Category: when you feel His call in your heart

The birds know more…


The bluebird knows it is April, and soars toward the Sun and sings.
–Eben Eugene Rexford (1848–1916)

When you consider the birds of the air or even the fish and other animals in the wild, all of them depend on God for their lives. Their food and their shelter are provided for them by the grace and power of God. Now you can say that it is just instinct or the way that these animals are taught by their “parents” but that doesn’t work for many of them.

Think about sea turtles. They live for many years but they never actually know their mother or their father. They are born from an egg which has been laid in the sand by their mother but when they are born she is not there. They have to frantically race to the sea and many of them don’t make it. Birds scoop up these little ones by the hundreds before they ever enter the sea and even then they are small enough to be eaten by some fish. God provides them with the knowledge to find places to hide and to find food because this is where so-called “instincts” come from.

Why am I speaking about animals? Because God cares for them. He knows when one of them comes to the end of their life and falls to the ground or dies in the sea or anywhere they are. Since God cares for and knows about their death just as much as He knows and cares about each of us. He cares and knows about each of us in a more intimate way because we are made in His image! We are given talents and gifts by Him to use for His Kingdom in this life until our time is up. God knows your day of birth and He knows the day of your death, but in between those times we are supposed to work for Him in every area of our life.

Some of us push Him away for a while because we think that we can do it on our own, but we can’t. Many of us hear His call on our life and just ignore it and we have many problems come up in our life. These problems usually come in the form of sickness or some other problem for which we need His hand or His strength to get through. Sometimes we will turn to Him and follow Him after these things and sometimes we become angry and push Him away. Don’t consider that you can outsmart God, He knew which reaction that you would exhibit. So if you’ve pushed Him away, He will try another one.

God uses every area of your life for His Kingdom. You don’t have to be a pastor or a deacon or a missionary…just be you. God created each of us with a unique gift or ability which nobody else has and He can and will use that gift for His Kingdom and glory even if it doesn’t happen until your last day on this Earth. Each of us has a date with destiny and we will meet God on that day. It is up to you and your decision to give your heart to Him even if you only have a minute to live…don’t waste it.

We are not forgotten


God knows when a sparrow falls to the ground lifeless and dead. Since He cares enough about His creation to notice when a small bird dies, don’t you think that He knows what you are doing and how your health and welfare are? God gives each of us the ability to get up and serve Him each and every day and until He decides that your ministry is done you will live until that day!

Our lives and every word that we speak as Christians is part of our ministry. Everyone who sees you and knows that you are a Christian can see Him in your steps every day. If they don’t know you well enough to know that you are a Christian they may still watch you to see how you react to every situation. Christians react to every problem and trial in a very different way from those who don’t know Jesus. Why? Because we know the One Who holds tomorrow so we don’t need to worry about it.

Jesus said that “I will never leave you nor forsake you“, God said the same thing to Moses and Joshua. There is nothing that we cannot accomplish in His strength when we allow Him to guide us each day. Do not worry about this virus which is all over the world today, God will limit its path and will stop it when it has accomplished the thing which it was put into the world for. He uses disease and other trials to bring us closer to Him which is exactly what our country and those in the world who don’t know Him truly need this day.

Pray this prayer: Heavenly Father, I know that you know what is going on in my life. I need your strength to get through this and your provision for my daily life. Please touch those in my family and those around me who are also going through this trial. It may be this virus or cancer or some other trial but with your strength and your Presence in my heart and my life I know that everything will turn out just fine. Thank you for giving your Son, Jesus, as a sacrifice on the cross and resurrecting Him so that I can have the hope of eternity if I believe in Him. I ask you now to bring that belief to fruition in my heart and help me to become a child of yours forever. Forgive me of those sins that I have done and help me to walk in the newness of Life everlasting. In Jesus’ name I pray this prayer, Amen.

Do you really know Jesus?


How many people claim to be Christians when they rarely attend church services? I’ve heard the “excuses” about worshipping from a deer stand or while fishing. I’ve heard that there isn’t enough time in the morning to get ready for church. I’ve heard that they would rather worship from home because of something that they have heard about “those people” who attend this church or that church.

These are just excuses which Satan plants in their minds to justify not going to church. Right now we’re not in church because of a virus and people are afraid to gather in a church. The governor has ordered no business or gathering of more than ten people in a building. What do you think will happen when this crisis is over? Will we bounce back to living a normal life again? I’m not sure what will happen, but our country will have a new “normal” and we might not like it very much.

Getting back to my original question. Do you really know Jesus? Why do many people claiming to be “Christians” yet they don’t go to church unless it is a holiday or when there is someone sick in their family? Now, I don’t want you to get the impression that I am saying that there are many people who want to have nothing to do with the church or Jesus Himself. But in the end many people will be disappointed when Jesus says, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.”

Living the Christian life is not an easy thing to do. Some people may think that it is “just getting my fire insurance” to keep from going to hell. It that is how you look at it, then you may end up where you don’t want to be anyway. The surrendered, repentant Christian that has truly had a heart change because of Jesus’ influence and presence does much more than just go to church. They read their Bible daily, they study the meaning of what they have read, they pray about what they read and hear at church, some may become the pastor of a church or a deacon. A Christian is a target for Satan and his demons and they will try to ruin your witness in every way possible.

Jesus told His disciples that they would have trials and tribulation in this world. So by extension we should expect the same thing. It will not be easy or fun to be a born-again Christian but living your life with your eye focused on Jesus will allow you to walk through those trials knowing that He is right there with you. God is always near, Jesus is always near and the Holy Spirit is living inside of you IF you are born again, so you have a part of the Trinity living with you ALL of the time! How awesome is that! Some people may think that the Holy Spirit is a weak part of the Trinity but He is just as much God as Jesus is and God the Father is!

All of us make excuses, especially when we don’t feel like going to church. But God knows your heart and He knows what your real reason is and you can’t fool Him. Seek Him in your hard times and your good times but especially during the times when you don’t know what is going on and few others know the answers either. The news today is full of guesses because nobody knows how long this virus and its effects on America and the world will last or even how bad it will actually be before it is through. God knows exactly how long it will last and what it will take to cure it or stop it. He is in control, don’t ever doubt that.

What is your motivation?


For Christians who have given their hearts and their lives to Jesus the Christ it is His sacrifice and His death on the cross so many years ago. What motivates you to do the things which Jesus commanded his apostles to do? It was the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb after three days. He fulfilled His own prophecy. He is our motivation. Jesus is the Son of God and it was His willing sacrifice which paid the price for your soul and for mine.

His humanity, the frail body of flesh and the knowledge of the pain and suffering which He was about to go through…it was all of that and more that caused Him to pray so fervently and deeply that He was sweating drops of blood. He was shedding blood during His prayer before He was arrested to go through a mock trial. He was asking His Father for the strength to go through the ordeal that He knew was about to come upon Him.

Eternity was paid for by the blood of Jesus. He paid that price for all of humanity, not just the Jewish people or the Syrians, or those in Africa or China or in a country which didn’t exist at the time…America. He could see down through time that each of our lives would mean so much. Not just because we would give our hearts to Him as new followers but because of those that each of us may have some influence in some way to bring them to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. We are His ambassadors in the place where we work and live and even on the Internet if we will carry His message to them.

Blood was shed in the Garden to cover the sin of Adam and Eve. God provided the lamb which gave its life to provide its skin to cover them and their nakedness. When Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, God provided a ram to be the sacrifice instead. There are many other examples in the Old Testament where God provided food and water for people who didn’t believe in Him and didn’t want to follow Him. But when they got into trouble or in captivity by a conqueror from another land, they cried out to God for help. When He delivered them they would follow Him faithfully for a while but then they would drift away from His love and His purpose. This pattern happened over and over again but God never really left them alone. He was always there even when He would tell them that He wasn’t going to hear their prayers.

Why am I writing this today? Because there are many people who need to hear it. Jesus loves you. God loves you and if you read His Word you can find His love in almost every book of it. He came in the form of Jesus His Son so that you and I could be redeemed and our sins would be forgiven so that we would be able to stand in His Presence and tell Him one day that Jesus’ blood has covered our sins and have Jesus stand with us saying that “This person belongs to Me”. That will be the most wonderful feeling that all believers will ever have. To know that the Creator loves you and He gave His Son as the perfect sacrifice for each of us so that we can be made in the likeness of Jesus.

The Creator came into Creation as the perfect lamb, without blemish or spot so that each of us have a chance to be saved from our sins and our sinful nature. He changes each of us inside all the way down to our soul so that we will be a new person. Not the same person that we were but a forgiven and redeemed person clothed in the righteousness of Jesus. Seek Him while there is time because without Jesus there is no salvation and there is no way to enter in Heaven without Him.

Sin forgiven in Eden


It seems that many of our preachers and those who have been in church have forgotten that the Son was present from the very beginning. The Spirit and the Living Word were both present during the week of creation.

When God gave Adam the first commandment or rule it wasn’t long before it was broken. Since sin could not be covered by anything but the shedding of blood, God had to kill a couple of animals, likely sheep, to atone or cover their sin and their nakedness before He cast them from the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were very much like children or babes in Christ at this time. They knew God personally and had walked with Him and yet they sinned by disobeying His commandment about the tree of knowledge.

A few chapters later in Genesis, God commands Abraham to take his son and sacrifice him on Mt. Moriah. While they were going, Isaac asked his father about the sacrifice that they would use. Abraham told him that God would provide a sacrifice for them. Abraham’s faith in God was such that he reasoned that even if he sacrificed his son, God would raise him up again so that God’s promise would not fail. He was right about God providing the sacrifice because even when he had bound Isaac and was about to bring the knife down, an angel stopped him and told him to look about and a ram was caught in a bush.

All of these salvation precursors are placed in God’s Word because He has wanted us to see that we have a choice to follow Him. We are chosen from before the foundation of the world to become His children.

Even when the Israelites walked into Egypt to live because of the famine which had gripped the entire Middle East, God had a plan. Joseph who had been sold into slavery by his brothers prophesied about their release from slavery and told them to carry his bones into the promised land when they saved from their slavery one day. They didn’t know it would be over 400 years before that time would come, yet they hoped and prayed for a deliverer all of that time. God heard their prayer and raised up Moses in the palace of Pharaoh, the son of a Hebrew slave but raised as a prince in Egypt. In time, he would be their savior from the oppression of their slavery and their subjugation of over four centuries.

Although it was not Moses who actually saved them and brought them out of Egypt, it was God and His signs and wonders that caused them to be cast from their slavery to a nation in order for them to become a nation. This is also a precursor or a type which shows how we are saved from our bondage to sin. Some of us spend many years in bondage to sin although we look at it as “living the life”. What life is there without God in it? There is no life in reality without God’s Presence. You are like a zombie before you come to realize that you need Jesus as your Savior. He calls you and me as “the dead” because without the Holy Spirit coming into our life, we are dead to Him and His influence in our life.

God has a plan for each of us and in His timing He will bring us out of that dead world into His world of Life everlasting. When you feel His touch in your heart and you know that you are a sinner without Jesus in your life, you will come to Him. All of the Old Testament “types” which I have outlined here point us toward salvation because each of them are a picture of how we are before knowing Jesus and when we are set free because of our faith in Jesus. These are but a few of the types which point us toward our Savior and they are in the Old Testament, all the way back to the very beginning of the book of Genesis.

I pray that you will give your heart to Jesus and ask His forgiveness for your prior sinful ways so that you can enjoy the gift of eternal life with Him one day.

Salvation is through faith in Jesus alone and when you are brought to that cross you must make a choice, follow Jesus or go back the way you came. Salvation isn’t forced on you, but you have to be willing to give your life to Him for it.

Before you can walk…


God’s Word is full of pictures in words about how the Christian should learn to follow Him. The problem is that for most of us we’ve never had anyone in our lives to show us and explain what the baby steps are and how to progress from there. If you have ever listened to a sermon on TV or at a church revival or even at a friend’s church you have likely wondered exactly how to become a Christian and then what do I do when this happens? Where do I go from this point?

Baby steps are the first options which we all have. When we are learning to walk, we don’t wake up one day and just run around the house and down the street. It is the same way with believers. You don’t come down the aisle one day or night and repent of your sins and then you understand all of the theology and mysteries found in the Bible. God doesn’t dump the Old and New Testaments in your brain and tell you to get out there and make Him proud! There have been some days that I wish He had done that but we aren’t capable of going from a non-believer one day and then have the ability to understand all of the mysteries of the Bible on the next day.

Talk about a mind-blowing experience! That would truly put us in the asylum for sure.

The problem with becoming a Christian is that many times you are on your own. Once you have accepted Jesus as your Savior, most churches expect your parents or friends to help you to learn about your faith and what you should do with this new life which you’ve been given. Is this the way it was supposed to be? Well, yes, actually it was because that was the way that God had told the Israelite people to teach their children about Him and their history from the books of Moses and their Prophets..

All of us have a responsibility to lead and teach, not only new Christians but each other. All of us need to be helped along the way. Learning more about our faith and about our Savior and the message which He taught the disciples during the time that He was with them. Saul who became known as Paul even went into a secluded place to learn from the Holy Spirit before he became the evangelist to the gentiles.

Why do I bring this up today? Because many of us have heard the gospel preached and we might have given our heart to Him but we are left on our own to “work out our salvation” by ourselves and sometimes we get in the muck of our own minds. What do you mean by that? Well, work out your salvation doesn’t mean that we must work for it but it does mean that we have to study God’s Word to learn more about Him and what He taught the disciples so that they could take His good news to the world. Humans, you and me, tend to overthink things whether it is learning from Scripture or learning to cook or even learning how to play a guitar. Your mind and your thoughts will get in the way like a puddle of mud does when you are walking or riding in a car or on a bike.

Since we are in the process of being quarantined at home these days it is a perfect time to learn more about your Savior and to have Bible study sessions at home. Get into God’s Word while there is time on your hands and learn more about Him and the love that He has for you because He has loved you with a deep, abiding love since before the world was created.

Can you walk in heaven while you are here on Earth?


According to the apostle Paul we have a place in heaven even while we are still here on Earth. In Ephesians 2:4-6 says it this way:  4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) 6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:

When we pray to our Creator, God, and we do so in faith there are times when we may see the floor of Heaven. When you get a glimpse of the floor of Heaven, you are seeing the golden streets which make up the streets of Heaven. It is likely that you will think it is a dream or some sort of illusion, but those don’t usually happen while we are awake. Can I prove that I saw this? No more than I can prove that my feelings are real or that my imagination can conjure up worlds while I read a book, so I would say that there is no way for me to prove any of this. But the look of reality and the solid feel of it is all that I can describe to anyone. So call me crazy or insane if you wish, but I have experienced this at least once maybe a couple of times.

How I wished at those times I could just take another step and be there with my loved ones who have gone before me. One day soon. How are we to respond to someone who claims to have this happen in their life? I can tell you that most people are not going to tell anyone about this because they will be afraid of being sent to a mental hospital. Only those of us who know how real it felt and can still feel, at times, to have gold bricks as pavement under your feet.

While it is true that we won’t experience the actual feel of gold under our feet until we get there, a vision from God which feels real is the best you can ask for while on this side of the veil. Remember, we are only separated from God and our loved ones by the veil of life here and the different and glorious life that we will experience in God’s Presence. I am looking forward to the day when that trumpet sounds!

If you haven’t given your heart to Jesus, it is time to get busy seeking Him for your Savior. If you have ever felt the Spirit calling you during a service or when you feel convicted about your life and your mistakes then you truly need to come to a saving knowledge and belief in Him for your salvation. I pray that any of you who read this will turn to Jesus for your salvation soon because I don’t think we have many more years to wait. Seek Jesus as your savior while you have the time.

Life from the Author of it


Jesus came to give sinners an opportunity to be forgiven. It was His sacrifice and His love for us which compelled Him to do this. He didn’t have to do it but because of His love for you and me, He did. Many people look at this in the Bible and they don’t think anyone would do this, even when it is written in God’s Word. So, what will you do when you feel the call from God’s Holy Spirit?

Some people try to ignore it. Some even try to run away from the Spirit of God, like Jonah did. The problem with this is that God is everywhere and none of us can run from Him. God uses all sorts of ways to get our attention and sometimes we pay attention and sometimes we don’t. The problem is that we live in a world where there is so much information around us until the prompting from the Spirit could be ignored.

The Holy Spirit is very subtle in the way that it touches us. It is that small voice that you feel more than you hear, but if God is trying to get your attention because He wants you to be His voice at some point then you will hear it. Sometimes it will feel as if He is trying to hurt you deeply, when the truth is that some of us need a whack on our head in order to truly get our attention. The “crisis” that we are in now could be considered a massive whack up side our collective heads.

Pay attention and seek Him for your healing and your salvation as well because we might not get another chance.

Be useful in the world around you


Many of us seem to be stuck in a rut of some kind. We live our lives from one week to the next, day by day doing things which seem to be useful, but would God see your life that way? The letters to the Middle East churches which are found in the first chapters of the book of Revelation tell a story much different from what we see in our world today. But, if you read these letters carefully, those churches mirror our churches too. Some of the letters even remind you and me of people we’ve known as well. They were saved at a revival and baptized and for a while they were on fire for the Lord. But now their zeal has tempered and cooled. The worship may still be there but they don’t volunteer for projects in the church. They rarely come to church now. Some have become “holiday Christians” by only showing up during the holidays.

The letters to the churches in the book of Revelation reflect this “loss of the spark” and even sliding into a prideful type of worship as if God should be thankful to have us! So what does that say about the church in our time, in the 21st century? To me and to a lot of other people who have moved away from worship in the church it says that religion has taken the place of the message of Jesus the Christ. People who have been in the church for many years have lost their “first love” of Christ. Not because He has lost His love for us, because He hasn’t, but because of how much the world around us has crept into the church and with it the “outward show” has been diminished.

The church that the world sees today is very different from the church of sixty years ago. Things which would’ve caused our grandparents to blush because of the nature of the sin, are commonplace today and these behaviors are not taught in church as being sinful anymore. The original message of Jesus about believing in Him for salvation and laying aside our old way of living to follow Him daily has been watered down to something far less demanding and socially acceptable. Jesus and His disciples did not water down the good news and they didn’t change the message so that others were not offended.

The message which Jesus taught did stir up controversy, and He made it a point to tell the priests exactly what they were doing wrong. He also pointed out to them that He was the Messiah which Isaiah has prophesied about over seven hundred years before. The Holy Spirit even revealed to David, when he was writing the Psalms, the way by which the Messiah would be crucified in details which you can readily see. At the time that David wrote Psalm 22, crucifixion had not been used as a form of punishment for crimes deserving death.

Your life, as a follower of Jesus, is given to God through the grace of God and by the power of God because of the sacrifice which Jesus made on the cross to pay the penalty for ALL of our sins. If He had not been obedient to the point of death, we would have no hope of eternity in Heaven. It is because of Jesus’ obedience through the arrest, conviction, scourging and His death on the cross and His burial in the tomb and His resurrection three days later that we have the Hope of seeing Him one day in our resurrected bodies! Was He afraid of the agony that He was about to go through? Yes, He was! The human part of Jesus knew the torture that He would have to endure along with the pain and suffering. His nature of being God in human form knew that it was necessary so that many would come to know Him as Savior and Lord.

We wrestle with our own natures every day after we give our lives to Christ and repent of our old ways. This is what makes the life of a Christian so difficult. Your life and mine are at odds with our “old nature” and Satan slings darts of temptation at us constantly, because he knows which sins you enjoyed so much. Walk with Jesus, read the Bible and pray for the Wisdom of God through the word that you read every day, even if it is only a verse or two. Ask Him for strength and wisdom so that you can withstand the temptations of the world around you.

He could’ve but He didn’t


In many ways we are all fortunate to have a Savior Who loves each of us completely and without condemnation. He could’ve cast the first stone at the woman who was caught in adultery but He didn’t. He met the qualifications of having no sin to be the first to cast the stone at her, but He loved her. Every person that He met during His ministry from the disciples to those who were seeking food or a miracle really didn’t deserve His attention but they got it anyway. Why? Because He loved them and He loves us today, even though we don’t deserve His love.

God’s love for us is far more than we can understand in our limited way. Love started with God since He is the embodiment of love. So why do people either disbelieve in Him or choose not to give their heart to Him? My opinion of this is quite simple: they don’t believe and they don’t want to. Some people just can’t see that God’s offer of forgiveness and eternity is as simple as their heart-felt belief in Jesus and the atonement that He bought for us with His death, burial and resurrection. We don’t have to try to add our efforts, our “works of righteousness”, our help in saving our soul or trying to be good enough. We can’t measure up on our own and it is that simple.

Our self-righteousness is as dirty, filthy rags compared to being a forgiven true believer in Jesus and what He did to purchase our pardon from the penalty of our sins. There truly is nothing which we can do which will gain us entry into the gates of Heaven. God owns everything because He created it all, so He doesn’t need our money. We can’t give Him enough time or do enough in our own strength, even if we did it in the name of Jesus because if you are not known by the Savior then your work in His Name is false because He doesn’t know you.

In order to be truly and completely saved each of us has to know our Savior and be known by Him. If you have felt His call on your life, the conviction of your need for a Savior and the knowledge that only belief in Jesus and surrendering your life to Him will bring you the salvation that is only possible by knowing Him as your Savior then you have a decision to make. Give Him your heart and your life and repent of your sins, regardless of the perception of their size, because size doesn’t matter to God. A sin of murder is no more or less than the sin of lying or stealing in God’s eyes. When you break one of the Ten Commandments, even by your lust for a woman and no more, it is still a sin.

You can be forgiven through Jesus’ sacrifice for you and be adopted into God’s family. When Jesus was confronted in the picture above, He told the people who brought her to Him that the one without sin could cast the first stone at her for adultery. They all knew that not one of them could be considered “without sin”. He could’ve but He didn’t come to condemn people, not even one caught in the act of adultery. He came to heal and forgive and provide a way for forgiveness through belief in Him. Which is why He told her that He didn’t condemn her nor accuse her and He said, “Go and sin no more”. Could she live a sinless life even after that encounter? No, but with her belief in Him and the Holy Spirit’s help she could live her life as an example to those around her.

I pray that anyone who reads this will seek Jesus out as their Savior and Lord because the time is growing short for us in this sick world. Seek Him out while there is time.