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.

God is…

Our Creator…the Creator of everything. The Savior of all who will believe. Our God Who sees us as we are and loved us even before we were born. The Father of Jesus the Christ and the Lamb of God Who gave His life as a ransom for ALL of our sins. The One Who named the stars and placed them in their places. He is All knowing and all powerful. The One Who was and is and is to come. He is the One Who defends the helpless and heals those who are blind or deaf or paralyzed. He can soften a heart grown cold from abuse and neglect and make it to hope in the future and see His great love for them. He loves each of us, whether we believe in Him or not, just because He is God. He doesn’t have to have a reason or an excuse to do everything that He does because He is Life, Love, Perfection, Time and everything that is good and holy in the universe.

Since God is all of these things and more and yet He is holy and pure…how could you believe that you or I could stand in His Presence one day and even consider that we are worthy to be allowed into Heaven? We were in His thoughts before the Earth was formed and the moon was hung in its place. He thought of each of us before He hung the stars or our Sun in its place. So how could we be holy and blameless before Him unless we give our lives to learning from His Word and living our daily lives by striving to be more like Jesus? The answer is simple…we can’t! There is nothing that any of us can offer to God or live by on our own that will qualify us to be granted access to Heaven.

Only by believing in Jesus as our Savior can we be in God’s Presence because we loved Jesus more than our own life. I pray that all who read this post will seek to be saved by belief in Jesus as your Savior because the day is coming soon. Don’t be left behind when the church, the Body of Christ, meaning all believers are taken up to be with Him.

Every life matters!

Life matters regardless of skin color or ethnicity

God created all life on our world and He created the different shades of color found in humanity as well as all of the variety of life and colors found in nature. So…why can’t we look beyond our skin color? It has been over fifty years since Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered by a white supremacist and yet those on both sides of this tragedy still haven’t moved beyond the same anger and frustration fifty years later.

Life does matter and it doesn’t matter if it is a black life or a white life or any other skin tone, in God’s eyes ALL of life matters. So why can’t we realize this and find something in common and work from there? I do realize that there are many things that the white “race” has done in the past and in many ways are still agreeing with even today. Even though today we don’t vocalize it for the most part. Our crime of being racist is shown in how we react to the situation that we may find ourselves in. We may think that we aren’t showing a racist attitude toward anyone but our body language and our eyes show something else entirely, even though we may not even realize that we do these things unconsciously.

Is there a way to end the violence and the hatred in this world which has been sparked into a raging fire? I don’t know that we can find one without Jesus coming back and ruling our world. I don’t really believe that we have the ability to place our emotions and our prejudices aside in order to bring lasting peace into our world and keep it that way. Now, I’m not pointing a finger at any government or any other movement in the world. Black lives do matter but so do the police and fire service men and women. The EMT’s lives matter, who try to help those who are injured or shot in any confrontation. The doctors and nurses lives matter because regardless of color or “race” they do their best to put people back together who have been hurt regardless of the circumstances.

Yes, in the past people have treated other people differently because of their skin color or their station in life even, but that doesn’t give you or me the right to go into the street and burn down small businesses and homes and threaten people with harm for no reason other than the color of their skin! When you are doing that you are no different than the ones who did this to your ancestors many years ago. We are living in the twenty-first century but many people are acting as if they are still in the 19^th century. If things keep going in that direction and someone sets an EMP off one day we will be back in the 19^th century in the area that it affected.

God never intended for us to live like this or act in this way toward each other but we are doing it. Satan is the one who hates us and it has nothing to do with your skin color at all. Satan hates us because we were created in God’s Image. It is Satan’s coaxing and prodding which is pushing this movement to be as violent as it is and he doesn’t care if we kill off a few thousand or more because that is fewer than he will have to deal with later. God loves each of us and all of our unique abilities and our outlook on life. Seek to please God and walk with Him in this world so that you can be victorious against Satan and his influence over a world that seems to be crumbling around us.

We are a part of God’s creation whether we like it or not, whether we believe in Him or not, but that doesn’t change the fact that murder is wrong in every instance and it doesn’t matter if the one murdered is old or young, a cop or one of the crowd. Even suicide is wrong in God’s eyes because you are killing yourself and you are also created in God’s Image. He loves each of us and we should try to reflect some of His love back into the world and make it better than it was before…not worse.

Does God care for us?

There is so much evidence for His love for mankind until I would imagine that it hurts His heart when someone asks this. He loved us enough that He created Earth for us. He placed it at the right distance from our Sun so that it isn’t too hot or too cold. He put the right mixture of gases in our atmosphere so that plants and animals of all kinds could grow along with us. Our planet has an abundance of water and the right nutrients in it for all of the life in the oceans and rivers.

God also sent Jesus to pay the penalty of our sin debt so that we could live into eternity with Him one day if we will place our faith in Jesus for our salvation. That is the one gift which we have that no other part of creation has or can understand…the gift of God’s love and His atonement for our sins through His Son, Jesus. This gift from God is by no amount of worth on our part. We cannot earn it nor can we purchase it in any way other than our deep belief in Jesus as our Savior. That is the easiest purchase that we can ever make because we don’t have to spend anything for it. Just believe in Jesus for your salvation and ask Him for your forgiveness of your sinful life before you knew that you needed Him.

God calls us to come to Him through His grace and He gives us enough faith to believe and repent in order to be saved. It has nothing to do with your idea of being saved or your decision of going to church to be saved. When His Holy Spirit convicts your heart of your need of Him, you will respond one way or the other. Choose the right way and trust in Jesus for your salvation. Time is growing short and when He comes for His church you do want to be in the number of those called home to Heaven.

God’s Character

Psalm 103 is a good example of David’s poetry which states that God’s character is always good. In the very first line he writes, “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name”. David is not saying that he was going to bless the Lord. What he wrote and said was that he would bless the Lord with all of himself! Physically, spiritually and emotionally he would praise and worship the Lord with every fiber of his being.

God desires the praise and worship of His children but not because He can’t be satisfied with us because we are His children. He desires our praise and worship because of His mercy that He extends to each of us every day. If God did not bless us with our breath and our life each day then we would either be with Him or in hell, depending upon our belief in Jesus for our salvation. God has specific jobs for each of us as believers and we are to seek His wisdom in His Word to find those jobs. It isn’t listed on page 22 in the third paragraph but when you read His Word you can understand, with the Holy Spirit’s help, what God requires of each of us.

He requires obedience to His Word. Of course, the New Testament is our contract because most of the Old Testament is actually sent to the Jewish people. The promises found in the Old Testament are still relevant to us because of the prophecies which are still going to be fulfilled and the promises are partially contained within those prophecies. Each covenant in the Bible explains and confirms the other so you can’t just read the New Testament without the Old Testament. They both are necessary because the whole Bible is God’s inspired Word. He gave it to mankind so that we could learn from His wisdom if we will only read it and do what it says.

In verse 12 of Psalm 103, David writes something which many of us have heard but maybe never knew exactly where it came from. Verse 12 says: “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us”. When we pray for God’s forgiveness for something that we have done or something that we said, He puts that sin and its consequences away from us just as David says “as far as the east is from the west”. It is completely gone! God doesn’t place it in a box to be brought out later to torment us because when He sees that it is covered by Jesus’ blood it is forgotten and remembered no more.

That doesn’t mean that we forget it because our memories and our guilt are still present here and now and of course Satan will bring it up and beat us with it as well. So we can’t forget it easily but God has. God’s mercy is everlasting and He grants this to each of us who believe in Jesus for salvation. We don’t have to earn it or pay for it or anything like that. We just have to believe in Jesus and ask for forgiveness in His name. Then we need to walk away from that sin or behavior and never visit it again. That is the hard part for us because sometimes our sin involves something that we really like to do, but we should ask for His strength to stay away from it. One day at a time.

Life is not easy like most people think it is and especially for Christians who are trying to live and walk on the pathway leading to heaven. It is narrow and it has thorns and stones which we may trip on. We can look around from this path and see the things that were our problems before and Satan will make them look so tempting trying to get us to get off of the pathway. That is where prayer for each day comes in handy. Thank God each day that you wake up so that you can take His message to others, even if it is only one person that you tell. They may be the person that you are the only contact with for God that they will have and by saying something about God or your salvation God may use it to draw them to Himself.

Worry doesn’t help…

Do Not Worry

(Luke 12:22-34)

25Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not life more than meat, and the body than raiment? 26Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? 27Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? 28And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: 29And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30Wherefore, if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? 31Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? 32(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 33But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

34Take, therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Matthew 6:25-34

Why do we worry about stuff today? We see so much violence and hatred on the news and it causes us to worry about our lives and our children. But…why should we worry? God has the world in His hands and He is in control. Our worry and being anxious doesn’t change anything and we can’t make a significant dent in any of the so-called “news” stories on our own. So, hand your cares over to God and lean on Him for your comfort.

God has told us through Jesus Christ during His ministry that worrying about tomorrow won’t change anything. We should handle what is going on in our day, today because tomorrow isn’t here yet. Your life and mine can only exist in today’s time. Yesterday is over with and tomorrow hasn’t come yet. I know we are all anxious because of this disease which suddenly came upon the world and the economic downturn which happened because of it. Now we have hate and bigotry in the streets which is being shown on the news daily and that has added to our anxiety.

We are living in the last days before the Tribulation begins. How soon that will come about no one knows except God Himself and we will find out when He says for the angels to come and get His bride. You can decide to believe His Word or not but since He doesn’t lie then I believe Him. The thing which we have to remember is that we can’t do anything to bring it on sooner or to influence the outcome in any meaningful way. God is in control and no matter what we do, He will accomplish what He has determined to do.

The only useful thing that any of us, as believers, can do is to study His Word and pray that everything goes according to His plan. Of course, it always works according to His plan because He is God! Thinking about some crazy terrorist or some “alien” encounter which might upset God’s plan is not productive because He knows about them and He will use them, regardless of who “them” is.

Be useful to God’s Kingdom so that He will find you working for Him when He comes. Then you may hear those words, “Well done my good and faithful servant, come into your inheritance and the joy of your Lord.”

That is my reward, I hope, and maybe yours too. Seek to please Him more than men because in eternity it is God’s favor that you should seek through the blood of Jesus.

He is with you!

In John 14:16 the apostle affirms this promise: 16 And I will pray to the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever.

The Comforter which Jesus was speaking of is the Holy Spirit which all believers have living within them to teach them and guide them in their service to God. It is only by His strength that we can fulfill the position of a believer in His Kingdom. We can’t do it in our own strength but with the Spirit of Truth living within our hearts we can!

The Holy Spirit is the third part of the Trinity which makes up God Himself so we have a small portion of God living within us when we become believers. Some of us don’t live as if we have Him living within us and it is to those who think they have something that they don’t have that this is being written. I am not trying to judge your heart because only God can do that but I am trying to spare you from a fate which will come upon many on the day of judgment.

Those of us who live in America have been blessed immeasurably by God just to be where we are. But our place of birth has also lead many to think that they are saved from hell just because of a family tradition or a prayer whispered when they were young and never considered again. We live in a culture that claims to believe in God and many do but so does the Devil himself! That is what is so damning for many of us. Culturally we believe that we are Christians because we have been brought up in the church. We have attended Sunday school and Bible school and may have attended church services on a regular basis.

But attendance doesn’t make you a Christian. Belief in God doesn’t make you a Christian. Knowing some scriptures and even attending revivals doesn’t make you a Christian. It is your heartbroken conviction that brings you to the cross and to the place where you know that you NEED Jesus as your Savior and you ask Him to come into your life and change your heart so that you can be a Christian.

Satan knows that Jesus is the Son of God and so do all of the demons in hell but they won’t serve Him. Knowledge of Him and attendance in church doesn’t make you a Christian. In the past one hundred years, our country has heard and seen many evangelists who brought the message of salvation to radio and television many times but superficial knowledge of God or Jesus doesn’t change your life. Even owning and occasionally reading a Bible at home doesn’t make you a Christian. It is the conviction of your heart that brings you to Jesus, asking to be made into a new creation, forever changed into a Christian

I pray that all who will read this will give their hearts to Jesus and ask Him to make them into His true disciples so that others may hear from your point of view how Jesus changed your life.

God’s Promises

In a relationship don’t you keep your promises? Particularly to your significant other?

God has always kept His promises to us because He loves us. He sent Jesus to pay the debt for our sins and not just American Christians but for all Christians in the world. Yet, somehow we think that we are special and that we deserve His favor. None of us deserve His favor or His grace or His love but God has given us those things because of His love for us not because of what we deserve!

Why would that be true? We have pushed Him out of nearly every government office and building. We have taken Him and His Word out of schools and there are many who are trying to get any reference to Him out of our country so they won’t have to hear about Him or His Son again.

In Matthew 6: 25, 31-34 God promises to meet our needs. Here is the text of those verses:

34Take, therefore, no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Every promise that God made with anyone in the Bible, He has kept. Even if the promise hasn’t come to completion yet. All of the promises leading up to it have been. So why do so many people doubt the existence of God or His love for us? Why is it that one part of humanity considers themselves to be the apple of His eye and yet they don’t seem to follow Him any better than the rest of the world?

God’s promises are sure and yet we doubt Him and His Word all of the time. Do you believe His promises for His provision in your life? I do.

I have been pushing the lawnmower and I will ask Him for a cloud or a little breeze to give me some relief from the heat. Most of the time it is provided. I know that many people won’t ask God for such little things but they aren’t little to me at the time. I have laid before Him the fact that we needed to pay this bill or that one and somehow the money is available. It may be just enough to pay the bill but He provides.

While it is true that many of the promises that are in the Old Testament are not available to us today, the promises in the New Testament are available to each of us who has given their life and their heart to Jesus. I don’t mean walking down and getting wet. I mean real, honest, and completely giving your heart to Him. Changing your life and living each day with Him, reading the Bible and learning more about Him and actually leaning on Him for your day to day, getting by kind of things.

Will God answer the prayers of one of His children who is living day to day with Him? If it’s asking for a million dollars, probably not. But if you are talking to Him and listening to His responses then what you ask for is usually in line with what He wants to give you and He’s waiting for you to ask for it. Is living by His side easy to do? No, it isn’t. There are so many temptations around us and Satan knows exactly which buttons to push to cause you to step off of the pathway that you were on. But, the closer you are walking with God it makes it harder for you to listen to anything that Satan says.

God is always close to you

Hebrews 13:5 says: 5 Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

As adopted children of God, if you are a believer, we should never covet or be enticed by something that someone else has. We should remember that our relationship with God is worth more than all of the money in the world! I know there is no way to spend it in this world and most people who would see you on a daily basis might not know about it. But the life that each of us has here on Earth is just a little while compared to eternity. Even the lives of the early children of Adam before the flood only lasted for a few hundred years but compare that to 100,000 years or 1,000,000 million years. Looking at those numbers, even Methuselah’s age of 969 years seems small.

Life today is not viewed with the respect that should be given to it. We don’t think about a child in the womb as being a person until they are outside the womb and making noise. People don’t view elders with gray hair as someone to respect and admire for the life they have lived. Historical figures such as George Washington Carver and Abraham Lincoln aren’t looked at with reverence today because they belong to a past that many people want to forget.

Jesus came and died for all of mankind’s sins even though He knew exactly who would believe in Him for their salvation and who will reject it. He took ALL of the sins of mankind on Himself when He was on the cross which is why God had to look away from Him for a time. He was never abandoned on the cross, God was still near Him but He could not look at His Son. God sees all of the trouble and pain which is happening and that has happened in our world. He knows who is responsible for it and for some things Satan is responsible for them…but not all evil comes from Satan.

Just before the flood, God saw that mankind’s heart was set toward evil continually and much of what we see and hear about today is caused by man as well. Humanity is capable of some great evil as history proves to us if people will read it and learn from it. Although they seem to be wanting to change the history that they don’t like these days.

God is always close to us and if we would just listen to His Word and live by it instead of our emotions and our own ideas the world would be a much better place.