Category: when you feel His call in your heart

How long, O Lord?


The spirit of the anti-Christ has been a part of our world ever since the Garden. Why do I say that there was such a thing even before Jesus the Christ came to us? Because the spirit of rebellion against God has been in the world ever since there were people who knew about God on the Earth.

After Jesus ascended to Heaven and His disciples were taking His teachings to the ends of the Earth in those days, the people who were spreading hate and lies against their teaching were part of the anti-Christian movement and it kept spreading. But…so did Christianity. It seemed that the more there was persecution and a spiritual push-back against this message, the more the church grew. The plans that Satan had were backfiring on him. He wanted to stop this message and kill all of those who believed in the Son of God and His message!

But it didn’t work. Everywhere that there was great persecution, those who escaped from it took the message with them and it kept spreading. God’s Word will not return to Him void and it will accomplish that which He sends it out to do. It doesn’t matter if the message is spoken by a young farm boy or girl or a well-known evangelist!

The Word of God, our Bible, is the infallible Word of God and it is the Truth which our world and every person in this world needs it and the message which it has for each person.

6 “For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” Malachi 3:6

God loves each person in the whole world, but He knows who will accept Him as their Savior and who will not. So make sure of your salvation and seek Him today because you need Him. If you don’t know Jesus yet, I ask you to look for Him in the Bible because He is waiting for you.

John 3:16 says this: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Please don’t turn away from His call on your life and your heart because you will spend eternity somewhere and I would love to see you there in Heaven one day!

Truth or Lies


How many times have you looked at a picture of a woman or a girl with lust in your heart or your mind? In our world today with the Internet making pornography so easy to obtain and keep as a “hidden sin” there are many more who fall into this practice than most people would think. The really sad fact is that most of those who do fall “victim” to engaging in watching pornography on the web or looking at pictures from these sites are supposed to be leaders in our churches. Youth ministers and Lead pastors of churches which keep their habits on personal laptops and hopefully not on the church computer.

Why do I bring this up? Because I read an article about it in the AFA Journal that I get each month. It is a very disturbing statistic and it actually funds sex trafficking in a big way as well. This type of sin, which is exactly what it is, is known in the Bible as fornication. This word in the Bible encompasses just a glance, to a touch or anything beyond that but the Bible makes it clear that “fornicators will not inherit eternal life”. The Bible uses the words “sexually immoral” in place of fornicators but it means the same thing.

We are supposed to be better than this! Jesus didn’t call you into any ministry to fall victim to Satan’s temptations to sin! But…in the news, we hear of pastors committing adultery and bishops molesting children. Why aren’t we taking our calling from God more seriously? What has happened to our being a dedicated disciple of Jesus and a servant of God? These are good questions and they deserve answers but I don’t have any answers. God’s Word gives us the answers and it tells us to run from even the idea of these sins, yet there are still people in the church who are being caught in these sins and casting a dark stain on the church as a whole.

Prayer is needed because the statistics are staggering in their implications of how many may be involved in these practices. Much prayer is needed in the church as a whole, not just one denomination but the entire body of the church, the Body of Christ here to serve those who believe. Pastors, ministers, and teachers in the church are supposed to be dedicated to their service to God and to those who look to them for guidance.  We are not supposed to exploit anyone, regardless of their age, sex, or in any way which could be looked at as predatory in its nature. If there is anyone who is doing this in any way, they should be prayed for and confronted about it and at the very least try to get them some professional help!

This type of sin is easy to fall into but, if it continues long enough, it is very hard to get out of. Without therapy and professional help and much prayer, I don’t think that anyone could get out of it. It would take a person to be convicted spiritually and personally to know that their sin had been noticed and it needs to be expunged from their lives. I pray that anyone who reads this might use any of these suggestions to either get help or provide help to someone who really needs this.

Thank you for your attention and may God bless the outcome of any good that might come from this. Amen

The hurt will heal


Sometimes we look at our lives and wonder, “Why am I going through all of this?”. Most of the time we can’t truly find an answer to that question, at least not one which makes sense anyway. The pain of a lost loved one or of a child taking a step toward a life of addiction or crime will be ongoing and in most cases may never go away entirely. So what are we supposed to do with this kind of pain?

The solution may sound simple and uncaring but it is this: give the problem to God. There are too many people who will read this and say “Are you serious?”; my answer is “Yes, I am!”.

Just how are we supposed to give our problem to God is the answer which many people have sought for centuries and unfortunately there are few who have found the best way to do this. We will walk down the aisle and place a token which represents our problems on the altar but when we leave the church we pick it up spiritually and take it with us. We never REALLY leave it in God’s hands until we have come to the point where we can truly see that there is nothing which we can do to fix this problem.

We use God as the last best hope for solving our problem when He should be the first Person that we leave the problem with, no matter what the problem may be! Remember, God created the entire cosmos, so since He did that your problems and mine are easy for Him to handle if we will give them to Him. Why do we try to keep our problems until we finally realize that we can’t do anything about them? Because we are prideful and we think that we can handle the problems in our lives regardless of how involved or how big those problems might be.

God never intended for us to do everything in our lives alone or by our own strength. He had intended for our existence to be a cooperative life between Himself and us. But we know that Satan crept into the scene and changed that, but God already had a plan in mind before that happened.

Jesus, the Son of God, was going to be born of a virgin in Bethlehem and He would take the sins of the world on Himself and be sacrificed on the cross to pay our penalty so that we wouldn’t have to. Then, on the third day, Jesus came out of the tomb and taught His disciples for another forty days and then ascended to the right side of the Father. He conquered death and the grave and gave us a way to be saved from hell if we will believe in Him and His sacrifice.

Give your life and your heart to Jesus and give your problems to God so that you can serve Him and be His representative until He comes again. Because He said He was coming again and God can’t lie!

Consider having God’s attention


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Have you considered that each of us has God’s attention? I know this is a very BIG and awesome question to throw out there, but have you ever thought about this at all?

In this picture it is like the light from the sun is following you along the beach. If you are walking on a beach at sunset, you will see an image like this and it doesn’t matter how many people are on the beach, all of them will have the same perspective and that is that the light coming across the water is pointed at each person or couple walking there.

That is the kind of attention which God pays to those who belong to Him. Your life is always before Him, even if you have not given your heart to Him or asked Jesus into your life. Remember, Jesus said that “not one sparrow falls to the ground without the Father’s knowledge“. Don’t you realize that each of us is more important to God than a sparrow?

But, in your life, God sees and knows exactly what you have done and even where you have gone and each word which has gone forth from your mouth. God cares about your life and it is God Who sent Jesus to pay the price for each person in this world, so do all get to go to Heaven? NO! God doesn’t call every man, but He knows every man’s heart and whether they will follow Jesus after being called.

Does that mean that there are some whom God calls and some that He doesn’t? Yes. I know that sounds very picky and unfair but God knows our hearts and He knows which of us will walk with Him and do what is asked of him and who will not. So, why call someone to faith in Jesus if they are going to walk away or refuse to be a true follower of Jesus?

God is sovereign in His creation and in His Kingdom and He will do what He will, regardless of our decisions or our failures. He sent Jesus to pay for all of mankind’s sins and our debts have been paid but will every person on Earth give their heart to Jesus and follow Him as His disciples did? Of course not!

But…will you give your heart to Him and be His disciple until He calls you home to Heaven one day? Many people would truly jump at the chance of being His disciple! Why? Because He is the Creator of the cosmos! Doesn’t He deserve more recognition than a football coach or some CEO of a Fortune 500 company? He created everything around you so doesn’t that one fact give Him a bit more importance than even the President of the United States? I think it does!

Take a look through a real telescope one night or look at some of the pictures which the Hubble telescope has taken. God created ALL OF THAT! He did it mostly to watch us go “WOW!!”. Isn’t that neat? Looking out into space and seeing everything that He made as the Bible says, “He stretched out the heavens“; so don’t you think He can use your talents and your gifts for His purposes?

He knows which people can spread His message in the world and do it more effectively so that many more will come to know Him as their Lord and Savior after all God is One in Three Persons. There is God the Father and Jesus the Son and the Spirit of God or the Holy Spirit and each of them was present when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan river.

Please seek Jesus out as your Savior because there are many things which will need your specific talents and abilities in His Kingdom.

Occasional belief and attendance


Do you realize that while you come to church for certain “occasions”, you are hurting your relationship with Jesus? When Jesus called His disciples, and He did so individually, He didn’t ask them to follow Him on certain days or only on the Sabbath, He just said; “Follow Me”. When we choose to “follow Jesus” only at certain times or for certain reasons we are turning Him into our version of a genie.

We are, in essence, telling God and Jesus that we don’t want You in our life on a daily basis, we just want you on those days when we need you or when we feel the need for you to be in our life. That’s pretty insulting, isn’t it? How would you feel if you or a member of your family told you that? The family wouldn’t remain a family for very long, would it?

Yet, the church is expected to remain a church even when many of its members consider coming to church is something only real, committed Christians do. Who do you think the church is made up of then? Just “sometimes Christians”? Jesus didn’t call sometimes Christians or followers, He called you to follow Him. That doesn’t give you an out on Wednesday or Thursday or Saturday, He meant every day!

Do you think the church would’ve gotten started if His disciples only followed Him when they felt like it or on certain days? NO! The church would’ve died within a couple of centuries or less if that had happened.

God sent Jesus to Judea to bring the good news of salvation to them but also to enable the gospel of salvation to be taken out to the rest of the whole world. Because, Jesus died and rose again to pay for the sins of the world (past, present, and future) not just a few people in Judea. Our idea of Jesus as our Savior is not just an idea because an idea cannot bring you salvation, but a belief in Jesus can and will bring you salvation. Your life and mine are incredibly short spans of time, even in relation to a millennium but a millennium is just a tick on the face of a clock compared to eternity. Don’t throw away eternity with God because of your life here which is but a moment in time compared to eternity!

Each of us is special to God because we are part of His Creation and He cares for each of us. When you give your heart to Jesus and believe in Him for your salvation, you become a born-again child of God and you are part of His family. He loves you at that moment and from that moment on just as He does Jesus or any other Christian!

You are special to God because HE has given you talents and abilities which He wants you to use for His Kingdom and He knows what you can do with those abilities! You can do more with them and for Him than you can do without Him or without Jesus. Simple, childlike faith in God is all that your salvation requires.

Giving your heart to Yeshua (Jesus) is a simple decision and you need to realize that His name means God saves.

The Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament was the manifestation of Jesus which appeared to the Israelites in the wilderness. He was also the Rock from which the water came to keep His people alive. He was also the cloud which protected them in the wilderness, the Cloud by day and the Pillar of Fire at night. Yes, He was with the Jewish people during the Old Testament days and He fulfilled the prophecies about Himself when He did come in the flesh.

Jesus paid for your sins


God loves you and has made a way for you to have eternity as your future, but have you accepted Jesus as your Savior? He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and HE is coming back soon.

JesuspaiditallWhen He was crucified He wore a crown of thorns and was beaten so badly that only His mother could really recognize Him. But…when He comes back He will be wearing a golden crown and a brilliant white robe with a golden sash. He will be coming to claim the throne of David and HE will rule the world for one thousand years!

The angels who spoke to His disciples told them that He would return to the Earth and in His book of Revelation, it says that He will be mounted on a white horse with the saints of God coming with Him! His rule and His government will be set up and will rule over ALL of the Earth and our world will be restored to its beauty which it was supposed to have from the beginning.

I pray that anyone who reads this will seek Him out and give your heart to Jesus as your Savior because one day soon it will become much harder to make that commitment. When the Christians are taken up from their graves and those who are alive are changed and translated from this world to Heaven, there will be a man who will bring peace to the world and stability too. But he will be the worst dictator that the world has ever seen, but the world will follow Him anyway.

Jesus did give His life as a ransom for all of our sins, but there are only a few in the world who will give their heart to Him and follow Him. Are you one of those who will do this today? Will, you learn of Him and follow Him from this day until He comes for us? I pray that you will make that decision if you haven’t already.

The days grow short in relation to His return and I don’t believe that it will be much longer at all. I won’t speculate about dates because we don’t know the day or the hour but the world will know when He claims those who have given their hearts to Him. There won’t be a doubt in their mind that something momentous has happened but it will only be those who have studied the book of Revelation who will know what has happened.

Make sure of your salvation before then.

 

Are you ready?


So much is happening today and every day in the world until it is hard to understand that it was all foretold many hundreds of years ago. Of course, the world and the media can’t see or understand that the happenings in our world were prophesied by God and that they are ordained to happen. If we pay attention to God’s Word we can see these prophecies coming to pass each time something is reported in the news.

Sometimes it is a small thing that even the media misses but it is reported by other news agencies. It may be a local news item or, a few years ago it would’ve been an actual news event but it doesn’t fit the “agenda” of the day now. Either way, you look at it, the world is drawing closer to the time of the Tribulation spoken of in the book of Revelation.

So my question stands: Are you ready for what is coming? Are you ready for the church being taken away from here and will you be going with it?

These are big questions which have eternal consequences for you and for your loved ones. Are you ready? Do you know Jesus as your Savior and Lord? Giving your heart to Him and believing that He is your Savior is all that is necessary to gain eternal life with Him. Have you made that decision yet?

How can you know that you are saved?

It is possible to know that you are saved because your faith will bring you to the conviction that you are a sinner. You don’t have to be a terrible sinner to be convicted of it, but you will know when you feel it. God’s Holy Spirit will cause you to seek out the Truth of the Gospel of Jesus. When you do, you will want to give your heart to Him and ask forgiveness for your sins. Then you will ask Jesus to make you clean through His Spirit and give you a new heart.

I know, it sounds like a lot but it really isn’t. Truly, you don’t have to do anything except believe that Jesus died and rose again on the third day. He paid the price for all of our sins on the cross and if you believe that and accept Him into your heart as your Savior you will be saved.

Here are some scriptures which will give you comfort in the fact that you are saved:

Rom. 10:9  that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;
Eph. 2:4 But God, being  rich in mercy, because of  His great love with which He loved us,
Eph. 2:5 even when we were  dead  in our transgressions, made us alive together  with Christ ( by grace you have been saved),
Eph. 2:6 and  raised us up with Him, and  seated us with Him in  the heavenly places in  Christ Jesus,
Eph. 2:7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Eph. 1:13 In  Him, you also, after listening to  the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation — having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise,
Eph. 1:14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of  God’s own possession,  to the praise of His glory.

Remember, the thief on the cross gave his heart to Jesus through his belief in Who Jesus was. He couldn’t be baptized and he couldn’t tell people about his belief, but Jesus said that “Today you will be with Me in Paradise“.

I pray that all who read this will be encouraged to give their hearts to Jesus by believing in Him for your salvation. Don’t turn away from His call on your life because you may not get another chance to be a child of God and you can only do that by making the choice when the Holy Spirit prompts you and convicts you that you need Jesus as your Savior!

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Why is there so much tension?


The world seems to be ready to snap these days and it shouldn’t be. God created all of us and there is very little difference in our genetic makeup. I mean if you could track it down there is only about 1% or so that is different between people all over the world. Most of that has to do with eye color, skin color, hair color, and texture but very little else.

Still, we keep shooting at each other and killing each other for mostly cultural reasons. Some of it is also because of religious beliefs but…why? We are individuals and we should be tolerant of other people’s beliefs and their culture too, so why can’t we?

Is it because of hate or greed or just being an extremist in our own belief which keeps us at each other’s throats?

The real reason is that this is supposed to happen. It is foretold in the book of Revelation. Tension and strife over petty differences and religious beliefs will become worse toward the end of the age and that is exactly where we are. If you have read the Bible and pay attention to the news all of these things are not unusual at all. They are disturbing and hurtful but God knew this was going to happen a long time ago.

Remember, God is not surprised by anything which happens. God loves us and He has things under His control. Nothing can happen without His authority. I pray that many who read this will seek Him out because one day soon the church will be taken from the Earth and life will get even harder for those who are still here.

Make sure of your salvation since it is the difference between living into eternity and being in torment for eternity.

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In the beginning…


The Bible begins with these three words and it is the beginning of everything. God starts with nothing except darkness and then brings forth everything around us, including each of us. The world around us today doesn’t want to believe that God’s Word is the Truth or even that any part of it is true at all. So, what are we to do with a book which nobody believes is true?

The Bible is God’s Word written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by the authors of the Old Testament and the New Testament. How can the Bible be true? If you read it and take notice of the actual story which is being presented, meaning the salvation of us and Who it is that will be our Savior…even though it was written by many authors and over many centuries, it still points to the Messiah, Jesus the Son of God!

Can you think of how you could get about forty men or women to write different books and yet point to the same Savior in those stories? There is no possibility that even two people could do this let alone forty writers separated by centuries and yet pointing to Your Son, Jesus as the focal point of all of their writing! Without it being inspired by God’s Holy Spirit the Bible could not exist at all so the truth of it is without question.

It is God’s Word and wisdom for us to live by and it’s an example of how we should live and believe in order to even have a chance at living in Heaven for eternity.

God placed these words in the minds of those writers so that they could write them down and pass them on to later generations. His Word came into our world so that we could get to know our Creator and our Redeemer. It is not a rule book to beat someone with when we do wrong. It is a guidebook for how to live our lives, how to pattern our lives around His wisdom and it gives us strength when we feel weak, that is what the Bible is.

Is it true? Yes! Emphatically true! The prophecies contained within it have all come true in the past and the ones which have not are the ones which are yet to happen. When will they come true? The Bible doesn’t give exact dates but if you read the book of Revelation and some of the prophecies pointing to the end of the age, you can see things happening all around us right now. There isn’t much time left. How much time is left? Only God knows that answer.

The very next thing which is foretold in God’s Word is the catching away of those who are believers. Some call it the rapture, but since that word isn’t in the Bible I like to use “caught up or catching away”. The church is not going through the Tribulation because that is the wrath of God poured out on the Earth and those who have refused to believe in Jesus as their Savior.

If God has begun a work in your life, He will always keep you in Him. He will finish the work which was begun in you for your sake and for His glory!

What does the Bible say?


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Photo by John-Mark Smith on Pexels.com

Oh is that a loaded question or what? The Bible is the Word of God and Jesus is the Son of God and the Word made flesh! So, in essence, when we read the Bible and study the Bible we are learning about God through Jesus the Living Word! When He was teaching His disciples the only Bible was the Old Testament because the New Testament hadn’t been written yet. But, Jesus is present in every book of the Old Testament and is revealed and explained in detail in the New Testament.

We have been created by God to reflect His Son because we were made in the image of God and by reflecting Jesus in our daily lives others can see Him in us. If we will obey His commandments and live by the Word of God throughout our lives. God sent Jesus to be the Savior of mankind because of the failure of the first Adam and to take back that which Satan stole from God. Of course, Satan doesn’t look at it as stealing. He sees it as taking back something which was his, except God didn’t give Satan the Earth to be the ruler of.

We are creatures which God blessed with a soul so that we can be in fellowship with God into eternity. We had that relationship in the Garden and we chose to do it differently, so now that Jesus has paid the price for our mistake. We can get our relationship with the Father back IF we will repent of our sinful ways and ask Jesus into our hearts. That doesn’t mean that we can get saved and then go back to sinning again! When the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts we are a new creation and we are not the same as we were before.

It’s kinda like working in an oil field all day and coming home with oil and grease all over you and your clothes and in your hair. Then you get into the shower and wash all of that stuff off of yourself and then put on some really nice white shoes and pants and a white shirt and tie and a jacket. Are you going to go back to the oil field in that? I don’t think so!

When we accept Jesus as our Savior the Holy Spirit comes in and cleans out all of the old stuff and freshens up the place. He gives you a new purpose and a new heart which is aligned with God’s purposes for your life. But, some people come out of the baptistry and then think that “I can go back to my old ways now, I got some fire insurance now.” That is not the way this works. You didn’t have anything to do with your salvation. You only accepted Jesus as your Savior when you realized, because of the Holy Spirit’s conviction, that you needed Jesus!! 

If you hadn’t been convicted by faith, which God provided for you, and by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, then you never would have felt that you needed salvation at all. So why would you get all cleaned up, inside and out as a born-again child of God, and then go back to your old life with the “old buddies” which drank with you and got drunk with you and laughed when you fell face down in the mud!

God loves you deeply and He doesn’t want you to be placed in torment with Satan and the angels who were stupid enough to be followers of a created being who wanted to be God! God has a better place in eternity for you and for me and it is in Heaven. Choose to follow Him, Jesus, for the rest of your life here so that you can have eternity with Him there! Because this life is short compared to eternity and our time is running out.