Category: Belief or believing

What?


I hear this a lot! If I had said that to my father, I would’ve paid for it and I doubt I would’ve said it again!

It seems that in today’s world, many people are saying the same thing in reference to God and His Word and the so-called “rules” that are preached in the pulpit of many churches today. Why do I say many and not all? Because there are many preachers who are not preaching from His Word like they are supposed to.

There are no “rules” in Christianity to keep, other than the Commandments of our Lord. We are not required to study His Word a certain number of hours a day, we aren’t required to wear certain clothes, we aren’t required to do anything. But, consider this: God sent His only begotten Son to give His life as a sinless offering for all of our sins. Then, He was raised from the grave on the third day and appeared to many people until just before the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came to His disciples.

God didn’t have to do this, but it was His plan from the beginning where He mentioned this:  “I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel” (Genesis 3:15).

That “seed of the woman” was Jesus Christ!

rules-for-christian-living-1024x613The reason that I said that there are no “rules” in Christianity is because once you accept Jesus as your Savior, you have the Holy Spirit living inside your heart. When that happens, you begin being changed from the inside and you want to do those things which so many people call restrictions or rules. You are changed from the person that you were into a new creation in Christ!

Before I truly accepted Jesus as my Savior, I still liked to smoke a cigarette once in a while, now I don’t have the craving to do so. A long time ago, I drank whiskey almost every weekend along with smoking illegal drugs like marijuana. That was more than 37 years ago, I don’t want to do those things anymore. I still have cravings sometimes for a smoke or a beer but God says that He won’t allow you to be tempted beyond that which you are able to bear, and He is true to His Word!

Why do some preachers preach messages which don’t go by God’s Word today? Oh, they use some passages from it, but the message doesn’t necessarily follow the meaning of those passages sometimes. Understand now, I am not picking on preachers in general, there are just a few who have done this. Some of them you have heard of in the news, some are local to me in the area that I live. My point is that if you are truly called to be a preacher for God’s Kingdom, you need to preach from His Word.

I know that some of what I write I don’t include a scripture every time, it is just the “wisdom” that I have learned from reading the Bible for the past ten or fifteen years from Genesis to Revelation. Each time that I read through it, I find something new that I didn’t understand before or maybe the Holy Spirit reveals to me something that He didn’t the last time.

That is the kind of study that God wants from His adopted children. There isn’t a rule that you have to do it, but how else are you going to get to know God if you don’t learn His voice which is revealed in Scripture? Does that make me a “super Christian”? No, just a forgiven and redeemed one! God loves the whole world, which is why He sent His Son into it so that He could live a sinless life and be the blameless, spotless, Lamb of God which would take away the sins of the world!

The offer of redemption is available to each of us, regardless of race, color, or nationality. It doesn’t depend upon your religion or your willingness to be a missionary and there are no requirements of denying yourself of food or water or anything that is available to you. The only part of you that God wants is your heart and your obedience to Him. When He calls you, answer Him. If He leads you to go somewhere to be a missionary, go without question.

This is the God that led Moses through the wilderness and helped him to defeat Pharaoh and release Israel from bondage. God also went with them through the wilderness and fed them manna and gave them and their animals water from the Rock (a type of Jesus). All of this is there to be learned. Sixty six books in the Bible tell the story of God’s love for mankind and show you the Savior Who was to come and Who did come to die for your sins. He will come again, only this time He will be King of Kings and Judge the whole world, those who haven’t accepted Him as their Lord.

What? Is an expression of surprise and sometimes frustration, but it is also used disrespectfully as well. What should you do? If you have felt His call, a small voice or a touch in your heart telling you that you need Him, don’t push Him away. Don’t run like Jonah did, because God is everywhere and He can find you. If He has something for you to do, it means that nobody else can do it….just you! Think about it while you can.

If you will obey…


Have you thought about being a Christian? Are you a Christian in practice and not just on Sunday morning or Saturday or Wednesday night, depending upon when your church meets for services? God seeks people of faith who will obey His commandments and seek Him in all things. Why do I say this? Because God said so!

He told the Israelites to go into the Promised land and destroy utterly all of the pagan nations and people who lived there. Why? Because God knew that they would entice His people to “check out” their religion and their gods, and they would turn away from Him. Which is exactly what happened. But, before they crossed into that land, Moses gave them a sermon on obedience and the rewards that come with it.

I am not going to print the whole text of it but you can read it here. God told them through Moses that if they would obey Him and keep their belief and their faith in Him, that He would bless them mightily but He also said that if they did not obey, there would be consequences.

If you have ever read the Bible, particularly Exodus and Deuteronomy, you know what happened. They would obey for a time, then they would begin to follow the practices of those around them because they didn’t follow God’s command. It is like watching a child of two or three when you tell them not to do something and you go to leave the room and immediately they move toward the very thing you told them to leave alone. Like the cookie jar or some other treat which tastes so good, but you have told them not to eat more than one.

This happened all through the wilderness and it was the very reason why they had to wander for forty years. They refused to obey God or listen to His wisdom. He had told them that He would drive out the people ahead of them if they would obey Him and they were afraid. Only two men out of the twelve would go into the promised land and they were the ones ready to go because the Lord said that He would be with them and fight for them. They were Caleb and Joshua.

All of the others died in the wilderness from the age of twenty on up except for those two men. Caleb took his land away from those who were there when he was 80 years of age. Joshua led the rest of Israel into battle many times and he was 80 when they crossed the Jordan into the Promised land. After his death, the people forgot about how God had provided for them and they began to follow their own ways of living and to follow the religions of people who were living there, just as God had told them not to do.

Even when Israel demanded a king be placed over them, even the king didn’t obey God when he went up against another ruler. The very first battle that Saul fought after being crowned King, he disobeyed God’s decree. He had been told by the prophet Samuel to wait and he, Samuel, would come and pray for their victory over the Philistines. When Samuel delayed in coming, after seven days Saul put the priest’s ephod on himself and offered burnt offerings to God because his troops were afraid.

It is at this point that God told Samuel to find a King from among the people who had a heart like His. He went to a man named Jesse and chose David and anointed him to be King, but he wasn’t crowned King until after Saul had ruled for a long time.

The point that I am making here is that God requires obedience not sacrifices or outward shows of our loyalty. God doesn’t require a burnt offering but He does require our obedience to Him, but it usually is our pride which causes us to do our own thing and try to serve Him in our own way. If we would just learn from the failures of Israel in the Old Testament we could and would be so much more effective in our lives and in serving God today.

Do you truly KNOW God?


I know that none of us have met Him in person. We won’t do that until we die and stand before Him. But, did you know that you could know God? Yes, we all can if we will seek Him out in the Bible.

I can almost hear people saying “I have read the Bible through many times and I am not going to claim that I know God!”. Why not? He reveals Himself in many ways, not just through His Word but by all of nature that you see around you every day. In the Old Testament God reveals Himself as a loving and patient God Who loves His Creation which includes you and me and all other people in this world.

Yes, there are parts of the Old Testament where God tells Israel as a group to slaughter all of those in the Promised Land where they are going to live. How does this show His love and compassion? Because, those that He told them to kill worshiped demons and idols and they sacrifice their children to their “gods”! God wants that influence taken out of the land that they are to live in because it will influence their children. This is why He tells us to teach our children from the Bible. We are to teach our children its wisdom so that they will know God and not be influenced to “try” some other religion.

Can you know God by reading His Word? I would say so. If you read some letters from your Dad or your grandfather who loved your mother or grandmother, even if you had never met them, you would know that they loved her and wanted to be with her! That is what many of the books in the Old Testament are like, they are like love letters to Israel and its people from God. They are also meant for us as Gentiles too. When Jesus referred to the Scriptures He was speaking of the Old Testament because that was all they had at the time.

The most important thing to remember about God’s Word is that it is True. The entire book from Genesis to Revelation, but especially the Old Testament. Why do I say it like this? Because, in the Old Testament, God was trying to get Israel to worship Him and Him only, not some piece of wood carved in the image of a cow or a snake, or even a man.

God caused all of the miracles which freed the nation of Israel from Egypt, and they still questioned Him. The still couldn’t or wouldn’t believe in Him, even with water from a rock, walking on dry ground through the sea, the supply of enough food for all of them during 40 years in the wilderness. Would it take all of that for us to believe in Him today?

Possibly. We are just as stiff-necked as they were and we don’t believe in Him today, at least much of the world doesn’t. Most of the population worships their ancestors or the stars or a moon-god, some even believe that when they die they will become a god. It isn’t hard to see that even with miracles for proof, many people today would still choose to not believe in Him. What a shame.

It takes a small amount of something called faith to believe in a God Who truly loves us. One Who cares for each of us, whether we know Him yet or not. He has used fishermen, murderers, thieves, and a shepherd boy to fulfill His work in times past. I think that He could use us too.

Broken pieces


Do you ever wonder how things get fixed in your life? What about in a pottery shop? In many ways the same thing has to happen to us that happens in a pottery shop in order for healing or fixing to be done.

A bowl which isn’t just right will be broken, then the pieces will be wet with water to make them pliable again, then they will be melded together into a lump of clay and placed back on the wheel. Then, after the breaking and molding and spinning and shaping is done, it will soon be in the shape that it was supposed to be in the first place.

Your life and mine are like that too. Many times we are going along, content with where we are and not really thinking about God much anymore. Why? Because, our life is good! We have everything that we need. We have enough money, our bills are paid, our health is pretty good, and our family is doing pretty well too. This is the way that many people look at life, whether they are Christians or not.

But…then part of your foundation cracks. You get really sick and you have to use some of your money to pay for treatments. The medical bills start piling up. Your health goes from good to not so good in a matter of days or weeks. This is the spot where most people will hit their knees and start praying for God to make His Presence known in their lives, right NOW!!  If you are a Christian, God hears your prayer but He doesn’t show up at your leisure or on your timetable.

Yes, He can put you back together again, but until your heart decides to stay close to Him on a daily basis He just might make you work for Him or even better He will make you wait until He decides to show up. God is not the cause of your pain and suffering, but He can use it, just like the pottery, to change you and mold you into the person that He knows you can be.

Some people, even some pastors, teach that God is the cause of your pain and suffering because He is trying to teach you something. I don’t believe that God works that way. He will allow your circumstances to bring you to the brink of breaking and then show you the way out. What good will that do? It will cause you to lean on Him and depend upon Him during the times when you are going through a tough period in your life. Then, when you have recovered from that, hopefully you will stick by Him even when life is going good!

Actually, that is the time that you should be sticking close to Him. Why do I say this? Because, it is God who blesses you with life and health to enjoy your days and your life that is why. I can’t think of a better reason to stick close to Jesus than when things are going good, but when things get bad that is even a better reason.

What will you do with God?


Introduction:

A young boy came to church one cold winter day to get out of the blowing snow. He had been trying to sell newspapers but not a single customer had passed by because of the weather. He slipped into the back of the church, just hoping to get warm and catch up on his sleep. Though the Sunday crowd was slim, the boy really paid attention to the sermon and was greatly moved by it. When the pastor was done, he called for the offering. The ushers went from row to row, and when the offering plate came to the boy, he stared at it for a while and then put it on the floor. He then did something very strange and very beautiful.

He stood up and stepped right into the offering plate. By then, all the people had turned around and were staring at the boy. When he looked up, he had big tears running down his face as he said, “Pastor, I don’t have any money because I haven’t sold any newspapers today. But, if Jesus gave His life for me, then I will gladly give my life to Him.” The person who has nothing to give but himself is able to give the greatest gift of all.

This story which has been on Facebook and in emails around the Internet illustrates the sacrifice of your life to the Lord. Not a physical death, but a spiritual one. Giving up of your whims, your will, to follow Jesus and to be more like Him. That is the essence of salvation, asking the Holy Spirit to come into your heart and make a change which will empower you to do this, every day. It is not something that you can do just once and then run back to your old friends and their ways of living. Yes, you do want to go back to them, but it should be to tell them what Jesus did for you.

Matthew 5-7:

5 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them.

He said:

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
    for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart,
    for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Salt and Light
13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

The Fulfillment of the Law
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Murder
21 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder,[a] and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister[b][c] will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’[d] is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

23 “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

25 “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. 26 Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.

Adultery
27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’[e] 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

Divorce
31 “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’[f] 32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Oaths
33 “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ 34 But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37 All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.[g]

Eye for Eye
38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’[h] 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Love for Enemies
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[i] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

What you do after you have heard the sermon on the Mount and heard what Jesus said in it will determine your eternity. Whether you put your own label on God as a BIG God, the One Who created all things, including each of us, or will you put Him inside a box of your own making. Which box and how much limitations will you place on God to make Him conform to your life instead of conforming your life to live a sacrificial life for Him?

Making God conform to your idea of Who He is and what He does in your life or doesn’t do in your life is not the way to live a Christian life. Even God told David and Moses that He couldn’t live in a building made by mankind, let alone a box which we place around Him to conform Him to our life! We are demanded and required to allow Him, His Spirit, to change us and we must determine to do it every day! Unfortunately, that determination is on us, each of us, to conform and live in Him by allowing His Spirit to change us every day!

What I am saying is that even if we ask Him to come into our lives, into our hearts, it is still our choice to surrender to His leading Presence every day in order to allow Him to do His work in our lives each day. If you turn back to your old life, your old habits and friends with no real change in your life that can be seen by others, then you may want to check with God’s Word and see if you really became saved that day or did you just say the right words and maybe get wet in the baptismal waters!

 

Are you a follower?


Of the many people who attend church on a fairly regular schedule, how many are really following Jesus in their daily lives? The answer may shock you. According to a study done recently, eighty-three percent of the people in the United States said they were Christians. But, when they were questioned further and asked about their relationship with Jesus and their belief about salvation coming through faith in Him alone and about the authority of the Bible and its inspiration by the Holy Spirit, the numbers tumbled to around eight to ten percent.

What happened?

Many people think that if you are a good person and you attend church once or twice a year, then you will go to Heaven. Not true.

Do you believe that Jesus was and is the Son of God? That He lived a sinless life and died for the atonement which is given to every person that is called by God? Do you have faith in God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit or the Trinity of Almighty God? Can you discern truth in the Bible and in your everyday life?

Or is there another pathway to get to Heaven through your works and donations? Jesus said that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life and no man comes to the Father except by Him. Believing in Him and giving your life to Jesus is the ONLY way to get to Heaven. There is no broad road to walk on with no holes and no rocks and other obstacles along the way. It is a path to follow by giving your heart to Jesus and asking for His forgiveness of your sins, repenting of them and turning your life around to follow Him.

This doesn’t mean that you can say those things, get baptized, and then go back to your old life. If you do this, then your heart was not changed at all and you are still living like you did before you heard about Jesus. Your heart hasn’t changed therefore you have not changed. It isn’t a magic formula, but you have to realize that you NEED Jesus in your life before something happens and you stand before God without Him.

God loves each of us and wants us to have a relationship with Him and the entire body of believers, and the only way to do that is by giving your heart to Jesus by believing in Him and asking Him to forgive you and make you whole. Why do I keep telling ya’ll this? Because, it is my job! Because the numbers shouldn’t fall from over 80 percent down to ten percent. Deception and lies are being spread abroad all of the time, even inside the church today, yet there are many who don’t see it or can’t discern it because they are not in God’s Word enough to be able to see when something is taught and taken out of context.

God sent His Son to Earth to purchase your pardon through His blood. He went through a scourging which left Him bloody and bruised, then He was nailed to the cross and withstood the shame and scorn of His people for six hours and then surrendered His Spirit into the Father’s hands. All of this was done to purchase us, our pardon for eternity and for our forgiveness. Would you turn away from something which is given to you without cost to you, but which Jesus paid for with His blood and His life?

Everything that could be done for each of us in order to purchase our souls and our place in eternity, has been done. It doesn’t require anything from you except that you believe in the One Who gave it all for you and that you repent of your sinful life and follow Him. Telling others with your life and your witness because we are supposed to tell others! Why? Would you be satisfied in Heaven without your children or your parents? Then tell them! Tell your friends and your co-workers, your students and anyone who will listen. If they won’t hear or refuse to accept Jesus, their blood is on their hands, not yours. It is God and His Spirit which will bring them to Himself, if they refuse then there is nothing else you could have done.

Be a follower of Jesus and tell others about what He has done for you. Satan will try to convince you to not follow Him, to go back to your old life, your comfortable life and your friends. When you stand in front of God after your life is over, which one of your friends will be there to help you? Will Satan stand there and say that you didn’t know what you were doing? No, he will be waiting for you to exit the room because he has a place for you…in hell.

Trust and faith


What do you put your trust…your faith in? When Moses realized that God was going to use him to deliver Israel from Egypt, what did he put his trust in? It wasn’t the stick that he had used as a shepherd, it was God! Moses wasn’t a magician who could turn the stick into a snake, God did that! God doesn’t use magicians because their magic comes from Satan and his demons!

With God all things are possible, to those who have faith in Him. Our lives and the fact that we live today on this Earth are not guaranteed, we did not evolve here, we as a species were created by God! The Bible is His Word given to man to write and keep records so that we would have wisdom and knowledge to know Him and how to be civilized in our society.

It does take faith in God to understand the Bible and to be able to grasp His wisdom there. It can’t be done if you just read it as a book, without faith or prayer for His Spirit revealing it to you the Bible is just a book. Which is why many people who don’t believe in God can say that they have read it and they don’t understand it. God’s wisdom in His Word is foolish to someone who doesn’t have faith and who doesn’t believe the words which are in it.

God loves us and He has promised to come back and make the world new again and since He can’t lie, then He will do it. When? I don’t know, but if you look at the prophecies in the Bible telling about the condition of the world just before His return then we aren’t far from it. I won’t be foolish enough to give a date because only God Himself knows that day and hour, and it isn’t written in His Word.

The world around us is changing dramatically in scope and in what we are trying to do in science and medicine. The Internet has enabled us to communicate around the world in seconds. Life is easier in some places and harder or even impossible in some other areas, yet God hasn’t abandoned us. We are His creation and this small planet is our home. When He comes, it will open many eyes to His existence and also to their regret because they didn’t believe in Him.

Search Him out diligently, seek Him in the Scriptures and at church, pray for His guidance and direction in learning about Him in the Word. Because, when your life is over there are no do-overs and you will meet Him, but in a very different way.

Problems in our lives


How many problems do we all have today? That question alone could fill up many pages of text. Suffice to say, all of us have problems of one kind or another. Some of them are of our own making, some are caused by the economic conditions in the world today.

So, what can we do about our problems? Not much really. Individually, we have to notice what is going on before it becomes a problem. The same is true for states and nations, but that doesn’t always work. In our lives, as short as they are, problems are going to be a part of them and there is no reason to think otherwise.

Sounds pessimistic doesn’t it? Jesus told His disciples that we would always have trouble (tribulation) in this world but to be of good cheer because He had overcome the world. Will that help in today’s climate with wars happening all over, earthquakes and hurricanes happening in places where they haven’t in a while if ever? For some people, no it won’t because they don’t want to give their hearts to Jesus. They don’t want the peace which comes with knowing Him.

Why don’t they want this? I haven’t got the slightest idea. Jesus and the Holy Spirit give me the strength to get by and get through the problems which come up in my life and they can do this for you too. I don’t have the problems that many people have with their health, but I can’t work because of my disability (at least not at an 8 hour a day job). I preach on Sunday and I give these sermons here when the words come to me, but that is about all that I can accomplish.

It saddens me that I am like this, but I like to think it was because I was making a difference in some people’s lives and Satan tried to stop it. It didn’t work. I am not letting this get me down and you shouldn’t either! I have days where I am depressed, but I do my best to read in the Psalms and give it to God and let Him take care of it. I can’t get rid of the depression on my own, but He can.

Your problems may have to do with money or lack of a job or an illness, but God can take care of them all if you will let Him. God doesn’t move at our pace, He works in His time which is why we sometimes try to help Him get things done. That is the wrong thing to do because it just postpones His answer! He will let you give it a try, and He will give the problem back to you if you think you can do better, then He will sit back and watch. When you figure it out, then He will ask you in a small voice (if you are listening), “Are you ready for my solution yet?”.

God loves each of us more than we can imagine and since He lives outside of time, He can see down the road, so to speak, what is coming and what is best for us. He wants us to wait for His best! We just get impatient. It is important to add here something that I learned a LONG time ago: DON’T ASK GOD TO TEACH YOU PATIENCE! You won’t like His class on that at all!! Learn it at your own pace, teach yourself patience through the reading of His Word and then listen to Him and wait.

I promise, it will be worth it.

More like Christ


This is the example that we have, the very one that we are supposed to try to live up to in our walk with Jesus. It is not enough that we try in our own strength, because we will fail!

Encouraging words, huh? We will fail to be like Christ if we do it in our own strength, yet that is exactly what Jesus taught with the sermon on the mount. Teachers and preachers have, for the most part, taught His Wisdom as it was pointing to those in attendance when it really means that we are all to live this way.

How can you and I be more like Christ? By giving away our old natural self! Sacrifice it, our old way of living, just as Abraham was going to do to his son when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac. We have to give up our life, our way of doing things, and start living the way that Jesus taught His disciples to live. As a servant of God to others in love and His Truth! If you wake up on Monday morning and thank God for getting you up, that’s a start.

What else are we supposed to do after giving thanks for our health and our life to serve Him one more day? We have to ask Him to give us the words and the opportunity today to show someone a reason why God loves them. It may not be a big thing, it could be only a few words, but if it is given to and shown to them in the love of Christ…it will accomplish what it was meant to accomplish. Get up with a gladness in your heart, a thankful spirit that God gives you, so that others will see it and wonder what you have that they don’t? Then, they may ask you and you can tell them.

God gives us such grace every morning by giving us the air that we breathe and our ability to get up from the bed and walk! We can look outside and see the birds and the sun and the clouds and all of it was provided by God for our benefit. Why do I say it that way? Because even David said so in the Psalms, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.”.

God uses the Sun, the moon and the stars to show His works in the Heavens, but they also declare His goodness and His greatness! Seeing all of these things, we have to wonder about the Creator, if you believe in Him, who put it all there. Why would He care about us? Because He loved us enough to send His Son to die, to be sacrificed for all of our sins, so that we might have the opportunity to become sons and daughters of God! Yes, we float in space on a tiny speck compared to the majesty of the cosmos, but God has a plan and a purpose for each of us.

All that we need to do is sacrifice our life, our sinful life, and give it to Him so that He can take what is left and make it into a mighty, servant of the Most High God! Don’t get all hyped up about being somebody in His Kingdom, because without the Holy Spirit nothing that you write, say, or do will amount to anything! Follow Him every day, read His Word every day, pray a few  prayers thanking Him for His goodness and mercy every day because without Him, you and I are nothing.

Sonrise!


Are you a follower of God’s Son? If you are, then you know why I titled this post the way I did. We, His church, are waiting for Him to rise in the skies to claim His bride! Will we see Him that day? Yes, we will! Will the rest of the world see Him? Not likely. Why? Good question.

The reason is because when He comes for the church, there will be a trumpet sound and the church will disappear, those who have fallen asleep prior to His summons will be first and the ones who are alive will be next! The change will be such an instantaneous event that if you happen to be talking to someone who is a Christian, it will happen in the blink of your eyes. If you are not a Christian, their clothes, shoes, watch, any jewelry that they have on will be in a pile in front of you.

That day will be a terrifying day for most of the world, at least the ones who haven’t given their hearts to Jesus. Those of us who have will be in His Presence in Heaven and will be there for eternity. There will be a drastic change in the world and it will not be pretty nor will it be enjoyable. I can’t tell you when this will happen. Some say it will happen prior to the arrival of the anti-Christ and the peace treaty in the Middle East. Then there are some who say that we won’t be taken up until about halfway through those seven years. Which one is right? I don’t know.

The only person who does know is God and it is up to Him when this happens.

Your trip to Heaven could be any day, just like mine though. We are not guaranteed tomorrow. If our soul is required tonight, then one or both of us will be in front of God tonight. This time is foretold in Matthew 24 and in Revelation so it is not as if we don’t have written warning, because we have had that for right at 2,000 years.

The time has come for us to make up our minds individually if we will follow Jesus or just keep doing our own thing. Some people are wondering why is it taking so long? God is trying to give as many people as possible the opportunity to come to know Him and give their hearts to Jesus. He is patient, but according to the prophecies it seems that time is running down. In my opinion, this is the last generation before His return. That could be next year or another ten, maybe even twenty years but I don’t think it will be that long.

Please, seek Jesus while you have the chance in this life.