https://bible.com/stories/3531
This is a group of pictures that create a story for you to follow while you are learning to listen to God’s voice. All of us who are Christians have gone through this at some point. We wonder, “How can I know that I am hearing God’s voice?”. The learning process that you have to go through is not something that you are told in Bible school or even Sunday school and it is this omission that causes many people to walk away after they’ve become Christians. They don’t lose their salvation but they do miss out on the joy of getting to know Jesus and His Father, God.
There is a learning curve to it and the road to knowing God does have some ruts and bumps in it but Jesus told His disciples that they would have tribulation in the world. Troubles always come and when you are trying to learn better knowledge of God, it seems that they come in waves…sometimes very big waves.
Why do I say that there is a learning curve to being a Christian? Because it’s true. Making the change to being His is not a “snap your fingers” decision nor is it that simple. The Holy Spirit touches your heart and you feel the need for Jesus and the salvation that comes with Him. Then, once you have accepted Him as your Savior, your walk with Him begins. That is why He said to “take up your cross and follow Me”. Your daily life with Him requires you to place your old ways and your old self on that cross every day because your life is not about you anymore.
You have to look at the eternal picture and see that your life with Christ is never going to end. There will be a transition from this life to your eternal life but when you consider the other eternal destination had you rejected Jesus I believe you will say “It was worth it!”.
O praise the LORD, All ye nations: Praise him, all ye people. For his merciful kindness is great toward us: And the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD. Psalm 117:1-2 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/psa.117.1-2.KJV
The entire world knows about God, whether they choose to believe in Him as their Redeemer and their Savior is an entirely different matter. According to the Bible or the Torah, God created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh. Although many people deny the truth found in the Bible, one day they will be shown the error of their thinking. The reason that I find it strange that people choose not to believe in God is that they call on Him when there is a dire need in their life. Sudden death or illness in their family will cause even the most devout atheist to seek help from a Higher Power.
Why should we praise Him every day? Because He placed each of us here for a reason and it is our job to seek Him for that reason and become the person to fulfill it. God gives each of us a certain number of days and years to live and only He knows how many we have. If you woke up this morning and you are reading this then you have today to praise Him and be useful to Him for today. You don’t know if you will have tomorrow but He has given you today, so do your best to be useful to Him today!
God is with me even on my bad days. I don’t feel like doing anything or writing much but He has inspired me to do it anyway. Why? Because He is my Savior and my Friend. He is Life and the Author of it, so whether you are feeling down or depressed or just “not feelin’ it”, He is still there with you every step of the way. God loves us whether we are good or not and He can bring our lives to the point of being even better than they could be without Him.
So…truly with Him in your life, there are no bad days just days where you don’t feel as “up” as you did yesterday or the day before. That’s the best way that I can describe it. One of the performers on AGT in the past few years really touched my heart when she came on. Her “stage name” was Nightbirde. I say was because her cancer came back before she could make it to the finals and she passed away. But her spirit was infectious and happy even with cancer hanging in the background. Her advice after her audition was this: “You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before deciding to be happy”… Nightbirde
The only thing that I would add to her advice is that “You can’t wait until life is great to feel joy”. Joy is the giddy cousin of happiness and you can feel it even when you don’t really feel happy.
The LORD is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide: Neither will he keep his anger forever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins; Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, So great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, So far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Psalm 103:8-12 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/psa.103.8-12.KJV
The world around us doesn’t think that God is merciful, especially during times of war or famine, or economic chaos. Most of the time, the world wants to blame Him for their troubles, whatever they may be. God doesn’t need to explain His actions or His inaction in any situation. Sometimes in the past, He did tell His prophets why He was doing this or that but He usually did this because He wanted the Israelites to know His reasons.
Did God feel the need to tell them why He was allowing a famine or why He was withholding the rain? God told them the reasons for some of His punishments because they needed to know why they were being punished. Usually, it was because they had disobeyed His commands or His commandments such as when they were worshiping other gods rather than Him. Moses had told them many years before that they would do these things and that they would be punished but most of them had forgotten all of those warnings.
God’s Word tells us what happened in the past so we will not make those mistakes today. Yet, many people in the church still look at the Old Testament as an outdated document that we don’t need to read today. The same is said about the Constitution of the United States. Our history and the history in the Bible are there to show us what could happen if we make the same mistakes.
Jesus came to be the sacrifice that would take care of ALL of humanity’s sins. He paid our debts so that we could become the adopted children of God. To be able to have a relationship with God for all eternity.
Life, as a Christian, can be described in many ways. For some, it is a journey toward a joyous reunion with your Savior. For others, especially those who don’t want to believe in Jesus as their Savior, it represents a drab and dull existence that they have no intention of getting involved in. Have you ever thought of what a joy it is to live with Jesus as your Savior on a daily walk with Him? Why do I use the word “joy” rather than “happiness”? Because joy is a state of mind that doesn’t require outside stimulation to attain. Happiness is an emotion that is fleeting and never permanent.
“The joy of the Lord is my strength” is an expression of joy from the Lord toward His people when they were brought back from captivity and were able to live in their land and worship Him in their Temple again. Why wouldn’t He be joyful? God is joyful every time someone repents and turns to Jesus for their salvation. That is why Jesus said that the angels of God rejoice over one sinner brought to salvation!
God loves every one of us, but He doesn’t love the sinful lives that we lead here on Earth. Until we repent and turn away from our sins and give our hearts to Jesus, we are still lost in our sin. When you feel the Holy Spirit touch your soul and your heart letting you know that you need Him as your Savior, don’t turn away from Him. You may not get another chance and it is during this life that you must choose. There are no second chances after you die. You will stand before Him and give an account of your life and why you didn’t choose to follow Jesus.
After you have given your life to Him and you know that you have salvation in your heart, the joy that you feel will never go away. Every time you think about eternity and your life with Jesus…a smile will come to your face.
O come, let us sing unto the LORD: Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, And make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. For the LORD is a great God, And a great King above all gods. In his hand are the deep places of the earth: The strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his, and he made it: And his hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down: Let us kneel before the LORD our maker. For he is our God; And we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your heart, As in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, Proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, And said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: Unto whom I sware in my wrath That they should not enter into my rest. Psalm 95:1-11 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/psa.95.1-11.KJV
Life, as we have known it over the past few decades, is soon coming to an end. The first couple of decades of this century has been pretty hectic and enjoyable to a certain extent. Yes, there have been some terrorist bombings and quite a number of shootings but for most of America, this century has been pretty good. We never did win the war on terror but that is because there are no winners in a war that has religion as its driving force. The main point that I am getting to about the “count down” is that everything is going according to God’s plan.
If you have read Matthew 24 or the book of Daniel and some of the first few chapters in Revelation, you can see most of the prophecies coming true to some extent every day in the news. Why do I point this out? Because there are few people in our nation who are paying attention to the comparison between the news and those books of prophecy that I mentioned. We truly are counting down toward an ending that I believe will arrive much sooner than we are ready for.
Are you ready for that day? When the dead in Christ will rise to meet the Lord in the air and those who belong to Him and are still alive will join them. When that happens, the economies of the world will crash. There will be many who will wonder what happened and there will be a few who will still be here that will know exactly what happened. If you believe that we are in a recession now, just wait until many millions disappear without a trace.
Can you be ready for this when it comes? If you give your life to Jesus and follow Him today and for the rest of your life then you will be ready for that day when it arrives. Is there any other way to get ready for the taking away of the church? NO! Belief in Jesus and following Him as your Savior is the only way. Nothing that you try to add to it will make any difference. God has made this easy but so many want to “help” Him with their salvation. There is nothing that we can add to His work that He completed on the cross and in rising from the tomb.
Our efforts are only useful when we have given our hearts to Him and the service that we do after that only adds to our rewards in heaven. We can’t help God save us or to consecrate our lives more by accepting Jesus as our Savior. Reading the Bible, studying it daily so we will know His voice, and washing our minds with the pure water of the Word every day are the ways that we can become mature in our faith and become more like Jesus.
Seek Him in everything that you do. Look for ways to let others know that God loves them and then show it by your actions as well. Be His disciple daily so people will see Him by your words and your actions so they might want the relationship you have with Him.
The Living Message of Christ 