Category: Believe in the One Who saves

Follow Jesus


Romans 14   Disagreement between believers.

In Rome believers squabbled over whether or not to eat meat or whether to observe Jewish holy days and customs. If they had kept their convictions to themselves, there would’ve been no problem but they began to criticize and judge one another. The squabbling hasn’t abated even today. We argue over many more things, such as the color of carpet or which flowers to put out on a certain day or week. Some churches argue over even less important things than these, but the point is…we are supposed to be united in Christ! Regardless of our denomination or doctrine, yet the collective church is very divided in many ways.

Verses 1-12

In this section of the chapter, Paul begins and ends it with an admonition. He addressed those who were strong in their faith and did not waver toward holy days or diets but kept their freedom in Jesus Christ. He also addressed those who were worried about their diet or the Law and told them that they were immature in their faith. Many people think that Christians who follow strict rules in their faith are the more mature, when it is really the other way around. In the Roman church, the weak and immature Christians were judging the more mature Christians and the strong Christians were despising the weak Christians.

Paul told them to welcome one another and gave four reasons why they should. We are only focusing on one today.

The first reason is: God has received us into His family

It is not our individual responsibility to decide the requirements for Christian fellowship in a church, only the Lord can do this. To set up man-made restrictions or rules based on the personal prejudices or convictions is to go beyond the Word of God. Perhaps St. Augustine got it right when he said: “In essentials-unity; in non-essentials-liberty; in all things charity”. We are free in Jesus Christ to do that which brings honor and respect to the church and to the Word which we hold as the Truth.

When God sent Peter to take the gospel to the gentiles, the church criticized Peter because he ate with these new Christians. But God revealed His acceptance of them because He gave them the Holy Spirit just as He had done in Jerusalem at Pentecost. Peter did not stay in this freedom because later he refused to fellowship with the Gentiles at Antioch, where Paul had to rebuke him.

God showed both Peter and Paul that Christian fellowship was not to be based on food or religious calendars, but on their faith in Jesus and the freedom that we are given through Him.

In every church there are some who are more mature in their faith and some who are weak. The weak and the strong, young Christians in the faith and those who have been studying God’s Word for many years, are not to look down on each other because one feels freedom through Jesus and the other sees being a Christian as “following the rules”.

Peter asked the Lord, “Lord, what shall this man do?”; the Lord’s reply was, “What is that to you? Follow thou me!”

In other words, the Lord told him this: “Peter, make sure you have made Me Lord of your life. Let Me worry about John” or any other believer. When other Christians are criticizing other Christians for what they do, we are being judges. Don’t worry about what someone else is doing, follow Jesus and let Him be your Lord!

Paul emphasized this in verse 8 when he said: “Whether we live, therefore, or whether we die, we are the Lord’s”. Our responsibility is to the Lord and following Him in our life, not worrying about other Christians and their lives. If your brother in Christ is still drinking beer, don’t chastise him. If Jesus hasn’t convicted him of this, let him be. The same goes with smoking or any other so-called “vice”, follow Jesus in your life and let Jesus take care of other Christians.

Paul asked those who were young in their faith, the weaker Christians, “Why are you judging your brother?”; then he asked the same question to the stronger more mature Christians in the church. Both of them will stand at the judgment and be judged by the Lord in their walk with Him, so what is that to you or me?

All of our works, good or bad, will be judged at the judgment seat of Christ by the Lord Himself. It is not our place to do so in this life and it has nothing to do with our sins or our salvation since Christ paid the price for all of them and as believers our sins cannot be held against us anymore. In 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 Paul compares our ministries in Christ with the building of a temple. If we build with cheap materials, the fire will burn them up. If we use precious, lasting materials, then our temple (works) will last. If our works for the Lord pass the test, we receive the reward. If they are burned up, we lose our rewards but we are saved “yet so as by fire”.

Anything that we do in this life for the Lord and through His Strength will last, we should make sure of our faith in Him and our belief in Him. Your life is your witness just as every word and deed which others see you do. If it is done to please Jesus and would be approved by Him, then you are secure in your salvation. Don’t worry about what others say or do in their walk with Him, because Jesus is the final Judge and it is His approval which we should seek!

Where is God in this?


This is the feeling I get when I watch the news or any coverage of the devastation left behind by these hurricanes this year. Yet, nobody seems to be asking or answering the question. Even in religious programming! I get emails for donations to help, but who is actually helping these people? Those in Puerto Rico have no electricity, no clean water and very little food; people in Florida nursing homes are dying because of lack of electricity and the heat, so where is the help that is supposed to be there?

You and I know that God is there in all of this, yet there is no one telling the news media about His Presence. Samaritan’s Purse is in Texas and in Florida and I imagine they have some people in the Caribbean helping out as much as they can. There are products like water and food that are being delivered as quickly as possible but there are many who are angry because they want everything back the way it was before! They want it right now!!

God is there! His grace and mercy is there, but people don’t recognize it for what it is. We are so accustomed to getting what we want right now! We as a society don’t know how to have patience enough to wait for Him to bring help and food and water or whatever you need! HE is always near, especially to those who believe in Him but He is also there with those who haven’t given their hearts to Him. He is waiting for you to decide that you need Him.

That is why He has given us free choice to use it in our life and our decisions. We have a choice of whether we will believe in Him, and live our lives according to His will as taught in the Bible. He also gives us the choice to NOT believe in Him or in Jesus and just live our lives according to our own desires and our beliefs or lack of belief!

Why does He give us a choice? If we didn’t have a choice, we wouldn’t be human beings! We would be more like robots or automatons and that is not the kind of relationship that God wants with us at all!

Would you want a relationship with someone who doesn’t have a choice? They do what you want, when you want, no questions and they always hear you when you speak. Sounds a lot like slavery or a robot or something doesn’t it?

When you love someone deeply, don’t you want them to love you as well? God wants that relationship with us. That doesn’t mean that He needs our love, but He desires it. Parents know this because they love their children and they feel love from their children when they get old enough to know what love really is. That is the kind of relationship of love that God wants with us!

He is always near to us no matter what situation is happening in our life, when we are believers in Him. If you don’t know Him or believe in Him, he is near but not in the same way until you call on Him to give your life to Him. Then He is immediately there and will be near from that point on if you give your heart to Him.IamtheWay

At the end of your life….


ourlovingsaviorWhat will you do? If you have time to decide or make a decision about your life, what will you do? Many who look at this will wonder, “What else could I do at the end?”. Consider your religious decisions in your life. Have you given your heart to Jesus? Do you know Him? Does Jesus know you?

I don’t mean “know about Him”, I mean know Him and be known by Him!

I know that Christians today are hated because I see it on the news from time to time. I have also had some nasty remarks and comments here because of what I write. But, I am a preacher and my call is to tell others about my Savior! If I don’t do what I am called to do, then I am guilty of not being true to my calling and I will pay for it in some way.

My salvation is sure, but any reward that God might have given me because of my witness will be tainted. I have to write what I feel in my heart should be said.

God loves you and me and every person on Earth, whether they know Him or believe in Him or not. But what will you do on the day or maybe the week before you die, if you get that chance, and you haven’t made your decision about Him yet? Many people, some of them wealthy but most of them were not, have come to the end of their lives and found that they feel that they wasted it.

They look back at their life and if they are wealthy, they see so much good which they could’ve done but didn’t. Now they don’t have the time to do those things. The big problem is also that they feel empty and afraid, particularly if they haven’t given their heart to Jesus. Many of them feel the weight of eternity coming toward them, especially if they are dealing with cancer which is going to take their life.

When this happens, they wonder what else they should’ve done with their life. They can see that their life doesn’t have many days ahead and they feel anxious about what else they need to do, yet some of them are so rigid in their beliefs or lack of belief, that they have no idea what to do. Which frightens them even more.

Christians are not the monsters that some people make us out to be and God is not angry with you over your life’s choices whether they were good or bad or just uncaring toward His offer of salvation. God knows if and when you will make that decision but He doesn’t push you toward it and He is not going to take your choice or your ability to choose away. It is your responsibility to choose to seek Him, read His Word and ask Him to show you what you need to do.

His love toward you is unconditional because He loves you even when you don’t love Him. Just as your spouse can’t be forced to love you, each of us can’t be forced to love God or forced to follow Jesus. Just as sheep will not be forced to follow someone who doesn’t care for them, we won’t either.

“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Matt. 6:33

Wealth and poverty


I read something earlier today that bothered me because it was a kind of put-down of people who don’t have as much as others. In other words, they are poor. The article spoke of someone who eats “ketchup sandwiches, how pathetic”; I am not angry about their attitude but I knew someone who loved those sandwiches and I am married to a lady who liked mayonnaise sandwiches. You know, life throws all of us a curve now and then and sometimes we get hit with it a bit hard at times. When that happens, our life can go “off the rails” so to speak and it isn’t as acceptable or wonderful as other people’s lives.

PovertyWhat is my point with this? Here is a quote from an advertisement for a movie coming out soon:  Wealth and fame crumble when compared to life in Christ. 

Wealth is good when it is used in useful ways to help others and not squandered on things and vacations just because you can. Our lives can be so much more when we give our heart and our lives to Jesus the Christ. Not because He will make us wealthy, but because when we belong to Him…we already are. He is the Creator and we have been adopted into His family! He could give me a pound of platinum in the blink of an eye, but what good is that compared to eternity?

Why do you think that those who live in poverty in many areas of the world, give their lives to Jesus when they hear the message about Him? It is because it doesn’t matter what your circumstances in this life are, when you die and go to be with Him then you will have eternity to worship and praise Him and rule with Him one day. This temporary life with its fickle fame and fortune will be gone one day, whether it is by your death or by the time of Tribulation, none of this stuff matters!

Life is more than money and fame and houses or land! It is about you serving your Savior! He gave up His position in Heaven to come to Earth as a baby and be a man who did not sin and then die for your sins and everyone else’s sins, past, present and future! He did this not for fame or wealth but for LOVE. He, God our Father in Heaven, loves each of us SO MUCH that He gave a part of Himself for each of us, Jesus the Son. If you don’t think that His Son meant as much to Him as your child then you don’t know how deeply God felt. Even I don’t know how deeply God feels our betrayal and our rejection of Him or His Son, nobody can understand this because His ways are not like ours!

Take the time to learn about Him by reading and studying the Bible. Pray about what you read and be still and know that He is God! There is no other! The wealth of the entire world wouldn’t make anyone happy, it would only make them miserable because money cannot buy the things in life which truly matter! No matter how much or how little you have in money, God loves you and will always be there. Money can be taken from you, but it won’t buy love or friendship or anything which gives life its meaning.

This is why poor people always seek Jesus because knowing Him as your Savior makes you an adopted child of God, the Creator of all. What more could you ask for?

Too many distractions


.In the past, almost two decades (just shy by ~2 years), we have seen and are still seeing that distractions like texting, game play (virtual and connected through cell towers), console games and computer games are taking our millennial generation. They are not paying much attention to real life! It is true that some of them are paying attention, but it seems that the majority that get our attention on the news as spoiled brats are exactly that!

They are distracted from real life and don’t care to study real history and actual English as a language. Too much emphasis on abbreviations and shortcuts from texting is to blame as well as our education system which allows this. What has happened to discipline and character in education and in our children? In my opinion, it began to erode away when prayer and study of the Bible was taken out of the classroom. When prayer was taken out in 1963, the morals and the character of our teachers and their students began a very long slide downhill and it hasn’t stopped yet.

God has not stopped caring for us even though we have pushed Him as far away as we can. Truly, it is time that we got back to learning why the Pilgrims came to America in the first place. It is also time that we studied the Bible, not just as a historical document but as a standard by which our lives should be patterned. Before anyone shouts out that women were not allowed a voice and slavery was deemed as acceptable, I am not saying that any of that should be brought into view. I am speaking of the moral teachings from God’s Word and the lessons learned from the New Testament and Jesus’ disciples. Those are the more important and useful areas that our education system needs today!

For many years, the Bible was the main textbook used in schools until it was pushed aside in the late 1800’s. Although, it did survive as a classroom text into the mid twentieth century, it was finally taken out of the classroom and largely out of family life except for those who attend church occasionally. We need to get back to learning about and knowing God as our Savior and as our Teacher as well!

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14

Our God is forgiving and loving and willing to come to our aid if we will acknowledge that we have sinned by pushing Him away and repent of that terrible sin, then seek Him out as our God and our Savior, learning to follow Him in all that we do. But, today our world on the Internet and social media and in the news despises Him and His Son, Jesus. Any mention of Jesus will almost get you arrested today and I never thought I would live to see that day come.

Our world, not just everywhere else, but here in America is becoming a dangerous place for people who believe in Jesus. Have you noticed that? You can claim to worship a tree or a fish or a little fat man or even just claim that you are your own god, and everyone seems to be fine with that! But…if you claim to pray to the God of the Bible or believe in Jesus the Christ, our Messiah, then you have crossed the line into dangerous territory. Nobody wants to hear that nonsense! How dare you bring up the name of God or Jesus in public!

It is a shame that it hasn’t been brought up many, many times before! For over fifty years we have been pushing God away and out of our schools and out of public life and display and quite frankly if it doesn’t come to an end then the world itself will. God is a patient Creator, this much is very true. He has allowed us to go farther than the world did in Adam’s day and by Noah’s time, which wasn’t very far apart, God had enough. We have been fortunate that He hasn’t had enough far sooner than now. The only real reason which has kept Him from acting on our stupidity and arrogance was His promise to the Jewish people.

He had promised to bring them back into their land and after nearly two millennia He did exactly that! Then they regained control over Jerusalem in 1967, fifty years ago this year. His promises to them are the reason His patience has lasted so long, so yes we are fortunate indeed.

I pray that anyone reading this will seek Him out, not as a learning experience, but humbly and with a contrite heart. Leave your distractions behind, whatever they may be, and follow Jesus because He is the only Savior of mankind. Anything or anyone else is a fake and a liar.

Quiet listening


I know, it sounds like something Yoda might say. So, what do we do with this idea in the real world?

In many places on Earth, quiet listening could be used to listen for survivors or for calls for help. In some places it could be part of a time of meditation or maybe prayer. For believers in Jesus and those who are trying to understand the wisdom found in God’s Word, quiet listening is a way to hear God speak to you.

Although it is hard to find a place where there is enough quiet to sit or walk and just listen with our ears and with our Spirit. Life doesn’t seem to allow for much quiet time spent in prayer and listening for God’s voice, so we should make the time. Then we have to check our schedule and find a place to put this quiet time. Why not do like Jesus did?

Either go off by yourself into a quiet room before bedtime or get up early in the morning before the day gets too busy to intrude on your quiet time with God.

In today’s busy mixed up world, it is hard to find either of these quiet times. I tend to find mine after everyone else goes to bed or at least quiets down around bedtime. I have always been a sort of night person anyway, so I have always stayed up late whether I was seeking God or not.

My point for this post…this little bit of wisdom snatched from my time with Him is this: don’t take your day so seriously that you can’t find a quiet place to just sit down and listen to God. Life is serious it is true, but your relationship with your Creator is far more serious because it leads to eternity with Him! Don’t turn away or say that you don’t have time for God! Remember, God put all of your DNA together in such a certain way that He knows you far better than you will ever know yourself!

Believe me, God can slow your life down in order to get your attention so don’t ever tell God that you don’t have time for Him. He will see to it that you DO have the time to listen when He really wants to.

Being a Christian is not a birthright nor do you get it by sitting in church for forty or more years. It is a privilege and an honor to be called into the family of God. It is also something which you can really make a mess of if you don’t take the time to listen to Him. You can think you are doing what He wants you to do, when it may be something totally different that God has in mind. If you aren’t listening to Him or for His voice, you will miss it.

Only one man was ever called from a burning bush and heard God’s voice audibly, so you truly need to be quiet and pray that He will speak to you in your quiet time. If He has something to say, which I believe He does, to you or for you to know then you will hear it but only if you are listening.

Time will tell


Old and new, wrecked and fixed, upgraded and better than it was.

What do you mean by that?

Long story shortened, it has to do with our car and each of us as well. It wasn’t really old, a 2016 model we bought in ’15, now it looks new again. It was wrecked a few weeks ago, now it is fixed. As far as the “upgraded and better” part, that doesn’t apply to the car exactly. It does, however, apply to more than one thing in our lives I suppose. I am building a new computer, kinda, using someone’s old hard drive so it is going to be upgraded and better than it was.

The other part of that is that when we come to know Jesus and He lives in our hearts, we become upgraded and better than we were before. We have our hearts (our soul really) cleaned up and given a shiny brand-new outside and we are changed from the inside out. Gradually, as we study the Bible to learn more about God and Jesus and what we are expected to do with this new life, we become more like Jesus.

It isn’t an immediate transformation and sometimes old habits and patterns in our lives linger on. Some for longer than we would like. But, eventually, if we are diligent with our Bible study, we will become more like Jesus. Granted, we can’t walk on water or calm a storm like He could, but we will know what grieved His heart about us and others in our world. We will begin, like baby steps, to understand what righteous anger and indignation means. We will also learn to take those problems to God and leave them there.

Some people may say that “living like that is a cop-out”, but it isn’t. It is harder to pray about something which is wrong, whether it is a wrong done to us or our family, and then leave the problem in God’s hands. Because you know just as well as I do that humans want to fix things ourselves. We usually make the problem worse and then we really have some serious praying and soul-searching to do.

No, being transformed into the likeness of Jesus is not an instant or overnight process…it takes time. It is true that His Spirit comes into your heart when you ask Him to come, but the change is usually hampered by our nature. What you did prior to realizing that you needed Jesus in your heart, that part of you still fights with your new Spirit and causes your old habits and desires to cause you to stumble in your walk with Jesus.

This one thing, which many preachers don’t talk about, causes many people to give up and turn back to their old life and their sinful lives, even after giving their life to Jesus. These are the ones which Jesus was speaking about when He told the parable about the thorns and the cares of the world. “Lacking a root, the seed sprung up but quickly withered away“; being a Christian is not an immediate change nor is it complete at the beginning. You and I won’t be complete in our transformation until we stand with Him in heaven, but with study and prayer in God’s Word we can strive to be more like Him while we are still in our bodies.

Seek Him to become an upgraded and better vessel for His Spirit and strive to be more like Him as much as it is possible to do. Seek Him so that your ministry will be better than mine or others so that He can say to you, “Well done, my faithful servant”.

What will happen?


Today, I am writing because frankly I have nothing else to do at the moment. There has been a prediction that this weekend the rapture of the church will happen and all people who have given their hearts to Jesus will be taken to Heaven.

If God chooses to make this “prediction” come true it will happen, otherwise this is just a joke. Nobody knows when He is coming for the saved of this world and there is no way to predict it. As I stated in another post, God knows exactly the day and the hour when this will occur, not the angels in Heaven, not the demons on Earth, not Satan or even Jesus knows the timing of this event. God will tell them when it is happening and at that precise moment it will happen.

There won’t be a warning or a notice given, but it will happen. Anything else that God wants us to know is in His Word and we shouldn’t be changing words around or picking what we like or don’t like from it. The Spirit of God gave the words to those who wrote each book of the Bible. It wasn’t made up by men and it wasn’t written by old men having dreams, although some did.

God predicted many things which have come to pass long ago. Most of those prophecies have come true and the few which have not are the ones which directly affect Israel’s future. So, when will we be taken up? I haven’t the foggiest notion of that date or hour, nobody does except God and He will signal the angels to take care of it when it is time and not before.

Make sure you and your loved ones are ready because as the Bible says, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye we who are alive and remain will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air and be with Him forever“.

God doesn’t want any to perish but if you haven’t given your heart to Jesus, then you will be left here and will go through the Tribulation with the rest of the world. Be sure of your salvation because today is the day of salvation. Seek Him for salvation because it can be found in no other religion.

Are you full?


Are your bills paid? Is your house paid for possibly? Don’t be so proud of what you have that you miss what you need to hear from God! 

What do you mean, “what I need to hear?” I am rich, I don’t need anything!

These are the words and the thoughts which enter the minds of those who don’t have any worldly worries. The problem with this thinking is that they haven’t heard what God has been saying to them. That is what they need to hear. It is what many of us need to hear, regardless of which church we may go to or how much study we attempt to do in the Bible, if any at all!

YES, God is still speaking from His Word, through His preachers and teachers in the different churches and online too. God speaks in the sunrise each day and in all of the daily miracles which happen but we don’t notice them. The clouds, the wind, the air that we breathe are all gifts from Him. God expresses His love for us in all of these ways.

So, why do we ignore them? Because most of them, if not all of them, happen every day and they are commonplace to us. We don’t notice because there is no urgency to it and no uniqueness to each of these things, yet God gives them to us and to the whole Earth each day.

themissingpieceIs it so hard to believe that the Bible is true? Is it beyond our understanding that God is the Creator that the Bible says HE is? I don’t think that it is any harder to believe that God is our Creator than it is to believe that all of life on Earth, from bacteria to blue whales, came from a puddle of protein! Truly, I don’t believe anything about evolution because building from nothing to the most complex of life is so far-fetched that it is impossible!

God designed our world and each life…each person in this world for the purpose of fellowship with Himself. Then He provided the way of blotting out the sins of those who would believe in Jesus by His death on the cross. God loves the drug addict and the pusher and the hooker and the pimp and He loves them just as much as He loves you or me or anyone else on Earth!

All we need to do is listen to His Word and see Him in our world and in our life. Believe in Him and the Son which He sent to take the punishment for your sins, regardless of how long your list might be. To God Who is Perfect and Holy, stealing a paper clip is just as bad as killing thousands of people, even if it was in the name of some “religion”! The love of God transcends time and space and fills our souls with joy that we can’t contain when we finally realize His Truth. From that point on, we are slaves of His majesty and we should tell as many people as we possibly can about our Savior Who gave His life for me and you and every other person, good or bad or fat or mean.

Will all of us be saved? No. Because, not everyone will listen and hear with their Spiritual ears and accept His Son as the sacrifice which paid it all for them. Some will hear this message or one like it and say that it can’t be as simple as believing in Jesus and just walk away from the offer of eternity.

So…are you full of….joy? Happiness? joySorrow? Fear? Anger? Loneliness? Is it something else which controls your days and nights? Alcohol or drugs or maybe sex? The problem is that most of these are what we try to fill up on when we find that there is an empty place inside, but we don’t know what to put there. It isn’t a what….its Jesus. This picture shows the very essence of the joy that we can feel because our Savior gave Himself for us so that we can know Him from this moment into eternity…if we will accept Him.

What do you need?


In truth that is the WRONG QUESTION!! It is not what do you need or how much money do you need, but Who do you need? Is it that hard to understand? It is Jesus the Christ that our world needs! Every country, every individual, NEEDS Jesus in their life! Why do they not know about Him as their Savior? It is because of us.

Americans claim to be Christians but our society and the culture,which every other country sees evidence of in the news, does not show that our country and our people truly are Christians!

It is because of our collective claim of being Christian but it has a faulty proof.

We have come to think or believe that just because we are born into a family which goes to church that we are Christians. Some think that because they have attended church most or all of their lives, they are Christians. Christianity does not come to each of us because of osmosis or proximity. Each of us is called by God through interaction with the Holy Spirit and by faith as well.

The person and nature of Jesus is the One that came to save us and He put His nature as God the Son aside to do this. That is something that we don’t understand because our needs or rather our wants are not centered around being disciples of Jesus, which is what we are actually called to do.

Although, in being disciples we are supposed to be more like Jesus too. What do I mean by that? I mean that we are supposed to tell others about Jesus at work, in Walmart, on the street if the opportunity presents itself. In other words, we are supposed to take Jesus with us and be His witness to every person that we meet. If we don’t know them, then we should get to know them.

I don’t mean to be pushy about it and don’t act like a street preacher yelling at people, but if or when the opportunity arises then tell them what Jesus did for you. God sent Jesus to all people and when Jesus told His disciples to go into all of the world and preach the gospel, He meant ALL OF THE WORLD! Good places and places you might not feel comfortable with, but if you take another believer with you then Jesus is there in the midst of it with you too!

Life places us in places where we are comfortable and uncomfortable, when it does then tell anyone who might listen about your Lord and Savior. If it is at work or school or wherever it might be, then make sure that Jesus is there with you. If you aren’t carrying Him out of the church, then what good is your faith and your Christianity doing in this world?