Jesus loves….me!

I sang along with the children in my church this morning and we sang “Jesus loves me”. It is a very fitting song for Christmas because that is the reason He came to be our Savior! This season is known for excess spending and all sorts of commercial excesses in sales and marketing and all sorts of product placement, etc.

Why can’t we place our Savior at the center of this celebration? We have the freedom to worship Him, yet we change the names of trees that are bought for this time of year. We say “Happy Holidays” instead of Merry Christmas so we don’t offend a few people! The freedom to worship God was the reason which began the journey to this country for many people, so why should we have to give up or limit our freedoms now because of a minority of people who may be offended?

God’s love is so great for each of us that He sent Jesus to be born in Bethlehem and grow up under Jewish law to save His people. When they refused to see Him as their Messiah, the offer of salvation was expanded to the entire world! There have been many stumbles and mishaps along the way to bring Jesus’ gift of salvation to every nation. Some of them very tragic and costly in lives and property and those damages can’t be undone from a cultural standpoint.

Just as the results of wars cannot be undone and the effect of words on different parties can’t be unsaid to remove the hurt and the pain they have caused, Christian history cannot be changed either. But, there have been many good things which have come from the spreading of the gospel in the world. People have come to know Jesus as their Savior who wouldn’t have had that chance if we had not followed the Lord’s command to go into all the world and tell others about Him.

God loves you and every person on this planet and He wants you to come to know Jesus as your Savior. The extent of His love and compassion is unknowable because God is infinite in knowledge and power, but of all the people on Earth who can be effective in His Kingdom, one of you who reads this can do something which no other person in the world can do! You can reach your children or maybe your nephews and nieces when nobody else can. You may be able to reach your family in ways that nobody other than you can do. God knows all of these facts and He can use your talents because He gave them to you.

Don’t consider that your talent or gift is not useful to God or useful in His Kingdom because He wouldn’t have given it to you if you couldn’t use it. Seek Him out in all that you do, ask for the ability to use your gift to bring someone to Christ because that is the most wonderful gift of all and it doesn’t cost you anything.

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Being a mouthpiece

Since I am a preacher, that is what I am seen as by most people…a mouthpiece for God’s Word. I read a few verses or maybe a chapter during the service on Sunday morning and then expound on what I have read and what the wisdom that God has given me tells me about this scripture. Moses was a mouthpiece and all of the prophets in the Bible were too. Jesus is a direct mouthpiece because He is the Living Word of God and His disciples were mouthpieces and teachers just as we are today.

Bridge2Salvation What is my point in this article today? Simply that God is awesome, Jesus is sitting at the right of His Father and the universe is under their control! Being the person who tells others about God and His Son, and thankfully I am not the only one doing this, is an awesome responsibility! But, I enjoy it!

God loves us and the story that is told in the Bible, from the beginning to the end, is the story of His love and compassion toward us all. While it is true that it starts out being a story about Creation and the Israelite nation, the wisdom contained within its pages is for all of us! Jesus came to tell that story more personally so that we could understand that God’s love doesn’t just mean something to one particular people, but it is expressed toward all of humanity through His death and resurrection!

God’s love and compassion for us are also expressed in His patience toward us because we are very stubborn in our sinful lives and we don’t want to follow His ways until we are ready. The problem with that is that we don’t have a clue about our the brevity of our lives! We are not guaranteed tomorrow or even tonight, so as the saying goes “today is the day of salvation”! Tomorrow isn’t here until it is and you may not have much time in the day or the week ahead to give your life to Jesus and repent of your sins.

None of us can know if we are going into the new year in a couple of weeks because it isn’t a certainty. A wreck or a heart attack or a stroke could take your life at any time between now and then and if you haven’t made the decision to follow Jesus and believe in His atonement for your sins, then you will cross from this life into judgment and hell.

God loves each of us and this is shown in His Word, so don’t wait until you find yourself in front of God and being judged for a life lived without Jesus or even believing in Him. Yes, each of us will be judged in one way or another. If you are a Christian and have Jesus as your Savior then you will be judged by what you did for God’s Kingdom.

If you are not a Christian, then every word and deed that you have ever done in your life will be brought before you to convict you of your sins and to prove that you deserve to be punished in hell. Not for the sins, but for refusing to give your heart to Jesus! That is the sin which condemns you to hell. Make sure of your salvation while you can in this life because when this one is over you can’t rewind and fix it.

Have you learned much this year?

Life is hard at times. Learning about your Creator and your faith is one of the most rewarding experiences that you can have. So, exactly how do you learn about Him? Well, that is a very good question and it is what this article is all about.

Truly, God loves each of us! Not just those who claim to be Christians but every person on the Earth! Of course, that doesn’t always translate into those persons giving Him their heart and their love in return. The main part of learning about God and Jesus and their love for you is inside of a book…the Bible! God inspired writers to write down His laws and His requirements for His people, the Jewish nation of Israel.

Some might argue that those laws and requirements don’t pertain to us today because they were written over two millennia ago, some as much as three millennia in the past. How could wisdom and laws from that far back in time and written to a different people have anything to do with today?

It is because God is our Creator and His wisdom is timeless as are His laws and precepts. Yes, they were written by people far away and years in the past but God lives outside of time and He gives wisdom and love to all who will come to Him and ask. God loves all of us, which is why Jesus came to live a life unblemished by sin and then be sacrificed as the Spotless Lamb of God for our sins!

We are His Creation and when the world was still unformed and not made yet, He knew that humanity would need a Savior. Jesus came to be that Savior for all of us if we will believe in Him and the atonement that He purchased with His blood and His death on the cross and then He vanquished over death when He came out of the tomb three days later.

job-type-of-Christ When we are tested and tried during our lives by illness or setbacks in a job or finances, it is to make us better and closer to God. Just as Job was tested hard when all of his children and his wealth was taken by the attacks of Satan. Then his health was taken away and he still didn’t lose his faith. He questioned God’s reasons for his losses but he never lost his faith in God’s mercy and greatness! When the testing was over, God blessed him with the gift of children and twice his wealth and he lived to a ripe old age.

Here is the account of God’s grace toward Job:

God Restores Job’s Fortunes

10 The LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he prayed for his friends, and the LORD increased all that Job had twofold. 11 Then all his brothers and all his sisters and all who had known him before came to him, and they ate bread with him in his house, and they consoled him and comforted him for all the adversities that the LORD had brought on him. And each one gave him one piece of money, and each a ring of gold. 12 The LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; he had 14,000 sheep and 6,000 camels and 1,000 yoke of oxen and 1,000 female donkeys. 13 He had seven sons and three daughters. 14 He named the first Jemimah, and the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. 15 In all the land no women were found so fair as Job’s daughters and their father gave them inheritance among their brothers. 16 After this, Job lived 140 years and saw his sons and his grandsons, four generations. 17 And Job died, an old man and full of days.

Is your faith no better than Satan’s?

heaven-or-hell-eternal-destiny Kinda sounds a bit weird, doesn’t it? Does Satan have faith at all? Well, yes and no. He believes that Jesus is the Son of God, but not through faith. The demons which Jesus told to come out of the man in the tombs called Him the Holy One of God, so they knew Who He was. What is interesting is that many people in the church know Who Jesus is and they believe intellectually that He is the Son of God, but that is not a saving faith in Jesus. Consider someone who has read the Bible from cover to cover, but they did not read it with an attitude of faith or belief and they didn’t believe in the God Who inspired the writing of it. How do you think that they would see the information that they took into their brains?

Mostly the information which they may have learned will be just knowledge, head knowledge not saving or believing knowledge. Satan knows the Scriptures because he was around when it was written but knowledge and faith are two different sides of a coin and they never meet! If you didn’t feel a compulsion to repent or a call of the Holy Spirit, it wouldn’t matter if you memorized all of the gospels! The knowledge in them would be just words from a rabbi or teacher and nothing more.

Faith and belief are part of being a Christian but if you can’t joyfully proclaim that He is your Savior and be truly happy about that news, then you may not be any closer to Jesus than Satan is. Our Creator and our Savior is Jesus the Christ and being glad that He is your Savior is part of the proof that the Holy Spirit gives you! If your knowledge of Him only goes to the point of being in church and hearing the sermons, then you truly need to get to know Him better!

God loves each of us and doesn’t want us to be punished in hell because we didn’t give our hearts to Him. The message of salvation and the love that God expressed through Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross is the most excellent way of showing that love to all of us. Life is more than just living here day by day because your life doesn’t end when you die! Jesus spoke of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob because they are alive in eternity and we will be too…if we believe in Him and accept Him as our Savior. We can enjoy meeting and get to know the people that we have only read about in the Bible in eternity!

Those in the world who only know Jesus as a prophet or a teacher and don’t want to know Him as their Savior will not enjoy eternity. They will be in hell with Satan and the demons because of rejecting the Savior in this life. There is no party and no kingdom to rule with Satan, so eternity will be punishment and absolutely no fun at all.

Who do you say that I am?

WhoDoYouSayIam It is a question which Jesus asked of His disciples and it is one which all of us need to answer in our own hearts as well. Have you considered what your answer would be? Is He your Savior or just a great prophet? Is He the Son of God or an imposter like so many of those who had the name Jesus (Joshua, Yeshua) at that time? Who is He in your heart and in your life? Do you even believe that He existed?

Many questions to answer but the real truth of it is that Jesus is the Son of God, foretold to come by being born of a virgin, of the lineage of David and He was born in Bethlehem. So much conflict and strife in a city in the country of Israel. Fighting between relatives, since all of those around Israel are also descendants of Abraham through Ishmael. Yet, all of this conflict was foretold in the Bible, not just in the book of Revelation but in other, much older prophetic books like Isaiah and Daniel.

So, who is Jesus to you? Is He your Savior and Messiah? He is to me because without His Spirit helping me with these words, I couldn’t come up with all of these writings!

God sent Jesus to Earth to redeem the whole human race from the sins of our mutual ancestor, Adam. I know, if you don’t believe the Creation story from the Bible then we are descended from apes through evolutionary means. But, hear me out in this wise: Adam disobeyed God in eating from the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and we are partakers of that sin nature. We, meaning all of humanity, have always sought to be “like god” in some way!

We have searched for and are still searching for ways to extend our lives beyond our normal lifespan or to fix age-related diseases which our bodies have in one way or another as we get older. I contend with arthritis myself and would like nothing better than for a cure to be found, but that will likely be when I get my body in Heaven. We cannot be gods of any kind in these finite bodies of ours and God didn’t make us for that purpose.

We are His creation just as the animals and the angels and the planets and stars and galaxies are His creation. All of the universe which we can see and the parts which we can’t see are also His creation! God is ruler and sovereign over all and He doesn’t have to give us anything or even answer our prayers, but He does. His judgment is final and true and yet people want to question the Bible and its authenticity.

Jesus is the Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity and He came to pay our price for our sins. God’s Word calls Him many names such as Wonderful Counselor, King of Kings and the Prince of Peace among many others like the Root of Jesse and the Son of David and the Righteous Branch. He is our Savior and Lord and the only way to be saved from our sins is our belief in Him and the atonement which He accomplished for all of us! Don’t deny Him as your Savior, accept Him and follow Him into eternity because following Satan into eternity is going to be eternal punishment.

Problematic faith

In our society today it seems that we have problems with faith. Occasionally it is the lack of faith but most often it is that people of faith seem to be the problem. It doesn’t matter how many florists or bakeries there are in a particular town or city, those who want to cause trouble usually find the one run by someone who is a Christian. As Jesus said, “The world hated Me so it will hate you“; it is the Truth which the world hates and since our Lord is the Truth and His Word is also, then it makes sense in a way.

Our faith in Jesus is not really in question but the absolute Truth of God’s Word is the part which the world and those who don’t want to believe in Him or live by it is the real problem. Can we do anything to fix this? No, not really. The only way that this could be better would be IF the world would convert to Christianity. We are trying to tell the world about Jesus and that He is the Messiah for all of humanity, but much of the world doesn’t want to hear it.

Thankfully, we don’t push our faith on people. We tell you about it, we will pray for you, I can tell you the pathway to salvation through belief in Jesus, but if you decide against it then that is your decision. God doesn’t push Himself nor belief in His Son on the world. He didn’t do it even before Jesus was born but He did try to get the Israelites to follow His commandments and be His representatives to the world, but they didn’t do that even then.

Being faithful in following God has always been a tricky proposition. There was always the temptation to worship the gods of those around them or if they married someone who worshipped an idol. We have the same problem today, except our “idols” are much different. We worship money or family or our jobs, even though we don’t bow down or pray to them. We just place more emphasis on those things in our life than we should.

Anytime that you place anything ahead of or in place of your faith and belief in God, you are creating an idol or a “god” which takes His place. This is a big problem in our world today. Because many people look at their jobs or their bank accounts as their “savior” in many things. That is why Jesus said that “it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven“.

Why is that true? Well, wealthy people don’t have to worry about bills or having enough money or food. Why would they need God? Granted, there are some who know where their wealth came from and they honor Him for it and with tithes which show that He is the source and not their business or their bank account. But…those are few. Give God the glory for your ability to get wealth and for your salvation through Jesus!

Anger or compassion

thereasonforourproblems We live every day with the consequences of one or the other, the outcome depends upon which one is more prevalent in our lives. Is it anger and our temper or do we live a life of service to others and showing compassion toward their problems? Do you worry more about your own problems and troubles? Most of us do exactly that. We worry about our lives and our finances and many other problems, most of which we can do nothing constructive about.

Life is given to each of us to bring glory to God, not to our own life or for our own selfish needs or wants. God gives us the necessary abilities to accomplish everything that He has intended for us to do. We should depend upon Him and His provisions for us, whether it is in the form of money or talent, to be able to accomplish the task He has given to us. Finding out that task is our job, to work toward being close enough to God so that we can discern His will for us.

How do we do this? By reading the Bible with an attitude of prayer and seeking His will for our life. Read a chapter then ask God to reveal His wisdom in what you just read. Ask Him to show you what His wisdom means in this chapter and how it applies to your life and ministry. It doesn’t matter which book you are reading or what chapter it may be. It could be in Genesis or Psalms or Matthew or even in Revelation.

The point is that whatever you read, ask God to show you what His wisdom is in the scripture. I have found that it doesn’t matter how many times you read a book or chapter in God’s Word, you will get a different meaning almost every time you read it. Why is that? Because God’s Word is a living document which reads you and your Spirit as you read it. Actually, it is God’s Spirit which inspired the Word of God in the Bible which is reading you and your soul.

I know that many will read this and call it crazy or something like that, but if you ask a preacher or an evangelist about what they get out of reading and studying the Bible, you will get many different answers. By that, I mean that each time you read the same passage, if you are reading it to learn from God’s wisdom, you will get a little different message than you did the last time. I have only read the Bible through about seven or eight times and each time I will get a slightly different message from the last time I read it.

God knows you so much better than you do and His Word speaks to those differences however slight they are or what those emotional or life experiences might be. His Word speaks in His voice to your soul, your spirit and it is that part of you which hears the different messages or teachings which come from the study of His Word.

Jesus loves you!

The entire world seems to be on edge because of that phrase and I have no understanding of the reason. It is true that He wasn’t from Bethlehem, but He was born there. His Earthly parents were descendants of David, but it seems that bit of information was overlooked by many. He came to do the work of God on this Earth in order to pay the debt which the whole of humanity has owed since the garden of Eden!

So many wise men have lived in the past. Some in the distant past and some fairly recently, but they are only teachings of a human mind…wise though they may be, to most of us normal people. God’s wisdom, which is in the Torah and the Writings as well as canonized in the Bible, is foolish to the world around us because much of it goes against what the world wants to hear!

Everyone, it seems, wants to live in their own reality with their own truth and no consequences at all if it offends others. We shouldn’t live in a world like that! I mean, how can your truth not be offensive if it involves a behavior that I find offensive? If everyone lived their lives this way there would be total chaos in the world and nothing would ever get done! Riots and shootings would become the normal way of life and anyone who couldn’t live that way would just have to live in a bunker underground! What a dreadful life that would be.

God didn’t create this world and all of us in it so that we could live in a singular space of our choosing which means we could do as we wished and to hell with everyone else! That is the same world which was destroyed when God brought the flood when Noah lived. Everyone was living and being what they wanted, the way they wanted and if you didn’t like it then they would likely kill you for the fun of it. What a rotten world that would be!

If you haven’t given your life to Jesus, what are you waiting for? None of us are guaranteed to be here tomorrow and dying without Jesus as your Savior is a true death sentence because your soul will experience death in hell because you are apart from the Author of Life! Giving your heart to Jesus and asking for forgiveness of the sinful life that you have led prior to knowing Him begins your eternal life anew. Don’t turn away from God’s gift.

….it’s too late for me.

These are the worst words that a pastor can hear when someone requests prayer for a family member but they end the request with this. It is never too late to come to believe in Jesus, even on your last day here you can decide to follow Him! There is no sin that He will turn away because His accomplishment on the cross and during His life took care of the punishment for all of us. If we will just accept Him and believe in Him we can be saved, even if it is with your last breath!

God provided the atonement through Jesus’ death on the cross for all of mankind, all that we have to do to receive it is to believe in it and ask Him to come into your life and save you from an eternity in hell. Mercy is provided for us through God’s love for us through Jesus our Savior. You can’t purchase it and you can’t add to it by doing more in this life through works of any kind. Grace is our unmerited favor and blessing through Jesus Christ, to which we cannot add anything to or be deserving of more than we are.

Our Savior, Jesus Christ, came for this purpose only…to atone for the sins of the world and all of humanity. It is a free gift and all we have to do is accept it and believe it, confessing our sins and we are each saved. It is just that simple! God knew before the world was created that mankind would go their way and not follow Him as He intended but He also had a plan in place to redeem us from our mistakes.

It is never too late to accept Jesus as your Savior, regardless of the sins that you have committed or how evil you may think of yourself. Those are lies from the Accuser and we don’t need to believe them! Choose to follow Jesus, read the Bible and believe in Him and God’s inerrant Word, then walk with Him on a daily basis toward eternity. Your life here is only a puff of smoke compared to eternal life with Jesus. So, walk in it like you have it already if you have truly given your life and heart to Him!

Why am I bringing up eternity and salvation in Jesus at a time when our world seems to be more wicked and lost? Because of those very things! Our world is that way because we have chosen to follow our own goals and our own paths instead of seeking out the One Who can save us! There is nothing which we can do that can add one second to our lives and nothing that we bring to the altar is truly acceptable to God except the blood of Jesus!

He was our Spotless Lamb and our Prince of Peace and He has paid the price for every sin, whether you think of them as big sins or small ones, they are all sins in the eyes of God! How can you be saved? Here are a few scriptures which will point you in that direction.

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Life and the Author of it

Many times during our lives we see something which doesn’t quite add up or we experience something that seems to put a wet blanket on a holiday or a celebration. At times, it doesn’t have to be much in order to do this. It could be that your paycheck wasn’t quite what you hoped for or maybe the timing of a visit just didn’t click and the visit turned into hurt feelings. At times our relationships with family and friends can go sideways and then people will not speak to each other for a long time, maybe the rest of their lives.

Life turns out that way sometimes. When it does, we need to slow down and find a place to seek out the Author of Life, Jesus Christ. Why do I say this? Because He is the Savior of our world and He came for everyone in it who will believe in Him. Granted, there are many who refuse to do so, but God is still in control and His purposes will be accomplished in the end.

There are many in our world today who are against Christianity in general, which is sad. Sad because for most of the past 2,000 years, Christians have done more for people than any other religion. I don’t mean that the dark ages are even part of that because they are not. The Crusades were an abhorrent part of our past and although they were done under the direction of the Pope at the time, Christianity shouldn’t have had any part of them, but our religion has been damaged by this part of history.

Our real problem today is that our society has become so used to hearing lies until the real, honest Truth of Scripture bothers people. They don’t want to believe it and most don’t want to hear it either. Yet, they would rather listen to and believe something which a man wrote down a little over one century ago or even seventy years ago and base their spiritual lives on those writings. The wisdom of mankind, whether it was written in the seventh century AD or BC, is foolishness compared to the wisdom of God.

The Bible has never been disproven and it has been on the bestseller list for many, many years. All of the prophecies in the Bible have come true with the exception of the last book in it, the book of Revelation. There will be no denying it when they come true because the world will experience all of the plagues and the wars and pestilence which are foretold to come on this Earth.

What can we do about what is happening in our world today? Truthfully…not a lot. One person has had more influence on the world than any other in history and yet most of the world wants very little to do with Him. Jesus wasn’t a general of an army or a great world leader but His influence is still seen and is felt all over the world today! He died on a cross about 2000 years ago, but after three days He came out of that tomb and met with His disciples for about forty days before returning to Heaven at the right hand of God.

Many people today deny that He had any effect in the world and they don’t believe in Him or the Bible but one day soon that will change. When He comes back for the saved of the world who have put their trust in Him and those who believe in Him today, many people will wonder what happened. They will try to explain it away with all kinds of fantastic stories and theories but the truth is in the Bible.

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