Our new Life

Each of us sees life in a different way. Some see it as a burden and a hard toil to get through each day. To others, it is a joy to be grateful for and one which is given to each of us by God, regardless of the burden that they bear during their journey through it. Still, others see life as a challenge or even a time for play or even as work for some goal which they have in their life. Goals are great because they give us something to strive for, to work toward in our daily walk through life but it is the type of goals and our own character which is reflected in our walk which others see.

Jesus said that there would always be poor people with us but He meant those who are poor in spirit, not necessarily those without money enough to get by. The apostle Paul said that his goal was to attain the high calling of Jesus Christ. In truth, all Christians should be striving toward that goal like Paul and yet many see their salvation as just a ticket to escape hell and enter Heaven…nothing more.

We are to use our salvation as a platform to go and tell the world about our Savior. We are not to be sitting in a pew in church just for the attention or for the food but for the instruction of the Word and for growth in grace so that we can go and tell others about what Jesus has done for us! Attending church on holidays or for special occasions is great but if that is the only time that you attend church then your life with Jesus is lacking a true relationship. Even Satan attends church more than that!

God gave a part of Himself, His only Son, to redeem the sin in humanity. It is offered to all and it is available to all but many will not accept it. His Life was given for all and yet so many refuse to either believe in Him at all or they don’t want the salvation which comes with a price. That price is not for things which we have to do to attain salvation but it is the price of living as a follower of Jesus Christ. If your salvation is real and you have truly accepted Him as your Savior, being changed in your heart to become a new creation, then you should learn to walk with Him daily. This is what many don’t want because they don’t want to give up their so-called “normal” lives.

Jesus said that we would have to “take up your cross and follow me”, He didn’t mean that we were going to be crucified but we would have to crucify our old way of life so that we could successfully follow Him daily. This action on our part is not our work toward salvation it is our duty because of what He has given to us freely! We can’t earn our salvation because the price was paid by Him, all we need to do is accept the gift of salvation and walk in the newness of the Life we have been given! FB_IMG_1521382243378

Vanity and pride

The two most destructive and seductive sins in the world are vanity and pride. Why? Because they are tied together and they form the foundation for almost all sins in our world today. These two are also responsible for Lucifer’s sin and his rebellion against God’s authority above all. You would think that writing about these might be easy, but it really isn’t. Because I don’t wish to offend my followers nor anyone else who might come upon this site.

These two emotions cause sinful feelings toward oneself and toward others because they tend to make us feel more important than we really are. The problem with that is when we consider those feelings of superiority to others, Satan comes to us and we begin to believe that we truly are better or more important. This is not a phenomenon which affects us before we become Christians it also affects our church leadership sometimes.

Can these be overcome? Yes, with much Bible study and prayer hopefully before these feelings get out of hand in your life or in the life of someone you know or love. God has a plan for each of us and if we don’t seek out that plan through the study of His Word and prayer, then we won’t know what that plan may be. The sins of vanity and pride are such that they have brought down rulers of many kingdoms in the past and they bring the careers of many today to a halt.

Learning about God’s love for us through His Word and by studying it is the only real way to know what His Will for your life is. Prayer along with that study keeps us in contact with God, not only at the time of our study, but all during our daily life walking with Him.

While it is true that there is a good type of pride there is also a pride which leads to destruction which is where vanity comes in. Essentially, vanity and pride are two different sides of the same coin. They aren’t separate just different. Like light and dark, one is the presence of light and the other is the absence of it. You can’t make a dark lamp because light drives away the darkness. Pride in your accomplishments or your children’s accomplishments is fine but when you think of yourself or of your child as being better than others then you are straying into the vain area of pride.

Humble

Pride goes before a fall. God has given us a glimpse of His Wisdom in our Bibles, His Word which we have access to in our world today, don’t ignore it or turn away from it. Because God loves you more dearly than you can imagine and it is in your best interest that He has placed the knowledge needed for your life and mine in His Word. All you should do in this life is covered there so learn from it and seek Him while you read it. Amen.

Grace

His grace is an extension of benevolence translated into action that releases His enabling power into our lives.

Seeing that we can never merit His favor, we are indebted to Him to extend to us His mercy and bestow upon us His grace whereby we may respond to Him in an acceptable manner. From beginning to end we are dependent upon Him, for life itself, for all sustenance by which we continue to live and have our existence, and most importantly for our spiritual life without which we are but the “living dead”.

God extends His grace to us each day, yet many don’t perceive it nor even care that it is available. Jesus died and rose again to give us the grace and the hope of Heaven and eternity along with forgiveness from the Father. So why are so many churches today closing their doors? Because of the time in which we live, that’s why. This time frame in which we are all living right now is just prior to the Tribulation but the church and the Holy Spirit will be taken from the Earth before that.

God will still work in the hearts of mankind during the Tribulation but it will be much harder to give your heart to Him because if you aren’t serving the person who is in power at the time, there will be consequences. How long in coming will this be? I have no idea. Even Jesus said to His disciples that that day or hour is only known by God.

There have been many people in the past and right up until recently who thought they knew the day or the hour but they were mistaken. We can’t know the mind of God or His timing but there will be no mistake when the church is taken up to Heaven. Make sure that you are a part of that company and not one of those left behind.

Bridge2Salvation

Pain and healing

God is with you in all of your struggles, no matter what may be going on. I know that there are many people who are hurting in many different ways today. Some because of the loss of a loved one, some because of health issues, many because of the lack of food and other things. So…why is it so hard for people in the church, regardless of denomination, to help those in need? I know that many churches do have programs and monies given to charities as well as food banks and other charitable functions, but the number of those doing this is small compared to the actual need that is out there.

The church, the body of Christ on Earth, is responsible for those who need His presence in their lives. Whether it is by food or medicine or whatever it may be, those in need truly need us to be Christ to them. After all, we may be the only representative of Jesus that they ever see in this world.

While it is true that some pain is useful to bring our faith up to a level which we can be more useful to God’s purposes, He doesn’t cause the pain but allows it just as He did with the prophet Job. Job faithfully served God in all of his work and yet the Accuser challenged God in this saying that “he will curse you” if you will allow me to afflict him. Satan could not touch Job without God’s permission as He had placed a hedge about him because of his service to God in being a priest for his family.

Our purpose as Christians is to be priests in the world wherever we may serve. In the boardroom or in hospitals or police stations or whatever job that we hold, we are to be His light in those places. While it is true that today showing your faith in God can get you fired from your job, if that happens then God will place you in a place where you can do His will in that place.

God’s will for each of us cannot be stopped or thwarted by Satan or by anyone else, if God has ordained that you should be His representative in a place then that is where you will be. If He calls you to be an evangelist or a pastor then whether you refuse the calling at first or not, it will come to pass in time when you realize that your running from His call will avail you an escape from it!

In my past, I felt the call to become a minister long before I surrendered to that calling, but I decided that I wasn’t ready for it. The thing which I didn’t know at the time was that my decision of readiness wasn’t mine to make…the call had been made and it wouldn’t be revoked. The only time that God ever repented of anything was in creating mankind, because of their evil and wickedness, yet He still saved a remnant on the ark. God’s call on the church to be what He intended hasn’t been rescinded in two thousand years and it won’t be until He calls us to immortality and we are bound for Heaven.

No boundaries

In the world today there are borders which are not visible on the ground which separate nations from each other. But there is no boundary between us and God Himself, at least not anymore. When Jesus said that “It is finished” on the cross the curtain between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies ripped from top to bottom. This didn’t happen because of an earthquake or by someone cutting it but because of the Holy Spirit giving access to God’s mercy seat.

Why did this happen? Because the sinless Lamb of God had died and paid the price for all of mankind, not just a few people but for all who had lived and died in the past, the present and in the future where we are today! God’s love doesn’t have any boundaries, regardless of the rhetoric that we hear in the world. His love is such that He gave a part of Himself, His Son, to pay for all of our sins so that we can have access to Heaven and to Him. Nobody else would do that!

The question for us today is this: Do you set boundaries in your life where God is NOT welcome? If you do then you are limiting His work in your life and through you for the world around you. God loves each of us and He will draw each of us to Him when we feel the conviction of our sinful ways. That conviction comes through the Holy Spirit and each time that you feel it, if you have pushed it away or ignored it, it will get a little bit weaker and not quite as loud. Until one day, you may not feel it or hear it at all.

Don’t push Him away. Listen for His call on your life because it doesn’t matter what you may have done in the past, God is willing to forgive and take you into His family. Paul and Moses had both committed murder, yet God used them in mighty ways! Your life can be a witness to others who may believe wrongly that they can’t be saved, but they can be if they are willing to repent of their sins and follow Jesus.

The Bible is God’s Word and it is not just some old dusty book written by a bunch of old men! It is the Living Word! The Bible is a testament of God’s love for us and it is the tangible representation of the Son of God that we have today. John called Him the Living Word and that is what the Bible is as well. Each person who reads it gets a different message from the same passages because He speaks to each of us differently.

Don’t turn away from Him or the study of His Word because it is the mind of God which was given to us for instruction and training and for wisdom in this life! There is no education in the world which contains the wisdom in this Book except maybe a few seminaries where future pastors are trained. God loves us and He is coming back soon, so be watchful and be praying for those who haven’t given their lives to Jesus.

Today…

For those of us in America, today is Mother’s Day and it was celebrated in most churches this morning.

Mother’s do an amazing job of being much more than just a wife or a mother. They are teachers, housekeepers, taxi drivers, coaches, nurses, chefs, gardeners, and so much more. Do they do all of these jobs? Yes, many of them perform all of these jobs during the school year and every day during the summer too. When do they find the time for themselves? Most of them make the time in small increments…a little bit here or there.

The time which they give to themselves is tiny compared to the time that they give to their children and family, but they manage it in stride usually without missing a beat. God gave women a remarkable amount of strength and fortitude and so many talents until many of them are overflowing with it. Mom’s are the original multi-taskers and they have been doing it for a long, long time!

God shows much of His ability and love through the actions and the abilities of our mothers because that is how we perceive Him and get a small glimpse of His love for us. For many of us, our mother’s love may be the only human manifestation of God’s Love that we feel during our life. Many fathers are too busy or maybe they were raised to not show their emotions to others.

I could tell that my Dad loved me when we were together, but he rarely said so. My grandfather wasn’t so open with his feelings either but I could tell that he loved me and was proud of me. God loves each of us more deeply than we can understand or know until we are in His presence. Yet, God’s love is evident in the Bible because of all of the things which He has done for the world even if most of the world doesn’t love Him or follow Him. God still cares for us which is why He sent Jesus to die on a cross and rise again…just so we could have a hope of eternity!

His love is deeper and wider than we can know until we are with Him, so make sure of your salvation while there is time. Life is short, eternity is not, so make sure of where you will spend it.

God’s Love

God’s love is more than we can believe or understand and that is why we have so much trouble believing. Even when you read the “Love chapter”, 1 Corinthians 13, most of us think this is referring to love that we have toward each other. In reality, it is a human description of God’s Love for us. Why do I call it a human description? Because the Bible was written with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, just as the words here are, but our vocabulary is limited by the words that we use.

God’s love for us is so…deep and unknowable until we can’t begin to describe it in terms which we can understand. We can compare it to our love for our children, whether we are a father or a mother but even that falls terribly short. Yes, we love our children but God loves each of us in a deeper way that we just can’t comprehend. Does He really love those who hate Him? Yes, and He loved the world enough that He sent Jesus to die in our place to provide each of us a way to come to Him through His Son. Whether we accept that invitation or not is still our choice though.

God doesn’t want slaves or instinctual service from us, He wants a relationship with us! It doesn’t matter what we have done or who we are, He wants to know you and He wants you and me to get to know Him!

1 Corinthians 13 New International Version
13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

This is the description of how we should be to our wives and our children as well as toward each other in the church. It is a description which falls short of the love which God has for us, but it is how we are to be toward each other in Christ. Can you do this without Him? Partially, but not completely. Living and loving in this manner is not something which we are able to do on our own. God designed us to be this way but when sin entered the Garden our Spirit was cut off from God until we realized that we truly need Him in every way, every single day!

Don’t turn away from God and His love for you. He longs to show it to you in ways which you may not be able to see right now, but He will if you just give Him a chance in your life to change your heart and draw closer to Him each and every day.

Pathways to eternity

I know that most of you have heard the songs about the respective pathways to eternity. There is a “highway to hell” and a “stairway to heaven”, but have you ever wondered why such a difference? Well, it likely has something to do with this…
Pathways2Eternity It kinda makes sense when you read it in the Bible because it says that the road which leads to hell is a broad road and many will find it. The pathway (stairway) to heaven is narrow and there will be few who find it.

God and Jesus never said that the way to Heaven would be an easy path to find or to travel on but the gateway to Heaven is a narrow gate or road and few will find it.

Many people in the world will find themselves on a road with many other so-called “believers” yet they are on the road to hell. Why do I say it this way? Because there are many people who think they are Christians just by attending church services, whether they do so regularly or just occasionally.

Becoming a Christian is not so easy as just attending church, it requires that you turn to Him when you feel His calling on your heart. If you sit there with white knuckles and decide not to give your life to Him, then you have refused His calling. If you do this each time that you feel His call, the call on your heart will get weaker and weaker. That is how we quench the Holy Spirit’s power in our lives, even before it has a chance to change our hearts.

Please, seek Jesus and His Spirit to change your heart because eternity is a very long time to pay for a decision against accepting Jesus as your Savior.

Darkness and Light

In our world today we live in places of both darkness and light. Sometimes it can be seen or heard or reported in the news, sometimes it is more spiritual in nature. Particularly when someone you may know seems to go off the deep end unexpectedly when you don’t see it coming and nobody can explain any reason for it. Then there are times when we see an unexpected kindness in places where it doesn’t show up very often and it seems to grow by being passed on to others because of a kindness which a stranger did.

No one seems to understand how either of these can be seen in our world. The darkness which rises on our television screens when people are killed for no apparent reason. The light which shows up when someone either gives their life to save another or when someone does something for people they don’t know and didn’t have to do it but they did.

How can both exist in our world today? Because of the war between good and evil or God and Satan. This is the reason for both being seen in our world today. Sometimes or rather most of the time, we hear about the darkness more than we do the light simply because it gets our attention and it makes a better news story. Oh, there will be a small story at the end of the news where you will hear about a kindly man or woman who does something for others and they try to make it seem as if kindness was truly rare in our world.

Sometimes kindness and love really are rare in our world, but I believe that is because it doesn’t sell well. Kindness doesn’t make good news or copy for a newspaper. Evil or darkness makes really good news stories regardless of the media which picks it up. Also, we tend to pay attention to bad news more than we do when we hear about something which is good but unexpected. Why? For the same reason that the media picks up bad news… we look at it as more interesting, even when it may be a tragedy like the school shootings in the past few years.

If we are trying to follow in Jesus’ footsteps in our life we should be doing as much as possible to spread some kindness, some light into the world. Not for fame or recognition but to bring the world’s attention to Jesus and His teachings. A small kindness may not go very far but sometimes it goes a lot farther than you think it does.

We are special to God

YouAreSpecial Have you ever needed help which people cannot provide? Most of us have been through exactly that in our lives, especially before we found out that we NEED Him! There are many times in life where each of us truly needs God.

In truth…we need Him every day. Can we get through the day without Him? Yes, but we will likely make more mistakes during those times while we aren’t living each day with Him, following Him through the day.

I pray that you will seek Him out while you are yet living on this Earth because one day you will face Him and you will give an account of WHY you chose to live without Jesus.

If you believe that you are good enough to get into Heaven without Jesus, you may try…but it won’t work! We are not able to be completely free from sin on our own. We are only human and our nature from a young age is to be sinful. If you don’t believe me, tell a three-year-old or a five-year-old child not to touch the jar of cookies. Even when you are still in the room they will be working out in their head how they can do it.

Then, when they do get a cookie or two, ask them if they got those from the jar that you told them not to get into. They will most likely tell you “Nope, I didn’t get any cookies”. Many of us who are parents have heard this many times, it is nothing new. We are born with a sinful nature and even when we are too young to know that we are telling lies, we know how to do it and we don’t need someone to teach us how.

joy Be joyful in the Lord because He is thy Helper and your strength in times of trouble. God knows your trials and the problems that beset you in your days because there is nothing which is hidden from Him. Amen