What do you do?

During the times when we are anxious or fearful about…well, about anything in particular. Whether it is money or disease or death, anxiety and fearfulness can only add to the stress of the situation. Regardless of what is causing the problem itself, we should step back, if we can, in our minds since many times we can’t physically do so. Step back if you can get some quiet time during your time of need and seek to know the mind of God on the matter at hand.

How am I supposed to know or find out what God thinks about my situation? By prayer and the reading His Word.

I know it seems silly to seek God’s help with something in the 21st century but He is still here and His aid is much better at easing your mind than just sitting around fretting about something which you cannot control. It is never outside of God’s ability to control and take care of whatever it may be, no matter the circumstances.

But, in the world today we see all sorts of problems and fears which cause stress on our lives even when we aren’t directly affected by those problems. Why is this? Mainly, in my opinion, because of the twenty-four-hour cycle of news feeds and media and posts on Facebook which we can’t seem to get away from.

This year would be a good year to de-stress your life and only check in on social media when you need to, not every fifteen minutes or so like some do. I use it to keep in touch with family and friends but I only get on FB about once or twice a day. I also steer clear of the drama which tries to get under people’s skin while looking at it so I am not a very active person on that platform.

God will watch over your life and the stress that you carry with you but the best place to lay your stress down is at His feet and leave it there. Don’t ask Him to help you with it and then take it up and worry about it an hour or two later. That’s like taking a letter or a bill payment to the post office and then deciding that you can get it to the recipient faster and more on time than they can. Ridiculous logic there.

God can handle all of your problems, no matter how big and bad they seem to you. He is holding the universe together all the time and that isn’t taking much of His attention from your problems at all. Give your life and your problems to Him, you will never be disappointed with the results if you will.

What is your view?

The world and the media cloud our ideas and our view of the world around us with their own version, their own spin on what is happening and what has happened in the past. So how are we to discern the truth of what is and what will be if we don’t read the Bible? It is God’s inspired Word to mankind and since He cannot lie, it is the whole truth. Regardless of the watered down messages that some teach or try to “interpret” in a way which has nothing to do with its message at all.

God’s predictions for our world’s future, such as the saying of Jesus that “the kingdom of God will come before this generation is done”, did not mean that those living at the time would see His second coming. It did refer to the Jewish people who would still be the state of Israel at the time of His second coming. I am sure that many in that day hoped that Jesus would destroy Rome and its hold of persecution and oppression over the Jewish people but that wasn’t His job at that time.

Jesus came to end the oppression of Satan over the whole world so that people could gain their freedom from the world and its sins and the consequences in their lives. That was His message and His mission the first time. When He comes the second time, it will be as Conquerer and King and He will do it because not one comma or period will pass away before all are fulfilled.

Our world, not just America, is beginning a new year and all of us need to be seeking Jesus as our True Savior. He is the only Way to Heaven and our debts for our sins have been paid, all we have to do is believe in Him and follow Him daily, seeking to be more like Him until that day when He calls us all home. I pray that more people will learn of Him and seek Him as their Savior this year because He is coming soon.

My story…

God called me to be a minister way back in 1983. I was in a “relationship” with a woman who didn’t become my wife and it was a “friendship with benefits”, and I had not been listening to Him very well. I answered the call by going to Oral Robert’s University for a weekend to scope out the place in a way. I felt His call and His Presence touching my life while I was there and I listened, weakly, but I did listen.

But…when I cam home, I decided to reject His call and keep going on with my life like I wanted it and the way that I wanted to do it. Unfortunately, that was not the answer that He wanted to hear from me. It wasn’t but a few months until the woman that I had been in a relationship with found someone else and was planning a wedding until she died in a car accident.

Did that have anything to do with me or my decisions? I don’t know. Could it have been something caused by God or allowed by Him to get my attention? Maybe. But…I still didn’t turn toward Him in the way that I should’ve. My life went through a few more “storms” (to use an overused word) before I finally listened to Him. What kind of storms? Well, a bankruptcy and a divorce and a little while of driving OTR trucks (although driving the trucks was fun).

Actually while driving the trucks I began talking to God while I was driving. I told Him that I had messed up my life by not listening to Him the way I should, so I wanted Him to find my soul mate because I had heard Him the first time I got married but I didn’t listen. This time I wanted Him to find her for me and then make sure I knew it and didn’t walk away this time.

To shorten this a bit I did hear Him and we did get married and we are still married, going on now for twenty-six years now. So, yes, I learned my lesson about listening to God’s “still, small voice”. It is easy to hear if you are listening but it is also too easy to ignore because God’s voice is not loud. He tests your spiritual ears and if you hear Him and acknowledge it then He knows you are listening.

The next time that He got my attention was in ’95 when my grandfather died right around Easter that year and my Mom died on Christmas Eve. It took a year or more before I could continue my college education because I was half-way through my first two years when this happened. God called me again to be His minister about nine years later and this time I listened. I studied His Word during the night shifts while I worked as a Medical Technologist in a lab (during the times when I wasn’t really busy).

In 2011 I was called to be a pastor of a small church close to home and by the grace of God, I am still preaching there. I do realize that this story is about my life but I want to show you that when God calls you to be His minister or His disciple or His follower…don’t turn away from Him and don’t ignore His call on your life!

Pain, heartache, and disease

What in the world could cause me to begin with a title like that? Because there is something that many of us do in our lives which has a direct connection or effect on our lives. It is usually something which we have held onto for much longer than we should have and it can cause all of these in our lives. That something is anger and hate. Granted that is 2 things but many times they go together.

The problems start when we hold onto them for longer than we should. Either one of these emotions can cause pain and disease when we keep them in our lives because many times we treat them as pets. We bring them out and “feed” them our feelings and we try to keep them alive so we won’t forget the reason for them in the first place.

But anger and hatred are like hot coals from a fire. The longer that you hold them the more damage they cause to you…not to the object of your anger or hatred. After a few years or even many years, sometimes the heat of those emotions tends to cool a bit. But, just like a fire, if you stoke them and add a little more fuel to the “fire” in order to bring the heat back regardless of the type of fuel it is.

That is how our country has been fueling all of the anger and hatred and resentment over the past 130 years or so. We have never let the fire go out and we haven’t really tried to get to a point of forgiveness. Each time that there is some reconciliation or healing which begins, there is always an incident which happens to peel the scab off or which puts more fuel on the dying embers once more.

Slavery and the racism which came from it and all of the heartaches and horrible crimes which were committed during that time and since then because it is a part of America’s past, not just the South but because slavery was a part of England and the Bahamas and the Carribean. Yet it seems that we as a country and as a people, regardless of the color of our skin, can’t seem to learn from that past and come to a place of forgiveness and then move on.

So, to answer my first question of why am I writing this now…it is because it needs to be said. If someone in our generation who remembers the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy doesn’t begin to address the issue and seek to move on with forgiveness and healing, hopefully, it may never happen. If dialogue is not sought out in a peaceful way and then used as a step toward healing and forgiveness how can we ever find our way to that place?

If the first step isn’t taken to move toward reconciliation and healing in a country where there has been a division like this for so long, it will never be taken. We will be constantly refueling the fire with more anger and hatred and stoking it until it kindles again. Healing and forgiveness can never come from that and until we at least try to take that step there is no possibility of healing between “white’s” and people of color regardless of the darkness of their skin.

Jesus loves each of us regardless of our color or our culture and we should at least try to accept His strength and His Spirit so that we can make a difference one day in this country. Too many have died because of mistrust and anger over the years and if we can get to know each other as people, not colors, then maybe we can take a step in that direction.

we-are-not-born-racist-people-learn-to-be-racist-6800532

Do you believe?

Jesus said that if we believe in Him we will be saved. But what about the rest of God’s Word? Do you believe what it says? You know…you can’t pick and choose which parts or which verses or books to believe although many people seem to do just that these days. Being a Christian means more than believing in Jesus although that is the beginning of your faith. Living as a Christian daily means living by God’s Word. Not just the New Testament or the parts about Jesus and His ministry but by living and believing ALL of God’s Word from Genesis to Revelation.

There are no areas of the Bible which are gray areas when it comes to faith. You either believe all of it or you actually believe only parts of it and when you do that you have invalidated ALL of it. By choosing to believe some parts of it and not others it is you who makes God’s Word of no effect!

Being a Christian, heart, and soul, is not a life of choosing what you will believe and then throwing out the parts you don’t like. Except in our world today, this is exactly how people want to read and believe or not believe in God. They want to choose which parts that they can live with and leave out the parts that they don’t like or those which make them feel guilty of their sins.

Jesus did not soften His sermons because there were people in the crowd who didn’t like what He was saying. He taught what the Father told Him to teach and to bring those in who would believe. If there were some who would not listen or believe that His teaching came from God then so be it because it was their choice to reject His teaching.

God had been trying to reach them ever since He liberated them from slavery to the Egyptians. But as soon as three days into their freedom, they began to grumble and it never really stopped, even when they reached the land which God had promised to them and conquered those who were living there. We are the same way today. We want the blessings of God and the promise of eternity in Heaven but we want to live our lives our way…but that isn’t how it works!

In our world or living by God’s rules, it is either one or the other, you can’t have it both ways!

That is why in the book of Joshua they were given a choice and we are as well: “Choose you this day whom you will serve“. You will either serve your own selfish desires and live like the rest of the world does or you will serve God and follow His ways and live in the footsteps of Jesus.

Time…

Time is something which most of us think we have plenty of but truly we are deceiving ourselves. The ruler of time Who is God knows how much of it each of us has. Some of us have many days or weeks or even years, others may only have minutes or hours. But we are not given a card or a manual expressing how much time each of us has available to us…that information is known only to God Himself.

Your time may be long and full of life and happiness while another person is racked with the pain of diseases or some other malady. Some of us are blessed to be living in a place where there is enough food for everyone and some are not. It isn’t some lottery or drawing which has placed us in these circumstances although some people call it “fate”. I don’t believe in “fate” but I do believe in God. It is His pleasure to give to each of us a measure of grace and rewards in this life. Some of us are rewarded with more and some with less, at least as the world measures these “rewards”.

Many times I have seen these rewards cause heartache and pain in the lives of those who have much of them and in the lives of those who barely have enough the same pains happen as well. It is hard to distinguish which people truly enjoy their wealth or their poverty. Sometimes the amount of “reward” doesn’t really make much difference in a person’s life since some with much “wealth” experience cancers and heartache and some with barely enough suffer through it but their life is blessed in other ways besides that which “wealth” can bring.

One thing which money, power, prestige or fame cannot purchase for you is more time. Make the best of what you have and those you love because we are not guaranteed a certain number of days or years, so treasure the time which you have with them. Once a minute is gone it will never come again. There was a wise saying once, by whom I don’t know for sure but it went something like this: You cannot touch a river in the same spot more than once.

It is the same with time. Every second which passes by is gone so make the best of the time that you have.

God in man…

When our Savior came to Earth as a baby, He was the Seed of the woman but He was also the Word made flesh. The Old Testament tells of this in many scriptures and many verses yet there are some who will only teach and preach from the New Testament from the gospels on to the book of Revelation. The Bible reveals Jesus in many different ways and places in Scripture if we will only read and study it in order to find Him. In Genesis, He was the promised Seed of the woman. In Exodus, He was shown in the pillar of Cloud by day and the Fire by night, His sustaining Presence was also with them where the water came from the Rock and the manna which sustained them.

Jesuspaiditall The Person of Jesus showed up in many different places. Later He was seen as the Angel of the Lord and as a Son of the gods. His most enduring ministry has been in the past two millennia as the Holy Spirit sent to teach us to be more like Him and to be our Comforter. Jesus is our Savior, our Shepherd, and our Redeemer as well as our Advocate and our Protector.

God has given Him the seat at His right hand and one day He will sit on His throne in Jerusalem as King, ruling for one thousand years. How do I have confidence that these things will happen? Because of the prophecies in the Bible and their fulfillment. The only ones which have not come to pass are those foretold for the Tribulation. Be ready when He comes for His Bride, the believers who are on the Earth at that time and those who have died. There won’t be a second call. If you are left here then you will be part of the time of Trouble.

Jesus Can you become a Christian during this time? Yes, but it will be dangerous and deadly because if you refuse to take the mark of the ruler of the world at this time you will be killed by beheading. If you do take His mark then you will lose your eternity. There is no gray area to hide behind…you either belong to Jesus or you follow Satan’s false leader who is the opposite of Jesus, the AntiChrist.

A Carpenter’s Life

JosephandYeshua I worked alongside my father after my bar mitzvah, when I became a man at 12 years of age. Some days, it was hard work but we managed to keep our shop going for a while. It was hot and dusty work but it was fulfilling, but I knew that I was meant for something more. My dreams and my prayers told me this but I never told anyone until after my father died. Then I told my mother. She did the same thing that she always did and that was to keep those things in her heart and she didn’t tell even my brothers or sisters.

Being the firstborn in the family there is a lot expected of you and nobody knows exactly what to expect most of the time. Particularly from me. My name is Yeshua.

When I found my cousin baptizing people in the Jordan River I knew that I needed to be baptized. He tried to dissuade me from doing so, but I told him that we needed to fulfill all righteousness. So, he consented to do so. When I came up out of the water, I heard my Father’s voice say that He was pleased with me and I felt the Holy Spirit fill my soul. I was still learning at this point, so I went into the wilderness to fast and commune with God for forty days. I didn’t know how bad that would make me feel, but I felt in my Spirit that it needed to be done.

The hunger was almost too much to bear until the fifth day or so, but it became easier from that point on as long as I found a spring to drink from occasionally. When the forty days were up or at least close to being finished I was tempted by Satan with the smell of freshly baked bread at first, then he showed me the Temple and said that I should test God to see if He would send angels to bear me up lest I dash my foot against a stone. Then he tried to tempt Me with the kingdoms of the world and I told him that I would worship God and serve Him only. Then, some angels came and ministered to Me with manna and water.

Then, my work really began.

I walked along the seashore and found some fishermen and I knew I had found most of my disciples. There is yet so much to accomplish and there is little time to finish it all, but with my Father’s help, I will get it done.

We were invited to a wedding in Cana and all of my family and my disciples came along. A couple of hours after we arrived my mother told me that they have run out of wine. I told her that it was not my time to reveal myself but, being my mom she called the servants of the groom and told them to do whatever I told them to do.

There were six pots there which were used to carry water for cleansing according to Jewish custom and they each held about 30 gallons. I told the servants to fill them with water and then draw some out and take it to the master of the feast. They did so and when he tasted it he exclaimed that “Usually a man serves the best wine first and saves the cheap wine for later, but you have saved the best for the end of the feast!” (part 1)(This is my attempt at giving some small look at the life of our Lord, Jesus the Christ, our Savior. Why would I write something like this? Because of people’s conception of His life and, because it is only covered briefly in the gospels, imagination is the only pathway we have to attempt to see some of what is not in the Bible. As long as we don’t add more to His story than that which we can imagine about Him, this is useful and helpful.)

How good are you?

Many people notice who attends church and they think that “if they are going to Heaven then I’m good enough to go too”. The problem with this kind of thinking is that not everyone who attends church, regardless of the denomination, will be going to Heaven. There are also quite a number of people who will be in Heaven who may not attend church at all!

Our beliefs about who is or isn’t saved have changed drastically over the past few hundred years and the church itself has strayed from the teachings of Jesus so much that the believers who were the church during the first century wouldn’t recognize us as the church today! So, how close are you really following Jesus and His teachings? I know it is a hard question to ask but your eternity may rest on your answer or the answer from your friends and your church!

It really doesn’t have anything to do with how “good” we are in our own eyes. It has everything to do with how we treat others according to the teachings of Jesus and how we live our faith in everything that we say and do each day! If you aren’t walking through your day like you are walking next to Jesus and doing the same things that He would be doing or saying then you likely aren’t living a sacrificed life in submission to Him.

I am not writing this to do anything other than make you think about your life in Christ. I don’t mean for this to sound like I am judging you or your walk with Him. This is just a few words to let you think about your walk with Him. Is it a walk which you would be proud of? Would Jesus approve of the things which you say or do in your life each day or would He correct you about some things?

I know that my walk with Him isn’t perfect. I make a mess of things with my thoughts and words sometimes and on some days I probably don’t look like a Christian or sound like one either. Each one of us stumbles and makes mistakes because we are trying to live a life that is pleasing to God and without faith in Jesus this is not possible. Some days it seems that my “faith bulb” goes out or gets pretty dim, so it doesn’t surprise me that on those days my walk with Him looks more like a drunk man trying to walk but is stumbling and falling more than walking.

Our goodness or rather our holiness is only there because we have accepted Jesus as our Savior and His holiness is imputed to us. Our “goodness” is nothing more than rags and filthy rags at that so there is no possible way that we can go to Heaven if we are only standing on “our righteousness” because it isn’t good enough. The part of living with Jesus which saves you and allows you to enter into Heaven is simple but for many people, it is also not enough. They want to help or add their own spin to the way or the works which will get them into God’s Home, and that is not the way this works.

Remember the thief on the cross?

Luke 23:39-43

39 And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. 40 But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost, not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. 42 And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. 43 And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

It doesn’t take much, in fact, it takes faith like a mustard seed to believe that Jesus is your Savior. So don’t turn away from Him especially when you feel His Presence in your heart telling you that He is waiting for you. Ask Him to save you and repent of your old life then follow Him into a new life which will follow you into eternity.

Ministering to…

Do you have a specific ministry? Do you pastor a church or are you a lay speaker or maybe a deacon at your church? What is your calling?

Over the past few years, I have wondered these things concerning my place in God’s Kingdom. I have also wondered how other people have answered these questions. Not being nosy but just curious.

You may wonder exactly why I am asking these questions and the reason is simple: I need to know if my calling is actually doing anyone any good at all?

God called me into this ministry in late 2008 so blogging and writing these thoughts and small sermons are my real calling rather than just being a pastor. God calls us in ways which we can’t really understand especially at the time of our calling. So…what are we to do with the specific talents and other gifts which He has given each of us?

For one thing, don’t ignore God’s calling on your life! Get up and use your gifts for His Kingdom. The reward of your writing and telling others about Jesus is being kept for you in Heaven so you can’t lose it ever! In today’s world, most of us are too timid to get out in public or in front of an audience with His message but we should. He called His disciples to do so and if you have given your heart to Jesus then it is your calling as well.

Don’t listen to those voices in your head which tell you to turn this into a business and make as much money as possible with it. Money and possessions are temporary because when you die that money and those possessions are given to someone else. You will stand before God’s judgment seat in the same condition that you were when you were born.

If you have truly and sincerely given your heart to Jesus then you will be clothed in His righteousness and your sins will not be held against you as evidence. God loves each of us, saint or saved or sinner alike, but those who haven’t taken Jesus as their Savior will be sent to a very different place other than heaven and that is hell.

Even if your self-righteousness equals that of the Pharisees who put Jesus to death, it won’t be enough unless you have given your heart to Jesus and have lived by His teachings and not by the sins which abound in this world today. You have been given a gift which is God’s grace through Jesus our Lord. It is a gift which will take you into eternity with Him but if you don’t give your life and your heart totally to Him then your eternity will be much different in hell.

Why do I say that you will be in hell? Because a sinful life is a life of rebellion and it is in that rebellion which you are in the same “camp” which is occupied by Satan and his demons. They rebelled and you refused to live your life by following Jesus every day, so you are the same in the eyes of God.

Make your goal one which looks for Jesus and for salvation through Him because by following Him is the only way to gain entry into heaven and a life with your Lord and Savior.

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