Do you feel like you are an outsider at times? All of us were at one time but God chooses people, even outsiders or those who feel that they are unworthy, in the way that He wishes. God chooses each of us when He deems that we are ready and useful. Sometimes, His call on our lives is the very thing that will change us and make us ready to follow Him. Sometimes His call on our lives does change us in radical ways. We become His followers and His Spirit changes us so much that “we are a new creation” from that point on.
We are changed in our heart and in our soul because of the Holy Spirit’s work after we have accepted Him as our Savior. From that point on we are “made new” in Him. Our witness for Him will be changed and so will our lives be changed when we learn and read the Bible and learn how we can serve Him from this point on. Many people think that our lives in Christ will just stay that way but we should sanctify our lives by studying His Word and learning more about Him and about our place in His ministry
The Bible is our guide to knowing how to serve God and be useful to Him. We must read it and study it every day, not just on Sunday at church. Being a Christian, a follower of Jesus, is not an easy task like many people think it is. Belief in Jesus is easy but following Him every day of our lives from that point on is not easy because much of the world and many people we are around during the week don’t make it easy. Even our “old self” is still at odds with the new person that we are living as Christ-followers, so we struggle to keep the old sins from overpowering our new way of life.
God loves each of us, whether we believe in Him or have asked Jesus to save us. Life has a way of confusing our outlook toward becoming more like Jesus, because we feel that we are truly at odds with our new nature when the Holy Spirit has changed us to be a new person in Christ. That is why we need to read God’s Word after we become Christians. We have the Holy Spirit that will help us understand His ways while we read it and the understanding will come later. Salvation comes the moment we accept Jesus as our Savior, we have the Holy Spirit in our heart from that moment on molding us into the person God intends for us to be but the understanding doesn’t come immediately. It is only after we have read His Word and prayed over it, sometimes for years, that the “light” will come on and we begin to understand the why and the reason for our salvation and the struggles that come with it.
So it is our job to learn more about Him and to do that we need to study His Word daily. Even a chapter every day will get you through the Bible and help you to understand more about who you and I are in Christ. Many pastors and churches don’t tell us that we have to study to grow in our Christian walk. The body of Christ, the church, should be involved in teaching new Christians to be more involved in reading the Bible and learning about God and our place in the church, the Body of Christ.
Seek to know Jesus as your Savior if you aren’t sure of your salvation. He died for you and we should put our old self to death and live for Him until the day that He comes for His Bride.
There are so many things that are happening all over the world. In Asia, America, Israel and everywhere it seems, there is so much happening everywhere and the world seems to be ignoring a lot of it. Even the floods that happened in North Carolina have been ignored now that fires have destroyed so much of California. In North Carolina there were many houses destroyed and thousands who died but after a couple of weeks, this “news story” was pushed aside.
Why do the networks push aside stories so quickly? Likely because the new stories are more interesting, some because they are in California and near Hollywood. Flooding in the mountains of North Carolina doesn’t grab people’s attention like fires burning through cities in California.
These are just a couple of the news stories out there but you can tell how the news is decided. Why am I bringing this up on my website? Because there are many millions of Christians who are being tortured and killed in countries that don’t like Christians and we never hear about it either. We are living at the “end of the age”, the Church age, and life is getting harder to understand. Much of what we see depicted as “normal” today is not normal at all. God’s Word tells us that the world around us would become more like the world was when Noah built the Ark before the floods and it has become that way.
Read the sixth chapter of Genesis and then the 24th chapter of Matthew. The Lord describes much of what is happening today and He does it from 2,000 years ago. He is God the Son after all. My point is that we should be looking into eternity and where we will spend it. If you believe in Jesus as your Savior then your eternal home will be in Heaven. If you refuse to believe in Him for your Salvation and think that you can work your way into Heaven, your eternal home will be in hell. Take your pick.
The Living Message of Christ 