Category: when you feel His call in your heart

Little things…


There are days that little things don’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. Such as how you feel in the morning or when you have your coffee, if you drink coffee. Some days, little things don’t seem to matter a lot but we all have those days in which even the little things can cause problems or even compound the problems that we are having on that day. So can we do anything about them? Most of the time we really don’t have much, if any, control over the little things. The bigger problems which come along from week to week are the problems that we usually don’t have control over.

In light of thinking about this, Jesus tells us in the gospels not to worry at all. Because God the Father knows what you need and He will supply it at the proper time. Of course our humanity usually causes us to ignore this advice and worry anyway but when you think of worry as “practical atheism” Christians shouldn’t do it at all. By worrying we are telling God that we don’t think that He can or will handle this problem so we need to worry about it and find an answer to it on our own. Why is this a problem? Because when we take the problem into our hands by worrying about it and trying to find our solution to said problem, God will just step back and allow us to work on it ourselves. Then when our “solution” fails He will come in and let us know that we should try it His way the next time.

Problems, big and small, can cause anxiety in our lives if we allow it to. God tells us that we don’t have to endure this anxiety if we would just give Him the problem to solve and let Him solve it. Few of us can do this because we think that we need to help God with our problems. God created the universe out of nothing so what makes us think that He needs our help? Just as He told Job, “Where were you when I hung the stars in their places?”. Since He can do all of the things in the book of Genesis without any help from us, I believe that God can handle our little problems in this life.

Our problems seem to be BIG to us and the longer they stick around the BIGGER they seem to get. But God is bigger than all of our problems and He can handle them all by Himself if we let Him. It is hard to believe that we could take something from God but we can. Simply by worrying about it and telling God that we’ll handle it and He doesn’t have to do anything for us is one way to take back your problem that you were seeking a solution to. He can see the outcome of that path even before we head in that direction but if we insist on taking our problem back, He will allow it.

I’ve repeated myself in the paragraphs above because it needed to be repeated, like in the Bible. If you are a young Christian (one that has just come to a saving knowledge of Jesus), you may not have this problem. Most new Christians will give their problems to God and they seem to have more faith than Christians who’ve been acquainted with Jesus for a long time. We’ve grown comfortable in our relationship with God and Jesus and we think that we can handle certain problems and we will let them have the BIG problems in our life. God wants to be involved in your life in every way and in every decision whether they are big decisions or little ones.

Faith…do you have it?


Without faith it is impossible to please God. So…do you have any faith in Him? In Mark chapter 9 there was a father who had come to Jesus’ disciples first because his son had a demon who afflicted him. This boy had this going on for many years and the apostles could not cast it out. When his father saw Jesus he said something that you don’t hear or read in the Bible very much. The father told Jesus that his son had been this way since childhood and he said “If you can….”.

Mark 9:14-29  14 When they came back to the disciples, they saw a large crowd around them, and some scribes arguing with them. 15 Immediately, when the entire crowd saw Him, they were amazed and began running up to greet Him. 16 And He asked them, “What are you discussing with them?” 17 And one of the crowd answered Him, “Teacher, I brought You my son, possessed with a spirit which makes him mute; 18 and whenever it seizes him, it slams him to the ground and he foams at the mouth, and grinds his teeth and stiffens out. I told Your disciples to cast it out, and they could not do it.” 19 And He answered them and said, “O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him to Me!” 20 They brought the boy to Him. When he saw Him, immediately the spirit threw him into a convulsion, and falling to the ground, he began rolling around and foaming at the mouth. 21 And He asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 22 “It has often thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!” 23 And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.” 24 Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.” 25 When Jesus saw that a crowd was rapidly gathering, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You deaf and mute spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again.” 26 After crying out and throwing him into terrible convulsions, it came out; and the boy became so much like a corpse that most of them said, “He is dead!” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and raised him; and he got up. 28 When He came into the house, His disciples began questioning Him privately, “Why could we not drive it out?” 29 And He said to them, “This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer.”

The boy’s father didn’t know Jesus very well at this point but he did ask Jesus to heal his son and help him with his unbelief. God can do all things as long as we believe in Him and don’t doubt that He can. But, mustering up enough faith to see something done that you have trouble believing that it can be done is something else entirely. Yet, God can help you with your faith in ways that you don’t reallize at first. Our God and Savior is AWESOME so don’t consider for a moment that He can’t do something that you ask of Him because He can!

I pray that everyone who may be in the path of the storms in our country and all over the world will seek His strength and guidance in these troubled times.

Who is Jesus Christ?


This is a question which has been asked ever since His ministry began over two thousand years ago. How can I answer this question? According to God’s Word He is our Savior and the King of Kings. He is also the seed of the woman. He was the cloud by day and the pillar of flame by night to guide the Israelites in the wilderness. When they finally crossed over into the Promised land, Joshua met the Captain of the Lord’s Host with His sword drawn. That was the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ.

Our Lord can be our Savior if we invite Him into our hearts and believe that He is our Savior. So many times when the Israelites were going through the Promised land they turned away from God and went after the gods that those around them were worshiping even though these “gods” were not gods at all. They were a generation which had not seen the miracles of God which brought them out of bondage in Egypt. They may have heard about them from the priests or their grandparents but it is likely that they didn’t believe them.

Later, when Israel had been taken to Babylon, it was demanded that all of the people would worship the image of Nebuchadnezzar . When some would not, he had an oven made hotter than it had ever been. So hot that when he ordered the three to be thrown into the fire, the men who put them in were killed by the heat as they pushed Shadrach, Meeshach and Abednego into the furnace. Then the king looked into the fire and saw four men and one of them looked like “a Son of God”, and he called them out of the furnace. Their hair was not burnt, their clothes didn’t smell like smoke and they were not harmed because Jesus showed up in their fiery trial.

There are many other names and places where Jesus showed up in Scripture. Sometimes in a human form and sometimes He was there in the circumstances. Our Lord and Savior comes to us when that need is there. He is there during our hardest time and in our best day. If you believe in Him as your Savior then the Holy Spirit takes up residence in your heart and He will teach you about Jesus and be your strength when you don’t have any. He will be your friend when you can’t find any. He is our Provider and our Shelter. He is our Deliverer and our Protector. He is the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, the Great “I AM”. He is the Lamb that was slain for the sins of the world. He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. He is the Son of David and the Son of God. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is the Commander of the Lord’s angels. He is Jesus Christ now at the right hand of God the Father.

Seek Him and you will find Him and He will fill that empty place in your heart and bring peace to your troubled soul.

What makes the difference?


What makes a difference in a person’s life? I don’t mean materially like having a lot of money, what I am speaking of is an eternal difference. Now, there are some in our country today who would ask, “What do you mean “eternal difference”? Well, according to God’s Word which, isn’t read very much in America anymore, all of us have an eternity to look forward to after we die. Some of us won’t like it there at all. They will see their eternity as a punishment and a prison. Well, it is. 

You see when you live your life like the devil then your eternity will be to live in eternity with the devil. Now during this life, I have heard many people say that in hell we will be having a party all through eternity. But that is not the way Jesus describes hell. He said the smoke of their torment rises for eternity and that they will be thrown into the lake of fire with Satan and his demons. A lake of fire doesn’t sound like a party to me. Especially when your eternal body is capable of feeling pain even though the lake of fire can’t kill you.

The difference that we make in other lives and in our own life can only come by one Person, Jesus Christ. He is the Author and the Finisher of our faith and it is His Spirit which remakes us into a child of God. We cannot do this transformation on our own. There is no amount of money or time or work, which will miraculously make us righteous in the sight of God. Only belief in the Son, Jesus Christ for our salvation will accomplish this task. We do not choose this on our own because even when you have been in a revival tent or meeting if you feel that you need Jesus and you go down front that decision may be because of your friends going down or some girl going down.

When the Holy Spirit touches your heart and breaks it so that you know that you need Jesus regardless of who may see you or what your friends might say. Nothing will keep you from going down and making Him your Savior. God’s Holy Spirit will move you to make that decision and you will make it. Sometimes it may take a few more prompting touches from Him but you will get down on your knees and give your life to Jesus.

What does all of this have to do with making a difference? Because others will see the difference in you and they will want to know what happened? Your life and your way of living changed and someone will want to know how they can have the peace that you have. They will hear about your life turning in the opposite direction from where you were headed and they will see a difference in you. Some may not see it as a good thing and that’s okay but there will be others who see the change and they will want what you have found.

When your life changes like that then you will make a difference in someone’s life. Maybe even more than one person. Then they can go out and make a difference and the effect will keep going from there. God can make one person…one seed sprout into a field of new growth for His Kingdom. It only takes a spark to start a fire if the right kind of wood is there. Your “spark” comes from the Holy Spirit and the fire that He starts in your heart is what other people see. Once they see this change in your life, they will want to know what or Who it is that made this change.

Make sure that they know it was Jesus Christ Who brought you to this place in your life.

Endless love for…


We have heard songs for this and we’ve prayed for it to happen to us but until you realize that you already have it…it never really sinks into your conscience. God has loved every one of us since before the first blade of grass grew in Eden. He has known our weaknesses and our strengths and where and when we would make mistakes and He loves us anyway. Even when we refuse to listen to Him or we turn away from Him for a time and do our own thing…He still loves us. Feeling loved or unloved? Seek God in the Psalms and Proverbs. His love shines so bright that our own Sun cannot be bright enough to make a shadow.

Endless love. The kind of love that lasts not just for a lifetime but for eternity is the love that God has always had for each of us. Will He show this love to us while we are still alive? Yes, and He does it every time you wake up to a new day. When your day goes your way until you get home that was God making your day smooth and productive. God’s Spirit comes to live with you when you accept Jesus as your Savior and He is with you during the good days and the bad ones. He is never any further from you than a breath and a prayer. If you are hurting, the Holy Spirit can fill in the blanks that you can’t pray because of grief or the loss of a loved one. He knows your pain but He will give you the strength to get through it today and tomorrow and the next day too.

The gifts which the Spirit brings to your life will help with so much and add to your life and your enjoyment of it. God does so much for us each day and most of it goes unnoticed because He takes care of little things before they become big ones. Sometimes we ask Him to do something for us and He knows that we don’t need it or that it would cause problems for us later. He answers those prayers by not answering them. We don’t understand His logic but we aren’t supposed to understand Him. He’s God our Savior, our Protector, our Creator and our Redeemer. What more could you want or need?

God watches over the righteous


For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil. 1 Peter 3:12 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/1pe.3.12.KJV

When you pray, God hears your prayers. If you are a sinner, the only prayer that He will hear is your prayer for forgiveness and repentance. After that, He will be near you every step of the way. God never turns away from a sinner if they are sincere about turning away from their sins. Only a prayer for forgiveness and repentance from a sinner will be answered instantly, if it is sincere. Just like trying to quit smoking or drinking will not work unless you truly mean it. God knows what is in your heart and He knows what you are thinking. It cannot be hidden from Him.

God does care about and He watches over all of us, sinner and saint alike, and His will for all will be accomplished because His will cannot be undone. The world around us thinks that they can change the future by their actions but the future is in God’s hands and it will happen the way that He says it will in His Word. Look to His Word for your peace and your salvation through Jesus Christ.

Are you following Jesus?


When Jesus called His disciples, He asked them to follow Him and they did. Some of them learned a lot from following Him and listening to His teachings. One of them was dissatisfied with how things were going. He wanted a King for Israel and one who would defeat the Romans and push them out of Israel. But…that was not the reason for Jesus’ mission at the time.

So, are you following Jesus or are you hearing the preacher tell you about Him and then going your own way? Believe it or not, there are more people who are in church just listening than there are who are following Jesus every day and every step of the way. Some who read this will want to know how to follow Jesus every step of the way and here’s the answer: read the Bible each day, praying that He will speak to you about your day and your problems.

God will do that if you are serious about reading it and learning from it exactly Who He is and His love for you. Even if you only read a chapter each day it will focus your thoughts on Him and you will have those Scriptures to help you in your time of need. The thing is: when you read God’s Word, the Holy Spirit can and will speak to you through it. You will never read the same verse twice and get the same message. It will always be a different more useful message even if you’ve read it 100 times!

Walking with Jesus is the same today as it was when the disciples walked with Him. Get up from your bed and thank Him for giving you one more day to live and learn from Him. Go through your day thanking Him for even the little things which seem insignificant but they touch your life or your thoughts in some way. Thank Him for your food and your job and the ride home. Be in a worshipful mood of thankfulness all day because He has given you this day to learn from Him. Thank Him for your day before you go to bed and thank Him for a home to sleep comfortably in because there are so many who don’t have even that “luxury”.

Make this a daily habit and your life will be so much more complete and secure.

When trials come…


There is a reason that I put this in the title. Because all of us have trials. Some are good and some are not so good. Some of them sneak up on us and some we have been living with for a while.

What should you do when trials come? Pray. If you aren’t a believer you need to ask Jesus to be your Lord and Savior because that is the most important prayer that each of us needs to pray. Then pray for your country. If you live here in America, it needs prayer and I mean a LOT of prayer! If you live outside of America, you know what you need to pray for in your country. Because there are so many problems and trials it is hard to know exactly what to pray for or even how to pray for it. That is why you need to ask Jesus to be your Savior. When you do that, you will receive the Holy Spirit and even when you don’t know what to pray for or even how to pray, He can pray for you and let the Father know what is needed.

Trials will come, to Christians and non-believers as well. Just as it rains on the just and the unjust, trials come to all of us. Prayer is what is needed for all things. For your health, for your salvation, for your family and for your country’s leaders. God is interested in all of this and in each of us but many of us don’t believe that He cares about our lives. God has always cared about us and our world. Our problem is that we can’t or won’t believe in Him because many people in the world deny His existence. They don’t believe the Word and His book, the Bible or they pick and choose what they will believe and what they will not.

The problem with picking and choosing to believe parts of God’s Word or not is that you are calling God a liar. His Spirit inspired every word and promise in the Bible. There is no reason not to believe what He says and Who He is, unless you just don’t believe in God or Jesus Christ at all. When I think of someone who is in this state of mind, I truly feel pity for them. Because if you don’t change your mind and seek Him and ask forgiveness…you will have an eternity separated from Him to realize that you had the ability to be in His Presence with one decision.

Our trials in this life are small compared to much of the world around us. Truly, worrying about the injustices in this world is the least of our troubles. Your life and mine are only a puff of smoke compared to eternity. Make sure of your destination after this life because you will have a lot more time after death to either enjoy Life with Jesus or the feeling of death outside of His Presence in hell.

You have led captivity captive


Psalm 68:18 Thou hast led captivity captive; thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.

What did the Psalmist and the Holy Spirit mean by this scripture? One of the interpretations is that the whole world was and is still captive to sin in this world today, but when Jesus Christ came He made it possible for us to be led from the captivity of sinful living and into the “captive” life of a follower and believer in Him. That is the one that I choose to believe today.

Today, there are many of us that are captive to many things in life. Our work, our family, our TV or the Internet, our children or grandchildren and sometimes we are captive to bills that need paying even into our retirement years. It seems that we never get away from something that keeps us as “slaves” to whatever it may be. Even when we give our lives and our heart to Jesus there are certain things which we refuse to give to Him because those are special to us and we want them just for us.

It is usually those special things which cause us to fail at being His servant or His voice in the world. Because of those things that we don’t want to give up or give to Him, we can’t or won’t completely give our life and our being over to Him. It doesn’t take much really. A small part of your life that is important to you, that you want to keep doing or working on yourself but you don’t want God to have it. Have you ever thought about the truth of this matter: you have things which belonged to God first and He gave them to you.

Think about it. Abraham had to face it and many others did as well. Moses followed God and obeyed Him so that the nation of Israel was born out of Egypt. Moses had to go through all sorts of trials and tribulations for forty years because of the Jews decision not to believe God. In order to be obedient to God we should give Him ALL of our being and our family and our possessions because they were His before they were ours.

God loves all of humanity. Regardless of your nationality or your skin color or your culture. He created this world so that we could have a place to live. He named all of the stars and placed them where they are so that we can look up at them and see His handiwork and believe in Him. Our real problem is that many people will worship the creation rather than the Creator. We walk proudly through our life and tell Jesus that we can guide our life just fine on our own. But when a true problem comes along that we cannot handle such as a deadly accident or a diagnosis of cancer or some other disease….that is usually when we run to the Savior and plead with Him to help you with it.

Won’t you decide to follow Him today and give your life to Jesus? If you have ever felt the touch of His Holy Spirit prompting you to come to know Him please don’t turn away from His call. Because not one of us knows when our last day of life will be and we need to have the assurance that our eternal destiny will be with Jesus Christ. Just the knowledge of that assurance will relieve many anxieties and fears for many of us. God doesn’t want you to spend eternity in hell away from His Presence so please make sure that your heart belongs to Him today. I will be praying for all who come to this blog because God has asked me to. Thank you for reading and if you know someone who might benefit from this site please direct them here.

The Word of God


On the morning of Creation when God’s Spirit hovered over the waters and He decided that it was time to act, The Word of God said “Let there be Light!”. John begins his gospel of our Lord’s ministry with these words: 

The Beginning

(Genesis 1:1-2)

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2The same was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made

Jesus was and is the Living Word of God. There is no debate on this and no discussion needs to be done. Those who believe in Jesus as God’s Son will believe it and those who reject Him will do that as well.

God knows each of us because it was Him who formed each of us in the womb of our mothers. He fashioned each of us to have a purpose and a personality and the talents and abilities to accomplish His purpose for us and Him. In another part of God’s Word, Paul writing to the Galatians of our calling and purpose has stated this way: 3 “Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 Who gave Himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father. 5 To whom be the glory forever and ever, Amen. 6 I marvel that you are so soon removed from Him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel. 7 Which is not another gospel, but there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ”.

In today’s world, we see and hear about a disease that has infected many and taken the lives of many as well. God can and will protect us by His power if we will just listen and pray about this. When we, as the church, bow to the wishes of those around us and give them power over us we are letting the world tell us what we can and cannot do. God loves us especially when we have given our hearts to Him as His people. He will protect us from this pestilence that is in the world.

But when we go along with the rest of the world and close our doors as a church because of a virus that few have had in our community, we deny God’s power to save us and keep us safe while we worship. 

Life is not safe today, all of us know this. Yet we give our freedom to worship up because an official says we should. One day our freedoms may be taken away from us even more than they are now if we aren’t watchful and careful with our votes and by reading the prophecies in God’s Word. Because we are living at the end of the last days.

You can scoff or whatever if you don’t believe it but our world has come to that point and if the church doesn’t recognize it then it is certain that the rest of the world will have no clue at all until it is too late. When the church is taken up everyone in the media and in most governments will be left bewildered and wondering what happened. We must keep our spiritual eyes open and on our Savior because He will soon appear and when that day comes we need to be ready. 

Don’t be like the virgins who didn’t have any oil for their lamps and had to get some and while they were gone, the Bridegroom came and those who were ready went with Him to the wedding feast and the door was shut. Just as in Genesis, when God shut the door of the Ark the judgment came to the rest of the world and no man could open that door.

Make sure of your heart and Who it belongs to because when the Trumpet sounds it will be your Spirit Who hears it. If God’s Spirit isn’t in your heart that day will just be another day until the news reports come in about all of the people who are missing…but then it will be too late. Yes, you can be saved during the Tribulation but it will be harder and you will be put in jail and killed for your belief in Jesus.