It surprises me sometimes that I think of doing something completely out of character for me. It actually scares me when this happens because many times it is an action against someone I love and I don’t ever want to hurt my son or my wife or even my pets! But when this thought or feeling comes into my mind it is really scary. Why did it come into my mind? Would I actually do something like this?
When you read a book that has a group of people who are trying to do something fantastic, it seems there is always at least one character that just needs a little push or nudge in the wrong direction to cause a catastrophic failure that will take someone’s life. That is the problem with our “sin nature”. Each of us is only one nudge away from snapping and becoming some truly evil person.
Could a Christian do something like this? Satan will plant the thoughts in your mind but if you are mature in your faith you will recognize it and your Spirit will help you to resist it. On the other hand, people who are not saved or just think they are saved don’t have the Holy Spirit living inside to help us stop those thoughts. They may have a conscience that is telling them it is wrong but they don’t have a helper to give them the strength to truly resist that impulse.
I once thought that I could make it without the Holy Spirit and I tried, but it didn’t work because I could not control myself and my thoughts and actions without the Holy Spirit. Many people think that their conscience is the Holy Spirit and it isn’t because you can just push it away. Pride and covetousness will cause you to think that you are able to do things that you can’t do. You will want something or you crave more money to get something and this happens to Christians too.
You need to study about Jesus and seek Him to be your Savior and Lord. His ways and His teachings are the only way to become better than you were because of the Holy Spirit coming into your heart and changing your nature. The sin nature is still there but it is deactivated and the longer you study the Bible, the more strength you will get from God’s Word. I thought, before I truly gave my heart to Jesus, that I could never read the Bible because I couldn’t make sense of it. You have to have the Holy Spirit living inside you so you can make sense of it and get the wisdom you need from it.
Don’t push the prompting of the Holy Spirit away when you feel it. You might never feel it again and it would be sad that you missed becoming a Christian because you felt that you weren’t ready yet. You don’t get ready, Jesus knows when you are ready and He touches your heart to bring you to Himself.
Many people are going through some tough times. We have many on our prayer list who are going through treatments for cancers of different types. Some of those treatments are painful and debilitating in and of themselves even without the disease that is being treated. There are others in the world that we may not know about who are having to deal with pain from pinched nerves in their necks and their spine. The problem with the “treatment” for those is that it usually makes the problem worse in the long run. The same goes for the cancer treatments which usually make your quality of life worse from the first treatment.
As Christians we are supposed to “count it all joy” regardless of the pain that we experience. Many of us live with some kind of pain or other problem that causes us to dread getting up in the morning to go about another day. Our friends and relatives don’t understand what is bothering us so we don’t tell them how we feel on most days. We just go through the day with whatever it is and if you are like me you just pray that God will give you the strength to get through the day today. Then that prayer is repeated tomorrow and the next day. I don’t tell my wife how I feel because my pain is…well it’s my pain and she won’t get it. So I keep it between me and God.
Disability does hurt. It hurts because I can’t do many of the things that I would like to do like go hunting or fishing. My balance is gone and there have been many times I have nearly fallen in the shower or when I bend over to get something off the floor. Having your balance gone doesn’t sound like a disability and most people only lose their balance occasionally. I live with it every day, all day.
I am not writing this to complain, just venting a little. I have seen the looks that people give me because I don’t “look” disabled.
God does allow things to happen to us in order to bring about His purposes. He gives each of us a talent or an ability that He knows we will use and sometimes it takes an affliction of some kind to make us use what He has given to us. I have never written as much as I have since this came on me. I thank God that my affliction has allowed me to point some people to know my Savior, Jesus Christ.
I began this blog before I became disabled but my early writing was more world-weary or about some other things that were happening at the time. This site didn’t become a true witness about Jesus Christ until I became sick just before Thanksgiving in 2012. It has been twelve years now and God has seen me and my family through many trials since then. I pray that this site has blessed those who read it.
Every day the world we live in changes. Sometimes we hear about good news but lately the news is not very good at all. People have their own ideas for the reasons for this but, if you are a Christian, you know why it is happening. God’s predictions always come true because He knows the future and has told us in the Bible. If you have read His Word, the prophets especially, you know that the news isn’t news when you know about it ahead of time.
I know that specific news stories are not mentioned in the Bible, but when you read the books of Daniel and Isaiah and the 24th chapter of Matthew, it does sound eerily like what is happening all over the world today. Some people dismiss the prophecies in God’s Word as being too vague but when you read them in their context, they make a lot of sense for us today. Why am I bringing this up? Because we are at the very beginning of what is referred to as the last days.
Theologians would say that we’ve been in the last days for nearly two thousand years but the waiting is almost over. We are in the beginning of the “third day” since one thousand years is as one day in the way that God sees time. Read the chapter I referenced in Matthew, then read the beginning of the book of Revelation. Then…watch the news and you will understand what I mean. The “day of the Lord’s coming” is not far off and I pray that everyone who claims to be a Christian truly is. Because when the church is taken and those who were dead are raised to meet Him in the air, the world will become far worse than it is now.
You don’t want to be here when that happens and you aren’t taken up. It will happen in a moment and the world will watch many people just disappear. Not beamed up and not dissolved but taken like Enoch and Elijah were. Make sure that you are counted worthy to be in that number. Jesus made it possible and like the thief on the cross, if you believe in Jesus with all of your heart, you will be worthy.
The Living Message of Christ 