Category: Abide in Him

Foolish


Today is two different days all rolled into one. Most importantly it’s the day that we, as Christmas, celebrate Easter as the day when Jesus rose from the tomb. To others it’s April Fool’s day. In any event, today is a special day. So, will you be celebrating Easter today with family worship or will you be sitting in at home?

I will be preaching about our Lord and Savior this morning, I pray that you will come to know Him as your Lord one day soon. God made a way for you to be saved from an eternity of punishment if you will just believe in Jesus for your salvation. There is no other way to be saved.

This pathway to salvation is very simple but many don’t come to know Him because it seems to be too simple. We want to make it harder so that we can contribute something to our salvation, but we can’t. Our efforts only get in the way and make it unprofitable to others who may think that they can work their way into heaven.

Truly life is busy and confusing at times, but we should try to be more like the apostles were. Taking the message wherever we go in life, that is our job. Telling others about our Savior is our vocation because Jesus gave His disciples a command and we are His disciples as well.

What is Easter about?


Easter is about salvation. The Bible teaches that “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). Remember, usually more unbelievers attend church on Easter Sunday than any other day of the year. This may be the only opportunity to share with them the truth of salvation. Believing people need to hear the gospel as well as unbelieving people. Reminding ourselves of God’s glorious work in forgiving our sin and saving our souls ought to constantly challenge and change us to become more like Jesus.

Yes, there are times when we should understand and accept that the work which Jesus was sent to accomplish was finished on the cross and on the morning that Jesus came out of the tomb! It took both His death on the cross and His resurrection to complete the job that He was tasked with accomplishing and He did!

empty_tomb11How do we honor His Work today? Some churches do have Passion plays and preach on the work that Jesus accomplished. Others have egg hunts and things for the kids and maybe a sermon about His resurrection, then everyone goes home and does the same thing except without the sermon. Why don’t we live our lives as if He was going to show up in a couple of hours?

God’s timing and His blessing for us does come through Jesus our Savior Who took the punishment for us and everything that went along with it, especially the part about God having to turn away from His Son. He had to because Jesus took ALL of the sins of the world on Himself! From the sins in the Garden all the way until the end of everything on Earth, Jesus took all of our sins, yours and mine and every person born until that day when God says, “Enough”.

When will that be? It’s on His time and nobody knows the day or the hour when the time will be up for the whole world. Is it coming? Yes, it is coming, if you don’t believe it or you don’t want to believe it that is fine but…what if the Bible and everything in it is really true! Christians know it to be the Word of God and if God says something or promises something then it will come to pass..in God’s time.

Have you given your heart to Jesus? I mean truly and completely, not just saying words and getting wet in a baptism. What do I mean by completely giving your life to Jesus? For one thing, it is living your daily life with Him by your side because if you have given your heart to Him, then He is there in the Holy Spirit which is in your heart. You can’t run away from Him so you might as well learn to learn from Him every day.

Reading the Word of God on a daily basis. As John wrote that Jesus is the Word of God made in the flesh of man.

We are also told to wash our minds in the River of Life and to eat the Bread of Life, both of which are found in our Bible because they are the Word of God! The only way to grow in your life as a Christian is to consume God’s Word just as we do when we eat our meals. This is the only way to wash away the old sinful person that was present in your body prior to your salvation and replace your old self with the one which, in time, will look more and more like Jesus!

Being part of the church or even a member of the church doesn’t bring salvation. Celebrating the communion and drinking the wine and eating the crackers doesn’t save you. Attending church religiously for fifty or more years and reading your Bible doesn’t save you. Only your belief in Jesus and your faith in Him will save you and once that happens, you will give up your old ways and repent of them. When you read the Word and pray about what you have read so that the Spirit can reveal God’s Wisdom to you, you will become a little more like Jesus every day. But…this is a process! This is not something that you just put on like a coat and walk away with.

As with most anything else, it requires practice and faithful reading of God’s Word with prayer. Believing everything that God says because He inspired the writers to write the words which we have as our Bible. Prayerfully seeking Him in every daily endeavor and trusting that He will be with you in all of it and He will carry you through every trouble and trial that Satan tries to throw at you. Because once you are a child of God and a believer, you have a target on your heart and the devil and his troops will try to trip you up and make things hard so that you give up your path toward Jesus. One step at a time, one verse at a time, one day at a time will lead you to Jesus and to eternity.

Good Friday


Why do we call it “good”? When you see the movie or read the Bible, it doesn’t seem to be good at all. I suppose the reason is that Jesus was fulfilling the prophecy about His crucifixion, which paid for our sins. It just doesn’t sound right, though.

Bridge2SalvationI know, it had to happen because it was part of God’s plan all along. It just doesn’t seem right calling it “Good Friday”, except for the blessings that we all have been the recipients of through His mercy and grace because of the crucifixion and the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus the Christ! If you are wondering why I put His name that way it is because I have heard it spoken and written as if that were His family name. It’s not.

Khristos is the Greek word for “anointed” or Messiah, Christ is the Anglican version of it. All of the prophecies were fulfilled by Jesus (Yeshua) on the cross and by His resurrection, and there is nothing which we can add to it to make our salvation any better or more pleasing to God. So, why do people try to add works or anything else to their lives after their acceptance of Jesus as their Savior? We are not asked to do anything to earn our salvation. The only command which Jesus gave to His disciples was to go and tell every person about the salvation available to them. Tell the gospel, the good news which Jesus brought to us by His ministry and His death and resurrection!

Salvation is not earned by anyone or by any amount of witnessing or going on a mission trip to a place you’ve never been to before. It cannot be earned because it has already been paid for by Christ! Its price was paid by His blood and His death and resurrection on the first day of the week! Nothing that we have can add to it! Performing the ritual of the “Lord’s Supper” is nice but even today many people take part in it which are not saved through the blood of Jesus! That is forbidden in the Bible, but nobody seems to enforce it.

God knows your heart, the preacher does not, so if you do take part in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper and you aren’t saved by His blood and belief in Him then you will be required to account for this when standing before God. Why do I bring this up? Because there are so many people in America who claim to be Christians but their lives outside of the Sunday or Wednesday night service don’t reflect that there has been an actual change in their life!

We celebrate His resurrection this Sunday and it isn’t a joke because it happened. Just because it is falling on April 1st, which is Fools Day, doesn’t mean anything although some will try make it into something. Your eternal life is in the balance whether you believe in your heart and have confessed Jesus as your Lord and Savior or if you haven’t actually given your heart to Him, just lip service. Why do I put it this way? Because there are far more people who claim to be Christians than there are in church on Sundays.

If all of the people who claim to be Christians were in church every Sunday, church construction would be a booming business…but it isn’t. There are at least a thousand churches closing their doors each month in America, and yet according to some polls taken our country is very much Christian. Some of those polls show at least seventy percent claim to be Christians. Look these statistics up, I feel confident that what I’ve heard on the news in the past few years will bear this up to scrutiny.

Claiming to know Jesus in this life is nice and cozy, but when you stand before Him at your judgment will He know you?

The storms of life


There are days that it seems are filled with anguish and pain and sometimes heartache too, but the storms in life are what Jesus helps us get through. Living in this world in its fallen state causes anxiety and fear yet, at times, wonder at the joys and the fate of those around us. Why do I mix this sentence like this? Because during your lifetime and mine, we do experience joy and sorrow, pain and fear and anxiety too. This is just part of our experience in this life and it won’t get any better until our King comes to rule this world.

Yes, storms cause a lot of damage at times. Tornado’s and hurricanes can devastate whole cities and the surrounding area for miles and they both cause a lot of property damage and loss of life too. Yet, storms should not be part of our daily existence. If you live with what could be described as a storm on a daily or weekly basis, if you are a Christian then you may be doing something RIGHT!

Why do I say this? Because those storms and the trouble which is part of your life could be caused by Satan and his spirits and demons. If you are doing something which is bringing glory to God and His Kingdom, then Satan could be bringing these “storms” into your life to buffet you and interfere with your faithful living! Don’t think that just because you are a Christian that Satan will leave you alone. Being a Christian who is trying to live their life according to the example set by Jesus puts a target on your back as surely as being a medic in the Army with a red cross on your arm made them targets of the enemy.

We live in a world where Satan has free reign for a little while longer and he knows that his time is growing shorter. Therefore, he is stepping up his temptations and his working in our minds and in the world by causing all sorts of evil to be done, some of which is in the news and some are not. As the scripture says, “Satan goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour“. So, we are to be sober-minded and steadfast in our living by the Word of God, picking up our burdens every day and seeking to accomplish the work that Jesus set before us.

Don’t be slack in doing the things which God sent His own Son to do because once we have asked Him to come into our hearts then His charge becomes ours as well. We are to go around doing as much as we can, just as He would if He were here in our shoes. That is why the church, the people who profess to know and be known by Him, is supposed to be His hands and His feet and to bring His message to all who will hear it.

God is bigger than all of the storms that this life can throw at us, whether it is from disease or an actual storm or a disability or whatever it may be. He is up to the task of giving you the victory in all things when we depend upon Him for our daily strength. Give Him the glory for your healing and for your blessings because all good things come from God.

God is good in all ways and always God is good! Amen!

How can I be saved?


There is a scripture which says this in the book of John: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will have everlasting (eternal) life”. John 3:16

FB_IMG_1521382243378All that is required of us is to be convicted of our own sinful nature and then desire to repent and believe that Jesus really DID pay the penalty for our sins! A child can believe this, so what makes it so difficult for an adult? Is it because we have learned more about life during our years or is it that a child can believe without needing proof?

In many ways, I think it is that a child’s mind and heart haven’t been corrupted or polluted with all of the evil that is in the world. They still carry a bit of innocence in their spirit so when they hear the Truth or when the Holy Spirit touches their heart, they know Who it is and they turn to Him without question. As adults, we want to analyze and ponder over our decisions, even if those decisions have eternal consequences.IamtheWay

Salvation is not something which can be bought or earned in any sort of way. It is offered by the will of God through faith in Jesus the Christ and by the grace and mercy extended to us by God Himself. We cannot demand it of Him nor can we purchase it with any amount of money, even if it were silver or gold.

Jesus came into the world with only one command from His Father and that was to go to the children of Israel and offer them salvation through their belief in Him. While it is true that many did believe in Him and what He came to offer, many more did not. The priests of the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees did not believe that He was the Messiah, with the exception of a couple of them. He came to the people, the fishermen to bring His message through them.

His birth was announced to shepherds, His disciples were a collection of fishermen, a tax collector, a thief, and a tentmaker/mender. He went to the house of a sinner who was a tax collector and has a meal with his friends. Jesus went to the people that He came into the world to save, not to the people who thought they were too religious and righteous in their own minds. They thought they were too good, too righteous to need to be forgiven of their sins. Even at that time, there were those who were too heavenly minded to be any Earthly good to God’s Kingdom. (In other words, they thought they were doing God a favor by worshiping Him)

God doesn’t need us for our worship or our money or anything else that we can offer Him. But…we need Him for our very lives! He provides us with shelter and with sunlight and the air that we breathe. He provides the water for us to drink and our food that we eat. God is the Creator so everything in the universe is His! All of the gold and silver and copper and bronze and the precious stones as well. What could your pitiful bank account offer Him? Every dime and penny which we have earned in life is His anyway, we are just borrowing it to use it for our purposes and to give some back to Him to keep the message going.

The least that we could do is to give Him our body and mind as a living sacrifice every day! Wake up in the morning and ask Him what can I do for your Kingdom today, Lord? Then read some scriptures in the gospels and the Psalms and pray that He will give you an answer from your Bible.

Why did He ride a donkey?


This is a question which I thought of while I was young and I have had others ask me too. Why did Jesus ride into Jerusalem on a donkey? To fulfill the prophecy in Zechariah 9: 9-10 for one reason and so that the people would know that He was bringing salvation to them, not war, and not as a conquering King. A king would normally ride into his city on a white horse, a charger symbolizing victory over the enemy or enemies. But, Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on the colt of a donkey, the foal of a beast of burden. What is the message here?

The message from our point of view is that He was letting the people know that He was NOT going to overthrow Rome, but that He was to be recognized as Israel’s Savior, their Messiah. Unfortunately, the people and the priests did not see Him as the Messiah, they only saw a prophet who could do some really great miracles, like healing a blind man or a leper or even bringing one who had been dead for four days back to life again! But..they did not see a Messiah.

The most telling part of this, at least to me, is that He rode on a colt which had not been broken to riding yet. Why is this significant? Because the colt knew that this is my Creator and I MUST do whatever He tells me or asks of me. He could’ve ridden into Jerusalem on an unbroken horse and it would’ve submitted itself to Him the same way. God is the Creator of all things, great and small, therefore He is in command of them all. Which is why the waves and the wind obeyed Him in the boat when the storm came upon them.

Jesus was and is just as much God as His Father, He is just a little different. The attributes of Jesus showed His love, compassion, care, and tenderness toward all of His disciples and those to whom He preached. So, what would you say about Jesus? Is He the King and the Lord of your life or do you just know about Him?

If He’s not your Lord, then what are you doing here? Did you come to church just because you are expected to? Did you come because that’s what you do on Sunday morning?

God loves you far more deeply than we can even understand, so why don’t you love Him in the best way possible? This is a relationship after all. Consider this for a moment. Our very lives depend upon His blessings and His grace and yet we seem to discount this all of the time. Your breath and mine come from Him and we are His in spite of our decision to follow Him or not. I don’t mean to say that nobody is going to hell if they die or if they don’t give their life to Jesus and ask for His forgiveness but what I do mean is that God loves all of us in His way and it is a deeper love than we can imagine.

The only human foreshadowing of God’s love for us is the love that we get from our mother and father. It is a love which is deep enough that no matter what we do or say, we are always loved by them. God’s love for each of us is deeper than that even before we come to Jesus and ask for Him to be the Lord of our lives. Does that love become deeper when we become a follower of Jesus and a believer? I think that it does because we are covered in the blood of Jesus which has cleansed us of our sinful stains, so in that sense, I do believe that God sees His Son more than He sees us from that point on.

What is our vocation?


As believers in our Lord Jesus, we have a vocation which is not actually recognized by most who attend church. Our vocation, our job is to tell others about salvation through Jesus. This is not such a hard job actually unless you are trying to tell some of those in your own family about Him. People who have been in church most of their lives already think that they are Christians even if they haven’t given their lives and their hearts to Jesus.

This is a problem of course because just sitting and hopefully listening to the sermons really doesn’t make you a Christian. Neither does being born into a Christian family. You don’t inherit Christianity and you can’t absorb it by being in church more than other people. If it were that easy we would all have an easy time in school, just sit there and soak in the words of the teacher and when the test comes up…just pass it. No problem.

But, learning about Jesus or God’s laws or anything that you hear in church is not the only way to come to know about Jesus. The problem is that knowing about Jesus or the Ten Commandments doesn’t make you a Christian either. You can have “head-knowledge” or “book learnin” about Him and all things in the Bible, but just knowing about Him or learning some verses in Psalms or Proverbs doesn’t make you a Christian.

Truly, reading the Bible gives you a foundation in the Scriptures but unless you have asked God to show you His wisdom in your reading. Reading the Bible once per year is a good practice to get into as well, but if you haven’t given your heart to Jesus and asked Him into your life to change you from the sinner that you were then all of the reading in the world will not bring salvation.

So, how can we be or become Christians? The first thing which happens is that you will feel a conviction from the Holy Spirit. This is the calling of God to your Spirit to bring you into His family. Can you ignore this? Yes, you can although some say that you can’t. The problem with ignoring the call of God’s Spirit is that you may not get another chance. Remember, we are not guaranteed tomorrow.

After the conviction of the Spirit, you need to ask Jesus to come into your life and change you so that you will go into the world a changed person. You are not the sinner that you were, but you need to read the Bible so that you can learn God’s voice and allow it to wash your mind in His Word. Why is this needed? Because, washing your mind and your life in the Water of Life, God’s Word, is the only way to become a Christian who is grounded in Him and His wisdom.

I know that all that I have said in the paragraph above sounds like I have been giving you requirements of becoming a Christian but all of them aren’t requirements but they are suggestions. Suggestions which will make your Christian life even better and more productive.

What will you do?


The movie, “I can only imagine“, is in theaters now and the song has blessed the world with its inspiration for a while…but what do you think that you will do when you see your Savior? Will you fall to your knees in worship? Will you be so giddy with joy until you dance in His Presence? How will you express your gratitude when you come face to face with your Savior?

FB_IMG_1521382243378Truly, I have no idea what I will do. There are times, even now, that I get tears in my eyes just thinking about the mercy and grace which has been poured into my life. I didn’t deserve any of it and I still don’t understand the depth of the love of our Father. I won’t understand it until I am face to face with Him and even then I don’t think that I will completely know the depth and breadth of His love for me…for all of us!

God is our Creator and our Savior because He made a way for us to get to Him in His Word and to be able to come near to Him through the blood of Jesus. It is a good thing that we will have an eternity to be with Him because the understanding of His Love for us will take about that long to comprehend, even with our immortal bodies and minds.

Meeting Him as a saved and sanctified, born-again Christian will be so awesome until I can scarcely imagine even the beauty and majesty of seeing Heaven and our Savior. Truly, I don’t think my imagination could conjure up the images that John described for Heaven. Many of the paintings which I have seen which some artists have painted of their vision of Heaven just show a landscape which is just more than what we have on Earth. More and deeper blues, more vibrant greens, flowers which are dazzling in their beauty and water which is more like “liquid joy” than anything we could possibly find here in this life! This water flows from the throne of God, so there is no way we could find water like this here.

God loves each of us which is why He sent His Son to pay the penalty for our sins. All that we are required to do is to believe in Jesus and His atonement for us…that’s it. You don’t need money and there is no amount of work which any of us can do to deserve to be in Heaven. We can’t save ourselves because salvation is only through the name of Jesus. His name is the only name which will bring each of us to salvation, there is no other!

Bridge2Salvation

It doesn’t matter how many gods you serve or the names of your gods, they will not bring you into Heaven because they aren’t there either.  This picture shows exactly how your salvation is done and paid for. Your only response is whether you will accept Jesus and repent of your sins or not!

If you accept His sacrifice for your sins, regardless of how many they may be, then ask Him to come into your heart and save you from yourself and your sins. He will honor that prayer and come into your life and your heart, cleansing you from your old life and your old ways and make you a new creation in Jesus Christ! If you have done this, please let me know in the comments section, because I would love to know and hear about it.

Sufficient grace


2 Corinthians 12:7-10

“And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh…”

We are plainly taught how mistaken we are when we set eminent saints upon a platform by themselves, as though they were some kind of superhuman beings or even angels.

Paul enjoyed more revelations than we do or at least more than we should let others know about,  but then he also had a thorn in the flesh. He was a good man, but he was only a man. And, as men sometimes do, he was subject to the lure of the sin of pride itself. Pride in your children is not a bad thing, nor is being proud of your heritage, but the things which Paul had seen in the Spirit and in his walk with the Lord, he might have elevated himself higher than he should if he were to think much about the revelations that were given to him.

In his prayers, Paul asked the Lord to remove this thorn from his flesh. He did this at least three times as recorded here, yet the Lord said, No. My grace is sufficient for you. So, you see sometimes our infirmities may be brought on by Satan but allowed to stay by God. Why? Because when your joints hurt and it is hard to get up and walk or maybe you can’t balance yourself very well, then you need to depend upon God and His grace toward you so that He will get the glory in your weakness by giving you the strength to endure this trial.

In verse 9, Paul says that he would rather boast in his weakness and infirmities that the power of Christ may be manifest in him.

Leaning on God or on Jesus daily is what God was always speaking of when He told the Jewish people time and time again that He was their portion or that He would sustain them. Even in the wilderness, they got tired of the manna yet they ate it because they needed something to eat. He provided water for all of the people and their animals in the desert, even where there was no river or spring to draw from. God has always provided, yet people tend to rely on themselves more than they do on Him. Even when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, God provided the substitute for him in the form of a goat.

We are meant to walk with Him every day. That doesn’t mean that you have to be reading your Bible all of the time or even be in prayer all of the time. But, to walk in the spirit of worship regardless of where you may find yourself or in what situation, this is what Jesus meant when He told the disciples to take up your cross and follow Me. Your cross is your spiritual worship of Him everywhere you are, not just in church or Bible study.

Even when we do walk with Him daily, don’t fall prey to the sin of pride like the Pharisee did while praying. He was proud in his prayer: The Pharisee was standing alone by himself and he was praying these things: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men: extortioners, oppressors, adulterers, and not like this Tax Collector.”  We must be careful not to allow pride to raise us to a place above others because we don’t deserve it, especially concerning our faith in Jesus.

Paul’s thorn was a blessing as well as a messenger of Satan because it drove him to his knees in prayer. Anytime that we are on our knees in prayer before God we can stand before anyone or anything! God honors our prayers and He hears them, whether He answers them right away or not is His prerogative because He is God!

Do we look to Him for our strength today and every day or do we just say so because it makes us look more like a Christian in the eyes of others? Remember, there are many people who claim to be a Christian but there are fewer people who actually worship God and live their lives in accordance with His Word. Even when they do this, they don’t brag about it, they just walk through their day and their lives the way that they always have since Christ entered their life. Sometimes you can spot them and other times you may not be able to pick them out. Striving to be more like Jesus is a life of living one foot in front of the other. Every second of each day is expectant of His return for us because it could be at any time.

Is it possible to live with the grace of God giving us our daily bread and following Him like He will be appearing just any day? Yes, it is! Because whether we are ready for it or not, He will appear and call us home one day. Then the world will mourn and rejoice in the same day! Rejoice because all of those “intolerant Christians are gone” and those who are mourning will be the ones who attended services and knew about His return one day but like the virgins who needed more oil…they weren’t ready when He did show up.

Do you consider your blessings?


There are many who may not think that almost everything in your life is actually a blessing from God but each of them is exactly that. Consider the fact that each of us who live today was blessed with life through God’s grace in order to live through the night. Some of you may look at it like a teenager “I’m young I won’t die just by going to sleep tonight”, are you absolutely sure of that? Many of us look at life like it is guaranteed to us until we are old. Really? I have heard of teenagers who have had a stroke or a heart attack after practice for sports in the past couple of years. These children were sixteen or seventeen years old! The same age as my son at the time!

Gods Promise2We are blessed with having a family who loves us, if you are blessed with this you should truly count your blessings! Because there are so many who are in relationships where they are beaten or sexually abused or any number of bad situations! Do you realize that your days are only numbered by God Himself and only He knows how long you will live on this Earth? God loves you and He watches over you in this world, whether you have given your life to Him or not. He knows if you will become a Christian and when it will happen, but that doesn’t give you the permission to go out and do whatever you wish until God calls you!

Jesus said that we should believe in Him and we will be saved. Some people think it is too simple and that it can’t be that easy to be saved from our sins? Yes, it is that simple! Think of the thief on the cross. He didn’t have money or time or even the opportunity to be baptized, but Jesus didn’t care about that. He believed that Jesus was Who they said He was, the King of the Jews, the Messiah, and all he asked was for Jesus to remember him when He came into His Kingdom. Jesus told him that “today you will be with Me in Paradise”.

We are seeing things happening all over the world today which prove that Satan and his agents are working hard to point people away from God or even cause them to blame God for their suffering and we see it on the news every day. Why is all of this happening? Because he knows that his time is growing very short in this world, that is why! When the church, those who believe in Jesus, is taken up to Heaven he knows that his time will only be seven more years in this world.

We can’t live a Christian life alone because our strength is weak, especially our spiritual strength. Even pastors have trouble living a holy life, one which people might look up to him for and I never thought about why we can’t do it? It is very simple actually. We have to walk with Jesus every day, put our troubles on Him, depend upon Him for our strength in every matter of life. In America, we have always looked up to many “actors” who played the part of an independent cowboy or a strong military person, one who could accomplish almost any task that was before them. The problem with that is this: being a Christian is even harder than being an actor or a cowboy or a strong military person.

Our biggest problem is our “old nature”, that part of us which had all sorts of fun or at least thought we did because when we are saved by Jesus we have to walk in Him and read the Bible, which is something we likely wouldn’t have done prior to knowing Him. So, how can we walk in Christ? First of all LEAN ON HIM! Don’t act like you can do it alone because you can’t! The Holy Spirit gives you the knowledge and the power to live your life in Jesus the Christ. Don’t turn away from His call on your life!