Category: Accountability

Birthday wishes and kind words


Birthday wishes are like snowflakes, they are beautiful as they come and they make you appreciate the life that you have. We appreciate them when we see them or hear them fall on your ears. Wishing someone a happy birthday is a wonderful way to appreciate this person’s friendship. Appreciation of someone’s friendship is a wonderful way of showing kindness toward people who are or have been part of your life. Whether they are in your life now or not, even if you only see them infrequently, kindness and appreciation are qualities which you get from being Christ-like.

Yes, you can be kind and appreciative even if you are not a Christian but you will be even more so if you are one. Your character or the character of Jesus will come through into your daily living, your being, and it will show through everything that you do. There won’t be much of this distrustful, mean-spirited, person left in you. Now, I am not saying that everyone who is not a Christian is this way, I have met a few Christians who act this way in their life and their business practices. I suppose thinking that if they are kind and caring toward their competition that they will be run over in their business and be taken advantage of by people, so they think that they have to be “tough-minded and hard”.

Do you think that Jesus was this way while He was a carpenter before He began His ministry? I doubt it. I think that He was just as easy-going and kind toward those who didn’t want to pay Him for His work as He was to those who paid Him a little extra for the work that was done. Being a kind person, whether in business or in your everyday life, is easy but as Jesus said “be shrewd as vipers” when working or talking around people who might take advantage of you. In today’s world people will try to take advantage of you when you are kind to them or seem to be naive, so conduct yourself in the way that Jesus would.

Seek His wisdom, found in Proverbs mostly, to conducting your life and your business and then do it everyday. Some people may not see the love and compassion of Jesus until they see it or hear it in something that you do or say. Just a kind word, a “thank you” for something that is expected but say it anyway, open the door for someone who is carrying a package, just being helpful can go a long way toward bringing someone to the knowledge of Jesus.

Good news for ALL people!


Our God and our Savior loves you all and you have an appointed time with Him! It is not a judgement time, if you just come to believe in Who He is and what He did for you!! This is a simple message but a powerful one, so powerful in fact that after the dream that I had of Him this morning (it is 3:12 a.m.) I had to get up and write this to tell all of you the good news!!!

God truly is NOT dead, He is alive and Jesus is coming soon to claim His Bride for His own. But that news alone is not the GOOD NEWS, it is that if you truly believe in your heart and confess Him before men then you will be saved, that’s it! We are not required to do anything or perform any “tasks” for Him, just believe as a little child that Jesus did what God’s Word, the Bible, says that He did. When you can come to that belief in faith like a child, then you will be changed into a child of God.

I am not saying that you will fly up to Heaven the moment that you are saved, but your soul, your spirit will be counted as a citizen of God’s Kingdom and from that moment on you are not the same! He loves you and wants to bring you into knowledge of Him, a loving knowledge of Himself, like that of a toddler to your Father! That is the kind of relationship that God wants to have with you from the moment that you believe and on into eternity!

Isn’t this AWESOME, the Creator of the universe wants to know you personally, every day. Not just at Christmas services and Easter, but every day. He cares for you like nobody on Earth can, just because He is God! You don’t have to do anything to receive this blessing, except answer the call in your heart, in your soul that you may have felt before, but you didn’t know what it was or even why you felt it. Yes, the emptiness that you have felt is telling you that something is missing, and that something is Jesus! Nothing will fix the feeling, nothing else will work in that spot in your heart. It is a place that only one Person, only one relationship will be the right one and that is the relationship with Jesus that needs to begin today!

Don’t put it off until tomorrow! Now is the appointed time to be saved and to come to know Him for Who He is, He is your Lord and Savior and He has always been waiting for you to come to Him. He doesn’t force you into a relationship, forced servitude is not a loving relationship. You have to be willing to come, you need to learn of Him and about Him, because only in Him and through Him can you be saved from the fate that awaits Satan and his demons.

Why would a loving God do that to you or anyone else? Because, if you have rejected His offer of grace and mercy through the belief in Jesus and His sacrifice, then you are no better and no different from Satan, who wanted to place his throne above God’s throne! You are rebelling against God when you choose to be separated from Him, but it is your choice, God is not the One who condemns you to hell, you are. By rejecting His grace and your salvation through Jesus, you are rejecting God Himself and all that He is offering to you, and by doing that you are no better than any demon or principality or even Satan himself. The “lie” that many people have believed is that they will always have the time to come to know Jesus. But, we are not guaranteed tomorrow. We have been given the grace and the ability to come to Him today and only by accepting that grace, by asking Him to come into your heart and change you into the person that God knows you can be will you be able to stand before Him with all of your sins covered in the righteousness of Jesus.

That’s it…that is all that is required or necessary. Just belief in Jesus and in His sacrifice and asking Him to change you into the person that you should be. Give your life to Him because He is coming…sooner than you think!

Expectations, what are they today?


Many people seem to have fantastic expectations of their children and their lives today. In many ways, we seem to try to live our lives or some part of our lives through our kids and their accomplishments, don’t we? You see it portrayed in movies and on television and on the Internet and social media, our lives and our children’s lives are open to all of the world in one sense or another. Depending upon the security that you have in place, and unless you are knowledgeable about such things, many of us don’t have much security at all.

I don’t know how many emails that I have received about a poll which was taken at random, that showed that thousands of people still use “password” for their password or “0123456” even. These are ridiculously easy for a child to crack, let alone someone who really is a true hacker! The security that I am speaking of is in reference to the “stuff” that you store in the cloud or on Facebook’s servers. How easy would it be for someone to crack your password and get into your family photos and other things which should be kept private?

We have expectations of security and life, along with what we expect or want from our children. To put it a bit more politically correct, “what we want our children to become is just to make us look and feel better”; maybe not so politically correct, but a sight more succinct maybe? We expect or hope that our children will do better with their lives and their careers than we have been able to do, but do we give them the esteem and the knowledge of applying themselves toward that goal or do we just coddle and spoil them until they graduate into the real world and hope that they get it right?

Many times it seems that is exactly what we are doing to the next generation. We “baby” them and give them stuff that they didn’t have to earn until they graduate from high school or college and then we expect them to hit the ground running toward a goal which they have no idea how to accomplish at all! We never tried to get them to earn their way in life or through school or with chores to do at home! They played games and watched TV and movies on DVD, when they weren’t whining about all of the two pages of homework that they had to do. Yes, some kids actually have far more than two pages but so did we when we were growing up!

In the public school system, there is now something called “common core” which is the biggest joke of all on our kids. No one can be left behind while taking this curriculum because not even the teacher understands it, so how can our kids know or learn it? We are expected to raise our children to be good people with character, but how can they have character when many of us don’t even have it? Do you know any of the Ten Commandments? Do you know where they are found? This country was founded on principles which came from the Word of God and all of the Ivy League schools were founded, at first, to be seminary schools which trained preachers and missionaries.

What happened to our country? What happened to the values and the beliefs of those who run this nation and those of us who live in it? We have allowed science and political correctness to invade our churches and our homes. Many people are mourning the loss of values and purpose in our country, but it is our fault that it has slipped away. We allowed it to happen because we as Christians did not speak up and try to keep our country as a Christian nation. Now, we are paying the price although the true price hasn’t been set yet.

Violence is not the answer


I am a pastor and a Christian and I happen to be caucasian, but beside the fact that the person who was shot was African-american, what good is going to come out of this violence in Missouri? If the kid who got shot was white, would there be such violence and rioting going on? Yes, there would have been some crying and maybe a lawsuit, but what good is going to come out of the days of violence that is going on now?

I have to ask, “What would Jesus do in this situation?”

I know that my culture is different and my history is different, but what is the point to all of the fires and looting and shootings or whatever else is going on up there? Will this ease the mother’s pain? It won’t bring the young man back, but it will polarize the country yet again over a racial issue that shouldn’t be an issue at all. Not today! Stirring up a nest of hornets is not something which anyone would rationally do, and stirring up racial anger and hatred doesn’t accomplish anything except cause more hatred and anger.

There is no rational reason for any of this, except to gain publicity for some people and cause more pain for others. Seek God and His answers for this, not an answer that would thrill Satan himself! The anger and violence that is being shown in the news looks more like some of his doing than righteous anger that some are calling it.

“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness”, this should be the cry behind those seeking justice. It shouldn’t sound like a call to war, which is what it looks like. I am praying for a peaceful solution to this and all of you should be too.

Blue, down or depressed..which is it?


When you feel down, you don’t want to do anything. When you feel blue, you just don’t feel right. Depression makes you feel this way too, but in a more concrete way, by that I mean in a way that is not easily gotten over. Which of course is another thing that many people will tell you with all of the insensitivity that this contains, “Get over it!”.

When you feel like you are blue or you are just having a bad day, nothing seems to go right.
Depression and feeling depressed gives you a bad day which lasts much longer, sometimes, than you would care for it to.

Feeling blue or down in the dumps can be fixed by a lively song or a cheerful child or even a happy book or movie. The “blues” go away and you are yourself again. Depression is something which cannot be fixed by a happy song or any of the things which help a “blue” day. As a matter of fact, some of these so-called fixes can make the depression worse…can make it even deeper than it was.

Feeling sorry for yourself is another form of the “blues”, but it is nothing in comparison to depression at all. It’s like comparing a fire-cracker to an atomic bomb, they both go “BOOM”, but with far greater intensity and destruction in the atomic bomb’s case.

It is the same with depression, feeling blue is easily fixed…while depression is like an ongoing “bad day”. Drugs can help, but chemicals only go as far as they can go. Therapy can help, but confession to others only gives you a support group to spread the pain around with.

Time, prayer, and faith in God’s healing power is the only real cure for depression. Although, Satan will try to derail that with more intense feelings of despair and depression. The answer….I don’t have it. It is found in God’s Word, in faith and in fellowship with God’s people. Fellowship and the caring love demonstrated by them toward you, as a child of God, is the only REAL cure but it still takes time. It is not a quick fix, like we expect in our society today.

It is not easy and coming to the church is hard to do especially when you are depressed, because there will always be someone who thinks that you are just feeling sorry for yourself, when that is far from the truth. Whether they voice their opinion or not doesn’t matter, the look that you may get are just as cutting…just as hurtful.

You can fake “getting better”, but inside depression doesn’t go away like “feeling blue or down”. It is more similar to an alcoholic. Some think that it is a personal demon to be conquered, but it is one that truly doesn’t go away entirely. An alcoholic may be sober for years, but one drink can send them back and depression is like that. You might be OK for a while, but one trigger, one bad day can send you right back into the well of depression again.

Prayer and fellowship is the only real helpful fix for your state of mind. Intercessory prayer from friends is more helpful than anyone can know, so I am asking for this from all of you, and I Thank you in advance for your prayers.

Adult to child or child to adult, which way is it?


When we are young, we can’t wait to get older. When we get older, we want to feel young and act that way. It is so hard to get away from being a child it seems. So, why is it hard to imagine people being childish regardless of their age or their occupation?

We all want to grow up or at least we are supposed to, but looking at the way our culture is today it seems to be taking a long time for many people to do so. If they ever do. Yes, the correct direction is supposed to be from child to adult but it seems that we have gotten confused in the past few decades, not just in America but all over the world. People enjoy things in their middle age that they enjoyed when they were children, even into their later decades of life people tend toward being childish at times concerning some things.

Why is it this way? Because when we get older, we want to have things our way, just as we did when we were toddlers. We may not throw a tantrum about it, but sometimes we do. We are being given things today in our everyday lives that we would’ve had to work for a few decades ago and we get them almost instantly. Games give us instant gratification in winning, you can order anything online now and you would’ve had to travel to get those things years ago, especially books. We can get them instantly delivered over the Internet without having to go anywhere or pay shipping. We can get online and talk with our friends that we haven’t seen in more than twenty years, yet we both are in our own homes hundreds of miles away in some instances and we aren’t even paying for long distance charges to do so!

Our culture and the way that we live in today has gotten so addicted to instant everything and constant information availability, until if something happened to all of this connectivity….we would be totally LOST! Many people would likely even commit suicide because they couldn’t get in touch or look up something. Being childish about some things is OK, being addicted to information overload is just ridiculous. We have intellect and intelligence but to someone coming from a different planet, it would not seem so at times.

Why have we lost our way so badly? Because we have moved away from God and His wisdom. Many of us have Bibles in our homes, many thousands of people have them on their eBook readers but do we read them? Some do, many don’t. The wisdom contained in the Bible is wisdom from God written down through the prompting of the Holy Spirit and it was sent to us for our benefit. Pushing it to the back of the room or throwing it away doesn’t change anything. Ignoring the Word of God doesn’t get rid of any Truth contained in it, just as ignoring the law of gravity doesn’t get rid of it either.

Reading God’s Word, studying it and praying for Him to open your eyes to the Truth is something which all Christians should be doing as we come to the end of the age. Many don’t want to believe that we are so close to it, but when it gets here….you won’t need a news program to tell you that it is, people all over the world will know it at the same time. Our education system has gotten so far from the Word of God and pushed any of its teachings out of the classroom until our society is paying the price for its arrogance in doing so now. The biggest problem with this is that once we have given up on teaching these things, there is no remedy, no way to introduce sanity back into our schools and society again without a HUGE backlash.

Childish, yes we are in more ways than most would like to admit. Sanity and being an adult seem to not go hand in hand anymore and IMO it is because of the absence of the Bible in the home and in schools that is the reason behind it all. How can we fix it? The sad truth is that we can’t. Only the return of Jesus will do that and His return will be sooner than many are willing to admit.

Life today?


So, what do you do? Is your so-called “life” bound up in your occupation or in something else? Does your family enjoy most of your time or do you spend it working at the office? Do you travel a lot on business? These are occupations or at least the reflections of what is important to you. So, does your life reflect what is really important in your life or even what is important to you? Or does your life reflect things that you desire or “stuff” that really doesn’t count for anything?

These questions are some that we all need to ask ourselves at least once, not just once a year but once a week and sometimes once every day! Your life will be far more and have much more meaning if you latch on to Jesus and His message today! Living your life with Christ in the center is the best way to live it, even if it costs you your stuff, it may not cost you everything but it will cost something. Some of your friends may not like it that you are really following Jesus, they may not want a “Christian” as a friend because it will make them look bad!

You know what? If they feel that way, then they weren’t your friend anyway! Being a friend of Jesus and following Him is far better and more rewarding than having friends here which are just friends during the good times. Life comes from God, the air that we breathe comes from Him, the ground that you walk on every day was created for you by Him. The beating of your heart and the heart of everyone around you is His grace toward you for today. You are not guaranteed tomorrow, so the beating of your heart will only go on as long as God decrees that it will.

He loves you and me and everyone else on this planet and only He knows why!! He may not like some of the things which we do or say about Him or against Him, but He still loves you regardless because He is God! We need to love Him in return for the air that we breathe and the job that we have and the family that we have because He gave all of those things, good things, to us. I know that if you are in an abusive relationship you might not think that it is a blessing and you may be right, but God is still with you in the place where you are no matter how dark or hellish it might be.

God cares for you and for your family. He loves us, all of us so much that He sacrificed His Son so that we would have the covering of Christ’s blood to allow us to come into His presence every minute of every day if need be! We don’t have to go to a priest, we don’t have to have a certain amount of money or power to get God’s attention! All that we have to do is be humble enough to tell Him that ” I messed up, God, please forgive me and cleanse me from my sinful ways. Come into my life and my heart and fix what is broken. Thank you, Lord, for loving me enough that I can come to you for this and for all of my troubles and trials. In Jesus’ Holy name I humbly ask this of you, Amen.”

That is all that it takes to be a child of God. Just a simple, humble prayer. No haughty spirit will get this, no prideful person need come, no un-repentant person should “try God” because it won’t work! God knows your heart, He knows where you were last night and what you said on the phone to someone who you shouldn’t have been talking to. Nothing can be hidden from Him because He sees each of us as we REALLY are at all times. Even a prayer that is said humbly as the man in the temple did, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner!”, is heard when it comes from a repentant heart! Please, give Him a chance to show you His love and mercy while there is time to do so. Don’t just read this and think about it, do it!

 

What do you do?


In the New Testament book of Colossians in chapter three and verse seventeen it says: “And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus and in (dependence upon) His person, giving praise to God the Father through Him.” AMP

In this verse of scripture, Paul is writing to those who have come to faith in Christ who are trying to reconcile their vocations with their new beliefs. He is telling them that regardless of your vocation, do it as if you are doing it for the Lord. If you dig a ditch, do it as if Jesus asked you to do so. If you are a doctor, treat your vocation as if you worked for the Supreme Physician.

All of us cannot be missionaries or preachers or evangelists, but we can do what we do as if we are doing it for Jesus. If you are a professional football player or golfer, play like you are playing for Jesus and the same goes for any other sport. Regardless of the work that you do, do it as if you are working for Jesus because you really are.

He gave you the talent and the ability to do what you do and the job or the business that you have so that you can be and do your work for Him. I know that many people don’t treat their job as a gift from God or a blessing from Him but it is. God gives to each of us a measure of faith as well as skill in an area that nobody else can match and we have that skill regardless of our education, it was given to us from birth. We may not find out about it until later, maybe after we have attended school or finished school, but it has been there nonetheless. I never thought that I could write much, until years after I graduated from college. I finally found my voice through finding my Savior and He gives me the words to write or say, I am just the messenger.

Your vocation, whatever it may be, is a doorway to other people’s lives. If you work in a hospital, you see people who are hurting in many ways almost every day. I used to work in the laboratory of a hospital and the specimens which we processed were from many people every day who were dealing with cancers of all kinds, HIV, viruses, you name it they were suffering from it. Nurses, Doctors, and all who work in hospitals should be on their knees every day praying for those who they have to care for, regardless of whether they might know any of them or not.

We should be praying for our country and those in Washington who are in charge of the laws of this land. We need to be praying for our military men and women who are serving and putting their lives on the line every day. Prayer should be in our minds and on our hearts for the whole world to come to know Christ, because Satan is busy changing the minds and hearts of as many as he can to turn against Christians and Jews. We are in his sights as a nation founded upon those principles, even though our country is trying to abandon them as fast as it can it seems.

Even though it has been two thousand years since the crucifixion of Jesus, He is coming back! We need to be prepared for His return by doing as much for His Kingdom as we can, whether it is just by praying or if we can preach or teach others to know Him. Teach your children about Him and your grandchildren because they need to know as well. Your family and your friends are the hardest to tell about Jesus if they don’t already know, so in many instances you may just have to pray and invite them to a Bible study at your home. Prayer can cover many things, especially in the lives of those who haven’t come to know Jesus.

Give your heart to Him, tell others about Him, live your life and your vocation as you would with Him by your side. This is the way to eternal life, follow it…follow Jesus and He will guide you.

What do you think is happening?


In the world today, many things are happening around the world and here in America. Disturbing things, horrible things and good things too if you look hard enough. But why do we have to look hard to see the good things or even to hear about them? Mainly it is because of Satan and the work that he is doing on Earth. He has been doing it for many, many years and he is very good at what he does. His main tool is deception and his influence on the pride of mankind.

He has deceived mankind for thousands of years and even now, many don’t even think that he is real or that he even exists. But, he is still there. He is still here around us every day. Can we avoid him or otherwise keep him out of our lives? Through the power of the Holy Spirit we can, but those in the world who have not accepted Jesus can’t. Satan can influence them in any way that he wishes and he does. You can see the effect of his influence every day on the news or hear about it on the radio and Internet. He and his fallen angels are always busy causing chaos with wars, large and small, diseases of all kinds, perversion, rape, murder, persecution, slavery, etc.

These are the tools that he uses on us but mostly he appeals to our pride and our greed. They are two of the most easily manipulated of mankind’s vices. People who have not given their lives to Christ fall prey to them very easily but some who claim Jesus also fall victim to them and their temptations as well. The examples which Christians set before the world, especially our friends and co-workers, are on display and are being tested and proven by trial by Satan. This is why Jesus said through the apostle Paul that “we must put on the whole armor of God” to be able to withstand the darts which Satan hurls at us each and every day, especially while we are doing work for God.

Your life and mine have eternal consequences for us and for those who see us and know that we are Christians. Your life is a witness for Him, your actions and words and your children are witnesses for the power of God in your life. They cry out about your true character and whether it is influenced by Jesus or not. People can easily see the difference, so what does your life and your character say about you and your relationship with Jesus? Does it really offer proof of what you may claim to be?

What will you do with your life? Not just this one, but in eternity. If you have not given your life to Jesus and asked Him to come into yours, then you are lost. Do you feel as if there is something missing, but you don’t know what it is? That is the place where Satan enters, in the spot where you feel vulnerable and empty. The person that should be there is Jesus and all that you have to do is ask Him to come in. You are responsible for that one action and it is a simple one because children can understand it, that is why many people miss their opportunity. They think that they have to “clean up” in order to get right with God, when in reality Jesus has done all that there needs to be done. Your only action is to believe in Him and the atonement that was provided for you by His death and resurrection.

Can racism be fixed?


It is a topic on many people’s mind for some reason, especially in America, but why is it so important? What is bad about racism? Why do we still have it, even after more than forty years of “the dream”!? What can we do about getting rid of racism?

For starters, we could just program our children to not notice the color of people’s skin. It is done in schools all of the time, the “programming” of our kids. But what about the adults, the ones that have lived through the sixties and seventies ad nauseam, where will it end? Those of us who saw the riots in Los Angeles, the shootings in Chicago, etc. cannot just forget. Then there are the family stories of lynchings and the slavery that was endured by great-great grandparents. Yes, all of this must be taken into account but what can be done about the racism of today?

Can we fix it? It cannot be apologized away. There isn’t enough gold or silver or any amount of groveling which will pay the price to a people who were taken from their home land, sold into slavery by their own people or who were conquered and then sold. Nothing that can be said or done in reparation for over four hundred years of slavery and bigotry and hatred!

I am a Caucasian male, born in the same year as our President. Yes, I have seen the terror in people’s eyes, the fear and anger during the late sixties when I was just starting school at about the same time that Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered and a few months later Bobby Kennedy was shot while campaigning! The thing is that none of my family, as far back as I can trace, has ever owned a slave. Yet, “crackers”, white people like me, are blamed for every slight, every injustice that has ever happened in the past one hundred years or more.

Why? Because of racism. Not our racism, but the racism that exists in our culture. I don’t blame African-Americans for this, it is not their fault. It is not my fault that racism exists in the South or in America as a whole. I believe that Satan himself has used racism to great effect in America and has used it to stir up so much hatred and enmity between people who don’t know each other, they just know that skin color and culture are different between us. God created mankind, He did not create certain races of people to do certain things and others to do other things in this world. God created one race that had many different shades of skin color because of the climate that they settled in, not because one is better or worse than any other!

God is the only person Who can bring about the end of racism and bigotry and when Jesus comes back and rules the world as King, it will happen! This is not an “if” or a “possible” outcome, it will happen because Jesus said so! At the end of the Tribulation, when the one-thousand year reign of Christ begins, there will be no more bigotry and racism and those who try to keep it going will answer to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords! God removed His people from slavery after four hundred and thirty years, He did not endorse it. Those who were in slavery in Israel were to be released on the seventh anniversary of their slavery, it was not to be a life-long servitude unless the slave loved the family enough to become a bond-servant and it was the slave’s choice not the masters.

We cannot do away with racism by our own choices. Humanity doesn’t have the moral and ethical capacity to get rid of it or any other bigoted ways of treating people, not on our own strength at least. The love of God through Jesus can open our eyes and our hearts so that we no longer act on our cultural and familial learned behavior toward others, but if it has been taught from an early age it is still there. Only the change wrought by Jesus in your life and mine can cause it to be any different, so the choice is clear…choose Christ as your Savior and follow Him. Serve Him as your Master and Lord because He is the only Master to whom service is due!