Category: Abide in Him

Freedom from depravity


The Christian faith gives believers the grace they don’t deserve but so desperately need. The depravity of humankind is obvious, especially today. Our faith grants us , as believer’s, a direct relationship with God, whom we can approach with freedom. Once you understand the value of your salvation you understand how tightly the relationship needs to be held onto. Many people today think that Christianity deprives you of fun and having a life but that is not true.

God’s rules, the Ten Commandments, are guidelines for us to live by and after you have given your heart to Jesus and have begun following Him in your life they are easy to follow. Why? Because your relationship with Jesus is more important to you than your old life and your old ways. This is why believers need to treat their salvation as their most valuable asset.

I know the word “depravity” sounds offensive but think about all of the sex trafficking and child slaves that are kidnapped for perverts around the world. If that isn’t depravity I don’t know what is! Our world is under the control and rule of Satan and his agents so much of our world is part of his world. Granted, God allows him to do this and He is in control by limiting what he can do and how far he can go but it is still our adversary that is in charge on Earth.

God has always been in control of him and has placed limits on what he can do and what is not allowed by God. We see some of these things as either God is not in control or He is a mean and hateful God. He is nothing like that at all! If God were not in control I imagine that Satan and his cohorts would’ve made sure that mankind would likely wipe himself from the Earth long before now.

We should seek out God and learn about Him and His love for us, because there is no other way you can learn of Him if you don’t seek Him for yourself. God provided a way for your sins to be wiped clean so that you could interact with Him and be in Heaven one day as a redeemed child of God.

Remember, God has always had a plan for each of us and yet we try to live as if He doesn’t exist at all. He hung the stars in space and placed all of them in their places so that their light shines on us and we behold His glory by His creation. I ask that you give your life to Him while there is still time to do so. Seek Him out for your salvation, learn about Him by studying His Word and listening to Bible teaching and preaching. Because there is no better way to know someone than to read their letters.

Little things


How many times do little things get in the way of relationships? Sometimes the things which get in the way are so small until you barely know what they were. But they still make a dent in other people’s feelings. Sometimes the dent is bigger than you think and sometimes the damage takes a real toll on the relationship. Occasionally, the damage causes a rift or a split in the relationship.

Then what do you do?

You repent, say “I’m sorry” for the fortieth time, and move on. Each day…every day we go through times which will test our patience and our faith in God sometimes. But each day we must determine for ourselves to walk with God that day, then do it again tomorrow, and again the next day. This is what Jesus meant about taking up our cross each day and following Him.

The cross you have to bear is sometimes a difficult one. It could be a disease or a financial hardship or maybe an ailing parent or child or it could be depression or any number of other things which we all face at some point. Why bring this up if these are little things in God’s eyes but in our life they can be pretty big at times?

Because each of us has these “problems”, regardless of the size of them or the weight that they carry. Nobody is immune to the trials of life regardless of what they may be! Each of us has to live through them but we should remember that we don’t live through them alone. God is always beside us and ready to help us with strength for our spirit and for our struggles.

Jesus said, “I will be with you, until the end of the age“; I know, its a paraphrase of His words, but He meant what He said. God doesn’t mince words and He doesn’t lie about anything. When He said this He meant it! The “age” He was speaking of is the one we are in now, the church age, and if you have been paying attention to any news you will know that people are not paying much attention to the church or the message which we preach.

Your sin debt has been paid! Everyone’s sin debt has been paid, but most don’t want to believe that it has been nor do they want to believe in the One Who paid it for them. God loves each person individually and deeply! He is not a vengful God nor is He an angry God, He is a loving God Who wants to know you better.

Give Him a chance to know you and for you to get to know Him. I promise, you won’t regret it.

Did you know?


God doesn’t care what the color of your skin is.

Jesus came to bring salvation to ALL people.

The only real difference between “races” are the parts of our DNA which code for skin color, hair texture, and morphological features. Our differences are just a tiny fraction of our DNA and yet those differences are part of the cause of most of our conflicts in the world, outside religious differences.

genetic-variationOur “racial differences” come about by a very small fraction of our DNA. By very small I mean 0.1%. We are all related and that takes us back to the Garden. Our original parents were dark-skinned like anyone from the Middle East is, yet over the thousands of years since the Garden our skin tones have changed to accommodate our location in the world.

So, why exactly do we have so many problems which are caused by skin color and other superficial features? Is it because of pride or arrogance? At times, I think it is because we have trouble just dealing with our differences regardless of how minor they may be. Then we look at all of the cultural differences that we have and those do outnumber our racial differences.

Culturally, we are different from each other in so many different ways until it is hard to understand how we do get along as well as we do! Will it be possible to get past these differences in the future? Not without the help and influence of Jesus as our King! He will rule the world for one thousand years and our differences will go away for that time. When we all enter into eternity none of our differences will matter at all because we will be serving God in all things and in all ways.

The reason that life is so mixed up today is that of the time in which we are living. We are at the point just before the Tribulation and just ahead of the time when the church will be taken up into Heaven. That is why there are so many problems and natural disasters and other things like the changes in the climate which are happening. The natural world is waiting for God to change it back to the way it was in the Garden so long ago. Jesus said that there would be “birth pains before the end of the age“.

Many other signs will be happening between now and the time that the leader who will make peace treaties in the Middle East for Israel. Be watchful and seek God’s wisdom in these times because He knows what is happening and why, so follow Jesus before the end comes.

Who is in control?


It’s not the United Nations. It is not the President or Congress.

The One Who is in control of all things is God Himself! He allows things and He causes things to happen on the Earth and in the universe around us. Nothing happens by fate or coincidence and nothing happens without God’s knowledge of it!

When Jesus showed up to be baptized, what happened? John the Baptist declared that He was the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world. Yet, the teachers of the Law didn’t accept Him as such. They accused Him and mocked Him at every turn in His ministry. Yet, one of their members after His resurrection told them that if this belief and this movement was of God there was no way to stop it. Regardless of how many times His disciples were put in jail or flogged or told not to preach in His Name, His church was built on one immovable rock and it wasn’t Peter…it was faith!

God is in control and He is the One Who wants to bring salvation to you and to those all over the world. But many in the world don’t want to accept Jesus as their Savior, they have their own ideas about finding the pathway to Heaven or their afterlife. God loves each of us and yet He knows who will accept His Son and who, ultimately, will not accept Him.

Does He want everyone to be saved and come to Jesus as born-again believers? Yes, He does but God knows human hearts and He knows how people are with their beliefs and their fears and their pride.  So, have you ever considered your life and the meaning of it, the purpose of it? Have you looked at God’s Word and read it and realized that your life can have much more meaning if you are a part of His plan for your life?

Life is much more than we truly think it is and it can be much more if you are a part of His Kingdom and live your life according to His Word. Many people think that we have to live by His rules but if your heart has been changed by His Spirit, it isn’t quite the same. When your heart is changed and He is living with you then you won’t want to be in the places where you were before. You won’t do the things which you did before you met Jesus and asked Him to come into your life.

The Holy Spirit makes a change in your heart and that change makes a difference in your life and the way that you live it. You live by God’s rules after this not because you have to or because He makes you do it but because you want to do it as a way of showing others that He has made a change in your life. Because Jesus cannot come into your life without a change taking place. You are a new creation! Your old, sinful ways and your old life have been replaced with His Spirit changing you from the inside out.

Don’t turn away from His call in your life or in your heart! God is calling you for a purpose and He knows that you are the only person who can take His message to the places where you go or to the people that you meet.

A change of heart…


In our Christian lives, we have to have a change of heart or we are not saved at all! When the Holy Spirit comes to you during a service or in your daily work by something which you have heard or read, He touches you and brings to you a message from God. He is telling you that you need Jesus!

“What if I don’t want Jesus?”

Well, that’s your choice but do you have a guarantee that you have X number of days or weeks or years ahead of you? Not one of us has such a guarantee! I may die before finishing this and you may die before you finish reading it if I do finish it! God knows your expiration date, thankfully we don’t!

God in His wisdom and His knowledge of our sinful ways touches us by a word or a thought or sometimes a sermon. Then it is our job, our choice to respond to that touch with, “Yes, Lord, I do need you to mold me and make me after Your will for my life”. Giving your heart to Jesus is not a one time deal nor is it just a “purchase” that you put away and forget about.

It is a beginning, THE beginning of a life-long journey with Jesus until He calls you home! Many of us do allow Him into our hearts and then get frustrated and angry when we can’t understand the Bible enough and we walk away from it and from Him. His disciples spent three years with Him and they didn’t understand most of His wisdom and His teachings until after He was resurrected!

He had to open their minds to the Truth of Who He was while they were learning from Him and to the Truth of Who He is today! If you think that understanding the New Testament is hard, His disciples didn’t have it at all! All that they had was the Old Testament in the scrolls of the Temple. What all of them had learned as children as the Books of Moses and the Prophets and the Writings. Many of us can’t understand much of what is in the Old Testament even though most of it points toward Jesus and His coming.

The only way that you can understand His teachings is to ask Him to show you what they mean during your study time and your prayer time with Him…daily as you walk with Him! As I said this is not like going to the store and picking up a book just one time, this is a daily journey through the Bible every day, learning and praying about what you read and thinking on it while you go about your day.

God has given us His Word and Wisdom for our life and examples of how we should live our life with Him on a daily basis. Your life and mine are a marathon and a journey with God as our Guide and our Teacher through His Word. Isn’t it wonderful that the Creator of all things is willing to teach us about Himself and how we can be His servants! He made this whole cosmos in order for our brains and our comprehension to go “Wow, what an awesome God we serve!”

Give your life to Him so that you can spend eternity gazing into His handiwork and His face and knowing that He loved you before He made any of it! Isn’t that wonderful?

One blessing at a time


Is this how you approach God or do you really want the flow to pour into your life? Many of us say that we want His blessings to flow into our lives but then we put conditions on the flow. We begin telling God exactly what we want and how we want it and when we want it, but have you ever noticed that God doesn’t answer prayers like that? God knows what you need and when you need it. Notice the difference in those two sentences.

In one sentence we are telling God what WE want and when and how we want it, but God knows what we need and He knows when to bless us with it and how much of a blessing to give because He knows exactly how we will use it and for what!

We multitask in our daily lives and we want Him to do His work in our lives the same way. For example, do you notice that many of us are trying to do many things every day and even though we think we are “multitasking” we actually get very little done? Unless…we concentrate on one thing at a time. Such as wash the towels, get them started in the washer, then move on to the dishes and hopefully finish them by the time the towels are done, then get the towels in the dryer, etc. Each task which we begin as just one task and them move on to the next gets done.

But when you are trying to call someone and get put on hold while you are washing the dishes and needing to wash the towels and the clothes, then very little will get done until at least one of those tasks is complete. Many of us try to do too much in our lives when God has told us exactly how to live and how to complete your tasks in this life easily. Focus on the Kingdom of God and His righteousness every day, learning from His Word and His Wisdom, then those other “things” will fall in place behind the most important One of all, Jesus.

Even when we know this, we tend to impose our ideas or our thoughts about how God is supposed to work in our lives. Don’t we? When we pray about a problem or about something which we want Him to do or accomplish in our lives, we impose our ideas and our wants on God and in the prayer that we are praying. God does not work on your specific ways of thinking because our ideas tend to limit God’s power and His miracle. God does answer prayer in His way and on His time and with His blessing for you even though His answer may not line up with your ideas about how He was supposed to do it!

“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you”.  Matthew 6:33

GodGaveusEverythingBegin each day by reading His Word, maybe a chapter or so, then pray about what you have read and ask Him to help you incorporate His Wisdom into your day. Then your day will follow Him instead of the other way around. Always begin a decision or a day with Jesus, no matter what the day may bring and when God comes first in your day and in your life then your other priorities will be in their proper order.

How much more, little one?


Have you ever wondered how little we seem to be in the universe which God created? I know that our world is a normal sized planet but when you back out into the galaxy and into the cosmos as a whole, our entire solar system gets lost in a sea of motes. The stars which comprise our own galaxy take up the sky and cover our small corner of this arm of the galaxy until we are lost among the dust and the gas. So why are we, on this little ball of dust and mud, so important to God?

We are important to Him because He created us to be His. We aren’t puppets or toys to Him, we are people and we are special because we are created in His Image. No other being in the universe can claim that place. But, we hold that special place because He is God not out of any accomplishment or any righteousness of our own. All of us are bought with a price and that price was the blood of Jesus our Savior and Redeemer.

How much should we suffer or be in bondage to sin? We shouldn’t be in bondage to it at all because we have been bought with Jesus’ blood and our sin debt is paid, but if you haven’t given your life and your heart to Him then you are still a slave to sin! It doesn’t matter how long you have belonged to a church or denomination or if you are a deacon or serving in the Gideons, no amount of work which we do without Jesus as our Savior will help us or save us in any way!

How much should we live in this world of temptation and heartaches and put up with all of the things which happen every day?  How much more, O Lord should we be here?

These feelings have been echoed throughout the ages since Jesus went to His Father. Is it selfish to wonder about these things? I don’t think so. The church is ready to leave as well, but the timing is God’s timing and not ours. It could happen in a few minutes or in a couple of years but only God knows that day and hour.

Jesus told His disciples not to worry about the timing of His return recorded in Matthew 24: 36-41: 36 No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,e but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. 39 And they were oblivious until the flood came and swept them all away. So will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left.

That day will take the whole world by surprise, even those who are looking for His return. But, He will return for those who are expecting Him and looking for Him because they have faith that He will return.onebreathaway

Artificial life


In our world today we have AI or artificial intelligence inside many things. Phones, cars, computers, and in some cases people too. What do I mean by that? Well, if you can use your “pocket computer” to find out all sorts of information on almost any subject imaginable then I would say you are artificially intelligent. You can spout all sorts of statistics on games and cars and science and history and the news of the day and you get it from those little computers we call smartphones.

We do live in a time where there are so many things which fall into the artificial category after all. We have sweeteners which are not sugar, we have whiskey which isn’t alcoholic, we have beers which have such a small amount of alcohol in them until they might as well be classified as carbonated drinks. The list of artificial stuff could go on and on, but you get my point.

My problem lies with those who consider themselves to be Christians who really aren’t. They are artificial Christians. They do many of the same things which other Christians do like come to church and to Bible study, some of them are deacons and even pastors but if you could see what they have in their hearts like God can, it is empty.  They know what they should say and do, they have studied the Bible and been to church enough that they can quote Scripture and they have all of the outward signs of being a “Christian” but they are artificial.

Can we know for sure of the state of their hearts and bring them to repentance and the saving knowledge of Jesus? Truthfully, we cannot. Why? Because only God knows the human heart and we can’t. All that we can do is keep telling others about Jesus and giving our testimony and all of the things which our Lord told us to do so as to win over those who haven’t given their hearts and their lives to Him.

If they are finally convicted of their need for Jesus, then they may ask Him into their lives although it is likely that many of them will be like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. They will be so self-righteous until they will see no need to change, even if they feel the Holy Spirit calling to them. Which will be a sad thing because they will be found in the group which is telling Jesus about all of the good things which they did in His Name and He will tell them, “Depart from Me, for I never knew you.”

Do you know anyone like this? Can you tell that they are not what they say they are? Unless God gives your spirit the discernment to be able to tell if their spirit belongs to Him, most likely you can’t. Even if you had a feeling about them, I wouldn’t confront them about it because you will be accused of being a judge and we are not to do that. God alone is the Judge of our hearts, so leave that up to Him. Make sure of your salvation so that you won’t hear those words from our Lord! Amen

How long, O Lord?


The spirit of the anti-Christ has been a part of our world ever since the Garden. Why do I say that there was such a thing even before Jesus the Christ came to us? Because the spirit of rebellion against God has been in the world ever since there were people who knew about God on the Earth.

After Jesus ascended to Heaven and His disciples were taking His teachings to the ends of the Earth in those days, the people who were spreading hate and lies against their teaching were part of the anti-Christian movement and it kept spreading. But…so did Christianity. It seemed that the more there was persecution and a spiritual push-back against this message, the more the church grew. The plans that Satan had were backfiring on him. He wanted to stop this message and kill all of those who believed in the Son of God and His message!

But it didn’t work. Everywhere that there was great persecution, those who escaped from it took the message with them and it kept spreading. God’s Word will not return to Him void and it will accomplish that which He sends it out to do. It doesn’t matter if the message is spoken by a young farm boy or girl or a well-known evangelist!

The Word of God, our Bible, is the infallible Word of God and it is the Truth which our world and every person in this world needs it and the message which it has for each person.

6 “For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” Malachi 3:6

God loves each person in the whole world, but He knows who will accept Him as their Savior and who will not. So make sure of your salvation and seek Him today because you need Him. If you don’t know Jesus yet, I ask you to look for Him in the Bible because He is waiting for you.

John 3:16 says this: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Please don’t turn away from His call on your life and your heart because you will spend eternity somewhere and I would love to see you there in Heaven one day!

May the Lord bless you…


Numbers 6: 22-27

22 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 23 Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them,
24 The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: 25 The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: 26 The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace. 27 And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.

This is the blessing which God commanded Moses to give to Aaron which he spoke to Israel as a blessing from God. Since we are adopted into God’s family through the blood of Jesus, we can also claim this blessing as we go about our lives following the Lord and serving Him in our daily living.

God will be with us and bless us as we do those things which are pleasing to Him but if we turn away from Him and go our own way do things in our own strength and our counsel then God will not bless those things which we are doing. He is a loving God but He is also jealous of our service and our devotion to Him. Which is why Christians are put to the test when we think we are doing what is right for Him but it is only right because we are doing it in our strength and not under His direction.

God loves each of us and He will test us and try our faith in Him to prove it and make it stronger. We will not be killed or hurt in this, but we may go through trials and pain because of our walking the path without Him. Being obedient to Jesus and to His teachings, just as His disciples and followers were, is a requirement which has not changed and because He hasn’t changed our obedience to Him should not change either. Although there are times when we think we are hearing His voice when it is a demon or Satan speaking in our mind and convincing us that it is from the Lord. Our enemy is very subtle and crafty and he has had time to perfect his ways to fool even those who know the Lord and His voice.

We must try these words which come to us and make sure that they are from our Lord before we act upon them. A word from the Lord can come to us in a time of meditation on His Word but even then we should test it to make sure of its meaning and where it comes from. Making sure of the words and their meaning and whether they actually come from God’s Word as well. This is the only way to prove them before we act upon them and carry them to others by writing or by proclamation (preaching).

God wants to bless us for our obedience and our loyalty to Him but we must be careful to test any leading that we have and make sure that it is from God and doesn’t contradict His Word or even may be similar to His Word but is changed just enough to make it of none effect.