Category: when you feel His call in your heart

Walking in His Presence


I had a dream or a vision one day but don’t ask me to elaborate on the sights and textures of it. I was reading and meditating on part of the book of Matthew, I think, and I could see myself walking on streets of gold. Matthew doesn’t speak of this but heaven is described this way in the book of Revelation. Why would I see gold under my feet? I don’t know. Maybe God was giving me a glimpse of His home? Just a small “blink and you miss it” types of glimpses? I don’t know for sure.

Don’t you think that is what Jesus meant by living a life more abundantly here? It’s possible I suppose. But if you are so spiritually-minded you are no Earthly good then what is the point of being a child of God? If we aren’t going to take our faith and the message that we should be living by out into the world at large, then what good are we doing for God? Jesus told His disciples to take the gospel out into the whole Earth and that means to our workplace and to the dog park or the market and to the mall as well. But if we don’t meditate on His Word and learn from it enough to tell others about it, what are we telling people?

Do you feel as if something is missing in your life? Do you want more than you have or do you want to be useful to God and His Kingdom? We should realize that we don’t have to be missionaries or preachers or even teachers in order to be useful to God’s Kingdom. God does give each of us a gift or a talent. Sometimes it takes us years to find out what our talent or our gift is. Many times it is because we are not searching in the right place. The only place that we can find the truth about us and what He has given us is in God’s Word and by prayerfully reading it and asking God to show you what He has for you.

God can and will show you. It won’t jump out of the Bible and it won’t be plainly on a page or in a certain book but by learning about God’s requirements for our lives. Obedience to His commandments is part of it, even though we can’t perfectly follow them. Obedience to God and the surrendering of our life and everything in it to Him is the truth of our lives in Jesus Christ. Not giving Him some of your life or some of your money but giving Him all of it. Does that mean that we are to live in poverty? Absolutely not. You were given so many blessings such as your life and your money and your job or business by God. None of it is yours. Your home, your family, your career, your very life belongs to God but until you realize this and truly give it all to Him…your life will never be as satisfying as it could be.

Your life in Christ is in heavenly places. Your soul inhabits your dwelling place in heaven even if your physical body does not. God’s Word says that we are seated with Him in heavenly places if we truly belong to Him. We are there, in Christ, in Heaven with Him and we must dwell in Him and live our lives as if we are in Him until that day when we are translated from this world to the next. We are saved by His Grace not through any vain thing that we may do but by our belief in Jesus Christ for our salvation, it is this which brings our soul into His presence at the day in which we move from this place to His home.

Love makes a difference


Sometimes I have heard people ask in a wondering tone, “Why did Jesus die for me?”. The simple answer is love. As John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him will have everlasting life.”

It is the love of God which restrains His wrath even now. It is the love of God which calls to those who will hear Him to come to know Jesus as your Savior and you will be forgiven. It is God’s love which keeps our lives and our world going and moving and being in this world where there are many who don’t want His love.

God sustained Adam and Eve perfectly for a time. He sustained them and their offspring even after they disobeyed His command about the Tree of Knowledge. God has sustained the universe and our little speck of a world since creation and He will do so until it is time to change things as it says in the book of Revelation.

Yes, love does make a difference. Whether it is God’s love for us or our love for Him and for each other, true love does make a huge difference. In our lives and the lives that we touch and in the work that we do every day, it is our love which makes a difference now and will make a difference to someone else who sees what we do or say. We won’t know about the effect that we have had on other’s lives until we meet them in Heaven one day.

A kind word, holding the door for someone, paying for their meal when they didn’t ask you to, thanking God for your meal when you go out to eat, all of these things are little things but God can use them in ways that we can’t imagine.

Love is powerful and it does so many wonderful things in the world and in our lives and in the lives of those around us. Love comes from God and perfect love is His to give freely to each of us every day. Make sure that you give some away to your family and to strangers alike because you never know the impact it could have in their life and in yours too.

Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound….


Amazing Grace! We have been given His Grace toward us and for us. Not because we deserve it, because we don’t. God gave us His Grace through Jesus Christ long, long ago because He loves us! Not because of what we can do for Him but because of what He wanted to do for us. He wanted us to be with Him in eternity to praise and honor Him with glory because we love Him for what He did for each of us while we were still sinners, even before we were born, even before the world itself was made…He loved us enough to come draped in human flesh so that He could reconcile our sins through His death on the cross and then redeem us through His resurrection so that we would be with Him in eternity.

How sweet the sound of the words in the song by John Newton. John Newton, who was the captain of a slave ship for a few years and all the while God was working in him and on him. One day, he gave his heart and soul to Jesus and it changed him so profoundly until he had to sit down and write one of the greatest hymns that the Christian world has ever known. Not because of the melody but because of the words and the meaning behind them. This song is a sermon of love…God’s love for us and our love for Him because He loved us first!

“That saved a wretch like me”; John Newton could hear the slaves singing spiritual songs in the hold of the ships that he was part of their crew before being made captain on another ship. It was those songs and the conviction which came by them that made him write the song that we still sing today. Because God loves us even as wretched sinners and He loved each of us enough that He sent Jesus, His Son, to die on a Roman cross in order for us to live in eternity with Him. He didn’t have to do this but He wanted to do it because it was the only way to pay our penalty totally and completely so that we could be reconciled to Him and by Him.

“I once was lost, but now I’m found. I was blind, but now I can see!” We were all lost. Struggling through this life as sinners and we didn’t know that we were dead already because of our sins. But when the Holy Spirit touched our hearts and broke them so that we could see with our spiritual eyes, we would see just how lost we truly were. Then we would know that we needed Jesus as our Savior and we would seek Him out until we found Him and asked Him to come in and clean our hearts and our minds so that we could be His.

“Through many dangers, toil and snares I have already come. His Grace has led me safe thus far and Grace will lead me Home”; In life we do go through toil and snares which Satan has put in front of us each day, but God’s grace and His Strength will guide you and me through these times and carry us home to Heaven one day. Seek Jesus out for your salvation so that you will be lead home to Heaven one day because He is the only pathway to Eternity. John Newton knew it, Billy Graham knew it, and the Bible tells us about it, all that we have to do is give our life to Him and walk with Him until that day comes when we will be taken home to be with Him.

Is there peace in your life?


In the political and anti-religious climate is it even possible to have peace? Yes, it is! If you place your trust and your faith in Jesus Christ. Many of us today, Christians and non-Christians, either forget where our peace comes from or we never really knew in the first place. Granted, the peace which Jesus brings into your life is much different from “peace and quiet” or a “peaceful, easy feeling” but many people still look for both of those after they have “tried” Jesus and they will tell you that it only gets worse!

The problem with people like that is that they don’t know that you can’t “try out” Jesus and enjoy the benefits of being a true Christian who has given their heart to Him and allowed Him to truly change them from the inside out. There is no trial period before you make a decision to keep Jesus in your life or not. He is the One Who chooses you first, then you feel convicted of your guilt for the sins that you have committed and you know that you need Him in your life!

God loves each of us and He calls you through His Holy Spirit and it is His choice to choose you, not yours. It is your choice to respond to His call on your life and some people do refuse but most people know that their life will never be the same and it will never feel peaceful if they do refuse to accept Him as their Savior. Sometimes those who refuse on the first call will get a second later in their life but if you keep pushing the Spirit away and keep refusing His call on your life…one day He won’t call on you. God will let you go and let you have your life the way you want it, without Him. At that point, you will never feel His touch or His call on your life again.

You don’t get to decide to get saved. If and when you feel Him call you and you respond with a humble heart to give your life to Jesus, it is only then when the reality of being a Christian will come into your life. From that point on you will need to seek Him every day, read the Bible, pray that He will reveal His Wisdom in the Bible to you so you can grow in His Wisdom and knowledge. All of this is not dumped into your brain when you are baptized, you have to study God’s Word to know Him better because He already knows you.

Is being a Christian easy? NO! Jesus was tempted for 40 days in the desert. We are tempted by Satan every day from the time you become a Christian until you die! Why does Satan make it that hard? Because if he can get you to stumble in front of one person who might become a Christian, he knows that they may change their mind and not become a Christian. What makes it so hard is that you don’t know who or where those people might be. It might be your son or daughter. It might be someone you work with. It may be a total stranger in a burger joint, but if you cuss or somehow ruin their idea that you are a Christian then Satan has done his job.

You may never see that person again but they may never believe that anyone is a Christian just because of something you did or something you said. It takes prayer and reading God’s Word and praying about what you just read and making it a habit every day. Because until you are so close to God that Satan doesn’t want to come around you, he will. Work on your witness and your character until he can’t tell the difference between you and Jesus. With the Holy Spirit helping you and your reading and praying about what you read, Jesus will help you to become peaceful in all of your situations in your daily life.

What do you expect from God?


You know that most of us are not taught to expect much from the Creator. In Sunday school and during our worship service we hear about what He did in David’s life and we wonder why hasn’t God used me in some way? Granted, we aren’t going to kill a giant like David did but the giants that we have to deal with today are more insidious and even more hurtful than Goliath. There are so many giants today which compete for supremacy over us such as alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addiction and the list could go on and on.

God gives each of us some talent or acumen that no one else has, yet many of us don’t pursue using them. Sometimes we are afraid to use them because we think that we won’t be accepted. So, should we use our talents for God’s glory or our own? The best advice I can give is to pray about it and listen for His answer. When we find out what our talent or God’s calling is on our lives some of us don’t like what we know to be His will. Then we strike out on our own and attempt to live our life the way we feel is the right way. Will God let you do this? Of course He will. He let Jonah do the very same thing but He turned Him around. So, when things begin to go wrong in your life and you know that you have been walking and living your way instead of His way, you will remember this.

Do we expect anything from God? In today’s church, I don’t think that there are many people who believe that God is even listening or even interested in us at all. Yes, there are some who read and study God’s Word diligently but most seem indifferent to what it says, let alone meditate on it.

If you are expecting anything from God, then you need to know Him and be known by Him. God loves each of us and truly wants us to know just how much. But if He doesn’t hear from you or see that you are trying to get to know Him better why should He answer when you pray? Seek Him out when you feel convicted that you need Him. If you don’t do so, you might not get another chance.

Truth is NOT relative!


Jesus said that He was the Way, the Truth and the Life. So…make sure that you find the Truth in Him! Find the Way to Heaven through belief in Jesus as your Savior! You will find eternal Life through Him into Heaven. The simple way to make sure of your place is to seek Him in your local church or through a Bible study group. When you feel that subtle conviction from the Holy Spirit, you will need to sit down and follow a few steps (but not necessarily in this order).

  1. Lord, I admit that I am a sinner and I need You.
  2. I am asking for Your forgiveness for my sins and for you to save me from an eternity in Hell. (I repent of my sinful behavior)
  3. I believe Jesus died and rose from the grave and paid the penalty for my sins so that my relationship with You could be restored.
  4. By faith, I invite Jesus Christ into my heart and my life. From this time forward I want to live in a loving relationship with Him and I receive Jesus as my Savior and Lord. In Jesus’ name I thank you for all that you have done for me, amen.

God loves each one of us and it shouldn’t really surprise us. I mean, He had a hand in each of our lives even before, long before we were born. He put our DNA together on atom at a time so He knows exactly what your personality is and what you can do. Far better than even we know ourselves! That is the most amazing thing about how awesome God really is! Is it really so hard to believe that the Creator of the universe knows how many hairs you have on your head? Knowing this, is it unusual to think that He has cared and does care for you and everyone else who will come to know Him?

I pray that anyone who reads this will look up a Bible if they don’t have one. If you do, dust it off and start reading in the New Testament from John to Romans and you will find the Lord Who loves you and you will find that you will come to love Him too.

What are you looking for?


Many preachers and teachers today are taking God’s Word out of context and molding it to fit their own “gospel” of wealth and prosperity. Why are there so many people drawn to this type of teaching? Because they want the wealth and the health without the “take up your cross daily and follow Me”, meaning that they don’t want to give up their “old life” for a better one in Jesus’ name. Everyone seems to want to have their cake and eat it too. But that is not what the Bible teaches and it is not what Jesus taught either.

People who teach this are using quotes from Scripture but they are taking them out of context. Jesus said “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” The abundant life which Jesus was speaking of is one of spiritual abundance here and now and then you will be given so much more than you can imagine when you are in His Presence in Heaven. Jesus was not speaking of eliminating poverty with wealth here on Earth although many teachers of this “gospel” claim that is exactly what He meant.

Especially in Africa. They see all of the wealth of those of us who live in “the West” and they point to all of the good things which we have been blessed with. Much of the wealth and health that our country has enjoyed is because of the support and defense of Israel in the past 80 or so years. God blessed us because of His people, period. Not because we are or claim to be Christians. In our culture we do try to help others as much as we can and it is that giving nature that points many people toward our countries borders.

America has been a light to the world because of our faith in God and the fact that our laws have always been based upon the laws which God gave to Moses. We should always keep His laws and His message in the forefront of our country and its citizens. I pray than all who read this will give their heart and their life to Jesus so that one day I may meet you in Heaven.

Why did God send Jesus to die?


This is a good question and it is one which many people want to know the answer to. When you look back to the very beginning of the Bible, all three persons of the Trinity are there. The Spirit of God is hovering over the waters of the unformed Earth. What those waters are made of is not told but the Spirit is there. Then God said, “Let there be light!”. Many people, including myself, have wondered where that light came from. Was it the light from the Big bang? Was it the initial spark which started our Sun to shine? Considering that the Sun and the moon were not created yet, I think that the initial light was Jesus and His Shekinah glory, the light which comes from God just as He is. The light which lit up creation before there were stars and galaxies and the Sun and the moon. The glory which made Moses’ face glow after he had been in God’s presence. That was the first Light of the universe.

So, why did God send Jesus to die and pay the penalty for all of mankind’s sins? You need to remember that God doesn’t live in the same “time zone” as we do. He lives outside of time itself because He created time. He can see the beginning from the ending and everything in between. God knew that mankind would try to do things on his own rather than following God’s instruction. He knew that those who came after Adam would be so sinful that He would have to save the most God-fearing family later and destroy all of life on Earth. There is nothing on Earth or in hell which is a surprise to God. He can see and know every person and place and even the thoughts of each of us, so there is nothing which surprises God.

In explaining my title, God sent Jesus to Earth to give us a way to become His righteousness since we could not attain it on our own. Jesus paid the price for ALL OF OUR SINS, but not everyone will accept this because they can’t understand the kind of love and compassion which it would require. If you have ever heard these words in church, “My ways are not your ways and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts“. God is not like us at all. He loves us as His creation and as His children because without Him we would not be. It is God Who knit our DNA together in the womb so He knows exactly what our skin color is and how we will react to certain things because it is due to His influence in our creation that we have the personality that we have.

What I’m pointing out here is this: God is intimately involved in our lives and in creation itself. Every day and in every circumstance, whether it is a sparrow which dies or your child gets sick, God knows it and He is there, waiting for us to humble ourselves and turn to Him for strength and healing and wisdom in every area of our lives. Do we do this? Some of us do humble ourselves and turn to Him for strength and prayer in our time of need. Many of us don’t.

So…back to my first question: Why did God send Jesus to pay the penalty for our sins? Because He values each one of us far more than we value ourselves. God has always had a hand in forming every life, every person on this planet and He wants them to have the chance of knowing Him as their Savior and the chance to be in Heaven with Him forever. Without Jesus’ sacrifice for all of us, that opportunity would not be possible.

This is where many people draw the line though. They want to have something that they have to do to have salvation and the only thing that each of us has to do is be receptive to the call of the Holy Spirit. When you feel convicted that you truly NEED to be saved and the only way for that to happen is through repentance and accepting Jesus as your Savior. Don’t push the Spirit away. Don’t “white knuckle” the pew so that you won’t go down when you know that you need to. One day, likely sooner than many people think, there is going to be a day when a trumpet blast will be heard all over the world and graves are going to explode with people coming out of them and then those who are alive and have given their lives to Jesus will follow those to be with the Lord forever. Make sure that you are included in that day’s festivities and not left here wondering what just happened!

Rejection, fear, and uncertainty


As human’s we do not like even ONE of these. From our family or our friends and certainly not from God. But why would we worry about feeling these emotions from God? The main reason that we feel these emotions in our relationship with God is actually because of Satan himself. God has never rejected us. Why should we be afraid of God? He isn’t going to strike us dead if we don’t do something, right? Feeling uncertain about your relationship with Him is also a tactic of Satan. Jesus said that all we had to so was to believe in Him and in the Father Who sent Him to save us from our sins…that’s it! Believe in Jesus and God the Father for your salvation. No hoops to jump through. No certain number of people that you have to tell about Jesus. He did all of the work on the cross in order to pay for your sins and nothing that we try to do can add value to our salvation.

Satan is the instigator and has been since before Adam or the Earth was created. He was a consummate liar then and he has gotten better at it over the thousands of years since then. Satan can make us believe a lie about God or Jesus or any part of the salvation which is freely given by God’s grace through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.

We don’t have to listen to those suggestions which Satan places in our head and in our mind, but many times we do listen to them. If you look it up and read about God in the Bible, you will see that He may make some people afraid of Him but He only did it because of their hard hearts. They wouldn’t listen to His instructions, His commandments, so He had to get their attention just as He gets our attention at times. He knows that we are hard-headed and stubborn and sometimes it takes more than reading a few scriptures to make us know that He is serious.

For some of us it will take a bit more than reading a scripture to realize what is being said to us. Many times it may take a sickness or a death in the family to really get our attention, but God will use that to His advantage. God loves each of us but He also knows exactly how much it will take to get our attention and to keep it focused on Him. Some people will blame Him and they will move away from Him but that isn’t a surprise to God. He knows exactly who will hear Him and follow Him and who will not. Regardless of our intention to follow Him or not, God still loves us. That is just His nature.

Amen

Lonely in a crowd


There was an article which was asking the question “Why have teenage suicides gone up 76 percent in the past decade?”. One reason is information overload. This is the first generation which has had constant access to the Internet on a device which they can carry in their pocket. Am I blaming the smartphone for this? Yes, actually I am. It is not wholly to blame of course. Parents who use electronic babysitters to calm their children also are part of the problem. So why are teens feeling so left out and lonely? Because they don’t engage and talk to each other anymore.

Have you ever watched a group or even a family in a restaurant lately? Most of the time they aren’t talking to each other. They are all looking at their phones or texting or scrolling through Instagram or Facebook. Technology is to blame for the lack of interaction in our society because it is like a drug. And we start children on this “drug” sometimes before they can even talk! People don’t feel a connection to their family or their friends because of the detached nature of the relationship. You can’t hear uncertainty or fear in a text, there is no way to relate to an emoticon speaking to you.

All of this technology was supposed to help us not enslave us to it to the point of not being able to spell our words and our emotions. Young people use text abbreviations such as BRB rather than spelling the words and they use them in writing papers in English class and wonder why their grade is not higher? English teachers are having to attempt to undo the damage caused by more than a decade of message-speak. Will they ever be able to undo it? Not likely.

God did not intend for us to be slaves to technology but we are in today’s world. In many countries where there isn’t a rampant embrace of technology, Christian faith and Christianity in general is growing. Because of God’s written Word. People are reading it and praising Him because of Who He is and what He has done for them. Technology can help in this of course, but when we depend on technology more than we depend on God, we have become idol worshipers. Even when we make “our god” statements we have made God in our image and reduced Him to a little “g”. Still an idol because He said in the giving of the Ten Commandments, that we should not make a graven image to represent Him or any other created thing to worship.

The Ten Commandments Exodus 20:1-17

(Deuteronomy 5:6-21)

1 And God spake all these words, saying,

2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. (This is the first commandment)

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

13 Thou shalt not kill.

14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

15 Thou shalt not steal.

16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

When we turn back to reading the Bible and learning from it, in church or in our homes, then our nation and the world will become the people that God intended for us to be. Pray for your children, teach them from God’s Word, learn from it while you teach them and help them to know that God loves them and has loved them since before they were born. Seek Him while there is time in this life because when this life is over, there are no second chances.