Restlessness…

Augustine wrote, “Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”

This quote from an early church leader says more about the human condition than most sermons ever will. All of us are restless. Once we realize that we have no direction in life and feel no real purpose in our lives there is an anxious feeling deep inside each person. Some try to fill it with “busyness”. Whether that is work or school or family or fame and fortune, all of us try to fill that empty feeling place in our hearts with something. The problem is that we don’t know what will make that empty feeling go away until we find Jesus.

He is the only person that can fill that place. Our acceptance of Him as our Savior is the only way to take that restless feeling away. Many people have struggled their entire lives trying to fill that empty space with many things or many people or hobbies and when they finally find their Savior…they realize that feeling of restlessness is gone. For many of us, this is a lifelong pursuit. Many people never find that Person that fills the empty area of our life that has been there for so long.

Some may find it while they are young but they will walk away from knowing Him fully until later in their life. Many have thought that they found salvation and then lost it when it was really their own selfishness that caused them to walk away from a deeper relationship with Jesus. If you truly were saved at a young age and then decided to ignore the Holy Spirit’s voice for many years, you may not have been saved at all or you were very good at pushing Him away. Some days it feels like I did this for a time although I did come back to Him in the past twenty-five years or so. I have become closer to Jesus over that period of time and I now consider Him to be my closest friend.

Why did I push Him away? Because I was selfish. I wanted to do things my way even when I felt and heard His Spirit speaking in the back of my mind. I would ignore Him until I couldn’t hear Him anymore. This is a very dangerous thing to do but I did it for a number of years. God finally got my attention…thankfully. I pray that anyone who reads this small confession of mine will seek Jesus out today and ask Him to be their Savior and Lord because our time is drawing to a close. The time of the Gentiles and the “age of grace” is coming to an end. All of the signs are in the news and prophecy is being fulfilled every day. Don’t wait. Accept Him while there is time.

Jesus loves you!

This song that most of us have heard and sung as children, is very relevant today. Because Jesus does love all of us. He may not like your lifestyle or the places you’ve been lately if you haven’t accepted Him as your Savior but He still loves you just the same. Why am I starting this article this way? Because, everyone needs to know that they are loved by God and our Creator, Jesus. It doesn’t matter if you are three years old or ninety-three years old, we need to know that we are loved by Him.

God looks at the heart of each one of us and regardless of how much we think we have messed up our life…we are still loved. We are created in His image after all and God loves us. “What if I don’t believe in God?”, you might ask. To that, I will say that God believes in you and He loves you. Not the celebrity, not the Congressman or Congresswoman, not the “profession” that you work at. God loves you!

We are all made up of three parts, just as God is a Triune being so are we. We have a physical body and our mind and our soul and it is our soul that stands out when God looks at us. That is the part of us that He wants to bring salvation to before the end of our life in our physical body. If you have given your “heart” to Jesus then He has your soul and one day in heaven your soul will be reunited with your resurrected body physically. I know, right now it doesn’t make much sense but one day in the near future it will. Work toward that goal in your life today to know Him as your Savior by accepting Him as your Savior by your belief in Him.

Seek the wisdom found in the Bible

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. James 1:5 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/jas.1.5.KJV

The best education that you can have in this life can’t be found at a university or a college. It is found in God’s Word. This wonderful book is God’s love letter to humanity! Yes, it was written to the Jewish people by Jewish scholars but it is also a love letter to the rest of us too. If it was only for the Jewish people and nobody else, Jesus wouldn’t have said anything about the “other flocks that I want you to take this gospel to”.

We are the other sheep that He was speaking about…the church. The wisdom that we can gain from God’s Word is the kind that we are supposed to give to others during our lifetime. If you knew that there was a way that could guarantee that everyone you tell about Jesus would give their hearts to Him wouldn’t you tell them? We have been given a present that is worth more than all of the gold and the money in this world and it was given to us without cost. All that we had to do was to believe in Jesus as our Savior…just believe in Him for your salvation. Why shouldn’t we be willing to give it away? It didn’t cost us one penny or one drop of our blood but it did cost Jesus His life and His blood and He would’ve gone to the cross if there was only one sinner to save.

That is how much God loves each of us! He makes sure that we can know Him by reading and studying His Word. God never gives up on us unless we keep pushing Him away and telling His Holy Spirit to leave us alone. When you come to the point of knowing Who you need and what you need to do and then you turn away from Him, you may never come to that point in your spiritual life again.

We are at the point in history and prophecy where the age of grace, the church age, is about to come to an end. There is very little, if anything, that has to happen before the Trumpet sounds and calls ALL believers home to Him. I pray that every person who reads this post will seek out their Savior in Jesus Christ. Time is short so don’t wait.

Encouragement keeps us sharp!

Life is funny…

I found a good quote today and it’s something we should all consider as part of our mission in life.

George Bernard Shaw said this: We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.

There are funny moments in life almost every day and truthfully we should enjoy them. God didn’t intend for us to be so serious all of the time. I’m sure there were a few funny moments during the few years that Jesus was teaching His disciples. We may not get to read about them in the Bible, but I imagine we may hear them when we get to meet Peter and John and James and the rest of the gang.

Many of us do grow old because we stop playing and that is something I’ve noticed about grandparents. When they become grandparents and their grandchildren want them to play with them…they seem to get some of their youth back. While it may be painful to get down on the floor and play and it is difficult to get back up again too, they will tell you that it was fun. Painful but fun.

The only part of life that isn’t funny is realizing that you haven’t asked Jesus into your heart as your Savior. If you haven’t done this yet, you’d better get to it! Not one of us is guaranteed tomorrow morning so don’t put an eternal decision like that off until another day that you might not see in this life. If you have not made this crucial decision please do so. We spend so much time planning for retirement and we might not even live long enough to enjoy it. But on the other side of this life is your eternity and that is something that many people don’t plan for at all. Satan has convinced them that they have plenty of time to get ready for that but he doesn’t know when they will die. Unless he causes your death.

The good news is this: if God has a plan for your life (and He usually does), He won’t allow Satan to kill you. You might get hurt in some way but He will make sure that you get a chance to ask Jesus into your heart and be useful in His Kingdom. The time that we are living in is coming very close to the end of the age of grace that the church has enjoyed ever since Jesus ascended to heaven almost two thousand years ago. I don’t know when the Trumpet of God will sound but when it does, those who have given their hearts to Jesus in the past and recently will be taken up to heaven to be with Him forever.

Make sure that your spiritual ears will hear that Trumpet when it does sound by asking Jesus to come into your life and change you into the person He knows you can be.

We are in a daily battle so…

You are invited…

Come unto me, all ye that labor and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28‭-‬30 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/mat.11.28-30.KJV

Much of the world does not accept this invitation. Why? It is the only way to paradise and eternal joy with God. The places in the world where Christianity takes root the best are in places where there is much resistance to the gospel. Places where many are threatened with death or with being thrust out of the family because of giving their heart to Jesus. The invitation has been open for a couple of thousand years now and many people have accepted it regardless of the danger to themselves. Some have even given their lives because of their love for Jesus and because they would not recant their belief in Him.

The invitation is an open invitation to everyone who may be seeking to fill that empty place in their heart. They’ve felt it for many years but they don’t know how to fill it. Money and power won’t fill it. Fame won’t fill it. Having a beautiful home and family won’t fill this void either. There is nothing in this world that will satisfy the longing for meaning in your heart except having Jesus as your Savior.

This was true when Jesus was teaching it to His disciples and it is still true today. Not one teaching in the Old Testament or the New is out of date. Every one of them is useful for our lives today…especially the gospel of Jesus Christ. Your life and mine will only last for a few years and there are so many who spend their lifetime trying to provide for their retirement. If people spent as much time and energy getting to know Who their Savior is and how to be saved by grace through faith in Him…there would be more Christians in this world today.

Most who have good jobs with retirement benefits spend lots of time trying to get as much as possible out of their 401K so they will have a comfortable retirement. Yet many of them will die not long after retirement because they are dissatisfied with it. There is no fulfillment in retirement, even though it is something they have been working toward for most of their lives. Some will even die soon after retirement because there seems to be no joy in retirement but joy can be found in Jesus and in Him you can have and enjoy eternity.

Wait for the Lord

What does it mean to “be like God”?

In the garden of Eden, the serpent tempted Eve with those words to get her to eat of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. “You’ll be like God”. What does that mean exactly? Satan was tempting them with the idea that they would have God’s power and become as He is. The problem with thinking this way is that nobody is like God except God. Nobody outside of the Trinity can be or have His power. Satan knew this but he still used these words to entice them to go against God’s commandment about this tree. Because he knew if he could cause a rift or a split in their relationship with their Creator then Adam’s claim of being the steward of Earth would be null and void.

You know the rest of the story if you’ve been in Sunday school at some point in your life. Adam and Eve did fall for it and they were put out of the garden to live and populate the Earth along with having to work for everything that they needed.

Can we become “like God” to do His will on Earth?

YES, we can if we have given our hearts to Jesus and we are striving toward that goal every day! We will not be like Him in ways of being healers or creators in supernatural ways but becoming more like Jesus is the progression that we are seeking. Becoming mature in our faith brings us toward His likeness each day but we still have to work at it. We have to become more like Him just as the disciples did. With the Holy Spirit living in us, we can become more like Jesus Christ. Using our gifts and the wisdom that we gain from His Word we can spread His message around the world even if we only touch one person each day. That is at least 365 people in a year’s time. Then if they touch only one person each that gives their life to Jesus…the church is growing exponentially from that point on. Imagine how many that could be!

365+365 = 730

That’s just the first year! You get the idea. If God used each of us to touch only one person that gave their heart to Jesus and this kept going…there would be a worldwide revival of Christians before too long. God’s math is fantastic and He knows exactly how much and how many it will take to bring about revival in this world. The problem today is that the church is outnumbered by those who oppose our message…His message.