Category: Believe like a child

Come as a child


The obvious reason that Jesus told His disciples not to hinder the children from coming to Him was and is that they understand His message better than any adult can. As soon as a child is old enough to know that He can’t earn salvation, they know that they have to ask Jesus into their heart and their life. It doesn’t take a lot of sermons or education for a child to just “get it”, they do.

madewholeinHeavenAnd they get it far better than we do. After we become adults, if we haven’t truly accepted Jesus as our Savior, we are so covered in education and pride and all sorts of other “filters” until we can barely see the message of the cross, let alone the real message of salvation. The world itself places those filters on us and our hearts and we allow it to happen. Most of the time we don’t even realize that it is happening, just as when we were sinners.

We didn’t know that we needed Jesus at that time and we didn’t really feel the need for Him. Until the Spirit of God touched our hearts and we noticed all of the sins we had committed and that they were separating us from God, most of us didn’t even know that we needed Him. We were comfortable with our lives and the sin that we lived in.

Don’t think that your life and your righteousness is good enough because it isn’t! If Moses couldn’t get into the Promised land because of his sin, then we are not close to being able to get into Heaven without Jesus! Regardless of which religion you follow or have been raised in, your goodness, your righteousness is as filthy rags next to the grace, mercy and forgiveness which comes from your belief in Jesus!

Have you been…crucified?


lamb-of-god-passoverI don’t mean in the physical, torturous sense. I mean spiritually crucified to your old way of life and actually living a risen life with Christ every day! It is not a life for the faint of heart and it isn’t a life for someone who only goes to church when they feel like it. It is living a life wholly given over to the Lord in humility and obedience, sacrificing your old ways and thoughts, a “sacrifice pleasing unto the Lord”.

This is exactly what Jesus meant when He said that you would have to take up your cross daily and follow Him. It isn’t a sometimes Bible study, sometimes on Sunday, occasionally on Wednesday, maybe during a revival kind of attendance. It is a life that is following Jesus no matter when or where in all of your life’s decisions and in everyday living!

If you have not given your heart and your daily living to Jesus, then you may want to check out this site and make sure of your salvation. If you are absolutely sure of your salvation, then ignore it, but if you have any doubts about what Jesus would say to you at your home, then you may want to truly seek Him and repent of your idea of salvation so you can ask for the REAL thing!

Playing or acting like a Christian doesn’t get you in the gates of Heaven. Praying and occasionally reading the Bible doesn’t do it either. Your life should be an example of discipleship such that Jesus could come into your home and not be offended at anything in your house. I know that none of us are holy or righteous, our righteousness comes from Him and Him alone. But, we should strive toward that goal of righteousness, read God’s Word and pray about it daily, seek Him in all that you do daily. It isn’t a hard life to live, but you have to live it with the purpose of striving to be more like Jesus!

If you are trying to be like the “idea” of Jesus that you have in your mind, then you are doing it wrong. Our idea of God or Jesus is not the same as the REAL Person of God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit, yet humanity will place God in a box of their ideas which fit their comfortable view of Him and all of us have done this at one point or another. This has happened for thousands of years, even before Jesus came! People were claiming that God wouldn’t do this or that, even though it may not be written down in the Bible that way you can bet that many were thinking it!

God knew their thoughts and their ideas of how He was and how He was supposed to be, at least in their minds. We have made up ideas and images of “the Man upstairs” or “a Higher Power” for centuries, it is nothing new at all. But…it is something that is about to change soon. As I have said before, I don’t have a clue about the return of Jesus or about the church being taken up but the signs are too numerous to ignore! It will not be long before the entire world sees Him or the results of His Trumpet’s sounding, but at that point many of you will say that it was just a weird sound or something.
People will be looking for all kinds of explanations for why so many people vanished and what caused all of the cars and planes to fall or wreck with no pilot or driver in them! The answer has always been in God’s Word, most people just ignored it or called it a fable or a fairy tale. What will you call it then?

What do you choose to be like?


A.W. Tozer once said this:

“We can choose to be like the Old Testament Israelites and look upon the pagan world with admiration and even envy, or we can choose to examine Christ and place all our admiration on Him. Either way, that which we admire most reveals who we are and who we want to be.”

Most of us don’t know most of the time what we would choose to follow or admire in today’s world. Many of us seem to follow the most talked about celebrity or sports figure or some other person or whatever that may be catching everyone’s attention today or maybe this week. It doesn’t seem to matter whether they are shallow, egotistical, or even in their right mind!

I know, I’m exaggerating a bit on some of that, but you get the point. We tend to be distracted by tweets and posts on FB and all sorts of other media these days, especially youtube, but real life is not part of these media outlets agenda! Your life is meant to be so much more than media consumption and tweets! This is not the type of life we were meant to have, particularly at the end of the age which we are coming upon.

What you choose to follow or be is your choice of course, but God made us to be more than what we are ready to do for Him. Today, we see and hear all sorts of things which get our attention and cause us to focus our attention on something or someone other than Jesus. When this happens we admire “those people”, whoever they may be or whoever they may be following, for their dedication.

Why can’t we be dedicated to Christ? There are so many who are fanatically following someone or some religion but Jesus is our Savior and He is worthy of our praise and our worship and we should be dedicated to Him! The number of truly dedicated Christians in America is far less than it should be. Many people claim to be His, claim to be Christians, but from the answers they have given on questionnaires they prove themselves to be “head-knowledge” Christians rather than changed heart Christians!

Knowledge of Jesus, even knowledge of God’s Word is great but if you haven’t repented of your sins and asked Him to come into your life and change you from the heart outward, then without a real change in your life, I don’t know if Jesus knows you or not. A repentant heart, one that is truly sorry for the life and the sins that they have been part of, will seek out the only One Who can cleanse it and make it completely new.

All of the stuff which we try to put into our lives and our heart in order to feel right on the inside just doesn’t work because it doesn’t fit! The only person that fits in that part of you is Jesus! No amount of work or money or sex or drugs or anything of this world will do, only Jesus fills that space and when He does then you will feel it and you will know it for sure.

Prayer…does it work?


Does prayer work? Yes, it absolutely does work! Praying for healing or comfort and just a better day or week than you had last week all work and God answers them IF you have faith that He will answer your prayers. Faith and belief go together, you can’t have one without the other and when your belief and faith are strongest is when your Christian life is usually better and more productive.

Jesus prayed every day. Many days He prayed more than once, whether it was for a healing or for strength or even for lunch, He always prayed to God for these things. Thanking Him for His gracious mercy and love and asking for something specific, not just a general blessing. If you read the gospels, Jesus never prayed in a general way. He always asked for something specific, such as multiplying the fish and the five loaves or for a blind man to receive his sight.

We tend to ask God to bless us, but we don’t ask for a specific blessing such as health or prosperity. Most of us just ask for His blessing on our life and then wonder why we didn’t get what we wanted or needed at the time. God knows what you need but He wants you to ask Him for it. Also, God bases His answers on needs more than wants, necessary things rather than luxury items.

He gives us our air and water and the ability to earn a living wage so all of this is part of the blessing which we already have from Him. Prayer is our link to the Creator for our comfort and our blessing in ways that those who don’t know Him can’t understand. It is the most reliable wireless service available to us and yet many people don’t make use of it.

We muddle our way through life, thinking that we can make it without God or His help. But, when life or some other circumstance throws a curve ball in our direction then we cry out to God. Sometimes we do it the first time this happens, sometimes we wait until there is no human alternative and we have to seek Him for our help. If you are wondering what the point of this missive is, it is this: God listens to your soul, if you belong to Him but He would like to hear from you too.

Just as human parents know what their children need, we would like to hear their dreams and their ambitions, their aspirations for a life away from home but we would like to stay connected to them too. That is the kind of relationship which God desires from us. Not a once per week visit for an hour or so. Not a once every year visit on the day that the resurrection of His Son is celebrated. God desires to be in your life, in your day and your nights, in your family, in your business and in your work!

It is a daily walk with Him that is most fulfilling, not just a weekly or yearly visit. I mean, how would you feel if that is all your wife or husband was around you or if that was the only time your children came to visit? It would not be much of a relationship at all, would it?

Seek His Kingdom and His presence daily because that is the best way to live a life of love and compassion toward others and with your Creator too.

What about today?


 

Today I woke without much pain.

Today, I thanked God for this blessing and for my friends and family.

Today, I will read God’s Word and learn from the Source of Truth.

Today, I feel His Presence all around me.

Today is the day that I will die to self and live for Him.

This is a poem, not designed to impress anyone or cause anyone to think about themselves. It is only for a daily walk with God. The words speak of a daily acknowledgement of God and His Presence in your life and mine. Some days, the first line may read like this: I woke up hurting all over, and I thanked God that I am alive to serve Him one more day.

Decide what your day will be like and how you will live it with Him, because you may only have today to do so.

I am adding to this on the last day of April, just as I wrote this on the first day. Time and age happen to us all, some of us feel it a bit more than we should or rather much earlier than we should. But, that is the way that it goes almost every day. One hour at a time, one minute at a time, life and time move at the same rate no matter who is doing the counting.

So, what is your time like today? Your life? Is it what you thought it would be? For many of us, our thoughts and dreams are far behind us now and very likely will never come to pass. The golden age of dreams for many in America was during the ‘50’s through much of the ‘70’s. Although it was also during those years that many conflicts arose in the culture of America.

Between races and even between men and women and their rights as separate but equal partners in life. The decision of allowing legal abortions also came through the Supreme Court of our land and has been a blight on life ever since. It doesn’t matter what your stance on this decision might be, it falls on the wrong side of life itself. Why do I say this? Because it is wrong to kill another human being, especially when it is a child that isn’t even out of the womb yet and can’t defend itself!

This so-called “right” is defended in the name of giving a woman a choice with her life, such as whether she wants to raise a child or not. If that were the case, then why is the child always referred to as a “clump of cells” and not a child or a baby? Consider what you are doing before causing this life to grow within you the way that God designed it to do!

God does love each of us and He is the Author and finisher of our life and our faith. Our choices in this life also affect our eternity for good or for evil and it is your choice which sends you in one direction or the other. God doesn’t toss you into the lake of fire or “allow” you into Heaven because of your good works in this life or what you did wrong in this life. It is your decision of belief in Jesus and His work, and His atonement for you which decides your eternal destination.

Today make that choice of learning to follow Jesus, learn more about Him, seek Him out in God’s Word and ask Him to come into your life. Because it is only in this life, while we are breathing, that the decision can be made. When your life is over, the decision is sealed and so is your fate and destination.

Kneeling in prayer


There are many places in the Word of God, where a man or a Savior, bends their knees and gets down to the business of faithful prayer. It is something that many in the Church seem to have forgotten about. We stand and pray, we sit and pray, some of us bow our heads with eyes closed, some don’t close their eyes during prayer.

PrayerPrayer..is talking with our Savior and our Creator, if you don’t revere Him enough to close your eyes and bow your head then I am sorry for you. God loves you more than you realize, but He expects some respect and reverence from His Creation.

When he had thus spoken, he knelt down, and prayed with them all. And they all wept sore, and fell on Paul’s neck, and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more.

And they accompanied him unto the ship.  [Acts 20:36-38]

They took him down to Caesarea and by journey to Jerusalem—his last visit to that city in which he was arrested, imprisoned, and taken to Rome in trial for his life. But the word that describes this last meeting with the people in Ephesus is most poignant and meaningful. “And when he had thus spoken, he knelt down and prayed with them all.”

What does this say about Paul? He desired that they would continue in the faith that he had taught them before his arrest. Paul knew that his time there was over. He knew that he may not see Jerusalem again, so he knelt down and prayed with them all. What did he say? We likely won’t know until we can ask him face to face in Glory! The point is that, as Christians and ministers of Jesus Christ we should pray for our families and our country. We should pray for our friends and our students and those who need God’s healing touch.

Prayer can bring about many things, good and bad. It just depends upon who is doing the praying and what they are praying for. In a parched, drought-stricken land, they may pray for rain, in a world on the brink of war they might pray for peace, even if it would take a miracle for that peace to come. Once there was a man who believed in prayer in our country and you may have heard of him. His name was George Washington. Here is a small picture of something that he did early in our history whenever it was called for.

There was a visitor to the Continental Congress of the American Republic from Great Britain.  And as he stood in the chamber of that august assembly, he turned to the man standing next to him and said, “Which one is General George Washington?”  And the man standing next to the visitor turned to him and said, “When Congress goes to prayer, the one who kneels will be General George Washington.”  Kneeling in prayer.

It happened that this was the way that Congress used to begin each meeting and some say that they still do this…but are they truly sincere about what they are saying and to Whom they are praying? In our society today I doubt it.

Daniel knelt and prayed for God to show him the meaning of his dream and although it took three weeks for the angel to come and give him the meaning, Daniel still prayed. In the eighteenth chapter of 1 Kings, Elijah said unto King Ahab, “Get thee up…for there is the sound of abundance of rain.”  So Ahab went up.  And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees, and he said to his servant, “Go, look toward the sea.”  And he went up and looked and said: “There is nothing” [1 Kings 18:41-43].  And Elijah said, “Go the second time, the third, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh.”  And it came to pass, after Elijah had prayed, down on his knees for the seventh time, that the servant said, “Look, there is a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand.”  And Elijah said unto Ahab, “Prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not.”  And it came to pass… that the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain [1 Kings 18:44, 45].

Elijah was the prophet who had prayed for the drought and he prayed that it would abate as well and his faith was rewarded to the glory of God.

There are many other times in Mark and Luke where we read that “And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.” (Luke 5:16, Mark 1:35)

Why do I bring this up at this time? Because we are at the doorway of a time that has not been in history before. We are at the very threshold of the prophecies of the book of Revelation! This is the time that we should be on our knees in prayer every day! Not just for our country or for the person who may be elected to be the next President, but for the entire world and its collective salvation.

I pray that all of us will be in prayer for our world and those in it, especially those who have sickness or may be dealing with treatments for cancer or surgery or the recovery from either. There are also many who are living in areas where there is very little to eat and no clean water to drink, so be in prayer that someone can bring them food and clean water soon. Life outside of America is hard but there are also people here who live in poverty and wonder where their next meal will come from. If you can help them, even in a small way, I am sure it would be appreciated.

God loves all of His children even if they don’t love Him or show His love to others, but that doesn’t mean that He will not hold them accountable for any suffering or pain that they may cause to others.

Loss, life and Love


Everyone goes through all of these in their lifetimes. Some go through them a little earlier or more frequently, sometimes it happens a bit later in life. But…we all have each of them at some point. Regardless of when or how things happen in your life, God is always near your heart and available to comfort your spirit and give strength to your soul. We cannot see Him or feel Him physically, but if you are a child of His you can feel Him spiritually by your side in all things, good or bad.

Why do I bring this up today? Because, all over the world there are people who are hurting because of one reason or another. Whether it is because of the loss of a loved one or because of disease or war or persecution, even in America people experience these. Maybe not to the point or extent that those in other countries do, but we should at least be in prayer for our brothers and sisters everywhere.

God cares for all of the human race regardless of the country or religion which you may subscribe to follow daily. He knows your struggle and would like for you to come to Him in faith. Though many people seek Him by other names, that is not how you get to know and love God. Faith and belief in Him and in Jesus is the only way to come to Him. You can’t call a statue “god”, nor can you pray to Him as another name and think that He hears you.

Jesus said that the only way to the Father is through the Son. No other name or worship is part of that relationship, just faith in God and belief in Jesus. God provided a way to salvation through belief in Jesus and His atonement for us in His death and resurrection. No other religious leader in history has ever come out of the tomb or grave after their death, except for Jesus! There were many witnesses of His resurrection body and His teaching after He came out of the tomb because He taught for another 50 days before ascending to the Father.

Life is in Him and eternity is only one heartbeat away. Make sure that your eternity is with Him!

So many signs, so little time


I am not giving a prediction of the end of the world, so don’t even go there. I don’t know the date or the hour, but it is coming and it is coming sooner than most people think. The signs are there, the prophecies are in the Bible from the Old Testament to the book of Revelation. Why aren’t people seeing any of these signs? Maybe because we have taken the words of Jesus a little bit too seriously and out of context when He said that no man knows the hour that the end will come.

The world as we know it will end when God decides that it is time. No amount of fighting or wars or bombs will cause the “end times” to begin, only God and His will controls that. We will know it when it happens, but I am afraid that much of the posturing and bragging that is going on in the Middle East, along with all of the rage directed at Jews and Christians, is pointless. It is tragic and cruel, but pointless, to think that any amount of terrorism and killing of people of a different faith will cause God to begin the time of Tribulation or Armageddon.

Mankind was truly evil during the time of Noah because most of the world at that time had chosen to worship anything and everything EXCEPT God. They wanted nothing to do with Him, even if He is our Creator. Only Noah’s family was found to be faithful to the worship of God, only eight people out of the whole world! That is truly sad. I pray that it will not get to that point again, but Jesus did say that it would be like the days of Noah at that time. It is truly a heart-breaking thought to think that humanity may get to that point and turn completely away from God!

Each of us can look at the heavens or the ocean or even a newborn baby and tell that deep in our heart we feel the Presence of God when we see those things. We don’t consider evolution or the “billions of years” theory of life and all that we see! God placed in our DNA the knowledge of Him that overrides our education, no matter how hard they may have tried to push Him out. We can feel it as the Truth in our bones and we don’t need a book or a professor to tell us otherwise.

We don’t need a dead prophet of a man-made religion to tell us that God is real and that we should follow his prophet because it is written in some book. Pedophiles and murderers are not prophets and they certainly are not holy! Jesus is not a servant of a prophet, He is the Son of God and He sits on His throne today!

Accept Him and you will live, reject Him and you will suffer the consequences for eternity, just as Satan will do. Hell and the rejection of Jesus only brings a barrier between you and God and you are the one who chooses this, God doesn’t send you to hell. You buy that ticket all by yourself when you decide that you know more than God and you are good enough to get into Heaven without Jesus. NO, you are NOT!

Read God’s Word and see that He loves you and me, but He won’t tolerate your worship of anyone or any thing other than Himself.

So little time…


Do you recognize that life itself seems short? If you are past your teenage years, you probably see every year this way. Sometimes when we are young it seems that time just won’t go very fast at all. Particularly when you are in school and you would rather be fishing or playing outside or for today’s young folks, at home playing video games. Time seems to just fly by once you have finished school or have a child and from that point on it never slows down (except in line at Walmart).

Our lifespans seem long, especially when we are under twenty, but 70 years or even 80 is not very long at all. Living beyond that is by God’s grace alone and under His supervision as well. So, what do we do with this amount of time that we are given? What should we do with it? As some country and rock singers say, “Just LIVE it!”; but do we really know how to do this?

Most of us don’t figure out HOW to LIVE until a good portion of it is gone! When we are young, we are going to school and hanging out with friends. As we get to our “adult” years, we are so busy trying to pay bills and keep food on the table that we don’t even think about what “living” means! As our children get older and move on to college or their careers, usually we begin to see things from a slower pace…usually. Then, when retirement hits us in the face, we realize that we have let all of our flowers die and we didn’t even get to smell them.

Now, we are learning about parts of our body, which hurt now, that we never even noticed before. We want to get out and travel and see the world, but our money is spent on pain medication and doctor visits. Life is too short.

That is why we all should be planning for eternity. What is that? Well, it is the other side of Life which we don’t get to see until this body dies. If you are not a Christian, eternity may not mean much to you. Some see the word “afterlife” and think it is a bunch of hogwash, others see it as a party that never ends, and still others see it as a time of reincarnation to fix things which didn’t get done in this life on the first time around.

Jesus called it paradise and my idea of that is much better than starting over or continuing to have fun into eternity. Paradise can mean different things to different people. For some it may be seeing family members that have gone before us or even to be thankful to God for the grace and forgiveness which allows us to experience His true Kingdom.

road2eternityAs human beings, we can’t imagine in our finite minds the wonders of a perfect and eternal place with God as the Ruler and King. Eternity itself is beyond our thinking because even millions of years is beyond us and one million years is just one tick on the clock of eternity. What will our eternity be like? Your eternity and mine may be two different experiences.

If you are a believer in Jesus, then at some point we may meet in eternity. If you don’t believe in God or Jesus and especially or particularly in anything contained in the Bible, then your eternity will be separate from God and all of His Kingdom. The image above shows an idea of eternity from our perspective on Earth, a road which goes into the horizon and we can’t see its end. That is actually a good way of looking at it.

We walk on it every day even though we don’t realize it. Every event in our life is a pause or a stop on this journey. The path is well-worn and wide if you don’t know Jesus as your Savior, but the path to His Paradise is a bit different. It is narrow but just as long, the big difference is that one leads to Heaven and the other leads to a place without God and a place of torment which was never meant for us.

God knows each soul in hell, but they are there by their own choosing. They are in that place because they chose to live their life without Jesus or belief in Him. It is not a place where God sends you because He hates you. God loves you and wants the best for you, but if you choose to follow your own path and your way of living instead of His, then that is where you will be. In your own version of punishment and misery, but not in Heaven.

Don’t waste the time you have to make that choice by being selfish and greedy for yourself. Pray about your salvation and what it could be and then seek Him out, and He will answer you.

What did I not do?


Strange title, I know, but sometimes it seems to be a mantra in my life. I am not complaining about it, but many times it seems that I mention something that I want to do and then something else interrupts my thoughts or my accomplishment of that which I wanted to do. Some might call this old age, some might call it being lazy, I just think that I have too much on my mind at times and the stuff which isn’t important at the time gets shoved aside.

2014-07-16-procrastinatorWhichever way you look at it, I could be accused of being a procrastinator and I suppose I should own it. Getting back to the point, what did I not do: I didn’t make some ham chowder. Why? I don’t know, I am not sure exactly what caused that bit to become shunted to the side in favor of something else. Some might also call this a form of adult ADD.

Whatever you want to call it, this little problem of mine doesn’t bother God in the least. He doesn’t have a problem with too much on His plate or on His mind. Thank goodness, because with all of those prayers being sent up to Him every hour or every minute of every day, humanly speaking there isn’t a person who could accomplish a fraction of what God does every second of every day that we don’t even know about! He is the Ultimate Multitasker of the Universe!

God knows which of us can handle multitasking and which of us can’t. Life is doing multiple tasks on a daily basis, just not necessarily on a deadline! Preferably, not a deadline which may get you fired from a job! The only real deadline that I am currently dealing with is the one which has to do with my sermon each Sunday. God usually gives me the words to speak or the topic to speak on, which for this year it has been mostly involving the book of Romans.

Paul was a very good evangelist and a multitasking individual because he was raised as a Pharisee. He knew the Law and the Prophets by memory and didn’t need to carry a scroll with him as we do our Bibles. My point in bringing up problems with our memory is that we can’t remember all of the things that we need to all of the time. Nor can we accomplish all of those tasks in a timely fashion daily, but God gives each of us the ability and the mind to accomplish our tasks which He gives to us at the right time. 

As the Bible says, “you will be given the words to say at the proper time” and the Holy Spirit will give you those words which you need to speak. I rely on this every Sunday and for every writing which I post here. I am not eloquent enough to spout as much as I have over these last six years between Sunday and all of the little sermons that I put up here. God gives me the words, I just put them down. The grace of God and through His Love is the only reason that I have been able to do this.

God loves each of us in a unique fashion that only He knows. We will feel it when we get to Heaven, but until then we have to live with the grace and love brought to us through His Spirit. It isn’t a downgrade exactly, but our humanity prevents us from experiencing His Love in any profound ways in this body. Seek Him out in your life so He can prove that His love is more than you can bear. I have felt it and it is something that I can’t describe to anyone, you just have to experience it yourself.