Category: Choose Christ

Jesus paid for your sins


God loves you and has made a way for you to have eternity as your future, but have you accepted Jesus as your Savior? He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and HE is coming back soon.

JesuspaiditallWhen He was crucified He wore a crown of thorns and was beaten so badly that only His mother could really recognize Him. But…when He comes back He will be wearing a golden crown and a brilliant white robe with a golden sash. He will be coming to claim the throne of David and HE will rule the world for one thousand years!

The angels who spoke to His disciples told them that He would return to the Earth and in His book of Revelation, it says that He will be mounted on a white horse with the saints of God coming with Him! His rule and His government will be set up and will rule over ALL of the Earth and our world will be restored to its beauty which it was supposed to have from the beginning.

I pray that anyone who reads this will seek Him out and give your heart to Jesus as your Savior because one day soon it will become much harder to make that commitment. When the Christians are taken up from their graves and those who are alive are changed and translated from this world to Heaven, there will be a man who will bring peace to the world and stability too. But he will be the worst dictator that the world has ever seen, but the world will follow Him anyway.

Jesus did give His life as a ransom for all of our sins, but there are only a few in the world who will give their heart to Him and follow Him. Are you one of those who will do this today? Will, you learn of Him and follow Him from this day until He comes for us? I pray that you will make that decision if you haven’t already.

The days grow short in relation to His return and I don’t believe that it will be much longer at all. I won’t speculate about dates because we don’t know the day or the hour but the world will know when He claims those who have given their hearts to Him. There won’t be a doubt in their mind that something momentous has happened but it will only be those who have studied the book of Revelation who will know what has happened.

Make sure of your salvation before then.

 

Are you ready?


So much is happening today and every day in the world until it is hard to understand that it was all foretold many hundreds of years ago. Of course, the world and the media can’t see or understand that the happenings in our world were prophesied by God and that they are ordained to happen. If we pay attention to God’s Word we can see these prophecies coming to pass each time something is reported in the news.

Sometimes it is a small thing that even the media misses but it is reported by other news agencies. It may be a local news item or, a few years ago it would’ve been an actual news event but it doesn’t fit the “agenda” of the day now. Either way, you look at it, the world is drawing closer to the time of the Tribulation spoken of in the book of Revelation.

So my question stands: Are you ready for what is coming? Are you ready for the church being taken away from here and will you be going with it?

These are big questions which have eternal consequences for you and for your loved ones. Are you ready? Do you know Jesus as your Savior and Lord? Giving your heart to Him and believing that He is your Savior is all that is necessary to gain eternal life with Him. Have you made that decision yet?

How can you know that you are saved?

It is possible to know that you are saved because your faith will bring you to the conviction that you are a sinner. You don’t have to be a terrible sinner to be convicted of it, but you will know when you feel it. God’s Holy Spirit will cause you to seek out the Truth of the Gospel of Jesus. When you do, you will want to give your heart to Him and ask forgiveness for your sins. Then you will ask Jesus to make you clean through His Spirit and give you a new heart.

I know, it sounds like a lot but it really isn’t. Truly, you don’t have to do anything except believe that Jesus died and rose again on the third day. He paid the price for all of our sins on the cross and if you believe that and accept Him into your heart as your Savior you will be saved.

Here are some scriptures which will give you comfort in the fact that you are saved:

Rom. 10:9  that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;
Eph. 2:4 But God, being  rich in mercy, because of  His great love with which He loved us,
Eph. 2:5 even when we were  dead  in our transgressions, made us alive together  with Christ ( by grace you have been saved),
Eph. 2:6 and  raised us up with Him, and  seated us with Him in  the heavenly places in  Christ Jesus,
Eph. 2:7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Eph. 1:13 In  Him, you also, after listening to  the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation — having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise,
Eph. 1:14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of  God’s own possession,  to the praise of His glory.

Remember, the thief on the cross gave his heart to Jesus through his belief in Who Jesus was. He couldn’t be baptized and he couldn’t tell people about his belief, but Jesus said that “Today you will be with Me in Paradise“.

I pray that all who read this will be encouraged to give their hearts to Jesus by believing in Him for your salvation. Don’t turn away from His call on your life because you may not get another chance to be a child of God and you can only do that by making the choice when the Holy Spirit prompts you and convicts you that you need Jesus as your Savior!

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Why is there so much tension?


The world seems to be ready to snap these days and it shouldn’t be. God created all of us and there is very little difference in our genetic makeup. I mean if you could track it down there is only about 1% or so that is different between people all over the world. Most of that has to do with eye color, skin color, hair color, and texture but very little else.

Still, we keep shooting at each other and killing each other for mostly cultural reasons. Some of it is also because of religious beliefs but…why? We are individuals and we should be tolerant of other people’s beliefs and their culture too, so why can’t we?

Is it because of hate or greed or just being an extremist in our own belief which keeps us at each other’s throats?

The real reason is that this is supposed to happen. It is foretold in the book of Revelation. Tension and strife over petty differences and religious beliefs will become worse toward the end of the age and that is exactly where we are. If you have read the Bible and pay attention to the news all of these things are not unusual at all. They are disturbing and hurtful but God knew this was going to happen a long time ago.

Remember, God is not surprised by anything which happens. God loves us and He has things under His control. Nothing can happen without His authority. I pray that many who read this will seek Him out because one day soon the church will be taken from the Earth and life will get even harder for those who are still here.

Make sure of your salvation since it is the difference between living into eternity and being in torment for eternity.

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In the beginning…


The Bible begins with these three words and it is the beginning of everything. God starts with nothing except darkness and then brings forth everything around us, including each of us. The world around us today doesn’t want to believe that God’s Word is the Truth or even that any part of it is true at all. So, what are we to do with a book which nobody believes is true?

The Bible is God’s Word written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by the authors of the Old Testament and the New Testament. How can the Bible be true? If you read it and take notice of the actual story which is being presented, meaning the salvation of us and Who it is that will be our Savior…even though it was written by many authors and over many centuries, it still points to the Messiah, Jesus the Son of God!

Can you think of how you could get about forty men or women to write different books and yet point to the same Savior in those stories? There is no possibility that even two people could do this let alone forty writers separated by centuries and yet pointing to Your Son, Jesus as the focal point of all of their writing! Without it being inspired by God’s Holy Spirit the Bible could not exist at all so the truth of it is without question.

It is God’s Word and wisdom for us to live by and it’s an example of how we should live and believe in order to even have a chance at living in Heaven for eternity.

God placed these words in the minds of those writers so that they could write them down and pass them on to later generations. His Word came into our world so that we could get to know our Creator and our Redeemer. It is not a rule book to beat someone with when we do wrong. It is a guidebook for how to live our lives, how to pattern our lives around His wisdom and it gives us strength when we feel weak, that is what the Bible is.

Is it true? Yes! Emphatically true! The prophecies contained within it have all come true in the past and the ones which have not are the ones which are yet to happen. When will they come true? The Bible doesn’t give exact dates but if you read the book of Revelation and some of the prophecies pointing to the end of the age, you can see things happening all around us right now. There isn’t much time left. How much time is left? Only God knows that answer.

The very next thing which is foretold in God’s Word is the catching away of those who are believers. Some call it the rapture, but since that word isn’t in the Bible I like to use “caught up or catching away”. The church is not going through the Tribulation because that is the wrath of God poured out on the Earth and those who have refused to believe in Jesus as their Savior.

If God has begun a work in your life, He will always keep you in Him. He will finish the work which was begun in you for your sake and for His glory!

Faith is powerful!


Acts 3

1 Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour. 2 And a certain man lame from his mother’s womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple; 3 Who seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple asked an alms. 4 And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him with John, said, Look on us. 5And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something of them. 6 Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk. 7 And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. 8 And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God. 9 And all the people saw him walking and praising God: 10 And they knew that it was he which sat for alms at the Beautiful gate of the temple: and they were filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened unto him.

Peter had preached the sermon on the day of Pentecost just before this healing event occurred but what made this healing special? The lame man had faith. He didn’t know Jesus, but he was expecting something from Peter and John. It is that expectant faith which brings the miracles of God into our lives! Some of us who have given our hearts to Jesus and asked Him into our lives and our hearts have faith because without it we wouldn’t have felt the pull on our hearts to come to Jesus.

But many times our faith is tested in ways that we don’t recognize as a test and we don’t expect anything from that experience. We go through it and we may pray for God to give us the strength to get through whatever it may be, but we don’t expect a miracle from it. But…we should!

While the lame man was actually expecting money from Peter, it was that attitude of expectancy which brought his miracle into his body. He expected something, anything from Peter and when Peter said “in the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk”, he did! He expected something and he got more than he expected from the encounter.

So, why don’t we get miracles today? Some say it is because miracles only happened at the beginning of the church age. I think it is because of our stubborn hearts and minds which have been “programmed” to discount things which science can’t explain. But miracles do happen today. Some of them are part of a medical treatment or surgery which God uses to bring a miracle into that person’s life. Which allows doctors to see that their treatment works in concert with prayer and faith.

Some of the doctors may not see the recovery as a miracle but there are times when a healing happens and the doctor can’t explain it because it happened through his treatment but not because of the treatment. In other words, the doctor wasn’t expecting a healing in this instance but the patient and their family were and God honored that. I imagine that many of these miracles happen more often than we realize. They just happen in the background and unless there is faith involved the healing might not have happened at all.

Are you one of the called?


In today’s society, we get calls all of the time. From telemarketers and scams and bill collectors and salespeople and from friends and family. All during the day and into the evening these calls come. Thank goodness for caller ID!

Have you been called by the Holy Spirit recently? Has He touched your heart and caused you to feel that Someone is missing in your life? If you have felt His touch or His call in your spirit, then you need to answer that call, that touch, that knock on your heart’s door so to speak. Because God uses His Spirit to call those who are needed in His service. Each of us has a place and a purpose for which only God knows that we can perform it and nobody else can. That is why Jesus called Saul to be His apostle to the Gentiles, That is why each of the Christians in the past two thousand years was called into their ministry.

Some of them were called to be witnesses or even preachers but many of them were called as Christian leaders in their home or community. Nothing world-shaking, no fantastic ministry spanning the globe. Just people who God knew could make an impact on those around them and cause some to come to know Jesus as their Savior. That is the ministry that some of us have been called to do.

Why would God use flawed, sinful human beings like us? Because we can relate to other flawed, sinful human beings! In the past, God has used different ways of getting His message heard or understood and today He uses us because the message is for humanity! God can get the message to us in a number of ways, but the easiest way to speak to people is through other people.

Will your words be heard by hundreds or thousands of people? It depends on whether you are called to be an evangelist who speaks to many people at a time or if you are a Christian father or mother who teaches their children and grandchildren about Jesus. God used a burning bush to speak to Moses and He used a donkey to speak to Balaam so He can use us in many different ways to get His message to those who need to hear it.

Even when those we are speaking to don’t want to hear it.

God can get their hearts to hear whether their ears are tuned into the message or not. Since God is in control of all things, the human soul is the spiritual heart and ear of each of us and He can use it to bring us to conviction and salvation. The thing that many of us don’t realize is that our salvation is based on our belief and our response to the conviction of our heart.

If someone told you that you had a fortune in gold available to you and all you had to do was to believe that it was real and take possession of it, wouldn’t you? But, when someone tells you that you can have your sins forgiven and also have eternal life with Jesus in Heaven if you will believe in Him and walk with Him daily by studying His Word and being a disciple of His…will you take that step of faith?

Seek your salvation by the name of Jesus and believe in Him for your salvation and serve Him in your daily living.

Are you certain?


Do you know for sure, without a doubt, that you are saved and sanctified by the blood of Jesus? Have you read through the gospels and wondered if any of this was real? When I was younger, I wondered if the Bible itself was real or was it just some fantastic book put together a long time ago. The more I studied it and read it and then read it again, I came to realize that, especially when I read about the martyrs and how they died for their faith in Jesus, this book and the stories in it had to be real! Because people would not die for a lie!

God loves each of you so much that He sent His Son to the Earth clothed in humanity’s flesh to be the sacrifice for ALL of our sins! It doesn’t matter if you are black or white or Asian or Turkish or from Kenya or Norway or Australia…God loves you!

There is no secret formula to become a Christian, other than believing in Jesus’ sacrifice for your sins and giving your heart to Him in repentance of those sins. That’s it! Then, walk with Him daily for the rest of your life so that others might get a chance to see Him in you! Christ died for you and for every other person in the world. He paid the price for your sins so that you could have eternal life through Him.

Why did He do this? Because of God’s LOVE for you, that’s why! God did not pick and choose who was going to be saved and who wasn’t, the choice is up to you! When you feel that conviction in your heart and know that if you died today or tomorrow without Jesus, you would go to hell. Make a commitment to Jesus as His disciple from this moment on so your life will have a true meaning and a purpose now and into eternity!

God loves you and wants the best for you in His Kingdom so make sure that you are serving Him in your lifetime.

GodsBlessing

How do we know?


How can we know that we have been saved? Can we know for certain? The Bible says that “our spirit communes with God“, even when we can’t pray our Spirit is constantly speaking to the Father in utterances which we can’t say. God knows about all of your needs and pains and trials and is there with you in all of them. When you read and study God’s Word and ask Him to show you His grace through the reading of it, He will.

God desires fellowship with us, just as He had with Adam and Eve in the garden. The only way that He can have that fellowship is when we have repented of our sins and asked Jesus to cleanse us of our old ways and make us into a new creation in Christ! God wants this relationship with His creation, particularly those of us made in His image. But, it seems that many of us have turned away from Him and His Word.

We have gone after strange gods and strange religions which are not of any real god at all. Many of them are religions which are “man-made” which is to say they are the imaginings of mankind. God is patient and loving enough that He hasn’t punished us for this, but He is keeping His anger in check until the time of Tribulation, which is yet to come. The world will know that there is a God, the Creator, Who is in control and Who is going to show the whole world Who He is!

How can you escape the punishment coming during that time? By giving your heart to Jesus and living as a disciple of His until He calls us up to Heaven one day soon. The church is the bride of Christ and will be taken up from Earth before the trials which will come on the whole world.

Although, at that time most of those who are here during those trials will not know that it is God Who is bringing the punishment on the world because they have refused to accept Jesus as their Savior. The few who realize why they are left behind may be turning their lives over to Jesus, but life will be very dangerous for them at that time. The world will be against most, if not all, religions in the world but especially Judaism and Christianity.

The best defense against Satan and the world that will be against your faith is to give your heart to Jesus now and serve Him until He does return for His bride. He is coming back soon, just as He said before He returned to take His seat next to the Father. Don’t discount the length of time that has elapsed since the day of Pentecost, we have been living in the age of grace, the church age, and when He calls His faithful followers home the rest of the world will know it.

If you truly are sincere about getting to know Jesus and to make sure of your salvation, follow this link and begin reading your Bible and serving Him today.

How can you be sure of your salvation?

A thought for today and every day


FaithisKnowing

Be mindful


In the movies, particularly in “Star Wars” movies, you hear this phrase in reference to some evil deed being done or something which might happen if you are not mindful. In the writing which I am placing here, being mindful is being careful as well. Not so much in watching what you are doing, although that has a part in it, but also taking care about what you think or say around people.

Your thoughts and your speech betray your true convictions and words cannot be unsaid once they are out. We are always careful with our speech in church settings or in mixed company, sometimes at least, but why don’t we pay attention to our thoughts and words in other places? I have heard many things in public which shouldn’t have been said, especially by someone claiming to be a Christian. Many times I would think that “I wouldn’t have said that”, but in their situation or as the saying goes “in their shoes” I might.

We cannot judge a person based on the words they use or even what they say, although many people do just that. We are judged by our actions and our words in many ways, sometimes rightly and other times not so much. The problem with being judged by what we say, whether it is posted on a social media site or on a blog or said in public, is our responsibility.

So…we should be very mindful of our thoughts and actions but especially our words because they never really go away on the Internet. In public places, the damage that spoken words can cause is much worse than a bullet or a knife and it runs deeper and lasts longer as well. Life is too short to dwell on what has already been said or the damage that was caused in the past by misspoken words. All that you can do about those is to ask forgiveness and give the problem to God and let Him take care of it.

Watch other people and what they do and say, keep your mouth shut and think carefully before proving to someone that you weren’t taught any differently. Seek God’s Wisdom in the Psalms and Proverbs on all sorts of subjects and learn from His teaching so that you can be better prepared for life because His Word is our guidebook and we should pay attention (be mindful) to it in everything that we do.