What is most important to you?

There are many, many answers to this question and they are not the same for everyone. Some of these would include our family or our children. Other answers may be more generic like world peace or just to live a good life. But when you get right down to the “brass tacks” of what is actually most important to you…in today’s politically charged world and in our culture, most people really wouldn’t know the true answer to that question.

If you were held at gunpoint and your life was threatened could you come up with an answer which makes sense and is the actual truth of your life? I honestly don’t know if any of us are that certain about what or who is the most important in your life. I have been thinking about it since beginning to write this and I just don’t know for certain. Isn’t that a little weird?

I have been married to my wife for twenty-six years and a few months but is she the most important person in my life? What about my son? Is he the most important person in my life right now? Even if I changed the wording a bit and asked: Who is the most important person in your life? Would that clear the water a bit? For some of us it might help but for others, I’m not so sure.

What is my point with this question? For one thing, it is to get us to think about it because we rarely do in today’s world. We are so busy running around doing things, going places, getting things done or going to the doctor’s office until we seem to be in a continual spin cycle. We never really settle down long enough to think about who or even what is most important to us or to our family while we have the time to think about it.

And really, if you sit down for about ten or fifteen minutes you will realize exactly what I am talking about. We don’t sit and talk much anymore. We are texting each other or liking a post or a picture or something funny which we share with our “friends” on Facebook. What did all of that accomplish? What does our electronic “friends list” actually mean in our lives? Do you really know these people or did you accept their request because you both have a friend in common?

What about taking one day every week and spending it with actual friends while learning more about our Savior at church. No pushing to make a change in your life. No asking for money that you don’t think you have to give for the work of the church. Just friends meeting at church and listening to a study of God’s Word for about an hour or so. God loves you and me and everyone else in this world but He also knows which ones will spend time with Him whether it is daily or weekly or just occasionally.

How would your friends feel if you only spent time with them on special occasions? How about once or twice in a month? How would your family feel if you did this? God loves each of us more deeply than our family members do and yet many of us don’t give Him or His Word much time at all in our lives. Many of us don’t spend as much time reading the Bible as we do liking pictures on Facebook each day or even in a week’s time!

There would be a massive revival in America if we could get off of Twitter or Facebook and pay attention to God’s Word at least as much as we did to those social media pages!

If we read God’s Word as much as we read social media in our country, the world around us would be impacted in ways that we cannot imagine right now.

God should be more important to each of us than our “friends” or even our family because He made it possible for us to have eternal life with Him. Eternity without Him is a pointless existence but it will happen if you leave Him out of your life until you die and then its too late to change that outcome.

Think about it while you can today…right now in fact because you don’t know when your time is up.

Is God in control?

First and foremost, God is sovereign. Nothing that happens in the whole universe is a surprise to Him. Not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from the Father’s will (Matthew 10:29).

So, why do we look around at all of the tragedies and the aborted babies and think that God either has a part in it or He doesn’t care about them at all? God does care and one day soon the whole world will see this and understand. They may not like what they see or how they come to understand that He is in control…but they will come to that conclusion.

Is our life in His control as well? Not in the sense that He makes us do things in our everyday lives, but He does cause things to work together for our good in the trials which we face. We may not see that this is happening and it may not feel that way at the time but God is in control. Whether the outcome is good or bad or better than we expected it to be, it is He that directs our path and the outcome as well.

There seem to be more people in America who think that they know better than God about how to live their lives, especially when it comes to being “moral” or “good”. God is still in control and always has been yet people want to argue with Christians about the “mythical” book which is the Word of God. There are too many archaeological proofs which have been found all over the Middle East which point to verses in the Bible. Proving that a city or a place which was mentioned in God’s Word actually exists.

In America, it seems that since our country has always been identified as a “Christian nation” many people here seem to take the message of Jesus for granted. We don’t seem to put much weight in preaching or learning about Jesus or about our own sinful condition which He came to save us from. Also, it seems that nobody looks at or even cares about where their eternal destination may be, even though that is what most of the New Testament was written to prepare us for!

Our lives, as short as they are by comparison to eternity, are the spiritual proving ground for that life which we enter into after this one is done. The problem in America seems to be that nobody wants to learn about it (eternity) and they don’t want to hear about their own sins or how to live righteously while going through this life. I did not say that we could live without sin, but living a righteous life is possible even when we fall and make mistakes in this life.

Living a righteous life is actually what we are called to do as a Christian. By prayer and telling others about Jesus, essentially showing the fruit of the Spirit in your life and in your walk with Jesus every day…that is living a righteous life in Christ!

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Jesus, our Redeemer, and our Shepherd knows His own and He can see the fruit which we produce in our lives and in the lives which we live through Him while we are walking with Him in this life. Is it easy to be fruitful as a Christian? That depends upon your priorities. If you place more importance on life around you or your career or your family then this life is going to feel like a burden. Some people even treat it as a hindrance to your happiness, but when you do this you are only thinking of this life and not eternity. Live with eternity in your mind so that the life around you doesn’t get in the way.

Too much

Have you ever thought that God asks too much of us? I haven’t. God gave His only Son up to be killed on the cross so that all of us have the chance to be saved from our sins. Sometimes we do too much like I did today because it was cool outside, but God always does exactly what is necessary. He knows what is needed in every situation and for every need in our lives. So why don’t we trust Him for our salvation and for those needs in our lives more than we do?

Is it because we have too many needs? Is it because we don’t trust God enough to depend on Him for those needs?

Why do we think that our needs are too much for God? He is the Creator after all. He can create a star that is large enough that it would swallow almost all of our solar system, so what makes you think that a car payment or a disease in your family is too much for Him? Sun;_VY_Canis_Majoris_and_UY_Scuti_size

Our problems are easy for God to take care of IF we will give them to Him so He can. Many of us give our problems to Him and take them back as soon as we say “Amen”. Why? Because we don’t think He will do what we are asking of Him. So we take them back and essentially tell God, “I can do it myself”.

Have you ever thought that the reason for your prayer for Him to take care of whatever it is was because you couldn’t take care of it? Most of the time with disease or accidents we can’t take care of it on our own so why do we choose not to give it to God?

In most cases, it is because we are either not totally committed to Him or we really don’t have a relationship with Him (Jesus) in the first place. We have been to church or Bible school and we have heard the messages and even read the Bible a little so we think we are Christians…but we aren’t. Those are motions which we have gone through in our past but we have not given our heart to Jesus and we aren’t following Him in our daily lives.

Yet, we think that our prayers are being heard because we have had His blessings in our lives at some point. Those blessings may be because of someone else’s prayers for our blessing. They have a relationship with Jesus and it is their prayers which are being answered, not ours.

Prayers work when there is faith involved in them and in the person praying. God listens to the request and the faith of the one who is praying as well as the focus of the prayer. A child in a hospital or their parent’s treatment for cancer or some other disease may be the focus of the prayer but it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes it is a prayer to give traveling mercies to someone on a plane or driving somewhere. Occasionally it is a prayer for a passing grade on a test for someone.

Does God care about these things? Yes, He does. If He cares for the food provided to birds don’t you think that grades or healing or your car keys mean just as much to Him?

Give your heart to Jesus and keep Him in your life every day, no matter what you may be doing because He does care for you.

God did not spare His Son

“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all,
how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” Romans 8:32

God did this so that we could be redeemed from our sins, no matter what they are or were! Have any of you ever considered that our Creator, God, gave the Life of His Son for each of us! That is a kind of love which I can’t fathom and never will understand, but I am thankful for it and for Him! Amen!

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He sacrificed His life on a cross after being scourged almost to the point of death and yet He still went up the hill of Golgotha to be hanged on a cross. He did this because He loves us. Why would anyone do this? Especially the Creator of the Universe!

Jesus did this so that we could be adopted into the family of God because He loved us even before the world was created. The Author of Life did this for you and for me and for every person in the world…because of His love for us. Can you understand this? I can’t.

But we don’t have to understand it, He did it so that we could have fellowship with Him for eternity. God provided the way for us to be saved from the second death and be able to enter into His house which has many rooms. Can we understand this great Love of God? No, but it is provided for us in more ways than we can ever understand in this lifetime.

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Our sins are forgiven and taken away from us just as in Pilgrim’s Progress. When we give our heart and our life to Jesus, those sins are taken away and put as far away from us and from God as the east is from the west! Eternity is waiting for you and me to enter into His house and be in fellowship with Him forever. Won’t that be awesome?!

Remember, we are only passing through this world. Heaven is our home. If your heart belongs to Jesus and He is your Savior, then your home is there with Him in the Father’s house. Nothing in this world is worth losing your salvation over! God values our souls as worth more than all of the riches in the whole world. That is not collectively, that is the worth of one soul to God!

God provides the path for us to take to be saved from death particularly the second death of hell and that pathway is through belief in Jesus as our Savior and by following Him each and every day until God calls us home. Because Heaven is our home when we belong to Jesus since wherever He is that is our home for eternity! This world and all of its pleasures and pains and the fame and fortune are perishing and temporary. Everything that is available to us here is just rusty and junk, God’s treasures and gifts to us are eternal and they are in Heaven where we will be one day if we are His.

A man named Christian

This is the character in Bunyan’s tale of Pilgrim’s progress so are you on that same quest today? The quest which he was on to find that City of which God is the builder.

Hebrews 12:25 says this: “See that you do not refuse him that speaks. For if those who refused him that spoke on earth did not escape, much less shall we escape if we turn away from him that speaks from the heavens.”

Hebrews 10:38 says this: “Now the just shall live by faith, but if any man draws back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.”

In the story, Christian was told by one of the characters which he met to turn aside from the path which he was on and essentially “take the easy way”. That is not the way to salvation, it is the world’s way but not God’s way. If we listen to the world’s wisdom which isn’t wisdom at all, we will always get off the path which leads to salvation. As long as we keep our faith in Jesus and keep our eyes trained upon His ways and not our own, we will be saved from the wrath to come. When we think that our religiosity is good enough to make it to heaven, that is when we fail and fall on our own pathway.

pilgrim_s_progress__unburdened_by_douglasramsey-d7dm2ix God’s Word shows us the way and as long as we don’t create a “savior” of our own making and in our image which makes us feel good about our sins, we will make it to that City which is not built by human hands! God loves us and He gives us the choice to follow Him and His wisdom or to follow our own. It is when we follow our own ideas and our own wisdom that we fail to reach Him and we fail to truly follow Him because we are following our “god”.

Jesus said that the way is broad which the world follows and many will find that path but the pathway which leads to Life eternal is narrow and few find it. But for those few who have found it the glories of God and His Kingdom awaits them in eternity. We are loved by God and it is His wisdom which we should follow in this life which leads to Life eternal. Don’t follow the “wisdom” of the world around you because most of those who are following that “wisdom” haven’t got a clue where it leads.

Jesus Christ paved the narrow way to Heaven with His blood and it is only by belief in Him and what He did for you and me that we will find that pathway which leads to Heaven. Don’t let someone with smooth words and convincing speech tempt you into going along with them on their journey. Stay the course and follow Jesus into eternity because it is there that your true reward and your eternal life waits for you.

Give your heart to Jesus, follow Him and He will lead you to your home in Heaven. When you finally come to the cross and give your heart to Jesus, your burden will be lifted and you will be saved.

How does the love of God compare?

There is no comparison between God’s love for His creation and for us in all of the Earth. No human can understand God’s love because His love is deep and without limits. He loves us because we are made in His Image and we are to be His servants into eternity. We will not be as slaves in this but we will be willing servants as bondservants in ancient days. They loved their masters and did not wish for freedom and would serve him even if they were to be set free.

God’s love for humanity is fierce and limitless and yet the angels have no understanding of His love for us. Why should God love mankind so? Because He is God and if it pleases Him to love us in this way then He will do it! God is our Creator and has made us be His adopted children, we are not forced to be His but we are voluntarily His children because of His love for us!

So, why do we live as if He doesn’t love us or doesn’t care for us? Mostly because of the fact that we can’t see God even though we can see all of His Creation and it shows His majesty and His creativity and His artistry in Creation! It is His Creation after all! We didn’t have any part in it except when He created us. He knows your talents and abilities and all of your problems. He gave you your talents and your sense of humor and your abilities so He knows more about you than you do about Him.

Why not pick up the Bible and learn more about your Creator and your Savior and get to know Him personally. Then when you hear His voice speaking to you, you will recognize Him and then you can respond accordingly! God wants the best for you but only if you know Him and He knows you can both of you benefit from what is best for you. Give your heart to Jesus and let Him come in and clean up every part of your life so that you can represent Him in every area of your life as well. God is good all the time

Have you broken God’s heart?

Many of us do this on a daily basis or at least a weekly basis and don’t even realize it. When you worry about something, anything, you are telling God that you don’t trust Him with that area of your life. When you do this you are breaking God’s heart. You are throwing everything in His face that He has ever done for you, no matter what it is. You are telling Him that “In this area of my life, I will worry about it because I don’t think You can help me with this!”.

How would you feel?

God, Who is the Creator of the universe and all of the physical laws which govern it, and you are telling Him that He can’t handle your problem so you will worry about it. Come on, our problems are not big enough to even cause God to think about them in order to solve them. Many of the problems which we worry about are those which we can’t fix even if we want to.

The problem with worrying about those problems, whatever they might be, is that it makes us into a practical atheist. We worry about things because we don’t think God will take care of it. The problem with that is this: He will take care of it only if we give the problem to Him completely! Not a portion of it for Him and then we will take care of the rest. Give the pain and sorrow to Him totally so that He can take it and do what He does with problems! He turns them into opportunities for His glory and for your good!

Knowing this, why do we worry? Because God doesn’t fix our problems when we want them fixed, He fixes them on His time and in His way.

Are you feeling broken?

Are you broken? Do you feel broken sometimes?

We are very much like the pottery which God’s Word tells us about.

In Isaiah 30: 14-15

14 It will break in pieces like a potter’s jar, shattered so that no fragment can be found. Not a shard will be found in the dust large enough to scoop the coals from a hearth or to skim the water from a cistern.”
15 For the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel has said: “By repentance and rest
you would be saved; your strength would lie in quiet confidence — but you were not willing.”

In Jeremiah 18

The Potter and the Clay
1 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2 “Go down at once to the potter’s house, and there I will reveal My message to you.”
3 So I went down to the potter’s house and saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the vessel that he was shaping from the clay became flawed in his hand; so he formed it into another vessel, as it seemed best for him to do.
5 Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 6“O house of Israel, can I not treat you as this potter treats his clay? declares the LORD. Just like clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.

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God can do, with us, as He pleases. He can do some things without our consent in our lives but the most useful we are to Him is when we are submitted to Him and obeying Him. Can He break us in order for us to be more submitted to Him? Yes, He can. Will He do this? If He has to He will but I don’t think it is His preferred way of working with us.

God is not a tyrant in that He has to be mean to us in order to get us to do something. He would rather work with us in conjunction rather than having to allow things to happen in our lives which will force us to fall to our knees in submission to Him. So, does God break us sometimes in order to get our attention? I believe He does this sometimes, but it isn’t because He is mean, it is more likely because we are being stubborn and not listening to Him.

God loves His creation and He cares for each of us and He wants the best for us but during the time which we are feeling broken, we may not feel like He cares for us. Sometimes it is during those broken times when we feel down or depressed that we feel that the only way to go from there is up. We should be looking up and keeping our spiritual eyes on Jesus so that the time spent in those low places doesn’t last very long.

Make sure that you are centered in Jesus with Him as your Savior because the times in which we are living are unpredictable and we are not guaranteed tomorrow. So make sure of your eternity while you still live and work here in the present.

Seeking Jesus

Are you seeking to know Jesus?

There are so many things which the Bible tells us about God and His love for us, and yet those bits of information aren’t enough. We seem to see some things about Him in the Bible but many of them actually take a great amount of faith in order for us to truly believe them. So…why don’t we believe these words considering they are the Word of God given to mankind?

I believe that we can’t understand the ideas and the word pictures about God because much of it is too fantastic for our minds to comprehend. I mean, a bush which is burning which doesn’t burn? A pillar of fire by night and a pillar of smoke by day, parting the Red Sea so that Israel can cross on the dry ground, stopping the sun and the moon so that they can defeat their enemies when they are taking the Promised Land…all of these miraculous things are hard for modern man to believe without actually seeing them happen.

But consider that God cannot lie and if you have faith that God is truthful and just in all of His ways and these miracles make sense. He had to do some fantastic and wonderful things in order for the children of Israel to see and understand that He was taking care of them like He said He would. Today it is hard for me to understand how they could see these things and know that they happened and then turn away from worshipping God to worship idols. I just don’t get it.

I mean mortal man creates an idol out of molten silver or gold or wood and then he bows to it as if it was a god? It is a piece of metal or a carved piece of wood for goodness sake!! How can you possibly think that this thing is your god??!

The manna in the desert and the water which came from a rock to take care of the whole nation of Israel in the desert..just those two miracles would be enough to convince me!

Satan has a way of blinding us to God’s Truth and making our mind only see part of what is going on which brings us to the point of questioning God and His love for us. The church today is losing many to this phenomenon as we speak. While there are still people who are following Jesus and giving their hearts to Him, many more are walking out of the church and decide to never return.

God’s Word tells us that there will be a falling away of the faithful when the time is getting close to the Tribulation and it seems to be happening even now. So how much longer does the world have? I don’t know. I am not going to try to spin some lie about the time and the day because God doesn’t tell us, in His Word and we aren’t supposed to know ahead of the time anyway.

My point is this: we need to be telling people about Jesus and what He has done for us and for them. God loves us which is why Jesus came to pay our price of the sin debt which all of us have. We are not righteous enough to gain entrance into Heaven without Jesus and more people need to know that…and soon!

How do you see Genesis?

The first book of Moses. The beginning of the Bible. The beginning of everything. All of these are true! Historically and physically and as the very beginning of Creation, that is how I view the book of Genesis. There is no discontinuity or falsehood in His Word, from the beginning to the end. Because if any part of it is false then that makes all of it false.

Genesis is the beginning and the story which was written was given to Moses during those forty days which he spent on the mountain with God. How do I know this? Because that is the only way that he could’ve been told of all the things which happened prior to his birth. The Creation story, the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, the Flood and Noah, the Tower of Babel, the call of Abram and then the miraculous birth of Isaac to a man and a woman far beyond the age of childbearing.

The Bible is the history of the world and of the Jewish people but it is also the story of God’s love for mankind and the lengths that He would go to in order to bring salvation to mankind too. His patience and mercy toward us are so great and powerful until we cannot understand His reasons nor His love for us. The rest of the Bible shows us that He is patient and loving toward us in ways which we cannot understand or even fathom with our limited minds compared to His!

We are His creation, made in His Image and given a special place in this universe which nobody else can claim. God loves each of us and He gives us a chance to live our lives for Him because His Son gave His life in order to bring us salvation. What we do with our lives after we accept Him as our Savior and believe in Him for our salvation is largely up to us. God shows us the path to salvation through His Son, it is our choice to follow that path every day and show that path to others so that they can find it too.

That is our job, our purpose on this Earth. Not living to make as much money as we can or to have as much stuff as we can get, but to be as useful to God while we are still here! That is our true calling and purpose as Christians and followers of Jesus.

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