Category: when you feel His call in your heart

What is your idea of God?


Is He a father figure who gently prods you in the right direction or does He resemble the Greek idea of Zeus with a lightning bolt about to zap you if you do wrong? Many people seem to think of Him as a grandfather figure who is just waiting to pour money and blessings into your hand whenever you ask for them. Some people even think of Him as some sort of “genie” who will answer when called but is indifferent to your life unless you ask Him to be in it?

GOD IS NONE OF THESE!

Yes, He is a Father to us all because He is the Creator of all, but HE is not like a human father. He, God the Father, is not Zeus or Odin. They are mythical beings, God wrote the Ten Commandments on stone for Moses. A mythical being cannot do that! God is not a grandfather but the Father and Creator of all!

According to the Bible, God’s Word, He knew each of us before He created this planet that we live on. In His mind and thoughts you and I were there, along with every other person who has ever lived. He thought of you! Later, when you were old enough to feel His Presence, God the Holy Spirit touched your spirit and let you know that you needed Him. Before we who are alive today were born, Jesus Who is God in the flesh of man, died on a cross, shed His blood for our sins and bought our souls with that blood. He paid the price for our transgressions so that we could cry, “Abba, Father” in His Presence.

We are all able to receive His forgiveness and His Love which knows no bounds, if we will accept Him as our Savior and Lord. It is our choice. Even though He has made this easy for even a child to understand, many don’t want to believe it. Why? Because they don’t want it to be that easy. They want to have a part in their salvation through works on this Earth. But, works done without Him and in your own power just count as paper and wood. It is those works done with Him as your Lord which are made of gold and silver and which will endure the fire of His gaze.

God has loved all of us since the beginning, before the world became our home, it is our responsibility to accept Him as our Savior and give our life and our work for Him into His hands. I pray that those who read this and who haven’t given their lives to Jesus will do so today because you don’t know that you will even make it home today. You may not be able to find a pastor or a church to talk to someone about your need for Him, but you can do so right now. Just talk to Him like you would to a friend or your Dad and ask Him to forgive you and to make you whole in Jesus’ powerful name. It doesn’t have to be a fancy prayer or one which you may have heard in church, just talk to Him about what you have done and ask forgiveness for it all.

He knows but He wants to hear it from you. God has never turned away from you even though the world may tell you that He has. God loves you with an awesome love that nobody else has for you but Him!

Why the decrease?


According to a poll done recently, of the nearly seventy percent of Christians who identify as Christians in the United States, only forty to fifty-nine percent of those attend church weekly. The article was on Faithwire so I am giving you the link to it if you want to read it. The United States came in as an outlier in the statistical realm because of our less involved Christians.

Why have participation and participants gone down in the past fifty years in America? I think it is because we have moved away from teaching our children about the moral absolutes found in the Bible. The schools are not allowed to teach it anymore, we don’t have a copy of the Ten Commandments in schools anymore for fear of offending someone. We have taken prayer, compulsory or voluntary, out of schools because of “political correctness” and trying not to offend people.

You know, Jesus offended His people while He was teaching and preaching! He would heal a person on the Sabbath or clear the porch of the Temple because of all the business transactions going on in a worship setting. He ate with sinners of all things! What a disgrace!

Really? Those who are sinners, which we all are by the way, need to hear the message of love and forgiveness more than the people who have been in the church for forty years. Many of those who have been in the church the longest are more like the Pharisees than the tax collector. They may not pray like he did, essentially telling God that He was lucky to have him as a teacher and that he wasn’t like these sinners or this tax collector, but they have ears which have grown calloused to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Many of them are spiritually deaf!

Then, when they go home their children and grandchildren don’t hear any more about Jesus and His teachings until next Sunday for about thirty minutes or so. If you aren’t teaching your children about Jesus during the week then they are listening to those at school about what exactly? Football, basketball, soccer, cheerleading, all of the religions of America which push Jesus into the locker room and shut the door.

Then during the fall there is hunting and more football and its an endless cycle every year. We are letting our children down into a well where Jesus is not and if they don’t find out about Him in time, they will drown in the world’s “religions” and may never darken the door of a church after they graduate. We have allowed this to happen to our children and to society in general. It isn’t some plot from some other religious group or some computer or console game! The blame for this lies directly in the laps of our families because we have failed in our duty to teach the next generation.

If we don’t turn this around and begin teaching our grandchildren and children now, in another generation there won’t be a church in America or the UK. Many are closing their doors each month as it is because no one attends and there is no money to keep the church open, let alone pay a pastor. We are living in the time just before the return of Jesus and the world is running away from belief in Him as fast as possible and it breaks my heart. I know it is breaking God’s heart too watching those that Jesus died for turn away and leave.

“Therefore say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, “Return to Me,” declares the LORD of hosts, “that I may return to you,” says the LORD of hosts. Zechariah 1:3

A life changed


FB_IMG_1521382243378In the world today there are so many people who are going through many problems. Health problems, money problems, relationship problems and of course spiritual problems too. So, how can we come out of these places where it seems that there is nothing but problems?

By giving our problems to the One Who can fix them or change our circumstances or in some way have a positive effect on those problems in our lives. The main “problem” that many of us have when we try to do this is that we have a string or a chain tied to the problem and when we leave it on the altar for God to take care of…we usually drag it back off and pull it around like a wagon. Why can’t we leave it there? Because we think that we should take care of our problems.

We don’t really think that God has time for all of our problems and everyone else’s problems too. But when we think like this we are making God into our picture, our idea of Him. We change our perception of Him and think of HIm as being almost as limited as we are! How can our Creator be that weak and impotent? Why would we limit Him in this way?

I think it is probably because we can’t imagine in our minds that He is bigger than our minds can imagine or even comprehend. So we try to make Him fit in a human box so we can relate to Him. That is the very reason that Jesus came to us in human form, not only to be the Savior and the Redeemer of the world, but to show us that God can fit in our lives without us putting limits on Him.

This may be the reason that many people have trouble believing that God will or can answer their prayers. It is hard to imagine God as omnipotent when you don’t see it happening or you don’t learn about His power in the world around us. If you think of God in terms of humanity without belief in Jesus, which limits God’s power, then your unbelief in His omnipotence will limit His power in your prayer life.

ourlovingsaviorExpecting His work and His answer to your prayers is part of your faith in Him, as long as you don’t place a limit on Him in your thinking. So why do people do this? Mainly because there are many who think that all of the miracles happened as the church began. But, miracles are happening all around us every day. In people’s lives which are touched by cancer or when children are born completely healthy with no problems, God has a hand in all of our lives, whether we know about it or not.

LIves are changed all around us each day. Sometimes it is because of prayers, sometimes God is working in those people’s lives even when they haven’t asked for it just because He is God and He has a plan for their lives. God’s plans will always make a difference because His will for you and me and anyone that He has a hand on will never backfire!

Seek Him in your life and for your life because He can and will make a difference in your life for your good and for His glory! Amen

What will you do with your life?


Have you considered that question? Many of us think about this kind of question when we graduate from high school or college but what about when you become a Christian? You have a new Life in Christ because you are made new in Him. Your old life is supposed to be gone and a new one is just beginning, so what will you do with it?

We all have ideas about what we would like to do for God’s Kingdom but have you ever asked Jesus what He wants you to do with your new life? We have been given a new heart and are made as “new creations in Christ” so we should walk and talk like a new person and not like the old one. But…do we actually live like a new person after we have accepted Jesus as our Savior?

Did we really become a “new creation” or did we just go through the motions and say some words but really didn’t mean or intend to change? It seems that there are more people who attend church or claim to be “Christians” but are not any different from their old selves and it is this trend in the churches which is causing some confusion. Because people who know you outside the church can’t tell that any change has taken place. This is showing the rest of the world that Jesus doesn’t have the power to change lives when in fact He does!

These “false Christians” who seem to be just as sinful and worldly as they were before they claim to have changed are not Christians at all. They claim to have changed at some point but they are doing things which are not reflecting that new creation that they were supposed to become. The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity and it is He Who comes into your heart and soul and causes that change. But when you keep doing those worldly things which you did before your “change” you are calling Him a liar and saying that He can’t change you at all!

If you are going to change when God calls you, He knows it and He will convict you of the sinful life which you need to repent of. Your spirit cannot continue to sin and live as if He doesn’t live in your heart unless you didn’t actually receive Him in the first place. There is no gray area in being a Christian and following Jesus OR being a sinner who is still in the world doing what they did before hearing the gospel of Jesus. You either are saved or you are not!

Think of it this way: the fence is a razor wire fence; on one side you are a Christian and on the other, you are still in the world doing whatever makes you feel good at the time. You cannot straddle razor wire for long without injury. You are either on one side or the other, so which is it? The side of Life and eternity or death and eternity, you must choose.

lifeordeath

You are not an accident!


We are not accidents!

Psalm 139

For the director of music. Of David. A Psalm.

1 You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts,a God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand—when I awake, I am still with you.
19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
20 They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
God doesn’t cause accidents in His creation and each of us is a person that He caused to come into being for a reason. He has a purpose for you and for me and for all of those on the Earth. What that purpose is only He knows. He has given each of us gifts and abilities to be able to glorify Him and to be useful to Him in His Kingdom. So we need to start acting like we have a place in His Kingdom. If you don’t want to have a place in His Kingdom, that is fine. He doesn’t force anyone to be a part of His design and His will for His creation.

Our God and Savior is the only pathway to Heaven, there is no other. Seek Him while you can find Him because when the shout comes and the dead are raised incorruptible and the church rises to meet Him, the easy time of coming to Jesus will be over. The time of “Jacob’s trouble” will be upon the world and the act of giving your heart to Jesus will carry a death sentence soon after. I pray that all of you will be counted among those who rise to meet Him in the air. Amen

Prophecy is happening now


I don’t know if any of you are noticing all of the political and social “fires” which are popping up in Asia and the Middle East, but those were foretold long ago by our Lord Himself. Our world, the world around us is changing rapidly and unless you are seeing it through the lens of prophecy it just looks like business as usual. We are rapidly advancing toward a period in history that the world outside the church is not paying attention to. I pray that if you are a student of the Bible, God’s Word, that you have been praying about this and watching these things which are happening now. I am not trying to frighten the world or anyone and I don’t believe in some doomsday cult. I believe in Jesus the Christ, our risen Lord and HE said that all of these things would happen before the end of the age.

God is watching and paying attention to all of the religions of the world and the people around the world who will decide to give their hearts to Jesus. I pray that those who have been called by His Spirit will soon wake up and give their hearts to Jesus before the time is up. Life as we know it or have known it is coming to an end. It is in Matthew 24 and in some other prophecy books like Daniel. Anyway, the things which are happening around the world right now are part of the things which were foretold to happen.

Why am I bringing all of this up? Because the media doesn’t look at those things through the lens of Bible prophecy. Only those of us who are reading the Bible and who take God’s Word as the truth that it is can see these things but if we told the media about it we would be called kooks and conspiracy freaks.

Life is about to change on the Earth for billions of people and yet nobody is paying attention to the signs all around us. Of course, most of the world thinks that Christians believe blindly in a Savior who is dead and in a book which was written over two thousand years ago! Our faith and our beliefs are not blind. It is the faith which comes to us from God which brought us to the point of realizing that we needed Jesus as our Savior.

Blind faith and beliefs which point toward an imaginary figure are not what the disciples and the martyrs of the early church died for! You will not willingly go to your own execution for something that is imaginary or some belief which is based on nothing which can’t be proven! Historians outside the Bible wrote of Jesus and His crucifixion and His resurrection, at least what they heard of it. People have died for their belief in Jesus for the past two thousand years and are still being put to death because of their belief in Him!

Our world is moving toward a time when the problems of today will pale in comparison to what is coming. I pray that anyone who reads this will seek the Truth in the Bible and seek their Savior in the Person of Jesus Christ.

Empty space


There is a longing in every heart that only Jesus can satisfy. We should be seeking Him to fill that place because nothing else will fit in it except Him. So why do we go through life troubled about an empty feeling inside when it is easy to find Him as the solution?

Usually, it’s because we don’t want to admit that we need Him in our lives. We don’t want to live according to His ways or enjoy the life that we would have by following Him. Even when we find that nothing that we try can satisfy our longing or our emptiness, we usually don’t want to give up our life! Why? Because if we become a Christian we think that we will lose all of our friends. When we will really gain more friends.

We will be joining a group of people who are following the Savior of the world! He will make us feel whole and new again in ways that no drug or person or any amount of money could possibly accomplish! The empty place in your heart and in your life is meant to be filled by the Holy Spirit which Jesus will send to you when you become a Christian.

themissingpieceSo, why do people seem to be against everything that God and the Bible stand for? Maybe its because they are afraid of a book which has the absolute Truth in it. Maybe it has something to do with the way people are taught to think that “everything is relative”. Meaning the truth that you believe is relative to your life is not relative to mine. God’s Truth is relative to everyone! The Savior, Jesus the Christ, is relevant to each person who will decide to receive Him into their heart and their life!

While it seems that many people want to go to Heaven they think that there are easier ways of getting there than becoming a Christian. There are no multiplicity of pathways for getting to Heaven. There is only One way and that is through belief in Jesus and by giving your heart to Him when you feel convicted by the Holy Spirit that you are truly in need of salvation!

God loves each person on this planet regardless of your location or country or the color of your skin or even what ethnic group you may belong to. We are all a part of His Creation and He is the One Who gave you your personality and your gifts and talents! He knows exactly what you can do in His Kingdom and how much you could contribute to it if you will only become a part of it.

Yet, there are many in the world who either don’t believe in God or they are too stubborn to move away from the way they have always believed before. Just because your family believes one way doesn’t mean that you can’t have faith in Jesus and believe in Him for your Salvation. He died and rose again to pay the penalty for your sins and mine and every person alive! So why not follow Him and learn more about Him while becoming the person that He knows you can be?

Is the path of being a follower of Jesus hard? Sometimes, but He will be with you every step of the way. He will be there in the good times and the bad, so don’t turn away from His call on your life and your heart. Eternity is waiting for you and you will enter into it one day. You can decide today which direction and in which place your soul spends that eternity by choosing to follow Jesus now while you are still alive. Because if you don’t make that choice now then you may not be here to make it tomorrow or next week.

Is there something missing…


Many times when I was much younger, I felt as if something was missing in my life. Since my parents were divorced I always thought it had to do with my Dad not being in my life much. Which was likely since I didn’t see him much except during summer visits and two weeks doesn’t help much when your Dad is working and out of the house even when you are there. Still…I felt that my relationship with him wasn’t really what was missing but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

After high school, I found that the missing part of my life didn’t mean much, at least not yet. So I partied and played around with weed and sex and I still felt empty and confused because nothing that I tried was fulfilling at all and mostly left me feeling empty inside. Even though I thought I had found and accepted Jesus, and I may have invited Him into my heart, I don’t think that I had fully committed my life and my heart to Him at this point.

I didn’t have anyone to teach me how to become closer to God and to come to know Him in a deeper way, so I still felt like I was stuck in a rut and I didn’t know how to get on the right pathway. I don’t know if I am expressing this the best way but that is how I felt at the time.

Why am I opening my story up to you? Because our testimony is the story about how each of us came to know Jesus as our Lord and Savior and it is a story that each of us can express in our own words because it is personal. Each of us knows our own short-comings and our failures which brought us to the point of knowing that we need Jesus, because until we came to that point…we didn’t want to know Him.

My actual walk with Jesus began after my son was born. I had been given this gift from God to love and cherish and to be an example to, and I knew that if I wasn’t following Jesus from that point on then he wouldn’t learn about Him either. So, I began by reading the Bible at night while I was working in the lab at the hospital. I would read in between running samples or on my lunch (early breakfast) break.

Little by little, God’s Word began to make sense to me. I still didn’t understand it and even today after reading through the Bible many times I don’t claim to understand it yet, but I am walking with Him on a daily path. Do I stumble? Yes! Do I wander off the path or fall? Yes! But…He is there to help me get back up, ask for His forgiveness when I have failed Him in one way or another and then we carry on toward the goal.

What is the goal? The prize of being in His Presence! That is the ultimate goal of life. The life which each of us lives through and complains about here is just temporary but the Life in Him and in eternity is…well eternal! There won’t be anything missing when we are in His Kingdom and His Presence! The only “missing” things will be the problems which we have here, the time which we never seem to have enough of, our aches and pains and our glasses (if you wear them) or contacts. All of these man-made bits of help and diseases will be left on Earth when we leave this place, praise God!

If you need prayer for any reason or just an unspoken request, please leave it in the comments. I will pray for you in my prayers because I pray that this site and these messages have an impact in the world every day. Thank you for reading.

Amen.

Do you believe?


There are many Christians in the world or rather there are many who claim to be Christians. How many actually are in the world only God knows the answer to that question. In America, there are nearly 70% of the population who claim to be Christians but if that were true every church would be full whenever there was a service.

So, back to the question, do you believe in Jesus Christ for your salvation?

God provided the way for each of us to gain salvation through Him but it is up to us to make the decision to believe in Jesus for our salvation when we feel convicted of our own sinful lives. Knowing that your righteousness is not good enough to get you into heaven and that you only gain access through belief in Jesus Christ for your salvation.

In Acts 4:12, Peter exclaims: 12 “Salvation exists in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”

So, do you believe in Him as your Savior? Some who read this probably do believe in Jesus as their Savior but there may be many who think that He was just a man and a prophet and nothing more. In the Old Testament, there are over 300 prophecies concerning His birth and His ministry and He fulfilled them all! In the book of Micah, written between ~700 years prior to His birth it was foretold that He would be born in Bethlehem.

For a man to fulfill the prophecies about Jesus, even a few of them would be miraculous, but He fulfilled every one of them. Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity and the Son of God, there is no other name by which we can be saved and sanctified for our sins. If you don’t know Him yet, as your Savior, I implore you to seek Him with the utmost urgency because the time grows short and He will be coming for those who believe in Him soon.

I have no idea when His return will be but all of the prophetic signs have been fulfilled and the world is in turmoil just as He said it would be in the last days. Don’t turn away from Him or His call on your life because when this life is over there are no second chances to gain your salvation through belief in Him.

IamtheWay

 

 

What are your convictions?


Most of us really don’t think about this word or what it means, at least not on a daily basis. Your convictions come into play when you vote or in how you handle adversity. Sometimes, your convictions have an effect on the way you live your life from the beginning of adulthood throughout your life. One definition of a conviction has to do with being convicted of a crime in a court of law. The definition that I am writing about here is expressed best by part of a sermon which Dr. Charles Stanley taught recently so here is that definition:

A conviction is a solid, immovable belief based on confidence in God’s Word, being so thoroughly convinced of its absolute truth that we are willing to take a stand regardless of the consequences. Convictions shape not only what we believe but also how we live and even how we die. They define who we are and provide direction with solid straight lines that don’t veer off track to accommodate circumstances or temptations.

Many of the disciples and early church members were martyred for their convictions about their faith in Jesus Christ, so that should prove to many people that those beliefs and their faith and their conviction about Him were so strong that they were willing to die for them. You wouldn’t die for some made up fairy tale or a lie. Jesus is coming back as He said He would and I urge you if you don’t believe in Him as your Savior, to give your life to Him today.

None of us are guaranteed tomorrow so as the Bible says, “Today is the day of salvation“. If you truly want an eternity which is not eternal punishment, and honestly who would want that for eternity, then give your heart to Jesus. Seek Him out in any way that you can because He is coming soon and you don’t want to be left behind to live through the seven years which will follow His removal of the church from the Earth. There will be a lot of destruction and death on that day because of the people who were taken to heaven with Him, but the aftermath of that will be easy compared to what comes later.

God does love and care for all of us but He doesn’t like our sins and the lives which we live apart from Him. Lifestyles which go against His laws and His precepts in His Word are not the lifestyles which He approves of. Living outside of His law just because you don’t like what the Bible says is not the Christian way of life. Consider the places that you go on a Friday night or over the weekend. Would you feel comfortable taking Jesus to those places, really? If you attend church but haven’t accepted Jesus as your Savior, would you feel comfortable telling your pastor about where you went the night before church on Sunday morning?

If you can’t answer those questions truthfully and without hesitation then your life needs Jesus in it now.