Are you lost?

Today, we enjoyed a sermon about the prodigal son. If you’ve never heard of it or read it, it is about an entitled young man who wants his inheritance before his father dies. Then his father gives it to him and he runs off to a place similar to Vegas. He enjoys his money for a time, but he soon runs out of money and his friends desert him. Leaving him alone and destitute. In the story, Jesus said there was a famine in the land as well and he couldn’t find a job other than feeding pigs. For a Jewish boy, that was at the bottom of the ladder for sure. He became so hungry that he even wanted to eat the food that he was giving the pigs, because his employer wouldn’t feed him.

Then, he had a great idea! He thought to himself, “The servants in my father’s house have more than enough to eat. I will go home and apologize to my father and ask him to hire me as one of his servants.”

But…as he was nearing his father’s house, thinking about his speech, he saw his father…running toward him! He started his speech for his father, but his father wasn’t having it. He told the servants that arrived after him to get his son some new clothes and a pair of sandals and the family ring! He told another to fetch the fattened calf and prepare it for a feast!

Why would his father accept him back as his son after what he did? Because his love for his son didn’t depend on work, or obedience to the rules, only that he wanted to come home and he believed that his father wouldn’t turn him out. Just like we love our sons and daughters, God loves us even deeper than that. He won’t turn us away when we sincerely turn to Him for forgiveness and ask to be allowed into the family. Belief in Him (Jesus) and asking forgiveness is all it takes! God isn’t a tyrant or a bully, He loves us far deeper than we can know because He formed each of us in the womb. He knows every part of us and our personality and He knows when we will come to Him.

Think about your life and seek out your Savior in Him. His forgiveness and His love are available to you. Give your problems and your failures and those pesky slip-ups in your life to Him and He will untangle all of them and make your life better than it was and your eternal future will be in His house. As Christians, we have the right to call God, Aba (Daddy).

Life doesn’t compare to heaven

Eternity will be so much better than anything we are going through today. Life here has many problems and possibilities but for many of us we seem to have more problems than possibilities. Eternity with God will be so much more than anything that we have to live through here. Get to know Jesus. Read the Bible. It’s not just a book about what you can do or can’t do, it is God’s love letter to us. He shows us how much He loves us and that love is the basis of all of the blessings that we have now and the unknowable wonder of heaven that we will have there.

There is freedom in the Lord

Be merciful

I am not ashamed of the gospel

Stand firm in your faith

Let His Light shine through you

The Depth of God’s Love Explained

What does it mean, “to call on Him in truth”? The truth that David is speaking of here has to do with your faith in the Lord. God has never been very far from any of us whether we believe in Him or not. He is always near us. Close enough to be a comfort in our time of need, whatever that need may be. It is true that we sometimes feel that He is far away, but in those times it is because we have moved away from Him. He is always close at hand to be a comforter and a friend in all of our times of need.

We are living in a time where we feel the world is going crazy. It seems to be coming apart at the seams, to quote a phrase. But even when the world seems to be coming apart, God is still in control. His plans and His prophesied work will be accomplished regardless of our belief in Him or not.

God loves us and even if there had only been one person to save, Jesus would’ve gone to the cross for that person. That is a hard truth to wrap your mind around but it is true. God’s love extends to each person so deeply and completely that He would’ve gone to the cross even if only one person in the world would believe and be saved. Think about that for a moment. If that doesn’t blow your mind, I don’t know what would.

We can’t imagine the real depth of the love which God expressed on the cross through Jesus Christ. Jesus told the thief “today, you will be with Me in paradise“. All that thief did was believe in Jesus, yet it brought him to salvation