Category: Be a follower of Jesus

No boundaries


In the world today there are borders which are not visible on the ground which separate nations from each other. But there is no boundary between us and God Himself, at least not anymore. When Jesus said that “It is finished” on the cross the curtain between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies ripped from top to bottom. This didn’t happen because of an earthquake or by someone cutting it but because of the Holy Spirit giving access to God’s mercy seat.

Why did this happen? Because the sinless Lamb of God had died and paid the price for all of mankind, not just a few people but for all who had lived and died in the past, the present and in the future where we are today! God’s love doesn’t have any boundaries, regardless of the rhetoric that we hear in the world. His love is such that He gave a part of Himself, His Son, to pay for all of our sins so that we can have access to Heaven and to Him. Nobody else would do that!

The question for us today is this: Do you set boundaries in your life where God is NOT welcome? If you do then you are limiting His work in your life and through you for the world around you. God loves each of us and He will draw each of us to Him when we feel the conviction of our sinful ways. That conviction comes through the Holy Spirit and each time that you feel it, if you have pushed it away or ignored it, it will get a little bit weaker and not quite as loud. Until one day, you may not feel it or hear it at all.

Don’t push Him away. Listen for His call on your life because it doesn’t matter what you may have done in the past, God is willing to forgive and take you into His family. Paul and Moses had both committed murder, yet God used them in mighty ways! Your life can be a witness to others who may believe wrongly that they can’t be saved, but they can be if they are willing to repent of their sins and follow Jesus.

The Bible is God’s Word and it is not just some old dusty book written by a bunch of old men! It is the Living Word! The Bible is a testament of God’s love for us and it is the tangible representation of the Son of God that we have today. John called Him the Living Word and that is what the Bible is as well. Each person who reads it gets a different message from the same passages because He speaks to each of us differently.

Don’t turn away from Him or the study of His Word because it is the mind of God which was given to us for instruction and training and for wisdom in this life! There is no education in the world which contains the wisdom in this Book except maybe a few seminaries where future pastors are trained. God loves us and He is coming back soon, so be watchful and be praying for those who haven’t given their lives to Jesus.

What is your experience?


Have you thought about your experience with Jesus? What about your salvation? The reason that I am asking this question is that each of us experiences each one in a different way. Some of us get emotional and nearly fall apart because of the grace that is given to us when we accept Him. Some of us fall down and worship Jesus and walk away from the experience a changed person and one which will do all that they can by telling others about Him.

The experience, especially if it is truly genuine, changes your heart spiritually and your life permanently! Salvation is not an experience which you can go through without the Holy Spirit and choose to turn it on or off when you want to go back where you were. True salvation begins when your heart is broken because of the Holy Spirit showing you through faith that your life is sinful and it needs to change. Sometimes this realization is brought about at a church service other times it is by a night or three or more in a jail cell. God will use whatever is necessary to get your attention and sometimes it is painful.

God loves us but like any Father or Mother, He sometimes has to use tough love to get a stubborn child to listen! Many times…we truly need this tough love and until God has your undivided attention, He will bang your head against whatever is necessary to make you listen. Why do I say this? Because, when God wants you to listen and He has a specific lesson or purpose for you, that only you can fulfill, He will not let go until you come around.

God knows the talents and gifts which He has given to you. You may not be aware of them until you have given your heart and life to Him, most of us aren’t. I never would’ve gotten in front of a group of people to speak for ten minutes or more if I had not been called by Him to be a preacher. I struggled against this calling for years until finally He got my attention enough and didn’t really give me a choice about it.

Some people think that God forces us to salvation, but that isn’t true. He will call to you and prod your heart, sometimes for years, but until you realize that you need Him in your life, it won’t make much difference. If you think that you have an arrangement with God and consider yourself good enough without accepting Him as your Lord and Savior, you may never hear His call on your life because you don’t think you need Him or the salvation that He is offering.

At that point, you are just like those Pharisees in Jesus’ day…too religiously minded to be any Earthly good to themselves or to anyone else! God only uses those who know that they need Him. Truly our Creator doesn’t need us in any way other than what He can see in your heart and your life. He can cause things to work out in His time so that your life or mine will line up with His will and purpose. He has already given you a talent or gift that He can use in His Kingdom but only if you answer the call on your life to change like the disciples did.

Peter denied the Lord three times on the night of His “mock trial” before going to Pilate. Paul was a Pharisee and was doing everything that the priests would give him permission to do in order to get rid of the “Jesus followers” or the Way. Both of these men were changed by the Lord’s actions of redemption and healing toward Peter and by Jesus’ confrontation of Paul on the Damascus road. Both of these men became true witnesses to the Gentile world as well as to the Jews after their redemption and conversion.

So…what about you? Are you willing to give your heart to Jesus as a follower and a disciple? If you have felt His call on your life, don’t put it off or ignore it. God loves you.

 

Serving as Jesus did (part 2)


Jesus came to this Earth with all of the problems and chaos caused by a fallen people who truly had lost their sense of direction and their knowledge of the One True God. He came because He loved ALL of us, not just one little tribe of people and He knew that when He came that He would have to suffer and die for ALL of the people who didn’t know Him. Most people in the world at the time He came had no idea Who He was and didn’t care, just as many still do today. Yet…He loved them anyway just as He loves all of us today. That is the love which calls to each of us today.

God seeks out those of us who truly need Him but even in our broken state of being, He can mend us and make us better so that we can show others that His ways are so much higher and more than able to heal and direct our path toward His higher calling. The calling of being His disciple and His friend in this life and into eternity. It doesn’t take a lot of convincing to show people how He has changed us, just tell them about your life and how it was before Jesus came into it and gave you a new purpose and hope!

Are we perfect and sinless after becoming Christians, of course not! We are still human beings after all and we are still subject to every temptation of Satan and all of the other lures that are in this world. Wealth, power, greed, sex, drugs, alcohol….our world and the things in it draws our humanity toward all of these things even after our hearts are changed which is why we have to read the Bible daily. Washing our minds and our thoughts with His Living Water, the Word of God, is the only way to stay true to our calling and know His mind and thoughts.

The Christian life doesn’t give you a clean slate to go out and dirty it up again. If you are doing that, then your heart hasn’t been changed at all. When Jesus and the Holy Spirit come into your life, there is a change which will let you know that what you are doing is wrong. While it is true that you can ignore the message enough to go back and get into the pig stall and lie with the other pigs…why would you want to? We are not pigs, and contrary to what some people may think, we should live above our old lifestyle where Jesus would walk and live. Think about what He went through before the cross. The shaming and the threats on His life and even those in the town where He grew up wanted to kill Him because He told them that He fulfilled the prophecy of the Messiah from the prophet Isaiah. They didn’t believe Him and wanted to kill Him because they had watched Him grow up in Joseph’s carpenter shop. They knew the little Boy but they didn’t KNOW Him!

Like knowing someone from childhood and then they grow up and move away or join the military and essentially become a different person from the child you knew. Of course, Jesus matured into His life’s role as Savior and Messiah by His Father’s teaching and not Joseph’s teaching. The part of His life which everyone in Nazareth saw was His Earthly life, His physical life here. It was His Spiritual life and learning from the Spirit and from His Father that had brought Him to be a different Person from the one that everyone in His hometown thought they knew.

God has many jobs and roles which He wants each of us to do and fulfill in our Christian life, but we need to submit to His teaching and His Spirit and His Word so that we can learn what we need to know in order to be the person which God knows that each of us can be. If we will only follow Him in our daily walk and learn from Him, we can do this!

Living in His Light


Have you considered being a child of God? We are all His creation, regardless of the country we live in or the religion which we claim to serve if we believe in Him at all. God loves each of us, whether you believe it or not. Yet, living in the Light of His Love and Grace is where most of us who believe are right now. How we live in this condition is our service to Him. There are many who simply don’t want to live according to His gospel or in His LIght!

Why? Like the gospel’s say, “they shun the light because they like the darkness“; it is simple and so easy to see it today. Criminals do all of their criminality in the dark where that can’t be seen and it is the same with sinful mankind. They don’t want their sins or their deeds brought into the light, whether it is the daytime or the Light of Jesus! God cares about all of mankind, but He knows which people will give their hearts to Him and His Son and which ones will not.

Your life and the lifestyle that you live is not unknown to God. He knows each person on this Earth and He knows their hearts even if they don’t belong to Him. This has never changed since even the time of Adam and Eve in the Garden. It wasn’t a surprise to God that they could not resist the serpent in the Garden who told them that “they would surely not die“.

When we are tempted by wealth or fame or more knowledge than we are ready for, it is always the Tempter who is dangling it in front of our hearts or our eyes so that we want it for our purposes, not God’s purpose. This part of the equation between man’s temptation and God’s grace toward us has never changed. Actually, the difference has only become more pronounced, except that man doesn’t want to see it or acknowledge it. You can see it every day on the news but unless you are looking at the world around you through your spiritual eyes tempered by God’s Word and His prophecies, it won’t be very apparent to you at all.

This is the very reason that the world doesn’t recognize how the Bible’s prophecies work because they don’t have their eyes turned to the Holy Spirit. You can’t see the working of prophecy unless you have faith in Him and your Spirit is showing you those things around you. As some people on television seem to think that Christians have a mental illness and that they can’t live in the world with “normal” people. Really?

Somehow, I think its a bit more like we are the ones who can see what is really going on around us and the rest of the world is just trying to make sense of all of it and it doesn’t make sense to them. Why? Because the workings of God don’t make sense to those who won’t or can’t see the world with spiritual eyes of faith.

Do you bear fruit for Him?


John 15:1-8

Jesus the True Vine

1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. 2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. 3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. 4Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear the fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. 5I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. 6If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. 7If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. 8Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.

VineandBranchesJesus taught this lesson to His disciples during the hours just before His arrest and the mock trial that He was subjected to before being condemned to the cross. There is more to His teaching on this but this began His discourse on being a disciple which produces fruit for God’s Kingdom. Have you considered what you should do in light of the fact that as a Christian, you are a disciple as well?

We are called to be in God’s family to be disciples as well as His voice while we live in this life. Yet, many Christians don’t fulfill their duty to Him in this way. We are content with knowing that we have our salvation and that we will be accepted into Heaven one day. But, God intended for us to have and do so much more than that. His Word shows us that the disciples went out from Jerusalem and spread His gospel and we should do no less.

We have much more available to us and for us to use as platforms and possible routes to spread Jesus’ message into the world than they had. God will use your talent or He will give you the talent and the words to say to spread His message to those who need it so badly in the world today. I don’t have the ability to go on missions overseas, but this forum can get to anyone who has access to the Internet. Unfortunately, there are many who don’t have access to it, which is where actual visits are required if possible.

Some places are in areas where it is not advisable to visit with a Christian message or to bring it to those living there. It is dangerous for Christians to go, as Jesus asked us to do, into many countries in the world today. Prayer for those people and places which are not accepting of Christian ideals and its message. Do what you can with what you have and ask God to bless the outcome of your efforts.

Did God make the right choice?


Actually, that is a very silly question. Of course, God made the right choice but which one am I referring to? That depends on what you are willing to do. Has God chosen you for something? But you really don’t want to follow Him in that direction or even go in that direction with your Christian walk. You should realize that this is a decision which is dangerous. Jonah made this kind of decision and God turned him around and brought him to where he wanted him to be.

Do you really want to go against God when you feel His call in your life? Deciding to go one direction and you decide that you will wait or maybe you just won’t go at all.

If He is telling you to go this way and you decide to go but by a different route, are you really obeying Him? It is not wise to try to find your own path to get where God wants you. If He is leading you toward this area and you decide to skirt around that and go to another area that seems more promising in your estimation. Isn’t that actually disobeying God?

In life, we are faced with many choices. Some of the decisions are hard to make and some are fairly easy. So, what do you do when God calls you plainly to lead a planting of a church and you ignore Him? What about when you feel led by Him to preach on a certain scripture and then you change your sermon to something different before the service? Still being disobedient.

In the Old Testament, God expected faith from His servants that He called and He expected them to obey His commands. He still expects this today, so why don’t we hear Him and obey like we should? Is it pride or selfishness which is getting in the way? Maybe. Is it just stubbornness which is keeping us on our path rather than the path that He wants us to be on? Many times I believe that is the problem. We are comfortable where we are and we don’t want to change even if it is God Who is trying to get us to listen.

The big problem here is this: God will get your attention, one way or the other!! You can run away and hide, you can try to ignore His call, but eventually, He will win. He will get you turned around and going in the right direction. Remember, His Son died for us to be saved from our own mistakes so it is only fitting that we should obey Him and follow His lead in our Christian walk with Him.

God gives each of us a talent or a gift or some ability to be useful in His Kingdom, many of us have more than one gift but God expects us to use those gifts for His purposes and His Kingdom. Can we use them in other places? Of course, we can, but the main reason that we have these gifts is for God’s Kingdom first and foremost.

1 Corinthians 12:7-11 ESV 
To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

What will you do?


The movie, “I can only imagine“, is in theaters now and the song has blessed the world with its inspiration for a while…but what do you think that you will do when you see your Savior? Will you fall to your knees in worship? Will you be so giddy with joy until you dance in His Presence? How will you express your gratitude when you come face to face with your Savior?

FB_IMG_1521382243378Truly, I have no idea what I will do. There are times, even now, that I get tears in my eyes just thinking about the mercy and grace which has been poured into my life. I didn’t deserve any of it and I still don’t understand the depth of the love of our Father. I won’t understand it until I am face to face with Him and even then I don’t think that I will completely know the depth and breadth of His love for me…for all of us!

God is our Creator and our Savior because He made a way for us to get to Him in His Word and to be able to come near to Him through the blood of Jesus. It is a good thing that we will have an eternity to be with Him because the understanding of His Love for us will take about that long to comprehend, even with our immortal bodies and minds.

Meeting Him as a saved and sanctified, born-again Christian will be so awesome until I can scarcely imagine even the beauty and majesty of seeing Heaven and our Savior. Truly, I don’t think my imagination could conjure up the images that John described for Heaven. Many of the paintings which I have seen which some artists have painted of their vision of Heaven just show a landscape which is just more than what we have on Earth. More and deeper blues, more vibrant greens, flowers which are dazzling in their beauty and water which is more like “liquid joy” than anything we could possibly find here in this life! This water flows from the throne of God, so there is no way we could find water like this here.

God loves each of us which is why He sent His Son to pay the penalty for our sins. All that we are required to do is to believe in Jesus and His atonement for us…that’s it. You don’t need money and there is no amount of work which any of us can do to deserve to be in Heaven. We can’t save ourselves because salvation is only through the name of Jesus. His name is the only name which will bring each of us to salvation, there is no other!

Bridge2Salvation

It doesn’t matter how many gods you serve or the names of your gods, they will not bring you into Heaven because they aren’t there either.  This picture shows exactly how your salvation is done and paid for. Your only response is whether you will accept Jesus and repent of your sins or not!

If you accept His sacrifice for your sins, regardless of how many they may be, then ask Him to come into your heart and save you from yourself and your sins. He will honor that prayer and come into your life and your heart, cleansing you from your old life and your old ways and make you a new creation in Jesus Christ! If you have done this, please let me know in the comments section, because I would love to know and hear about it.

Changing times


We are living during a time which is changing at a rapid pace. Almost on a daily basis something or someone does something which is totally out of the ordinary. A bridge collapses or some bombs are set off in a city which hasn’t had any terror attacks and its on American soil too! Of course, the media isn’t calling the bombings “terror” attacks, just random acts of violent behavior which are unrelated.

Maybe, but I’ve never heard of anyone doing this in the last thirty years or so just as a “random” act and not just one but three! Yes, life is changing here and it isn’t exactly better than it was before. We do have a President who is trying to help our country instead of running it into the toilet, but it seems that there are so many people in America who would rather rip it apart at the seams…at least there are more of them than we used to hear about!

Why is all of this happening? I believe that it is because of how close the world is to the time foretold in the book of Revelation in the Bible. Of course, there are some people who don’t believe that the Bible is God’s Word. Most of them don’t think it is true either. So, what is the church, the people who DO believe in God and His Son, supposed to do while the world ignores God?

We are supposed to be the bringers of the word, the Truth of God’s Word to all of the people who haven’t heard it or those who didn’t believe it in the first place. Tell the people about your Savior and what He has done and what He will do for them too! Because of God’s love for them,  and for the entire world! He is our Creator and we are His creation! It doesn’t matter where you live or what you do with your life if you know Jesus as your Savior then you are a messenger and you need to take it seriously!

Believers are supposed to be messengers for Jesus in our world today, just like His apostles were at the beginning of the church age. Will there be some who refuse to hear or maybe get angry with you for telling them about Jesus? Yes, most likely. But, if you can get them to listen to your story, what Jesus saved you from becoming, then even they might listen..even if only for a few minutes. God’s Holy Spirit will do the rest. If their heart is touched by something that you said or maybe what you were saved from, then He can get them to think about it. “If God cares for the little guy, the one that wasn’t popular in school or the most handsome, then maybe He could care about me too!”.

God has used many unlikely ways of getting people’s attention in the past and He will continue to do so until the very last person is saved. It isn’t a hard thing to believe but if your heart has been hardened by school or science then that may make it difficult, but anything is possible with God. I mean, look around you at the universe! God did all of that with His Words, and it was made from nothing more than the thoughts of God! Just think what He could do with you or me?

 

What kind of love do you have?


God loves each of us with our faults and our imperfections, we can love our children without a reason other than they are our kids. I love my wife because she is a gift from God! Have you ever considered what kind of love do you have in your life?

I do realize that there are people who have not been loved very much in their lives and it is a very sad thing. Because, if they have never felt loved by their parents or grandparents or their spouse then how can they love themselves or others? Love is one emotion which multiplies when it is given to another, most of the time. If you give your love to someone and they don’t return it in kind, then it is like a water hose hitting a rock, it splashes a lot but it will take a long time to penetrate.

Life feels empty and hollow when there is a feeling of being unloved. Here is the only case study that I could find to show the effect of a lack of affection:

CASE STUDY

In the United States, 1944, an experiment was conducted on 40 newborn infants to determine whether individuals could thrive alone on basic physiological needs without affection. Twenty newborn infants were housed in a special facility where they had caregivers who would go in to feed them, bathe them and change their diapers, but they would do nothing else. The caregivers had been instructed not to look at or touch the babies more than what was necessary, never communicating with them. All their physical needs were attended to scrupulously and the environment was kept sterile, none of the babies becoming ill.

The experiment was halted after four months, by which time, at least half of the babies had died at that point. At least two more died even after being rescued and brought into a more natural familial environment. There was no physiological cause for the babies’ deaths; they were all physically very healthy. Before each baby died, there was a period where they would stop verbalizing and trying to engage with their caregivers, generally, stop moving, nor cry or even change expression; death would follow shortly. The babies who had “given up” before being rescued, died in the same manner, even though they had been removed from the experimental conditions.

The conclusion was that nurturing is actually a very vital need in humans. Whilst this was taking place, in a separate facility, the second group of twenty newborn infants were raised with all their basic physiological needs provided and the addition of affection from the caregivers. This time, however, the outcome was as expected, no deaths encountered.

Here is the link to this if you would like to check it for yourself. Truly, we need nurturing development regardless of our age. The same goes for your relationship with your spouse or with Jesus. Your spouse can withhold any or all of the affection that is needed in a relationship, but your relationship will suffer greatly because of it.

Jesus doesn’t keep His love from us because He showed His love to all of us by His death and resurrection! He did that even though most of us were still sinners. Why do I say this? Because the population of the world at the time was much smaller than it is today. Yet, He died for our sins whether we were actually living at the time or not! “But, that doesn’t make sense?” you might ask. It does when you consider that God can see ALL of history since He is outside of time. He can see and know every person that ever lived even though they may not be physically alive at this moment.

That is why He says to one of His prophets: “I knew you before you were“. God loves each of us because of what He knows about us even before we are born. Make sure that your life reflects His love toward anyone that you meet daily. Begin your day with a reading of His Word, maybe just a few verses to begin with. Working up to a chapter each day will wash your mind and heart with His Word before any other stuff happens in your walk with Him.

Seek Him through the Bible, learn His voice by reading His Word, pray and ask Him to give you an understanding of His Word and when the Holy Spirit draws you to Him…please don’t turn away from His call.

What kind of Christian are you?


Do you practice your beliefs on a daily basis or do you just do so on Sunday at church? There are some people who actually practice “sometimes Christianity”, meaning that they are Christians sometimes such as when they attend church or functions at the church. But, they don’t practice being a Christian at work or away from the church. Are you a real believing Christian if you do this?

Was your life and your heart changed when you accepted Jesus as your Savior? If you believe that it was changed, did you change along with it? If your life didn’t change, then are you certain that your heart was changed?

I am not asking these questions to be accusing of anyone because I wondered these things myself after I accepted Jesus. The change in your life is not like getting a smack on your head with a bat, it is gradual but if you don’t follow the leading of the Holy Spirit you can upset the apple cart in a manner of speaking. How do I know this? Because I did exactly that at first. I upset the apple cart and after a while, I was back doing the same things as before.

It isn’t shameful but when you become a Christian you do need some coaching or mentoring for a while. Going it alone is not the recommended way of walking with Jesus daily.

You need to begin to study God’s Word, not just reading it. Prayerfully study it, get into the scripture with Jesus and actually ask Him to explain things that you don’t understand. If possible, get with your pastor or someone that you know is a Christian to help you understand God’s Word and His meaning. Why do I say this? Because it is too easy for Satan to whisper in your mind when you are new to faith in Jesus and he will make you believe things about what you read which aren’t the truth.

God does want you to learn from His Word but you need to be listening to Him talk and not your own thoughts and ideas. Pray about what you are reading, read His Word out loud if need be. Get a set of CD’s or mp3’s which have the entire Bible on them so you can listen to it being read to you, then pray about what you are hearing. God will reveal exactly what He wants you to know from His Word at the time that you need to hear it and understand it.

God will not lead you to a place where He doesn’t want you to be. Your life with Jesus is important because He wouldn’t have called you into His family unless He had something for you to do. God knows that you are the only person who can do what He has called you to do, and nobody else can accomplish it.

All of us who are Christians have a calling from God. It may be to teach a Sunday school class or be an usher at church, it might be for us to be a preacher or a missionary telling people in far-away places about Jesus. It might also be that you can help out at a shelter for the homeless or for Veterans. Whatever you do, even if you do it at your regular job, do it for the glory of God and let people know that you belong to Him!

Don’t be a “pew Christian”, one that is only a Christian in church and not very different from the rest of the world when you aren’t in church. That is being a false Christian or a Christian on the surface alone. Make sure of your beliefs and your position in Jesus because when your life ends here, anything that is just superficial won’t help you when you stand for your judgment.