Category: Accepting Christ is your choice

Love wins….


Your life and mine have been influenced by love at one time or another. It could be when we were small children and we could tell that our grandma loved us by the way she spoke to us or played with us. Love is expressed in many ways and in many different cultures. Some are very affectionate, some are not. Parents are this way too. Some express their love for their children and their spouse by gifts, some by physical expressions such as a kiss or a hug. The best way to show your love toward someone is by being present. Be there with them during special occasions or just be with them period. Don’t be an absentee Dad or Mom, because that makes your children feel like you don’t care. This is especially true with your spouse. Be there when they come home, physically and mentally. It is too easy to be there in person but “zone out” into your own world when they are talking to you.

Why am I writing this on Easter Sunday? Because, we need to be present physically and spiritually in our relationships with God too! Don’t show up once a week, listen to a sermon, sing a couple of songs and then forget everything that you heard as soon as you leave! Some people even leave their Bibles at church during the week! How can you read and study God’s Word and get to know Him better if you don’t read His Word?!

I used an illustration this morning and I am not sure it sunk into everyone’s mind when I did it, and it went something like this: How would you feel if you only saw your spouse for about an hour one day per week? They never read your letters or poems which tell of all that you have done in times past or what is happening right now. Would this relationship be a good one? I don’t think that you would be in a relationship like that for very long, do you?

But, this is how many people treat God when they go to church. They visit for an hour or so, listen to the sermon and maybe read a few verses in the Bible. The sing and pray along with everyone else and then they go their separate ways until the next time. What kind of relationship is that? It really isn’t a relationship at all, but “Christians” do this to God every week. Why? Pride, selfishness, fear, apathy…these have infected the church and its people and this began a long, long, time ago. This is not something new. It isn’t something that is only happening in the 21st. century. This has been building up for a long time.

True, there are some Christians who are very dedicated to serving God and reading His Word, praying for others and for each other. These are the ones that you read about in the Scripture where it says that God has saved Himself a remnant. There are many who think that they are saved and in good standing with God but they are not. Sometimes, I wonder if I am in that group who thinks they are saved but aren’t. I think that is Satan trying to take my joy away from me, which he does easily if you listen to him much.

Some days, it is hard to only hear what God is saying but if you read His Word and learn how His voice sounds then you can discern His voice from another’s. Love shows through all of the areas in your life and mine, especially where God is involved in it. God is love and Jesus was God’s perfect expression of His Love for us, but many people don’t look at it that way. Many people today try to say that we are bigots and hateful preachers for preaching the Truth from God’s Word, instead of coating it with sugary words and making it say one thing or two that God did not say. This is happening in churches today, and many of those churches have large congregations. People like to be told that they are OK and that God loves them just as they are.

He really does love you just as you are, but He also wants your life to change when you open your heart to Him so that others can see a difference in your life and they want what you have! Telling someone their sins that they are living in are OK with God when they are not is just plain and simply a LIE FROM SATAN. Seek Him out while you can because your sin will show up very plainly when you are standing in front of God at your judgement! Without Jesus and His blood covering your sins and making you as righteous and Holy as Jesus is, you will go into hell because you turned away from Him while you had the chance or you were fooled into thinking that you were saved when you really weren’t.

Think about it while you can.

Good Friday


I used to wonder what was so good about the day that Jesus hung on the cross? I know that it was the fulfillment of prophecy and it was necessary for our salvation, but for Jesus and those two thieves, that particular day was not a good one at all!

Jesus willingly went to the cross, even though His human mind and body didn’t want to do it, He knew that it was necessary in God’s plans for all of mankind. It hurt, and He endured it for three hours or more if you count the scourging and carrying His cross up the hill. The pain that He had to endure from the point that God had to turn away from Him was even more excruciating than the physical pain that He experienced from the nails and the whips. Why do I say this? Because, in all of existence back to the very beginning of everything, He and His Father had never been separated, EVER!

That was the hell that every person in hell goes through forever. Not just the pain from the heat and the fire, but the total separation from God and everything good in the universe is a pain that I can’t describe because I don’t know what that feels like. Jesus suffered through that separation until He realized that His job, His mission was finished and then He gave His Spirit up to God. He was in control, not the Romans nor the Jewish leaders that is why Pilate was surprised when he heard that Jesus was dead already.

He could’ve called many angels to take Him from the cross, but He didn’t because He loves each of us more than He did His own life. Which is why He gave His life as a ransom for each of us, every person on Earth! Isn’t that amazing? Our God loved us enough that He would go to such lengths to redeem us to Himself which is why few people believe it. Why do you think is it that few people believe that each of us don’t have to do anything in order to gain entrance to Heaven?

I think it is because, in our minds we just can’t fathom the kind of love and the amount of love that it would take for God to do this. Of course, if you don’t believe in God or Jesus or even any of the events which happened in the Bible, then it truly won’t make any sense at all to you. The Bible says that the “wisdom of God is foolishness to those in the world”, and it is true. Before I believed or was convicted to believe, much of the Bible didn’t make any sense at all to me. I heard it in Sunday school and in church, but that didn’t mean anything because to me those were just stories. Like “David and Goliath”, that to me was a children’s story and nothing more. Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, I saw Charlton Heston play that role, that was from Hollywood.

The thing that you have to learn by reading the Bible is that these things are and were given to prophets and priests to write down by the Spirit of God and He can’t lie! These stories are true because every part of the Bible is true! Why do I believe this? Because if any part of it isn’t true, then none of it is true, so my faith and my spirit agree that it must be and that is that. If you are curious about Jesus this season, read Matthew 26 and 27. Both of these chapters describe the Passover (Last Supper), the betrayal of Jesus and the mock trials leading up to His crucifixion. The best part of the narrative is that on the third day…Jesus arose from the tomb.

empty_tomb11Our future, our hope lies in the resurrection of Jesus because He said that He would come again and take us to be with Him in Heaven! That is a Christian’s home, not this place. Since He lives, we will also! Amen!

What is your question in this life?


Do you go around asking or just wondering about life and all of its do’s and don’ts? Have you seen all that there is to see, for you at least or do you still seek out the next curve or over the next hill? Do you still question why the wind blows or where does the sun go at night? How does the grass know when it is time to come back in spring? How do the flowers and trees know when to begin to bloom again?

These questions have been answered by science, to an extent at least. The sun doesn’t go under the Earth and come out of a cave in the East during the night and even today few people can tell you where the wind actually comes from or blows to. Yes, we have weather vanes which can point out the directions for me for the wind blowing. But, how do the trees and the grass know when to wake from their slumber during the winter? I know, it is the ground temperature and the angle of the sun or at least that is what botanists tell us.

Questions allow us to learn things and grow our minds. They help us to see the world around us, not as a static place but as a place that is alive and growing. Science can explain many things but emotional attachment cannot be quantified nor explained. Love can’t be bottled or analyzed, but it can be felt and in a relationship it grows deeper and sweeter with age.

God created our world and everything in it and He gave us the capacity to love and to be loved. Why? Because He loves each of us! He created us unique and one of a kind. There isn’t another person on Earth who is like you or me. Some of us may resemble each other so closely that it may be hard to tell us apart, but our personalities are different, our likes and dis-likes are different. Why are we made this way? Because God wanted it that way. Of the millions of birds and fish species that are in the world, very few of them are “clones” of each other as well. Some are colored the same, but each bird has a different personality too.

Why did God make all of this diversity in the world? What is the purpose of it? Mainly it was to make us ask questions about Him and His creation! Scientists like to analyze things to the point of not having anything left to analyze, but unless you are looking to the Creator for your answers, you will never find them. God is the answer to all of your questions and mine. Jesus is the Savior Who can open the door to Heaven for you, all you have to do is believe in Him and give your life to Him. There are no amounts of money that you can give or even telling others about Him that will get you into Heaven, unless you have given your heart to Him first!

He LOVED us enough to give His life and shed His blood for our sins so that we wouldn’t have to do anything to earn eternity. There is nothing that we can do on our own to earn our way into Heaven. Believe in Jesus and His sacrifice for you, ask Him to forgive you and to change you forever and He will! That is all that is required of you…nothing else.

Nothing is free


There is a lot of truth in that statement because nothing really is free, if that is all that you have. But, have you considered that our lives and all of the blessings which God bestows on us every day are NOT free? It is true that we don’t have to pay for our breath or to open our eyes, nor do we have to pay anything for our salvation, but those things are not free entirely.

Our salvation was paid for by the blood of Jesus. God gives us without cost (free) all of our other blessings simply because He loves us. We owe God our lives and everything that we have now and for the parents that we grew up with as well. God loves us because He is the Creator and because it is His pleasure to do so, not because of anything that we have done or will do in the future.

God was in the past and He is in the future now as well as today, so He knows the problems that you have but He is preparing a way for those things which will come upon us tomorrow, next week or even next year because He is already there. Why doesn’t God work it out so that we don’t have to go through those times? Because it makes us a better person. You didn’t take all of the obstacles away for your child when they were growing up and neither does He. But, He enables you to get through them if you will lean on Him and trust Him.

Life is not free if you look at the cost of living, but God is the owner of it all. He gives us the opportunity to live, not just this life, but in eternity. Eternity is worth more than all of the wealth in ALL of the world! Even though I said that Life, especially eternal life, is not free…it is for us. What do I mean by that? I mean simply that there is no amount of work or money that we can use to purchase eternity! It was paid for by Jesus when He was crucified.

This was done by our Creator because He knew from the foundation of the world that it would be necessary for our salvation and for our entry into eternity. We couldn’t do it on our own, we can’t keep even the ten commandments, Jesus paid for our passage and our forgiveness with His blood and His Life. When He arose from the grave a few days later, He reminded His disciples that He was preparing a place for them and would come back for them. This promise extends to the WHOLE Church which began being built on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem.

We as a world, not just in America, NEED to turn to God and repent of our sins. Not just individual sins but corporate sins which we have allowed to happen over the centuries! Repent and turn back to God so that He can and will heal our world, before the world goes too far into the darkness of anarchy which is exactly where we are heading.

Whom do you believe?


Many religions in our world today purpose to worship men. Men who are dead and have turned to dust or dried up husks in the grave. Why would you worship these who are nothing more than portions of creation itself? Living and breathing in our world is a wonderful grace that God gives to us, hard though it may be at times. Dead men don’t give any such grace or knowledge to us while we live or dream, only God our Creator will do this. We will not see Him, but our spirits will recognize our Creator and God when we hear and feel His calling.

So, whom do you believe in and determine to follow? There are many so-called “prophets”, even to hundreds of years before Christ. Some were in Eastern nations such as India and China, some came a few hundred years after Christ in the Middle Eastern nations. The difference between them and our Lord Jesus is that they lie in graves or have turned to dust while Jesus stands at the right hand of God, alive and well.

Some portions of the Middle Eastern religion say that Jesus is a servant of Allah, which is not true. God the Creator is not Allah, He is God. It is easy to place a name upon One whom you have not seen and give Him a name which you want Him to have and yet is a name which is not His Name. God doesn’t share His glory with any other god because He is God and there is none other!

The Bible speaks of God in three persons. The Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God, the Angel of the Lord or the pre-incarnate Christ and Jesus and of course God the Father. The One that we, as Christians, worship is a Triune Godhead. Being God doesn’t diminish His Spirit nor does it take away from the Son, Jesus the Christ. Trying to make the Son of God into a servant of Allah is blasphemy and is completely wrong.

God sent His Son into the world in order to redeem the world and all of those in it from the consequences of their sins. The only requirement is that they each believe in Him and that He did this for them, repenting of your sins and my sins and following His example in our lives. Following Him every day so that others may see the joy and the example that He set for us to follow and to do. We are not to do it selfishly or in response to the dictates of man, but selflessly and by the order of Jesus. Be a reflection of Him in all that you do every day, in your words and deeds so that you will glorify Him until He comes to take us to our eternal Home.

Will it matter that I lived?


I am not asking this question just for me but for  every person who reads this. It is a question which begs to be answered. Will it really matter that I lived? I don’t know the answer to that question. Have I done or said anything that is profound enough or thought-provoking enough that it will be noticed when I am no longer posting? Some may say that they will notice, but there are many more who don’t know that I am here even now!

My family will notice, of course, but will the words and the wisdom (if you can call it that) be noticed enough that the words that I write will be missed? Honestly I can tell you that I really don’t care and that is the truth. If you have noticed and read some of the things that I have posted, great! I pray that some of what I have said here has made a difference in your life.

NO! I am not dying nor have I been diagnosed with some fatal illness. I read something recently which asked this question and I became curious, so I thought why not put it out there and see if someone might notice or care to comment on this question. Just as an experiment if you will.

Before I go and finish this missive I want to make sure that you know this: God LOVES you with a love that is above your emotional feelings for your children or your spouse. This is why He sent His Son to pay the penalty for our sins. The only requirement for your salvation is that you believe in Jesus and His sacrifice for you. Ask Him to change your heart and your life into the one that He knows that you can be. Join a church that teaches from the REAL Bible, not a paraphrase or watered-down version of it! Learn as much as you can learn about Who God really is because He is not the Man upstairs nor is He a genie that grants your wishes! He is the Creator of all the stars, the galaxies, our planet, the Sun and every atom that exists in the entire universe AND He cares about you!Inspiration

Preoccupied with what exactly?


It seems that in our daily lives, regardless of our religious faith or lack thereof, we are preoccupied with all sorts of things. Some of it is relevant to our lives, some of it is not but most of it seems to be of very little value in the scheme of our lives and those around us. We, and I say this openly, worry more about our twitter feeds and our Facebook friends than we do the homeless man who sleeps under a piece of cardboard to stay warm. We chase after our phones far more than we seem to chase after our spouses or our children. We worry more about our status on social media pages that we “belong to” more than we worry about our relationship with Jesus Christ! Technology has become an addiction for many people. From games and game systems to phones and tablets which many of us didn’t even have fifteen years ago because they weren’t available or were too expensive at the time.

Now, they are so cheap that Amazon is selling a five pack of Kindle Fire tablets for 250 dollars! Everyone in your family can have one so that nobody will pay any attention to each other when we all have our heads buried in our tablets! Most will be used for games, although as the saying went thirty years ago for Playboy “I just read the articles (books).” The problem with all of this preoccupation with games and electronic books and distractions is that we aren’t paying any attention to EACH OTHER!! And we aren’t paying any attention to God or His message because in many churches, they are using tablets and apps to spread the message as well! It is good that the message is getting out to more people this way, but many will just ignore the alerts from the church app just like they do any other alert.

We need to be talking TO each other more, not AT each other which is what happens when technology gets in the way. What can be done about this? Unfortunately, not much. The generation which came along around the turn of the 21st century called the “digital”generation has never lived without technology of some kind and they have always had access to the Internet. If something like an Electromagnetic pulse bomb or a nuclear explosion were to happen and cut off our technology for weeks or months or more, many people would go through such a withdrawal that it would be like a nation of drug addicts all going cold-turkey at once!

I know this sounds like a rant against technology, and I am using technology to write this but I do have a point to make. That point is this: we need to get our collective selves BACK into God’s Word, the Bible! A digital version will be better than no Bible at all, but a written one would be better because it wouldn’t need to be charged up to read and it wouldn’t be affected by a nuclear electromagnetic pulse which might send us back at least one hundred years technologically speaking. Our world and every person in it needs to get to know God, not Allah or any other pretender! The God of the Bible and specifically His Son, Jesus, because without Him you are doomed to an eternity of being out of the presence of God which will be hell.

God loves each person who reads this and He does care about every little thing in your life, but He doesn’t like the lifestyles that some of us live every day. If you have not given your heart and life to Him, then ask Him to help you with the decision…He will. Remember John 3:16,17: 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. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

End or beginning?


Humanity tends to look at life as that time which we have here on Earth and that it mostly ends when your life ends. Some believe in reincarnation, some believe that when you die that’s it and there is nothing more…but for a Christian this is just a rehearsal for our eternal life, the life that we will have with Jesus. The one that never ends and that we will be with Him and our Christian brothers and sisters forever. Does life end with your last breath? This physical life on Earth does, but if your heart belongs to Jesus then your spirit goes on to everlasting life in God’s home, Heaven.

I can’t tell you anything about that wonderful place beyond death, except the things which I have read or the descriptions found in the Bible. Even those descriptions pale because human sight and comprehension just aren’t enough to tell others about that which lies beyond this life. It would be like trying to describe a color, any color, to a blind person who has never seen or experienced seeing a color such as a purple sunset or a clear blue sky. Words just don’t describe and can’t describe that which your eye sees! Like the boy who was in the movie “Heaven is for real!”, when he tried to describe someone or something that he saw it was just more…more real, more colors, more than he could describe with words.

Heaven is more than our imaginations can imagine accurately at least because there are colors and textures and gold which is so pure that it is clear like glass. We don’t have a reference for anything like that in our minds. Eternity is more than we can believe or imagine, but we will be there IF we belong to Jesus! For the first weeks or months we will likely be discovering far more than we could’ve thought or imagined that our life in eternity might be like. After we realize that we have been there longer than we thought, time won’t mean anything anymore!

Seek Him out, learn about Him, give your life to Him and ask Him to come into yours because this time on Earth is just a training period for the real thing!image

Why do we push God away?


This is a question which I have wondered about for many years. I know that many who don’t want Him in their life do this. The problem is that many Christians seem to do it as well. Oh, they come to church and go through all of the motions of being a Christian but they usually leave God and their Bible even sitting on the pew when they go home. We wouldn’t even do that to our cell phone, why do we do it with God? He is far more important and able to help us in everyday life than a piece of plastic and circuits and glass ever can.

The world, our country and many people in it have been pushing God away for a very long time. That is no way to keep a relationship alive, especially with your Creator! You wouldn’t expect your wife and family to put up with that kind of treatment, so why should God? Because He loves you far beyond any measure of human love or compassion, that is why. He is patient and loving in ways that we just can’t understand because His ways are not our ways, they are incomprehensible to us.

We just can’t understand Him or His Word, so many of us just quit trying. If we would put as much effort into reading and understanding the Bible as we do working on our taxes or following the Super Bowl, our country and our world would be a very different place. Our lives would be much better as well because we would be following Jesus, and His path is always the best.

Seek Him in order to know Him, why? Because He loves you more than you can imagine!

Life…


GodisInterestedinYouDo you know the Author of Life? The Creator of Life? The Way to Life everlasting?

The Person Who is all of those and more is Jesus the Messiah. He came so that we might have Life, so that we could have forgiveness of our sins and enter into eternity with Him. There is no other name under heaven by which we CAN be saved.

Today, we see all sorts of bad things or atrocities in our world. Things which most of us have never seen or heard about. Most of them so horrific that we can’t imagine anyone living in the places where they are. But, it is happening. In some areas in America but mostly overseas in the Middle East and Africa.

Life is not respected or revered in any culture anymore, whether it is the life of a child in the womb or your life and mine on the street. It seems that nobody cares about each person’s life, except their own. They, each of us it seems, only care about what is in it for me. Selfishness is rampant, and this is dangerous. Why? Because when things get really bad, everyone will be only looking out for themselves and no one else but them and possibly their immediate family.

God loves all of us and He hasn’t forgotten anyone, but there are so many who have forgotten Him…just turned away from Him and His wisdom. Whether they actually ever knew Him or not, that is between them and God and no one else knows about their salvation or lack of it besides Him. Nobody is condemned to Hell unless they reject His offer of grace and forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

It is a sad fact that many people do just that and never really think about it much, until they really need Him, and by that time their lives may be nearly over or they die before then. With death, you forfeit your chance at redemption because your chances for that are while you live here and now. Unless you make that decision while you live, there is no second chance once you are standing in front of Him. Your life is your chance, don’t throw it away or ignore the offer.

In spite of the questions in the picture about God’s interest in you, He really is. He cares enough for us that He knows how many hairs are on your head and mine. If He cares enough to even know that detail, then the rest of your days and your life is included in His knowledge of you as well.