The Devil knows that God exists and even believes in God but he chose not to obey and serve God. Many people in the world are in the same place. They know Who God is but they choose not to believe in Jesus for their salvation nor will they obey God’s laws and commands. Jesus said that there are two roads that people are on. One of them is wide and smooth and one is rocky and small. One leads to an easy trip through life and one may not be as easy but where will you spend eternity? Your lifetime is only a puff of smoke compared to eternity…so where will you be?
Seek Jesus in the Bible. Learn more about God and Jesus Christ from reading God’s Word because we are living in the time just before the Tribulation. Please don’t wait until the church is taken away and the world really gets rough and scary to live in.
How much do you need in this life? God gives us everything that we need every day but most of us take that for granted and we still wonder, “Where is God when I need Him?”. As someone who has grown up in America and has so-called “privileges” because I live here, I can tell you that those privileges are few. Some think that because I am “white” I have everything but I don’t. Life and friends can be cruel at times even when the “friends” don’t intend to be. Life is what we make of it or so I am told and in many ways that is true, but when you see many people who are wealthier than you are, don’t assume that their life is a happy one all of the time. Nobody can be happy every minute of every day regardless of the amount of money they have access to.
Joy, on the other hand, can be had by someone who lives in a cardboard shack. Why? Isn’t happiness and joy the same thing? Not by a long shot. Joy is not fleeting. It is a feeling that you can have just because you were able to get up this morning and walk to the kitchen. Many people in the world don’t have that blessing. Happiness comes and goes and depends upon your situation at the time. Joy can go on forever.
Where am I going with this? In many parts of the world poverty is so crushing that even having rags on your body may be all of the clothes that you have, and yet some of those who live in this situation are joyful because they are believers in Jesus. In America, we can’t imagine being impoverished to that point, yet there are some in our country who do live that way.
God watches over all of us whether we are rich or poor, but many still don’t acknowledge Him as their Savior because when they felt the need for Him to intervene in some way for them, He did not. We can’t know why He didn’t heal or fix a problem or disease but He does. He may use a doctor or a prayer to heal but the answer is always up to Him. As Christians, we have access to Him all of the time but many of us allow the world to dictate when we seek Him. We try all kinds of treatments and other ways of healing us before we, as a last resort, turn to Him.
Being joyful in the face of a medical problem that feels overwhelming is not something many of us even consider, but one of Jesus’ disciples said that we should “count it all as Joy”, the good and the bad days. If you have given your life to Jesus and are walking through the world feeling sad or even angry because of a prayer that hasn’t been answered, ask Him to show you why it hasn’t been. God uses the good days and the bad days to give us strength and increase our faith. We may not like the way He does it but we will see the outcome one day and realize that it was for our good and His glory that it happened that way. Seek Him today and know that He loves each of us warts and all.
We are living a life that is so fleeting that it is described as a puff of smoke, why do we think we have plenty of time to accept Jesus Christ as our Savior? If you have asked Jesus into your heart but you are still living the life of a sinner, one that doesn’t look like a Christian life, then you are fooling yourself by saying “I am a Christian”.
When Jesus is truly asked into someone’s life and heart and it is sincere…there is a change that comes over your heart. Yes, you will slip up and say things that you shouldn’t but you will be convicted by the Holy Spirit, that what you said or did is wrong. You feel the wrongness of it because you do belong to Him. If you never feel that conviction, then you don’t belong to Him and you are not saved.
Saying a prayer and having someone tell you that you are a Christian doesn’t save you. If your behavior doesn’t change, then you haven’t received Jesus as your Savior. There is always a change in your life and your heart when Jesus comes in to be your Savior. Your life changes because the Holy Spirit comes into your life and into your heart and you are saved by believing in Him and the sacrifice that He gave His Life for all of us and it is a gift from God through faith in Him by our acceptance of Jesus as our Savior.
The Living Message of Christ 