Category: when you feel His call in your heart

What can we say?


Our world is paying the price for pushing God out of the schools and our government too. Not only are we paying for our ignorance but the rest of the world has been put on notice for the same iniquity. Some people may wonder exactly who is doing this? It is our Creator, God. God is in charge of the universe and everything in it, especially our lives. We may not acknowledge Him for it, but you breathe in and out and your heart beats because He wills it so. Does He control us or you like an automaton? Of course not! He created us to love Him and serve Him because we want to not because of instinct or because we have to. Love can’t be forced on anyone.

So why do we push Him away from our lives? In today’s culture it is because we want our lives and the truth that we use on a daily basis to be more fluid and flexible. God’s Truth is not flexible. That is the major reason that most of the world’s religions have no absolute truth in their holy words. God’s Word is the absolute Truth because it came from Him by the Holy Spirit Who inspired the writers of the Old Testament and the New Testament to write it as His Word because it actually IS HIS WORD!

In the book of John it begins at the beginning: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God“. Then, when Jesus came to Earth to live with His creation He was and is the Word become flesh. Believing in Him for your salvation because He is the only way to salvation is the Truth that many don’t want to listen to or believe but if they don’t…if you don’t believe in Jesus the Christ for your salvation then you will pay an eternal price because of it. Make your most important decision while you still can in this life because after your life is over, there is no way to change your choice. No choice is a choice.

Are we being disciplined?


Look into the Old Testament and you see God actively disciplining His people. He used signs and wonders to bring them out of Egypt and then He also used all kinds of signs and punishments to bring the Israelite community back into fellowship with Him. I am very glad that He does NOT use those kinds of enticements or punishments for the church, that is supposed to be part of the New Covenant through the blood of Jesus. Why is our world in such turmoil today? Mostly because the church dropped the ball in the past.

It didn’t take the “church” long to conform to the people and the world around them after Jesus ascended to Heaven. The Roman Catholic church adopted the “rituals” of pagans in order to bring them into its influence. That is where “Christmas” and “Easter” come from.

Have you thought about how we could get people to come to church? Most of us don’t because the world around us, for the most part, is not interested in coming to church. They don’t want to hear what they are doing wrong nor do they want to know that their “truth” is not the right Truth. Most people in the world don’t believe that the Bible and its teachings are the Truth much less that what is written there was inspired by God’s Spirit. They just think that the Bible is an old book written thousands of years ago and it has no relevance in today’s society.

I do believe that we are being disciplined by God but it is a soft discipline at this point. He’s not throwing hail stones of one hundred pounds at us and the Earth is not breaking open and swallowing whole congregations but we are being taught a lesson if we will notice it and learn from it. The things which are happening around us with COVID-19 and the Antifa riots and other media hyped “news” are just the birth pains before the real storm hits during the Tribulation.

If you are not sure of your salvation or if you have shunned church services for whatever reason I encourage you to make sure as soon as possible. The 7 year peace treaty with Israel will be the beginning of hell on Earth. Make sure which side you are on before that time gets here if you can.

Why do we have such hate and cruelty?


I watched a movie today called “Schindler’s List” and it truly showed the cruelty and the horrors that a human being can inflict on another because of hatred or racism. Not because of their skin color but because of their nationality and their religious beliefs. It was not an easy movie to watch. My Savior is Jewish and was raised as a Jewish man until His people rejected Him as their Messiah and hung Him on a cross to get rid of Him.

God still loves us but our sinful ways He doesn’t excuse one bit. There are going to be many people during the Tribulation and at the Judgment seat who will believe that they were doing what they did for God. I believe that they will get much worse punishment than others, especially if they were trying to exterminate the Jewish people. Our sins aren’t the things which get us thrown into Hell. It is our rejection of the Savior and His grace toward us that will sentence us to hell. We may be punished for the sins which we have committed in this life regardless of their “size”, big lies or little lies, stealing a pen or a million dollars. Any sin which breaks any of the Ten Commandments will convict you because even one sin is still abhorrent to God.

Life is too short for us to be cruel to each other regardless of the reason. But humanity has been finding ways to do just that for thousands of years. It was their sinful and cruel ways which brought the flood on the world and caused God to regret that He had made mankind. That’s pretty bad when the Creator regrets His creation. It also seems that as the years have passed by that in the past century plus twenty years we have grown to be more cruel toward one another. Not on a daily basis for the most part but the news which most of us listen to describes very hate-filled attacks on people all over the world. When I said “on a daily basis” I meant in my country, America.

Even in our United States there are many people killing each other over disagreements which shouldn’t be deadly. Some are over a few dollars or even less. Sometimes it is because of alcohol or drugs but most of the violence seems to center around a woman or money in one way or another. Not all of the violence in America is from guns or the use of guns, although the media seems to make it look that way more often than not.

Why am I writing this at the end of September this year? Because after the Presidential election in a little more than a month, there will likely be many protests and riots and violence of all different kinds. If one candidate is elected instead of the other there will be riots in the streets. I ask this question now before we get to that point: WHY? What good will killing people and burning businesses and police cars accomplish? Will it change the outcome of the election? Not likely. Will it force the government to step in and control the population? Possibly. Is there a rational way to make your voice heard? Yes, vote for your candidate and if they don’t win, this is the last time our current President can run so the next election will possibly be the one for your party to win.

God is the One Who places those in power, whoever they may be and wherever they may be. They are in power for His purposes and they can and will bring about the changes that He wants to be in place. Whether you believe in God or not doesn’t matter because He is still in control whether you believe or not. I pray that our country will experience a revival which will bring more people into God’s Kingdom because it won’t be long before He comes back for His Bride. Once that happens, this world is going to be much more violent than anyone can imagine because His Spirit will be taken from the Earth. The anti-Christ will be in power and there will be hell on Earth. Make sure that you won’t be here to live or die during that time.

Believe in and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord


That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Romans 10:9 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/rom.10.9.KJV

We are called by God and His Spirit to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. We can turn from this calling but consider your life as it is now. You are without hope for eternity and in this life you are confused about your purpose. God can clear up the confusion and give you hope and peace through Jesus Christ as your Savior. Salvation is a one time calling but God makes it easy to accept whenever you hear it.

I don’t mean that God only calls you once. But the calling is placed in your heart so that you will feel it until you answer it’s call on your life. The calling of the Spirit of God is unique to each of us. Some of us feel it at a revival at church or at a venue where someone is preaching about the Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes we are watching a movie which has a story that points our heart and our mind toward salvation through Jesus. God’s touch or His calling on your life is unique not only because it is personal but because He is. God knows you and all of your good points and bad points but He also knows exactly where you would be useful to Him in this life.

What do I mean by “useful to Him”? Consider this modern parable: a man finds a diamond in a field that he is cultivating. It isn’t very big but he gets the bright idea that if he could mine for diamonds he would be rich. So he sells all that he has and goes in search of diamonds, kinda like those men during the gold rush days in the 1800’s. What he didn’t realize was that the field which he sold to someone else was littered with diamonds but he didn’t pause to look around and see them. God knows your worth is far above diamonds and He is our Creator so He knows exactly the abilities that you have because He put them there before you were born. When you give your heart to Jesus, you feel inside that you should be telling others about your Treasure, your salvation through Jesus Christ.

It is not required to be saved because when you believe in Jesus for your salvation and walk away from your old ways…then you will want to let His Light shine forth so others will see it. That is the work and the ability that God placed within you. You have other talents as well and He can use those too. He may even give you more abilities that you didn’t know that you could do. Be sure of your salvation today because that spark of eternal life could flare up so others will see it too.

The wages of a sinful life


In Romans 6:23, Paul writes that “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”.

Why would God give us such a gift? It is worth more than we could ever begin to pay because there is no way that we can earn our way into heaven! But God sent Jesus Christ to Bethlehem as a human baby born to Mary the wife of Joseph. He came into the world as the son of David through His Earthly father and mother but He had the nature of God the Father. He came with no sin and He never faltered throughout His life. Just so He could go through the punishment of a criminal and be scourged and then hung up on a cross to die for humanity’s sins.

God the Father sent Jesus the Son to bear humanity’s shame and punishment, paying for our sins before most of us had even been born. I don’t know what the population of the world was at the time but He had looked down through history and He could see many people who needed salvation which could only come by His sacrifice. Clearly, God loved and still loves each of us far more completely and more deeply than we could ever imagine.

Your salvation and mine only comes by our belief in Jesus and our taking that belief into our hearts. Repenting of those sins which all of us have and seeking His Kingdom and His teachings so that we could be His until our death and then into eternity. It is our choice to do this but God already knows who will make that choice and who will not. God strung together your DNA in order to send you and many others like you and me into the world to be doctors or teachers or farmers or nurses but in doing so, He also knew which person would be a good fit for being a Christian. Your personality, your strength and your witness were all known before you were born. Just as God told Jeremiah, “….in the womb you were consecrated to Me”.

God loves each of us so much that He sent His own Son to die for our sins, paying the penalty for them and making atonement for us so that we could be allowed in His Presence one day. Isn’t that AWESOME! It is also humbling because the Creator of the universe cares about us on this little ball of dirt that He created for us. Life on this planet didn’t evolve from a single cell into multiple cells and then one day become all of life on this world! It was created in the mind of God and brought into existence by Him and for His pleasure. Why? I have no idea, but God does. Give Jesus your heart and make sure that it is done as soon as possible because not one of us knows how long we have to live and that decision has to be made while we live.

There are always two


It sounds like I’m channeling Master Yoda but what I am speaking or writing about is that there really are two, sometimes more but always 2. In our world the Lord shows us that in every situation there are 2 sides. Dark and light, good and bad, black and white, morning and evening. So how do we navigate in the gray areas that our culture insists on? God doesn’t show any gray areas. You are either in the light or the dark with no gray area in between.

How do we fix this? Truthfully, we can’t. It is a choice that we must make and it is an individual choice, not a collective one. Each of us must choose the side that we feel is the one that God is calling us to. I know that many people don’t believe in God as their Savior, but life requires a choice regardless of your beliefs. Because there is evil in our world and there is overwhelming love and goodness too. You see it and hear about it on the news or on your computer every day. Many people wonder why God allows the evil and the hatred that we see around us? That is where our choices come into the picture.

There are always two choices and just like the cartoon where the little demon was on one shoulder and the angel was on the other, those really are our choices every day. We can listen to one or the other and make a choice and it is that choice which determines how our day or our week turns out. When you look at the world with your spiritual eyes you can easily see that there aren’t any “gray areas” at all. You are either saved through faith in Jesus or you are not. You either believe in Him for your salvation or you just believe that He exists because it says so in the Bible which does not save your soul.

Our eternity stands or falls on one of two choices. Believe in Jesus for your salvation or choose not to believe in Him and go to hell. These choices have to be made in this life today! Why? Because we are not guaranteed a certain number of years before we die. I could die before I finish this or I could live another twenty years or so. With the pains that I have in my hands and my neck now I really don’t want to add another twenty years to it. My point is that we don’t know when our last day is, so choose which way you are going to go now…today.

Life is different today…


What do we do during this crisis? We live through it each day, one day at a time. Some days we even live hours or minutes at a time depending on our health and that of our loved ones. Life is very different today than it was six months or a year ago. We are trying to fight a virus that doesn’t kill everyone who is infected but those who have other “health challenges” such as diabetes or heart disease or COPD may not live through the infection. Sometimes it seems that it is age-related and sometimes it isn’t because there have been many young people who have died because of it.

Why? I think this time in history and the things which we are going through are God’s way of telling us to wake up and seek Him. Get out of your rut and the feeling that you are the only one that is experiencing what is happening in your life! God loves you and He is trying to get everyone’s attention but if you feel that He is calling you…please don’t walk away from it. Yes, life is different today, much different than we have had to endure in the past but God is still in control.

I know the questions: “Why are we being testing with this disease?” “Why does the world have to endure this?”

Because sometimes it takes a little hardship and the fear that comes with the virus to cause each of us to look at our lives and realize that there is more to this life than the self-centered way we’ve been living it. God is waiting to show you what He has in store for you. Not bad things but an abundant life into eternity with Him. God doesn’t place burdens on us that we can’t handle but sometimes we need His strength and His Spirit to get through the problem better than we could ever do it on our own.

We will not be beaten down by this problem regardless of the country you may live in because God is bigger than any problem or disease that we could ever face. Stay close to Him, follow Him and ask Him to be your Savior because He can heal every disease and give you strength to get through every problem in your life here and into eternity!

Are you confessed or conceited?


There’s more hope for a confessed sinner than there is for a conceited believer. Whoa!

Why? Because of pride. Now, wait a minute. Why should I think about pride?

Pride is the root of every sin and every decision which causes us to try to be more than we can be. Pride causes us to try to do it ourselves and not seek God’s help until we really have to.

A confessed sinner has come to the point where he or she knows that they have sinned and they’re ready to ask for God’s forgiveness. A believer who is conceited has allowed his pride in his “salvation” or even in the fancy church that he belongs to, to cloud his view of his sins.

Why would a person who is saved be so prideful? It could be because they only think they are saved. Pride is the original root of all sins. That’s why Christians should endeavor to stay humble. Don’t ever think or believe that you are more important to God than anyone else! God loves each of us and He cares for each of us far more deeply than we can understand. We are not just “animals” that He placed here! God formed Adam with His hands and then blew the Breath of Life into him so he would become a man with a soul.

The truth found in God’s Word is the truth that our world, and everyone in it, needs to hear. Whether they will understand it and take it to heart enough to seek their Savior is another thought entirely. God knows who will and who won’t accept Jesus Christ as their Savior and one day soon He will send the angels to blow His Trumpet and call His Bride, the church, home. The bad thing about that day will be those who thought they were saved but weren’t. Especially if it happens on a morning that church services are going on.

What is salvation?


Well…it depends upon what a person is being saved from? Salvation can be many things to many people. You can be saved from physical death by a seat belt in a car or an air bag or both. You could be saved from a life of being filthy rich by your circumstances or by God’s grace, whichever you prefer. Salvation, for a Christian, is being saved from the punishment of hell that we deserve but by God’s grace our faith in Jesus atones for all of our sins and allows us to come before Him with no blemish of sin on our person. You could receive salvation from drowning by someone throwing a lifeline with a float attached to it.

So you see, salvation can come to each of us in different forms and at different times but the one that most of us are seeking is our salvation from the punishment that we deserve for our sins. God is our Creator and our Savior which is why He came to live as a human for about thirty three years. He came so that He would know the temptations that we experience not to judge us for those but to call us into a life with Him. Sometimes the call that we hear from Him comes when we are young and sometimes we don’t hear it until we are a bit older.

There is one illustration that I would like to give here which points out the reality that our Savior gives to us and to no others in Creation.

“The life of Christianity consists of possessive pronouns” says Martin Luther. It is one thing to say, “Christ is a Saviour”; it is quite another thing to say, “He is my Saviour and my Lord.” The devil can say the first; the true Christian alone can say the second. Resource, July/August, 1990.

To claim our salvation we must come to a realization that we need Jesus in our heart to save us. God does that when His Spirit reaches down and touches your heart, breaks it and re-molds it into a heart that is ready for His gift. Sometimes this is painful but sometimes it is something that we have sought for a long time and in that instance it feels so good to get the burden of years of carrying the guilt and the shame with us all of the time.

Only a Christian can say “Christ is my Savior and my Lord”. If you can’t confidently say that is feel in your heart that it is true then you may want to seek the Lord for confirmation of your salvation. Do you believe it or are you just saying words? God came down as a helpless baby to live as we live so that He could identify with every emotion and temptation that we have. He saw and healed many diseases while He was teaching His disciples about the Kingdom of God and that He has healing for every disease if we will believe in Him for our healing.

Some people only say the words. Some people read the Bible but they don’t believe a word of it. Its just a book of stories and the history of the Jewish people. It is so old that it doesn’t apply to us today.

All of the statements in the short paragraph above are false with parts of truth in them as well. “Now, hold on preacher! The Bible is the Word of God, it can’t be a lie!” The Bible is the history of the Jewish people but some people read it like a book. Some just think it is too old to apply to us now, and there are many people who truly don’t believe a word in it came from God.

Why is that important? Because, God inspired the prophets and kings to write the words which make up the Torah, which is our Old Testament. The apostles wrote their accounts of Jesus’ ministry and Paul wrote most of the prison epistles from a Roman prison but even they were under the influence of the Holy Spirit. If the Word, the Bible, is inspired by God and His Spirit, then it is true and there is no other way to interpret it.

Finally, salvation comes to us by faith in the Holy Spirit which convicts us of our need of salvation. Then He points us in the direction of Jesus Christ Who is our Savior and Lord to believe in Him for our salvation to become real and genuine. After that we should read God’s Word to know what we should do with all of this joy and grace that we’ve been given!

One thief lived even though he died


Jesus didn’t have to save the thief on the cross beside Him but He did it out of love because that was the reason He came for…to seek and to save the lost. Just the same as He does for us today. When you come to church on Sunday if you are not a Christian yet you are likely thinking “What am I doing here?”. Most of us wonder about the reason that we are in church but when God’s Spirit has touched you and let you know that you need Jesus in your life, there is very little which could’ve stopped you from being in church that day.

I don’t mean to say that it is an irresistible call but it truly is. You might skate by this Sunday but one day soon God will get you into a church to hear the gospel preached. Because you will be drawn to Jesus at that time. God didn’t have to send His Son to bring salvation to mankind but He did it because of His love for us. Will everyone be saved? No, because there are many in the world who won’t hear that small voice calling them or they will ignore it until it goes away.

Don’t be the person who has heard God speaking to your heart, asking you to come to Jesus but you didn’t feel like it or you had something else you wanted to do. Sometimes God will keep calling until you answer the call but sometimes it is just too late. An accident or a stroke or heart attack will take you from this world when you least expect it. Not one person knows when their “time is up” until it happens so if you haven’t made your decision yet then it is too late at that point.