The immeasurable love of God

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3:16

God loves each of us so much that HE was willing to give His Son as a sacrifice to pay the penalty of all of our sins. They are paid for entirely, all you have to do is believe in Jesus for your salvation and you will be saved. Like the Jewish people in the wilderness who were bitten by venomous snakes for their disobedience and hard hearts, all they had to do to live was to look at the bronze serpent that Moses put on the pole in the camp. Just look at it and you will live. If they didn’t, they would die. Their “looking” at it was with expectancy and they were expecting God to heal them from the snake bites. We have to expect salvation through our belief in Jesus for our salvation.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is just that simple but many people don’t want to believe that it can be that simple. There must be something that they can do or must do in order to gain their salvation! That is the problem today, people expect that they have to help Jesus save their souls but that is not what is required. Those people in the wilderness couldn’t heal themselves. All they could do was believe what Moses told them about looking at the serpent on the pole and they would be healed. Jesus did all the work that was needed to bring salvation to us and it is up to us and our faith to believe in His work of atonement for our sins and we shall be saved.

There is nothing magical about the verse that nearly everyone knows but the belief in Jesus comes to us when God touches our hearts and we realize that we truly need Jesus as our Savior. I pray that everyone who reads this will seek Jesus Christ as their Savior because the time of God’s grace is coming to an end and the world will soon be in turmoil during the Tribulation. Salvation is possible during this time but it will be harder to achieve and live out during this period. God wants as many as will believe to come to salvation and I pray that you will.

Demons…

There are many “demons” in our world. They don’t look like the movies or even what most of us think they would look like. Some of them are drug addiction or even alcoholism that so many people deal with. Others are the diseases that we have to deal with that cause addiction, to begin with. No one knows how badly it affects people, but Satan knows how to cause people to become addicted.

People don’t really believe that demons or even Satan exist. That is why is it so easy for him to manipulate those who have no spiritual background. I’m not talking about “new age” spiritualism, I’m talking about those who have been to a Bible-teaching church. These are people who attend church but they think they are saved because of the church they attend. Some think that because their family has always been in this church, they are saved. That is not what Jesus said. He said, “He who believes in Me shall have eternal life“.

We don’t become Christians by osmosis, we become Christians when the Holy Spirit convicts our Spirit that we need Jesus as our Savior and we believe in Him for our salvation. It is our choice but it is also a daily walk with Him. Prayer and reading God’s Word DAILY, not just on Sunday, is where you engage Him on a daily basis and learn from Him every day. The Holy Spirit is the one who teaches us about Jesus when we are doing our part by reading the Bible every day.

Many people would say that they don’t have time to read the Bible every day, but God gives us the same amount of time every day. We make time for things that don’t mean anything to our lives but we won’t do the very thing that will help us to live according to His Word. God loves us and He knows what is in your heart. Make sure of your walk with Him and your Salvation because the time of the church and this age of grace is coming to an end. What day that may be no one knows but God Himself but if you compare today’s news with the prophecies you can see that our world is coming to the end of our time.

It could be a few years or maybe a decade but I don’t believe it will be more than that. I pray that everyone who reads this will seek Him for your salvation because not one of us is given more than today to seek Him.

Do you believe in Him?

There are times that I notice people who say they believe in His power to save and His power to heal but it seems to be more of a “head knowledge” kind of belief rather than a deep, heartfelt conviction. The way I look at the Bible and God and Jesus and all of their abilities is based solely on what He has done in the past and what He will do now…if we will have the conviction to follow through. Remember, a conviction in this sense is a strong belief and is deeply held. It is not swayed by the opinions of others.

It was conviction that began the church after Jesus was resurrected and then taken up to prepare a place for His people. Ideas and a belief that is only knowledge of a fact or a memory is not the same. Peter and the other disciples would never have started the beginnings of a church or a movement without a true conviction that their Savior lives and in all of the promises that they heard from Him. A deeply held conviction cannot be shaken even when everything around you is not going according to your plan. God is still behind the scenes, moving the pieces so that “all things will work for your good“.

Prayer and reading His Word daily will strengthen your faith and your convictions about Him. Although many of us who claim to be walking with Him only do so when we are at church. We don’t practice our beliefs when we are at the doctor’s office or when we are traveling or at work. That is not the part of our life that we allow God to invade unless we need Him to. We need to remember that “God came and walked in the garden“, He wanted to be near and with His Creation, Adam. The only time we read this is after they have eaten of the fruit that they were not supposed to eat, but I believe that God walked with them to teach them every day. How else would they learn?

Belief and conviction are different sides of the same coin. One is just an intellectual knowledge where you have read about God’s miracles and you know that He has done this in the past. The other is based on that but it is deeper meaning that He is still doing those things today. God didn’t stop performing miracles in the first century, He is still doing it even now somewhere in the world. Take that into your heart and believe it with enough conviction that those problems that you are having or going through are being fixed by the Creator as you pray. Just believe it in faith.

Who are you?

That is the title of a great song. To answer the question that is being asked would take many words. It is safe to say that none of us are who we thought we would be when this time came. Some of us think that we know who we are, but do we really? Since you were in grammar school life’s experiences have made changes in you and in the person that you are right now. Some of those changes are good and some…not so much. What is my point? We are not genetically disposed to be this way or that other than being either a male or a female. Your genetics also control your eye and hair color and to some extent your personality and your skin color too.

But much of our everyday persona is learned behavior. We learn it from our parents and our friends and from everyone that we are exposed to in school. When we were in junior high school we would change our ideas almost daily just to be liked by those we aspired to be like.

So…who are you?

Each of us is the sum total of all our life experiences, good or bad. In many ways, it is hard to believe that we haven’t blown each other up long before now. We are still here, not because humanity is getting better, but because God is not finished with us yet. There are still some prophecies that need to be fulfilled including the state of Israel and its people recognizing their Messiah.

Cultures around the world are very different from each other because of their “life experiences” and most of our wars would never have happened if we were all more like Jesus. But we can’t be that good, at least not on our own. One day soon, we will see the Son of God. and the church will be taken up. When that happens, the whole world will know that the Bible was true. I pray that many more will seek Him out as their Savior before then.

Obedience…

In the Bible, we read that God commanded the sacrifice of animals and the shedding of their blood to atone for the people’s sins. This was at a time before Jesus came and paid for our sins collectively. Why did God ask for the sacrifices in the Old Testament? In many ways, it was to show the people that they couldn’t be good enough to be redeemed. At least on their own, they couldn’t.

In the book of Kings, God told Saul that He desired obedience more than a sacrifice. Why is obedience more important to God than sacrifice? Because He asks us to do something for Him and since He is God it is expected of His children to obey. If you are a Christian, you have been adopted into God’s family. He asked Jesus to take on the sins of the world and pay the penalty for those sins so we would not have to pay it. Since we are children of God, shouldn’t we obey Him in all things…every day?

The blessing that we have been given through Jesus is not something that we have earned, it is given to us through faith in Jesus’ sacrifice for us. We must believe in His sacrifice and in order to believe in it and place our faith in Him we were given the grace and the faith to believe. We didn’t conjure it up on our own, it was given to us through God’s mercy and His grace toward us because of Jesus.

God saw each of us down through time and He knew that we would need Jesus at a certain point in our lives. Then, He provided us with the faith to recognize that we were sinners in need of a Savior so we would seek Him out. I know that some people don’t like the idea that they didn’t have anything to do with their salvation other than to believe in Him and accept it but that is how God works. When you feel His touch in your life regardless of where you may be at the time, respond to Him and accept His gift of grace. The opportunity may not come again.

We are forgiven

Time…

How much time do you have? How much time does our world have?

The only One who knows this answer is God. I have been on this Earth, in this body for 21, 900 days. That sounds like a lot of time but it’s not. Six decades is only enough time to live through marriage and raising a child and seeing them grow up and become adults and maybe even a grandparent. It is enough time to make it through high school, college, and a career and come to a point where you are considering retirement if that is an option.

Our days are numbered and God knows exactly how many days you and I have left. He has known this all along but we don’t need to know it. The time that we are living in is at the end of the age of grace. If you don’t know Jesus as your Savior, I suggest you begin seeking Him to be your Savior soon. The church will be taken away and when that happens it will be even more difficult and dangerous to become a Christian.

God’s Son has already paid the price for your salvation, all you have to do is seek Him out and claim it to become a Christian and an adopted heir of salvation.

Help will be repaid

Work as for the Lord

Trust in the Lord

Psalm 31: 14-16 says: “But, I trusted in the thee, O Lord, I said, Thou art my God. My times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me. Make thy face to shine upon thy servant; save me for thy mercies’ sake”.

Why should you trust in the Lord? Because being a truly changed Christian requires it. Trust is also another word for faith or “having faith in”. God is our Creator and our Redeemer and the faith that we should have in Him for our salvation is necessary for that salvation to be real. If it is not there, then your salvation may not be real either. Going a bit further, trusting in Him is the only way to know God and His Son as your Savior.

So, why do people in our world today seem to believe in things that have no eternal meaning? It seems that people will believe in many things today that have no basis in fact at all and cannot be proven scientifically but they will argue with you feverishly over their “beliefs” even when they cannot prove any of them. Jesus came to the Earth to bear the sins of the world and to pay the penalty for all of humanity. Whether you believe in Him or not or even if you have accepted Him as your Savior or rejected His offer, He still came and paid the price for your soul. That is how much God values your soul.

Even if only one other person accepts Jesus as their Savior, God knows who you are and He values you enough to pay your way into heaven by believing in Jesus for your salvation. When you feel broken and hurt and depressed, God is there waiting for you to turn to Him. He can heal your heart and the problems that are weighing on your life. He can give your life a meaning that it has never had before, regardless of your background or any of your sins in your life…He loves you!