Category: Be useful to God

There are always two


It sounds like I’m channeling Master Yoda but what I am speaking or writing about is that there really are two, sometimes more but always 2. In our world the Lord shows us that in every situation there are 2 sides. Dark and light, good and bad, black and white, morning and evening. So how do we navigate in the gray areas that our culture insists on? God doesn’t show any gray areas. You are either in the light or the dark with no gray area in between.

How do we fix this? Truthfully, we can’t. It is a choice that we must make and it is an individual choice, not a collective one. Each of us must choose the side that we feel is the one that God is calling us to. I know that many people don’t believe in God as their Savior, but life requires a choice regardless of your beliefs. Because there is evil in our world and there is overwhelming love and goodness too. You see it and hear about it on the news or on your computer every day. Many people wonder why God allows the evil and the hatred that we see around us? That is where our choices come into the picture.

There are always two choices and just like the cartoon where the little demon was on one shoulder and the angel was on the other, those really are our choices every day. We can listen to one or the other and make a choice and it is that choice which determines how our day or our week turns out. When you look at the world with your spiritual eyes you can easily see that there aren’t any “gray areas” at all. You are either saved through faith in Jesus or you are not. You either believe in Him for your salvation or you just believe that He exists because it says so in the Bible which does not save your soul.

Our eternity stands or falls on one of two choices. Believe in Jesus for your salvation or choose not to believe in Him and go to hell. These choices have to be made in this life today! Why? Because we are not guaranteed a certain number of years before we die. I could die before I finish this or I could live another twenty years or so. With the pains that I have in my hands and my neck now I really don’t want to add another twenty years to it. My point is that we don’t know when our last day is, so choose which way you are going to go now…today.

What will you do?


One day the church, all believers, will be taken out of this world. If you don’t believe in Jesus for your salvation or even in the Bible or God either…you will be left here to go through what the Bible calls the Tribulation. This time will last for seven years and the beginning of it will be a seven year treaty which will be signed by all of the nations which want to destroy Israel. After the church, all believers in Jesus for their salvation, is taken up there will be all sorts of “explanations” for this, none of them will come from the Bible. Many people in the world will actually celebrate the fact that “the church” is gone, or they will think it is.

God will still call some people during this time to give their hearts to Jesus and be His witnesses around the world but they will be persecuted severely. My advice to those who are left here is to find a church and go inside it and locate a Bible, especially if you don’t have one. There may be other literature that will also help you to understand what you read and what it means for your salvation. Take advantage of these resources because the Antichrist and those following him will be destroying any book or building which had a congregation of believers. They do not want you to find hope in Jesus!

The last book in the Bible is the book of Revelation. In it Jesus told John to write many prophecies down which would only come true after the church, the believers, have been taken away because they are the bride of Christ. It tells of the churches which will be around at the time or just before the rapture of the church, some of which we have today. One will be a church which thinks they are working for God and His Kingdom but they aren’t doing a very good job of it. One church has lost sight of their first love which is Jesus. One church was on fire for the Lord but they have lost that fire and become “lukewarm” in their teachings and their works for Him. In a sense they have watered down the message so that it no longer means what it should mean. We see evidence of that today.

I pray that anyone who reads this will seek out your Savior now! Before the church is taken up because the threats of death during the Tribulation and the strong delusion which will come upon those who are still here, even if you have knowledge of the Bible, will cause you to take the mark of the beast. If you do that, your soul is lost and you will be thrown into hell one day…if you survive long enough. The time of the “church age” or the age of Grace is coming to an end, very likely in our lifetime. I pray that anyone who reads this blog will seek out Jesus as your Savior, give your heart to Him and even if it is after the church is taken away keep your faith in Him.

Don’t wander into the belief that the current “savior” is the one. Read and study the Bible if you can find one. Find a place that you can grow your own vegetables and try your best to stay off of the grid if possible. Why do I suggest this? Because without the mark, you won’t be able to buy or sell gas for your vehicle or food or electricity but your soul has a place in heaven! I pray that anyone who may be searching for a Savior will seek Jesus Christ in the Bible and give your heart to Him. God has never left us and He loves you more than you can imagine. Read His Word and seek Him out before the day comes when you will truly have to choose between life with Jesus or death by beheading because you don’t have the mark.

What is salvation?


Well…it depends upon what a person is being saved from? Salvation can be many things to many people. You can be saved from physical death by a seat belt in a car or an air bag or both. You could be saved from a life of being filthy rich by your circumstances or by God’s grace, whichever you prefer. Salvation, for a Christian, is being saved from the punishment of hell that we deserve but by God’s grace our faith in Jesus atones for all of our sins and allows us to come before Him with no blemish of sin on our person. You could receive salvation from drowning by someone throwing a lifeline with a float attached to it.

So you see, salvation can come to each of us in different forms and at different times but the one that most of us are seeking is our salvation from the punishment that we deserve for our sins. God is our Creator and our Savior which is why He came to live as a human for about thirty three years. He came so that He would know the temptations that we experience not to judge us for those but to call us into a life with Him. Sometimes the call that we hear from Him comes when we are young and sometimes we don’t hear it until we are a bit older.

There is one illustration that I would like to give here which points out the reality that our Savior gives to us and to no others in Creation.

“The life of Christianity consists of possessive pronouns” says Martin Luther. It is one thing to say, “Christ is a Saviour”; it is quite another thing to say, “He is my Saviour and my Lord.” The devil can say the first; the true Christian alone can say the second. Resource, July/August, 1990.

To claim our salvation we must come to a realization that we need Jesus in our heart to save us. God does that when His Spirit reaches down and touches your heart, breaks it and re-molds it into a heart that is ready for His gift. Sometimes this is painful but sometimes it is something that we have sought for a long time and in that instance it feels so good to get the burden of years of carrying the guilt and the shame with us all of the time.

Only a Christian can say “Christ is my Savior and my Lord”. If you can’t confidently say that is feel in your heart that it is true then you may want to seek the Lord for confirmation of your salvation. Do you believe it or are you just saying words? God came down as a helpless baby to live as we live so that He could identify with every emotion and temptation that we have. He saw and healed many diseases while He was teaching His disciples about the Kingdom of God and that He has healing for every disease if we will believe in Him for our healing.

Some people only say the words. Some people read the Bible but they don’t believe a word of it. Its just a book of stories and the history of the Jewish people. It is so old that it doesn’t apply to us today.

All of the statements in the short paragraph above are false with parts of truth in them as well. “Now, hold on preacher! The Bible is the Word of God, it can’t be a lie!” The Bible is the history of the Jewish people but some people read it like a book. Some just think it is too old to apply to us now, and there are many people who truly don’t believe a word in it came from God.

Why is that important? Because, God inspired the prophets and kings to write the words which make up the Torah, which is our Old Testament. The apostles wrote their accounts of Jesus’ ministry and Paul wrote most of the prison epistles from a Roman prison but even they were under the influence of the Holy Spirit. If the Word, the Bible, is inspired by God and His Spirit, then it is true and there is no other way to interpret it.

Finally, salvation comes to us by faith in the Holy Spirit which convicts us of our need of salvation. Then He points us in the direction of Jesus Christ Who is our Savior and Lord to believe in Him for our salvation to become real and genuine. After that we should read God’s Word to know what we should do with all of this joy and grace that we’ve been given!

Who do you think you are?


Many people think far more highly of themselves than they should. Some don’t consider the gifts that they have been given in this life and some are too prideful to even answer the question. As if answering it is demeaning.

Life in all of its wondrous glory and in such bounty on the Earth. From the smallest plankton in the ocean to the Blue whale and all of the land animals and birds and fish that God created with the Word from His mouth. Our scientists still haven’t found all of them yet. There are still some in deep caverns in the Earth or under the sea that mankind has never seen nor have they been cataloged. Many of them would begin a new branch on the “tree of Life” because they don’t fit any other life-form definition.

People tend to look at themselves as they are described by their job. A plumber or a doctor or a lawyer. God doesn’t see us as a vocation, defined by our job or vocation. He sees our heart, our soul and knows what we are able to do on our own. He also knows what our potential is as well. God created and wove our DNA together in the womb so He knows our abilities and our limitations as a human being. But, if you will indulge me for a moment, what about that point when we become more than what we were born with? “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Our hearts are different spiritually and our soul is brighter when God looks at us. When heaven sees us after we have accepted Jesus as our Savior we look a lot like Jesus. A little rough around the edges maybe and still a bit of dirt here and there but with time and prayer and washing in God’s Word, we will begin to look far more like Him than we did at first. The thing is that we don’t see ourselves as being clean, forgiven, set apart from the world, adopted into God’s family because we can still see our faults and our flaws.

Occasionally we will feel different. We may even have a dream that we are standing in God’s Presence but we will be on our face because we don’t feel that we are worthy of being there. At least, that’s how I feel when I come before Him with a prayer or a request. But, God doesn’t see your imperfections or your flaws. He sees your soul and your heart as being a part of Him and His Son. Yes there are a few things which need to be polished and buffed a bit, but after salvation your outward man is only an Earthly cover over the New Creation which came to life when the Holy Spirit came to dwell within you.

Once you have given your heart to Him and asked Him to come into your heart, you are a new Creation. Neither man nor angel but also not God. You are an adopted Son born because your Spirit changed you so that you have become His. Live as your destiny in Christ allows you to. Not serving your old master in sin but living every day as a Son of God!

Faith…do you have it?


Without faith it is impossible to please God. So…do you have any faith in Him? In Mark chapter 9 there was a father who had come to Jesus’ disciples first because his son had a demon who afflicted him. This boy had this going on for many years and the apostles could not cast it out. When his father saw Jesus he said something that you don’t hear or read in the Bible very much. The father told Jesus that his son had been this way since childhood and he said “If you can….”.

Mark 9:14-29  14 When they came back to the disciples, they saw a large crowd around them, and some scribes arguing with them. 15 Immediately, when the entire crowd saw Him, they were amazed and began running up to greet Him. 16 And He asked them, “What are you discussing with them?” 17 And one of the crowd answered Him, “Teacher, I brought You my son, possessed with a spirit which makes him mute; 18 and whenever it seizes him, it slams him to the ground and he foams at the mouth, and grinds his teeth and stiffens out. I told Your disciples to cast it out, and they could not do it.” 19 And He answered them and said, “O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him to Me!” 20 They brought the boy to Him. When he saw Him, immediately the spirit threw him into a convulsion, and falling to the ground, he began rolling around and foaming at the mouth. 21 And He asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 22 “It has often thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!” 23 And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.” 24 Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.” 25 When Jesus saw that a crowd was rapidly gathering, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You deaf and mute spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again.” 26 After crying out and throwing him into terrible convulsions, it came out; and the boy became so much like a corpse that most of them said, “He is dead!” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and raised him; and he got up. 28 When He came into the house, His disciples began questioning Him privately, “Why could we not drive it out?” 29 And He said to them, “This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer.”

The boy’s father didn’t know Jesus very well at this point but he did ask Jesus to heal his son and help him with his unbelief. God can do all things as long as we believe in Him and don’t doubt that He can. But, mustering up enough faith to see something done that you have trouble believing that it can be done is something else entirely. Yet, God can help you with your faith in ways that you don’t reallize at first. Our God and Savior is AWESOME so don’t consider for a moment that He can’t do something that you ask of Him because He can!

I pray that everyone who may be in the path of the storms in our country and all over the world will seek His strength and guidance in these troubled times.

Who is in charge?


In our society today even those who are supposed to be in charge have doubts about who is really in charge. Some aren’t sure of their ability. Some are blocked from doing what needs to be done by those who want to see them fail. Some people just want to find someone to blame for their problems and they don’t care what they do or say about someone to switch the blame to someone else. In our country and our world at large it seems that nobody acknowledges that God is really the One Who is in charge.

In Colossians chapter 1 Paul writes this:  16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. 

Our Creator, Redeemer and Savior is God and also Jesus Christ in whom we live and have our life now and into eternity. If you have given your life to Jesus and follow Him then your Spirit lives in Him and through Him. God’s love for us and especially the Jewish people is a love which cannot be measured by any human measure. We cannot understand it. He is above us and yet when Jesus came to live among us, He personally lived as a man so that He would know our weakness and our frailties and would be able to identify with each of us in a personal way.

Some people foolishly think that we are able to “rise above the human condition” with no help from anyone. If you look at the history of every country in the world, you can see that it just doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t matter what political system is involved, mankind will be the animal that we think he is. While it is true that humanity can be and do good things for a while, historically it won’t last very long.

We can be more like Jesus Christ if we live according to His Word and teachings. The Holy Spirit comes into your heart and changes your “condition” so that we are able to rise above but we must live in His Word. Reading it, studying it, praying about it and what we can do through Him to be more like Him. Without the Holy Spirit we can do nothing. Our “natural inclination” is to be selfish and seek pleasure for our own purposes and do whatever it takes to “get ahead” in life. But by reading and studying God’s Word, not man’s rules and ideas, we can move toward being better than we could be on our own IF the Holy Spirit is allowed to work in and through us.

Don’t be the animal that “evolution” says that we are. God did not design us by using an ape, we are made in God’s image! More people need to see Jesus in and through our actions and our lives so that they will want to know Him too. The future of humanity is written in God’s Word and we should be living through Jesus and He should be working through us to bring the whole world into the future that God has prepared for it.

Consider the heat…


In the South, we live in a very humid area of the country especially during the summer. High pressure “cells” come through our area of the country at least once or twice every month. They begin well at times but when we get behind the high pressure “cell” it pushes humidity and warm air from the Gulf of Mexico up into Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama and parts of Texas too. Many of us have heard the saying about the heat in the Southwest “but its a dry heat”. Going from our state to Arizona is a wake-up call for sure but 110 degrees is HOT whether it is dry or humid although humidity would make that temperature nearly unbearable.

Why am I speaking about heat and the heat of summer to be specific? Because…hell is HOT and it could be a “dry heat” but an eternity there is not what most people think of when they hear about hell. Dry or not, we don’t know what temperature hell is and the lake of fire brings up images of the inside of a volcano to me. So consider this…all unbelievers and Satan and his demons will be cast into the lake of fire. Most people think that it doesn’t sound bad but people in hell will have eternal bodies. The kind of body which doesn’t die regardless of your circumstances but it will be able to experience pain

Being cast into a volcano in our body that we have here on Earth will be painful for only a few seconds. An eternal body that is cast into the lake of fire will live in the fire and pain forever. An immortal body will heal if it is hurt, whether from a gunshot or from thousands of degrees of lava. This place was not created by God for humanity. It was created for Satan and his demons but when we rebel and decide to live our life without God or Jesus as our example for living we are siding with Satan whether we worship him or not. Even if you go to church and “act” like a Christian for most of your life, thinking that you will get into Heaven because of your “righteousness” you are wrong!

The heat that we feel in the Southeast is nothing compared to hell and the fact that we will go to hell because we have rejected the offer of eternity by rejecting Jesus as our Savior just makes the lie that we believed even worse. Living our short lives here in the humidity and heat of summer is child’s play compared to the eternity that you will live in hell because you rejected Jesus as your Savior.

Remember the man who asked Jesus to “remember me when you come into your Kingdom”? Jesus told him that he would be in Paradise that day for the simple act of believing in Jesus and Who He was. He is at the right hand of the Father now waiting for God to tell Him to bring the church up there.

Something is in the closet…


When I was a child, I didn’t have anyone to call for my fears at night. I have never thought about it much before today. I heard a song a little while ago about a child that was scared and didn’t want his Dad to leave.

The thing that we should realize is that when you have Jesus Christ as your Savior, He is always with you no matter where you are. Of course when you are young the dark can be scary. The closet looks scary with the lights off. The air conditioner can make things move and cause shadows to move and your imagination can go into overdrive and make these normal things seem to be much worse than they are.

As Christians, the “monsters” that we face are real but we can’t see them, thankfully. Satan and his demons and principalities can cause real problems in your life. Our only defense is to study God’s Word and have many scriptures memorized so we can use them to fend off their attacks. When you consider all of the wars and problems and everything that is going on in the world, take a look at where these things are happening. Notice that most of them are taking place where God or Jesus or both are not embraced by the culture or the country.

If you don’t believe in God or His Son, Jesus, as your Savior then what are your gods? Who or what do you ask for help in times of need and illness or trials? There is no name under Heaven that brings salvation except the name of Jesus! The previous sentence is a paraphrase of Acts 4:12 but it is the Truth. Believing in Jesus as your Savior and Lord is the only way to get to Heaven or to experience eternal Life! You can keep following other ways or other “prophets” or even other “gods” but none of them will give you life in eternity except Jesus. Others will lead you strait to hell for eternity and that is not Life.

What is in your closet? Is it an old, dusty Bible that you haven’t read in years? Then I suggest getting it out and dusting it off so you can read it and seek God and His Son in its pages. Eternal life is found in no other name except Jesus so make sure that you know Him and that He knows you too while there is still time in this life to make that choice.

God is always near


Psalm 46: 1 “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”

Many people think that the other phrase, “God helps those who help themselves”, is in the Bible but it isn’t. It sounds good but the phrase about God being a helper and being with you in troubled times is the one found in Psalm 46. This is not the only one which tells of His ability to help us when we are in need but it is very true that He is and He will if we will call on Him.

It doesn’t matter what sort of trouble you may be in or how you got into such trouble, if you are a child of God and have faith in Jesus as your Savior He is always with you.

Why do I bring this up now? Because of all of the problems and pain that our country and our world is going through right now. The pandemic of this “new” disease which is even less deadly than the flu and it seems to be the most important disease at the moment. Jesus told His disciples that when He went to be with His Father He would send the Helper (Holy Spirit) to teach them and testify of His message in their lives and their ministry. Every Christian has this Helper living on the inside of them and He is always present in every area of our life whether we are going through something good or bad.

Even when we can’t think of the words to pray with, He is praying directly to the Father for us in words which express exactly what the problem is and the urgency of it. The Holy Spirit is our Teacher, our Helper, and our Voice when we are too emotional or maybe too sick or hurt to pray for our problem. That is why Jesus asked the Father to send Him and when you become a Christian, He comes to live in your heart.

When Jesus was baptized by His cousin, John, all three Persons of the Godhead were there. Jesus was there in His humanity, God spoke to those who could hear and the Holy Spirit came and stayed on Jesus in the form of a dove. So truly we do have “God with us” every day that we live after we become a Christian. I pray that whoever reads this will seek to learn about Jesus and His message, seek Him as your Savior and then live every day as if you are walking by His side because once you have accepted Him as your Savior there is a part of Him living within you from that day forward.

What would you give?


In Psalm 84:11-12 it says: 11 For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. 12 O LORD of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee.

God gives to us everything that we need. He doesn’t give to us our wants and our demand, yet many people seem to think that He owes them their desires just because they are “following” Him. God doesn’t owe us anything at all! He protects us and keeps us in this life because He loves us. We have air to breathe and water to drink and most of us have food to eat, so what is there to complain about?

Jesus said that she gave more than the others.

God never said in any part of His Word that we would be rich or well off because we serve Him in some small capacity, whether it is as a teacher or a mother or a police person or even a preacher. It is only because of some “twisted scripture” or scripture taken out of context which people use to get what they want out of other people that we see so-called “servants of God” who are wealthy. You also hear some people saying, usually during times of hardship, that they would give anything if their loved one would recover. Sometimes, God takes them at their word and heals that person but when the healing is done their “promise” is forgotten or it is reduced to a very tiny portion of what they were thinking at the time.

God gave His Son to atone for all of mankind’s sins. We may not be able to give a sacrificial gift like that but we could give our time or our prayers or volunteer in a nursing home or a hospice. Anything that we do for others is considered more than we think it is worth. Many times we will do things and we may never think of it again. We may not find out about the good that our giving accomplished until we get to Heaven and find someone that reminds us of something that we considered small but it made a big difference in their life at some point.

If you ask someone who doesn’t have a home or food or maybe even shoes what they want most in life, what do you think they would give for an answer? A mansion? The finest clothes that money can buy? Maybe the best and most comfortable shoes? Most of the time, in my opinion, the few that I have heard interviewed on TV, they would like to have a warm meal, a warm bed or a cool place to sleep in the summer, comfortable, simple shoes and maybe the most important thing…someone to talk to and who will truly listen.

Jesus paid the price for our sins and our salvation because we can’t do it on our own. Think of the love that He and the Father have for each of us to make it possible for us to have an eternity to love and be loved by our Creator and our God just because we believe that He did it for us because He loves us. Some may say that they don’t want to live an eternity like that. You don’t know what that eternity will be like. God did not save us to sit around meditating on Him, although we could and it would be wonderful. God’s love for His creation is so deep and unknowable until we will be in awe of Heaven’s beauty for many, many years because of what He has perfected there. Your home, if you are a believer, will be so wonderful even if it is a tent (which I don’t think Jesus would do that to us).

Every prophet or disciple who has been given a glimpse of Heaven could scarcely find the words to describe its beauty. It was so much more than what we can see here until even the most beautiful places on Earth pale in comparison with it! I pray that all who reads this will seek to know Jesus as your Savior and Lord and I pray that I will meet you there one day.