God’s sacrifice

God first asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son to prove his obedience to Him. Abraham went with his son, Isaac, to the mountain and built an altar and laid the wood on it and bound his son. He even drew the knife and was about to kill his son because God had asked him to. Then God said through an angel, “Abraham, do not harm your son!”. Why did God ask this of Abraham? To test him for sure and see if he would hold nothing back from God if God asked for it and he passed the test. So God gave a ram in place of his son, which was caught in the bushes, so that he and Isaac could worship God and then come home again. Abraham had told his servants when they set out toward the mountain that they would go and worship and then they would come again.

Abraham had faith that since God had promised that through Isaac his descendants would be inumerable, even if he sacrificed Isaac on the altar God would raise him again so that His promise would be fulfilled. In the same way, many thousands of years later, God gave His only Son up as a sacrifice for all of our sins and then raised Him up on the third day to be our Savior and Lord. I know you are probably thinking that since Jesus was God’s Son He couldn’t die anyway. But you’d be wrong. Jesus was born just as much a human being as you or I.

He got tired. He was tempted in every way like we are. He was afraid of the torture and the pain that He would experience during the crucifixion and the scourging which lead up to it. Just as any of us would be. He was so stressed about it until He was sweating drops of blood prior to His arrest. Doctors today have confirmed that it is possible to do this in highly stressful times.

Jesus came into the world for this purpose and yet He gave His life for you and me and many others just so we could be a part of His family! Isn’t that a wonderful gift? I know there are many who think that being a Christian takes all of the fun out of life but it doesn’t. You just have fun telling others about your Savior and what He has done for you. Should we forget all of our old stomping grounds and friends? No, but we should tell them about Jesus and His influence on our life. You can’t beat them over the head with a Bible but you can tell them how your life has changed after He came in and freed you from your slavery to sin.

I know that many of you will say, “I’m not a slave to sin!”. Well, how many times have you read the Bible lately? Can you tell me what all ten commandments are? Are you still drinking and smoking even after you’ve been redeemed by His blood? If you can’t answer any of these questions with the answer of “Yes!” or “No, I don’t drink and smoke anymore.” Then what kind of change really happened when you were “saved”? If you aren’t at least trying to change your life and your lifestyle so that you can walk with Jesus on a daily walk like His disciples did, then you may not be saved at all.

Seek Him out today and learn more about His offer of salvation by reading John’s gospel and then read Romans. Don’t stop searching for your Savior because He came here for you!

Are you listening?

God does speak to us today, but many people don’t know how to truly listen to Him. They ask, “How can I hear God speak to me?”. Well, if you would read the Bible, God’s Word, you would hear Him speaking in every verse of it. Sometimes He gives encouragement and sometimes He is rebuking you by His Word but He is speaking to you and to each of us. Sometimes we will search God’s Word until we find something that we like and we will say that God agrees with our position on whatever it is but that is not seeking His will for you that you trying to justify something that you know is wrong!

The funny thing is that God will let you get away with your justification until you realize that you truly made a mistake because it isn’t working out the way you hoped it would. Things are getting worse rather than getting better. You need to pick up God’s Word and seek His will for your life by prayerful meditation and reading with prayer so that you truly are hearing from Him and not your own “conscience” voice. You know your mind-voice can sound like your idea of God’s voice. You can convince yourself that you are hearing from God and all you are doing is talking to yourself. You can get pretty good at it too until one day when all of the “things” which your god told you to do come crashing down on your head and you realize, hopefully, that those were not God’s words of direction but your own.

How can you tell the difference? Because if you truly were hearing God’s voice and following His direction those “things” wouldn’t have crumbled to dust around you. If you truly were listening and following His directions like you thought you were…things would work out the way He intended for them to. It is a novel concept and it is shown in the Bible very clearly. When a prophet or king follows God and does the things which God tells him to do, the way He tells him to do it, everything works out wonderfully. But, when you try to inject your ideas or change things so that people will like you rather than following God’s directions there are consequences which follow and most of the time they aren’t fun at all.

Most of our lives are like that as well. When we are truly following God’s direction in our lives and not trying to do things our way all the time everything works out most of the time. I say most of the time because none of us follow His directions perfectly, but if we are listening to Him we try our best to follow Him. God expects us to follow Him and His directions when we are His and we have given our life to Him but if you don’t know Him or if you are being stubborn and ignoring His direction or His calling in your life then your ideas and your pathway will not be so easy nor will they work out the way you had hoped.

Seek His guidance and His direction by following Him and giving your life to Him because He paid for your sins on the cross. Is being a Christian easy? No, it is not because there are going to be temptations and situations where you want to do things your way or even go back to doing things like you did before you asked Jesus for His Presence in your life. I pray that anyone who feels His call on your life through reading this or even by a dream or hearing God’s Word preached will answer and ask Him to come into your life and change you into the person that He knows you can be.

God is AWESOME!!

God is our Creator and the Creator of everything that you can see. So…why is it so hard for people to understand that He wants the best for you? Is it because we can’t see Him like we can see a friend or our spouse? Possibly. But according to God’s Word, He has always been available to us through prayer and by reading of His Word.

I think that the reason that so many people are hesitant or unwilling to follow God and the few rules which He put into place is that it is too simple. Salvation is so simple that a child can understand it and yet when we become “educated” adults we can’t believe that it is that simple. What we should understand is the same thing that the thief on the cross understood, it is our belief in Jesus which saves us. It is not the church or a preacher or a certain ritual which we have to do in order to be saved.

Just believe in Jesus and what He did for you. Do this in the faith which God has granted you and then walk in that faith so that you will be a reflection of Jesus in your life. Because you may be the only Jesus some people may ever see before the end of their life or yours. Your life has an expiration date and it is only known by God, thankfully. But during the time which we have even the small things which we do that people notice because they know that we profess to be Christians can have an impact.

You may not think that a “Thank you” or a blessing said at McDonald’s over your food could have an impact but it can. You may not know about it before you get to Heaven but someone will let you know that it was that word or deed or some small thing that prompted them to seek out what made you different.

God is understanding and loving toward all of His children even though there are many who are hurting and struggling and it doesn’t look like He even cares, but He does. God is awesome because He created all of this universe and we have been studying it for hundreds of years and we’ve only scratched the surface. We have explored our own planet for thousands of years and scientists are still finding creatures which are new to science.

Why did God make this universe so complex? Because of His power and majesty but also because He wanted us to look at all of the beauty and the awesome size and diversity that is out there and wonder about Him. We would look at the intricate complexity of cells and bacteria and whales and humanity and even into the cosmos and realize that this couldn’t have come into being because of some accidental gathering of dirt and goo. There had to be a Supreme Intelligence behind every atom and molecule and His name is God.

Can you have peace in your life?

You must believe that God is in control of your life and your circumstances, no matter what they may be. Otherwise, you will attempt to gain control of your life and your circumstances and there is no peace in the struggle which comes from each of us trying to gain control of things which we can’t control. Each of us tries to gain control of our lives and our problems even when we know that there is no way that we can fix things. But, that doesn’t stop us from trying.

Does your life or your problems exempt you from asking God to help you to gain control of them? Are your problems too big for God? How can that be when He created the entire universe! He can give you the strength to get through every problem and every circumstance in this life. There is no condemnation in God’s sight toward your unbelief or your problems if you have given your heart to Jesus.

Each of us must believe that His offer of peace for your circumstances is real and be willing to accept His offer in spite of our feelings to the contrary. We should fully surrender our life, mind, will and our emotions to Jesus as our Lord. Because if you don’t fully surrender all of your life to Him then you don’t have Him in your life as your Lord and Savior. If Jesus is not the source of your peace, then what is? Here is the scripture and the promise from Jesus which cements this in His Words:

John 14:27

26But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. 27Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

Living your life by the power and the strength of your faith in Jesus Christ is your service and it is the living of it in front of the world around you which is your witness for Him to every person around you. Everything that you do or say is witnessed by those around you, whether you think they are watching or not. If they know that you are a Christian then every little thing that you do or say is part of your witness. If you are a new Christian then your light isn’t very bright yet, but you are still responsible for those who are watching to show that Jesus truly is your Savior. The longer that you are a Christian with years of Bible study then you are more responsible for more of His Light.

Are you perfect? No, none of us are perfectly sinless and we can’t be! Are we going to slip up and mess up your witness to others? Probably. At one point or another, every one of us will make a mistake at some point in our life. It may be a willful sin or one which you decide that you are going to do, even if it misses the mark. Will your salvation be taken away from you? If your salvation was real and genuine with repentance from those sins, then it can’t be taken away. If you just felt a good feeling and said some words that sounded right, but you have gone back to your old way of life then you are likely not saved at all. Do those of us who are saved fail in our living our life for Jesus? Yes, but we feel the failure in our heart and we are convicted of it by His Spirit. We want to ask His forgiveness as soon as we can.

Don’t turn away from His call on your life. When you feel it, answer His call and give your heart to Him because you may not have another chance to do so.

What has love got to do with salvation?

Truthfully, it was love which sent Jesus to the cross to pay for your sins and mine. Love has everything to do with even the possibility of your salvation and your eternity. Without love, there is nothing. Without the Love that God shows to us each day when we wake up and begin a new day, we would not have that day. There are so many in the world who look for love from friends and acquaintances and from their family as well and yet there are many who can’t find the love that they seek. Why is that? Actually, it is because the Love that our soul craves doesn’t come from friends or family or anything that we can buy or get on our own. The Love that our soul craves is the Love of God through Jesus Christ.

Until we find that…until we find Him as our Savior, we feel empty and hollow without hope and miserable in our search. Why? Because, as I said, the Person of God’s Love is Jesus the Christ and until we ask Him to come into our lives and make us into the person which God already knows we can be that hollow, empty feeling will remain. It won’t matter if we gain wealth or fame or anything which the world would accept as proof of our success…if you don’t have Jesus as your Savior then none of that matters at all.

God values your soul more than all of the wealth in the world. In today’s economy that would amount to, as a guess of course, about twenty to thirty trillion dollars. I don’t know the amount of ALL the wealth in the world but that number sounded big enough to me. If you could imagine having that much wealth, what would you do with it? What good would it do if you acquired it today and you died tonight? Not one little bit of good at all actually. Money will not buy the stairway to Heaven and even if it did you wouldn’t have the key to get in.

The key to gain entrance into Heaven is Jesus. If you don’t have Him as your Savior and Lord believing in Him for your salvation then you will be judged for your sins and sent to Hell. It doesn’t matter if you feel you have been wronged or how much money you gave to the poor and needy, if you don’t have Jesus as your Savior before you die then your eternity will be in hell. I ask that you make sure of your destination while you can because there is no second chance after death. Hell is not going to be an eternal party like Satan has told many people. There will be punishment there which lasts forever.

“and to dust you shall return…”

God created Adam from clay, sculpted him and then gave him the Breath of Life, so why did he mess up so soon after? It wasn’t because of Eve, although many people do blame her. It was the tempting words of Satan and the seed of pride which was placed in his mind by Satan. Pride itself is the tap root of all sins, regardless of what sin it may be.

All of us are susceptible to the lure of pride and all of its children. No one is immune from sin’s touch or the consequences of it unless you belong to Jesus and you have His Spirit in your heart. I don’t mean that you will be able to live a sinless life because only He could do that. But you will have His strength to help you resist the sin which you are tempted with, if you will acknowledge Him as your Savior and lean on Him during those times when sin comes to pull you toward something that you know isn’t right.

Adam could’ve resisted but he didn’t and so could Eve, but she didn’t. It’s in our nature to be susceptible to sin but we don’t have to give in to it again and again. Living a successful Christian life is possible if we stay grounded and connected to Him daily! Not just once in a while or on Sundays, it has to be a lifestyle of living in the power of Jesus every day. When you get up, thank God for another day. As you go through your day, ask Him to strengthen you as you face your trials and temptations throughout the day. Then as your day comes to a close, thank Him for getting you through it and ask Him to strengthen you for tomorrow.

Do I do this every day? No, I’m not as faithful as I should be but I do thank Him for each victory during my day regardless of the nature of it. Some days I do better than others, some days I do forget to thank Him for the problems that come my way to test me. But, usually before the day is a total waste I do thank Him for His blessings on my family and for all of the good things which He has prepared for me, even if I didn’t see them today.

Unless we are called up to heaven before we die, all of us will return to dust but until that day comes I will praise the Lord and you should too.

Seek Jesus as your Savior while you can. Life on Earth is too short to lose eternity because you waited too long.

Life is a gift!

Life is your gift from God so what will you do with yours? Would you seek to be a famous person or an athlete in a professional sport? There are times when we need to step back from the demands of the world around us and seek out God’s perspective of things. But…do we do it?

Many of us do think about it but then our everyday life gets in the way and our time with God gets placed on the back burner and it may be awhile before we think about Him again. That is not the type of relationship that God wants with us and it isn’t the kind of relationship that we were created for. God intended for us to have a daily relationship with Him. Not just a weekly or monthly meeting while we attend church, if we attend church services.

Unfortunately, there are many people today who do not identify themselves with any faith at all which is truly sad. Our Creator loves each of us and whenever we feel His call in our life we should respond to that call and give our heart to Him. In the world today though, there are many who hear Him but they aren’t interested in a relationship. They like their life and the way it is and many consider God or Jesus an obstacle in their way. They think that the rules of the Bible, God’s rules, don’t mean anything to them in the 21^st century. Those “old rules” are outdated and dusty and they don’t apply to our lives now.

God’s Word is fresh and relevant for today but only if you read it through the eyes of faith and with your heart turned toward God. If you read it as a book, without faith and without a relationship between you and Jesus then it doesn’t make sense and it is just a book of Jewish history and rules. I pray that anyone who is truly looking for a Savior will give Jesus a chance in their life and seek Him out by reading the Bible. Start in the New Testament with John and Luke, then move on through Acts and Romans. By the time you have read these books, God’s Spirit will have planted a seed in your heart and very likely has got your attention.

Don’t go through life without Jesus from this point on because when you do that life doesn’t have much meaning. From a Biblical point of view the news looks and sounds different because it is fulfilling the prophecy found in God’s Word every day. It may be only a small bit of fulfillment today or tomorrow but eventually the pieces will fall into place and when the church is taken from the Earth, the world will get much worse before it gets better because God’s judgment is coming. Make sure that you are part of those who are taken before that happens.

Separate, but why?

Separate? Why?

There are two camps in the world today. One is on the side of religion and the other doesn’t believe in any intelligent design or god. Granted, there is a fairly large gray area between those two and that is where many people have their ideas about who God is or who He is not or even whether there is a God at all. The limit of this could be shown by two mountain ranges and a deep valley between them. Our Savior didn’t teach this separation of beliefs so why did it come about?

With time stretching out since the crucifixion of our Lord and His promise to return, mankind has gotten some pretty “out there” ideas about how to serve Him or not. So, in truth, it is our ideas and our desires which have caused all of the divisions between believers and non-believers. Then there are divisions even in churches and denominations also caused by us.

The message of salvation is still the same as it was, to begin with. Believe in Jesus, ask Him into your heart, repent of your “old way of doing things” and follow Him.

Truthfully, believing is the biggest part of accepting Jesus as your Savior. Just think about the day that Jesus was crucified. One of the thieves believed in Jesus as the Savior and asked if He would remember him when He came into His Kingdom. What did Jesus tell him? “Today, you will be with Me in Paradise”.

We are not meant to be separate from God or in our belief about Him and our salvation, so what happened? In the past two thousand years, it has been our ideas and our desires to do things our way instead of truly following Jesus. We have tended toward the belief that “we know better” in our religious practices. Really? How could you possibly know better or more than God our Creator? He placed all of the stars in their galaxies and in the orbits where they are. He formed each of us in our mother’s womb and He knows you better than you know yourself. All of the universal laws and constants were put in place by God so how can we think that we are smarter than He is?

While it is true that many other religions are in the world and have been for thousands of years, God is still in charge of everything. Like it or not, He is the Creator and it is to Him that you will give an account of your life and your decision about your salvation. If you accepted Jesus as your Savior during this life, then it will be to Him that you will account for what you did with your salvation. Did you tell anyone about your Savior and what He did for you? Did you live your life as He would have so that others might see Him through your life?

Many things that we should do in our lives and being a disciple of and an evangelist in some way during our life as followers of Jesus Christ is the least we can do. I pray that many of you who read this will give Jesus a chance to be your Savior.

What child is this?

I know this sounds like it should be about the birth of Jesus but it isn’t. In our country and all over the world today there are children who have been sent by their Creator to bless someone’s life with the joy of becoming a parent. In our world today children are in danger before they are born because of the number of abortions that are done in America and around the world. While it is true that some pregnancies may be “unplanned” due to rape or incest or prostitution, these children are gifts from God. There are many couples who would love to adopt a baby if the child is not wanted or the mother cannot take care of them. So why isn’t this option given to women who want to get rid of their “problem”?

God allows us to make all sorts of crazy choices in our lives and some of them are really hard to believe. In the Old Testament, worshipers of Baal and Moloch gave their children to be sacrificed in flames to their gods. Today we sacrifice unborn children to our “gods” of convenience and freedom. What a waste. Since abortion became legal in 1973 there have been millions of babies killed for these “gods”. I have heard and read many of the arguments about the reasoning behind this and it sickens me. Women are told that those are just blobs of cells and they don’t feel anything. “Those cells are just a parasite inside your body”; really?

Were you just a parasite in your mom’s body until you were born? I don’t think so! I saw my son’s sonogram picture at about 12 weeks and he was a fully formed baby. Very small for sure but he had fingers and toes and ears. That is not a blob of cells! I am going to see the movie, “Unplanned“, tomorrow and I pray if there are any who are wondering about whether that is a child inside you or not then please see this film and decide for yourself. Jesus loves the little children and He would not condone the murder of millions of them. (My plans have changed but I still believe that people need to see this film).

Jesus loves each of us as well and I pray for all who read this to seek Him out and ask Him to be your Savior. Time is growing short and there are no second chances when it comes to your salvation so get it now while you can.

Who is Jesus the Christ?

Ooh, this could be a long list. He is the Seed of the Woman and the Captain of the Lord’s army. He is the Rock and the Manna which sustained Israel. He is the Bread of Life and the Living Water. He is the Good Shepherd and the Root of Jesse. He is the Rock cut from the mountain without tools and the King of Kings. He is our Savior and Lord and the Friend who sticks closer than a brother. He is the Messiah and the Suffering Servant. He is the Great Physician and the Creator of all things. He is the Lover of my soul and the Prince of Peace. He is the Bright and Morning Star and the Lily of the valley. He is the Firstborn of those who will be raised from the grave and the Spotless Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

There are many names which describe Him and all of them are true and right because they all describe some part of Who Jesus is. He is the Lord of Lords and the Living Word of God. All of these names and more have been given to Him and I don’t claim to know them all but Jesus is everything to all of those who have accepted Him as their Savior. He is Creation and the Creator. He is the only begotten Son of God and the Son of Man. Why do I speak these words about my Lord with reverence and awe? Because He deserves so much adoration that I can’t express it adequately.

God sent His Son to Earth to redeem mankind from their sins and yet there are many who don’t want to know Him. Why is that? Because of the work of Satan in this world, that’s why! He has been at work since the Garden of Eden and the fall of mankind and his work is not over until Jesus comes back and sets up His Kingdom here. Satan knows his time is drawing to a close and it will soon come to an end, at least for a thousand years. Then he gets to try again but God will utterly defeat him at that point and he will be thrown into the lake of fire.

I pray that anyone who might be seeking to know about Jesus will read some of my other posts here and find a Bible teaching church and truly seek Him out while there is time. God doesn’t wish for any to be sent to hell but if you choose to ignore the Truth in God’s Word then that is your choice and God will not try to change your mind. If you are convicted of your sin then please seek Him in the Word and ask Him to forgive you and help you to believe in Him.