Category: By faith

Time…


Scientists say that the universe seems to be winding down. Winding down to what exactly? Well, the answer to that would require you to have faith in the One Who made all of it. The Bible is full of prophecies and the only ones that haven’t come to pass yet are the ones in the book of Revelation. Truly, there is nothing standing in the way of His return except He may be waiting for one more soul to decide to follow Him. That’s about all that could keep Him from calling His Bride, the church, home.

Time is winding down to the “end of the age”, the church age, and that is where we are right now. How much more time do we have? I haven’t a clue. It could be a day or a week or six months or three years, only God knows the exact day and hour. We should be doing the work that Jesus gave us to do until that day comes. Keep looking for Him, studying His Word and be in prayer for those who haven’t made the decision to follow Him yet because it could be someone you know that is the last person that God is waiting on.

The parable of the ten virgins tells us what we need to do and that is be prepared for His return at the time of His return. You can’t get ready when the trumpet sounds, you have be ready when it sounds. Because once the call goes out for those who have passed on before us to rise and then those of us who are alive will meet them and the Lord in the air, there will be no getting ready. It will happen “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” and then we will be gone.

At that time…the world will change so drastically from that day on until the Earth will not seem to be the same place at all. From that point things will get progressively worse for those who are left. God has not forgotten you and you can still give your life and heart to Him but it will be much more difficult. People will turn in their own family to the authorities when Christian beliefs are outlawed. Many other things will happen during those seven years after the taking away of the church and all of them are outlined in the book of Revelation.

I pray that anyone who has not made their decision to follow Jesus and have Him come into their heart and change them will do so…soon. We are not guaranteed tomorrow so make sure of your salvation while you can.

Place your trust in the Lord


Amen

Faith, hope and Love


These three are in one of the most beautiful chapters in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13. Many people call it the love chapter and it is used almost exclusively at weddings and sometimes at funerals for the hope that it gives to those who have lost someone dear to them. Paul writes at the end of this chapter that “the greatest of these is love”. Why?

Because it was love that brought Jesus to Earth to be the perfect Lamb of God for our sins. It was love that compelled Him to minister to all of the people who were not allowed in the Temple because of who they were or what sort of occupation they had. He taught them, fed them, healed them, and set them free through belief in Him and in His message. It was love that caused Him to sweat drops of blood in the garden that night before His crucifixion because the flesh of His humanity was not ready for the punishment that was coming.

Many people think that since Jesus was the Son of God, He didn’t feel pain or fear or helplessness but He did. All of those and more were part of His humanity that He was born into. The pain of a skinned knee as a child and the pain from the Roman soldiers scourging were both equally real. The pain from the soldiers whipping Him was far more excruciating because of their ferocity and hatred for the Jewish people that He represented to them. Then, after the scourging, He had to endure the humiliation of carrying His cross to the hill where He would be crucified on it. Jesus, the Son of God, endured this because of His love for you and for me and for every person of the human race past, present at His time on Earth and for all of the future generations to come after which includes us.

The greatest of the three is the true Love of God. Because if it hadn’t been, Jesus would not have been sent to redeem us and He wouldn’t have gone through all of the things which He allowed to happen and be done to Him if it had not been for the vast love of God poured out on humanity through the blood of Jesus. We are still loved and God still calls many to repentance with the offer of salvation. Some hear His call and listen but choose not to respond to it because of ignorance and pride. Some hear it and do respond but they don’t last because of family or the enticements of the world. Some do embrace the promise and the call and take it in completely and these are the ones that Jesus came to save and welcome into His home one day.

I pray if you don’t know your Savior yet, seek Him out. He came to pay the way for you and if you have ever felt even a little bit of God’s call in your heart, please make the decision to accept it and seek to follow Him today. It doesn’t cost you anything but the eternal reward will be more than you or I can imagine.

The King is coming!


“Then, the Arrival of the Son of Man! It will fill the skies—no one will miss it. Unready people all over the world, outsiders to the splendor and power, will raise a huge lament as they watch the Son of Man blazing out of heaven. At that same moment, he’ll dispatch his angels with a trumpet-blast summons, pulling in God’s chosen from the four winds, from pole to pole. “Take a lesson from the fig tree. From the moment you notice its buds form, the merest hint of green, you know summer’s just around the corner. So it is with you: When you see all these things, you’ll know he’s at the door. Don’t take this lightly. I’m not just saying this for some future generation, but for all of you. This age continues until all these things take place. Sky and earth will wear out; my words won’t wear out. Matthew 24:30‭-‬35 MSG https://bible.com/bible/97/mat.24.30-35.MSG

God’s provision


When you have given your heart and your life to Jesus, He gives His Life to you. You are a beneficiary of the Lamb of God and you have been adopted into God’s family. God loves each of us dearly, whether we love Him or believe in Him or not. The problem that many people have with God and His provision for them is that He knows exactly who among us will accept His provision and His salvation through Jesus and His sacrifice for them. He also knows who will not accept it. This upsets some people. Because they think that they might be in the group that won’t accept it, they choose not to and go on with their lives. The problem with this is that He knows but you do not and it is Satan who is telling you that you aren’t wanted by God so go back to your life like it was before.

You are wanted by God but it is still your decision to make. He doesn’t force or try to manipulate you into giving your heart to Jesus it must be a willing decision on your part. Satan knows this and that is why he tries his best to convince you to go back to your “old life”.

God provides us with every imagined good thing in our lives. Some of it is our stuff that we are able to have because of the gifts and abilities that He has blessed us with but most of these blessings are because of His love for us. The air that we breathe, the ground that we can walk on and the planet that we live on are all provided because of His love for us. I know that some scientists say that God didn’t have anything to do with our planet or the universe’s formation. It just happened because of the “big bang” and chance. Really? How many mountains have you ever seen form because a bomb was dropped and exploded? I haven’t seen any.

Things, like stars, planets and galaxies, do not form from gas and dust for no reason. Some of you may not want to hear or read that but it is true. There was and is a Designer in charge of all of the matter and “star stuff” that is present in our universe and His name is God!

We have been given far more than we deserve in the lives that we live, whether we live them for Jesus and His Kingdom or not. Our problem is that mankind has been in rebellion against God almost since the very beginning. We are like little children. We want it now and we want it our way, not the way that God wants us to do it. I pray that each of you who may read this will consider giving your heart to Jesus for your salvation. Then get into the Bible and read two books first afterwards. Read John and Romans. John because it will give you and good foundation in what Jesus’ teachings were and Romans because it goes into depth with those teachings and gives you a better understanding of why they are important to your Spiritual life in Christ.

Punishment and payment


We are a race born with a natural bent toward sin because of Adam. If you told a little child not to eat these cookies and you caught them doing so, most would tell you that they didn’t eat the cookies. Even if you caught them with crumbs on their clothes and their hand coming out of the jar! They’ve not been taught to lie but they will when they are caught doing something they know is wrong. It is this natural tendency that stays with you and me for our entire life and that is the reason Jesus Christ had to pay the penalty for all of our sins.

So why was it so important to God for Him to do this? Because He wanted our relationship to return to the way it was in the Garden.

He wants the relationship to be as it was because it won’t be tainted by the stench of sin and rebellion. That is the only kind of relationship that will be present in Heaven. We will be able to go to Him at any time and He will answer us even before we ask our question.

Oh, how I am looking forward to that day! When the sky opens up like a scroll and the Trumpet of God sounds and the dead are raised to immortality and those who are alive and have remained faithful to Jesus will follow them. The whole world will know that our God is True and faithful and there will be no denying it.

I pray that anyone who reads this will seek to know their Savior before that day comes.

Faith walks…


When Jesus looked for followers, before He called His disciples, He knew He needed men who would follow Him every day during His ministry. He knew that He would find them because His Father had sent Him to Israel to teach, preach and touch the lost children of Israel. The only way that this ministry would last and make a real difference in the world would be men who would have faith in Him and His ministry but also men who would walk their faith in and around Israel so others would see that what they believed about Him was true.

This is what James talks about when he wrote “faith without works is dead“, not because you have to have works to be saved but because your faith should be a working, walking faith. One that gets your Spirit moving in God’s direction and in His will. I used to wonder how could Jesus sleep in a boat which was being tossed by the waves in a storm but as I’ve grown in my faith and in my walk with Him I realized that His ministry covered many hundreds of miles. Not every day naturally but all of it was by foot! He and His disciples were bone tired by the end of each day, regardless of the miracles they saw or the healings that He performed. Jesus was the Son of God but He was also the Son of Man, human in all of its respects except that He didn’t have our sinful nature.

So He was tired every day what does that mean to me? It means that we are supposed to be tired from telling others about Him. We should walk with Him each and every day because He said that we would do “greater things than these” if we did. Does your faith in Jesus walk with you each day regardless of the circumstances? It should. If you are a born-again Christian your faith should take you through each day and each trial in your life, regardless of the circumstances or problems that you may face. While it is true that there will be some days that are better than others, for a Christian there is no way of avoiding the bad and the good days. All of them go together and He will see you through each of them.

God loved each of us even before He created the universe and our planet and He had determined at that time that He would come down and save us from our own sinfulness one day. He did it as the Son Who gave Himself as a ransom for many. Make sure that your life in Christ reflects the gratitude of one who has been saved from the fire of hell and eternal separation from God so that others will want to have your hope and your Savior as well.

On that day…


When the Lord sits in judgment of the world and how we have lived and worked in it, whether we served Him or not, there will be millions of children who will testify against their parents and those who took their lives before they even had a chance. God will take up their cause and they will have justice.

This is a very disturbing thing to consider but there have been over sixty million children aborted in the past 48 years in America. I don’t know the numbers in other countries of the world but I suppose there are many, many more in the entire world. But…on that day when God takes up their cause, there will be weeping and crying from those who have killed the children that God had sent to them.

This world and its troubles and trials and all of the other problems that are present today is going to soon come to an end. Whether you believe the Bible or in God or not it has been prophesied by Him and therefore it will happen. It may be a few more years but it could begin tomorrow as well, nobody on Earth knows that day or hour but God knows and it will come to pass.

If you are interested in finding out more about what will happen soon, read the book of Revelation because it tells it in detail. You might want to pick up a more modern translation for it because the King James version has descriptions of some things sounding too fantastic to believe. I pray that you will receive a blessing from reading it because it is the only book in the Bible that says specifically “readers of this book will be blessed“.

Be thankful in all things


Amen

What gets your attention?


In everyday life many of us get distracted because there is so much information out in front of our eyes. We have smart phones and tablets and laptops and TV’s and all of them can truly have almost the same “shows” on them. As distracting as that is…what can you do with the information that you find there? For most information on these media devices the answer would be exactly that…information and very little else. It isn’t very useful and most of the information found is just that and not much more. Some people may find some usefulness in it but most of it just takes up time or clicks or may be used for “posting” on Facebook or Instagram.

So what good is all of this information? Not much more than a time wasting exercise to be truthful about it. Most of our media platforms could be classified as such too. Before all of you who love your media, wherever it comes from, get upset about this part of my post this is simply my opinion and we are all entitled to have one whether you agree with mine or not.

Moving on from there. Our lives could be so much more rewarding and useful if we would seek to place our lives and our pursuits in the hands of Jesus. His Kingdom is coming to Earth one day in the not-so-distant future and if you aren’t ready for it then you need to be getting ready soon…like today! Not one of us has a guarantee on whether we will be alive tomorrow so the actual day of salvation should be today and if not then why? God loves each of us and He has a plan for us. Whether we choose to get onboard His wagon or ship is our choice but think of this for a moment: when the group of believers is taken from this Earth it will be even harder to declare your heart belongs to Jesus. Not long after that event, Christians will not be very popular and it will be dangerous to associate with others who believe the way you want to.

Eventually you will have to choose. Take the chip/mark in order to be able to buy or sell anything or refuse it and be killed because of your decision to not take the mark. One decision will condemn your soul to hell and the other, if you have given your heart to Jesus, will take you to Heaven. Read the book of Revelation, it details most of what I’ve written and it tells in detail how most of those seven years will play out because God told John to write them down nearly two thousand years ago. This is going to come to pass whether you believe it or believe the Bible or not so regardless of your belief it will happen.

God has made a way of salvation through the blood of Jesus who paid the price for all of our sins on the cross. Belief in His atoning work on the cross is one of the first steps toward salvation. The first is realizing that you need to be saved which is when God’s Spirit touches your heart and convicts you of it. At that time please don’t turn away from His touch. He loves you and wants the best for you. All you need to do is accept it and act on it by asking Jesus to come into your life and cleanse your heart, giving you a new heart which can hear all of the wisdom that God has in store for you.

I pray that everyone who reads this will give their heart to Jesus because if you don’t…eternity is a very long time to be separated from your family and God Himself.