I will rejoice in the Lord

Habakkuk 3: 18-19: “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights.”

When you get a bad diagnosis at the doctor’s office, rejoice in the Lord. When your day doesn’t go very well for you at work…rejoice in the Lord. When you wake in the morning, rejoice in the Lord!

Why do we need to rejoice in the Lord during times of good and in times of bad things? Because we are to give thanks in everything and rejoice in the Lord Who is your Strength and your shield in times of distress and in good times as well. God is always near to His children and even to those who don’t believe in Him and His goodness. He will be there when you call because He is always near you regardless of your circumstances.

There are some friends of mine and some family members too who are going through treatments for cancer or joint problems or recovery from surgeries or from the loss of loved ones and yet God is present in all of their daily problems or in their rejoicing over a good outcome. He is near to all of us when things are good, even though we may not seek Him in those times. He is also near when things aren’t going so well and in those times we usually do seek His favor and His help.

Regardless of your idea about how you get salvation or even prove your salvation, God is near your heart and He loves you. Jesus died for you and paid that debt, all that each of us need to do is to turn to Him when we feel His touch in our hearts convicting us of our sinfulness. If you haven’t done so, please seek Him out while there is yet time in this life.

You don’t get a second chance after this life is over, regardless of what Satan may tell you, he is a liar and always has been. Jesus has never forsaken anyone but there are many who have turned away from Him because of something that they heard from someone else and they believed them rather than Jesus.

I pray that all who read this will seek Him out in your time of need or in your time of good fortune because it is God Who gives you the strength to live through both.

What is the Truth?

For many people in our world today it seems that the “truth” is relative to your situation, whatever that may be. Relative truth is a truth which changes with your area whether it is your business or your residence or the country where you live. But, why is the truth so flexible today? Is it because people don’t want it to be a certain truth? Or maybe it is because each person wants their truth to be one way and they don’t care what your truth is?

The truth of the matter is that Truth is from God and only if you believe in Him will you accept the Truth from His Word!

Our world today seems bent toward NOT accepting His Truth because it is an absolute and they don’t like the absolute part of it. God loved us enough to send Jesus to pay our sin debt in full so that we could learn about His Truth and His love for us through Him. Yet today, we don’t want to learn that Truth and we try as hard as we can to push it away from our schools and our homes.

Many people want to know why is there so much violence and hate in the world today and it is because we have pushed God and His Wisdom out of our education system and out of our homes as well. Many churches today even preach a more “acceptable” gospel, one which makes everyone feel good about themselves rather than preaching His love and His grace to all who will hear it.

Jesus didn’t pull his punches verbally when He spoke to the priests in the Temple and we shouldn’t water down His gospel when we preach it to those who are listening either. God loves you but He will not accept your sinful life into Heaven. Which is why Jesus and John the Baptist said that we should “repent of our sins and be baptized”. Baptism isn’t required to be saved, but it does symbolize the death of our old life buried with Jesus and resurrected to walk in a new Life with Him!

Your old life is what you were convicted of when the Holy Spirit touched your heart and let you know that you were sinful and you needed to be saved through the blood of Jesus. Place your old life, whatever it was, on the cross and leave it there to die. Then ask Jesus into your heart for your creation into a new Creature in Jesus! From that day on, walk with Him, read His Word and pray about what you read so your mind will be renewed along with your Spirit!

Jesus said “seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened” because no person is turned away if they are sincere in their search for salvation. God wants all to come to know Him, but there are few who will make that commitment to Him. Walking every day in the newness of Life which Jesus gives to us is not an easy walk or task. It takes discipline and commitment to walk as He did and learn from Him each day. Which is the reason that it is a pathway or a stairway to Heaven when following Jesus. The way that many people find is the one which they feel comfortable walking and it is not leading them to Heaven, even though Satan makes them think so. WhereAreYouGoing

Jesus is my shield

His Word is a sharp sword and a defense against Satan. As long as I belong to Him, my salvation is sure and my hope for eternity is sure. God loves each of us, whether we believe in Him or not. So, when hard times come and trouble is all around you it is time to trust in the Lord and lean on Him for strength because He will uphold you with His mighty and righteous arm.

God created the entire universe to amaze us about His power and glory and yet we don’t revere Him and give Him the awe and glory that He deserves. God named the stars and placed them in their places so that we can see that He is THE Creator of all things!

Psalm 18:1-6

1 {To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, the servant of the LORD, who spake unto the LORD the words of this song in the day that the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul: And he said,} I will love thee, O LORD, my strength. 2 The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. 3 I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies. 4 The sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men made me afraid. 5 The sorrows of hell compassed me about: the snares of death prevented me. 6 In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears.

God is our shield and our fortress, He is our Commander and our Savior, He is not the “man upstairs” or “a higher power” as some think of Him! In their minds, they may be thinking of God when they say those things, but they are not giving Him the respect and honor that He deserves when those words are spoken. God is the I AM and the Alpha and Omega and He is all-powerful! It is time that we started preaching Him in that way and not as a weak and ineffective deity which will punish you when you do wrong!

themissingpiece God loves each of us, which is why Jesus came to give His life and His blood as a ransom for ALL of humanity! The price was paid for everyone, even though there are many who will not accept His offer of forgiveness and repent of their sinful lives. Forgiveness is there for everyone, like a bank account full of money but it is only going to do something in your life if you use it for His good and His purposes!

Does God care about you or your children? Of course, He does! He created this entire universe to cause us to look up in awe and wonder and see what a mighty and awesome God He is! We aren’t supposed to worship those stars or check our “horoscopes” just to see if we should go outside today! Read your Bible and pray to the One Who hung those stars in their places, Who calls each star by name and makes sure that they are doing their part in His creation!

THAT IS THE GOD WHOM I SERVE AND WORSHIP! Make sure that He is your God and fortress and Savior too!

What happens in between?

God knew when you would be born and He already knows when you will die but what will you do with the life between those two? We don’t know when we will die and I am thankful for that, but what will you do with your time on this Earth?

Jesus told His disciples to go and tell the entire world about the gospel and to bring salvation to many, shouldn’t we do the same? This is exactly what our life is for. We are to live our lives in such a way that other people will hear Jesus speak in our words or see Him in our actions during our lifetime. Is that asking too much? I don’t think so!

He came from Heaven and gave His life to pay a debt that He didn’t owe for people who might not want to know Him! But, He did it anyway. God is amazing in His love for us even when we don’t care about His love or maybe don’t acknowledge Him as God at all.

In between our birth and the day we die there are many things going on. We learn how to talk and walk and how to tie our shoes. We go to school and learn many things that we should and some things that we shouldn’t learn at all. We get a job and maybe get married and have a family and hopefully, we take them to church to learn about our Savior. But…what if we don’t know Jesus as our Savior? What do you teach your children then?

In some families, they teach them how to cheat and lie and steal, but the lying part we know from the time we are toddlers. They also teach them that their only way to make it in this world is to work hard or steal from others or maybe be ruthless in their business dealings regardless of the cost. Living life as an unbeliever is sometimes, not so easy but occasionally Satan will reward you with money and power but then what? Money and power don’t bring happiness in this world.

Most people who have had lots of money have found that the only happiness comes from giving their money away to good causes or charities. But, they are still empty if they don’t know Jesus. Without the Author of Life in your heart, life itself has very little meaning regardless of your wealth.

Jesus came that we might have Life and have it abundantly, meaning that we will be in eternity with Him not that we will have more money than we need here. Consider this: you will be living in a heavenly Jerusalem with streets paved with gold so pure that it looks like glass! That is the life abundant which God has planned for those who believe and have asked Jesus into their hearts for their salvation. Don’t turn away from His call on your life.

The Way, the Truth, and the Life

5 “Lord,” said Thomas, “we do not know where You are going, so how can we know the way?” 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. 7 If you had known Me, you would know My Father as well. From now on you do know Him and have seen Him.”

Who is God?

Well, that is an easy and a hard question to answer because God is God! He told Moses that He was I AM. So how do we make sense of that? In some ways, most of us try to put Him in a box or we try to see God as being like us or maybe like our father or grandfather. While picturing God and your father or grandfather is flattering to them, it puts limitations on God and it gives Him some very human characteristics which God does NOT have!

We think that God is mean or hateful or maybe He really does love us but He expects a lot from us which we think we can’t accomplish. God’s ways and thoughts are so much above ours until we are all like little children to Him. He is not a human being although Jesus did come to live as a human for a time, so God does know the limitations and our temptations through the life of Jesus.

God is our Creator, meaning that He created everything in the universe including you and me and anyone who will be born in the future or who was born in the past. God is everywhere because He exists beyond our dimension of time and space. He can be wherever He looks or thinks or even whenever He wants to be. God is indescribable because we have no point of reference to know His nature or His face except for the descriptions of Jesus in the gospels.

When Jesus walked the Earth, He was the embodiment of all of God’s nature in human form. So, as we read about the things which He did and said we can get a glimpse of God in the flesh of His Son. Reading the Bible is the only way to know the mind of God because it is inspired by the Holy Spirit so all of it has come from God’s wisdom and has been imparted to us through the writers who made sure to get the words right.

God is the only god in our universe yet many believe that there are others. These “others” are the demons and fallen angels who followed Satan in rebellion who have deceived mankind to make them believe that they are gods and are not. To know the mind of God and to know Him you must read and study His Word, the Bible. The letters and books which are within its pages are all that we need to know Him.

Seek Him out while you have time in your life to make sure of your eternity in His Presence because there is no second chance after your death.

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What will you do?

Many are preaching about our history today. About service and honor and the sacrifices made by those who have served in our Armed Forces and I agree and commend those sacrifices which were made, some of them were the type of sacrifice which required their lives in service to our country. God watches over all of them whether they were or are believers or not.

My sermon this morning has to do with honoring them by telling of our Savior and His sacrifice for us.

He gave His life on the cross to pay the penalty and the debts owed for the sins of the world! He also was raised to life and conquered death and the grave so that we could have the hope of eternity with Him one day. Isn’t that a wonderful and marvelous reward to look forward to?

There are many references to scripture which tell us about our wonderful and awesome Creator and Savior, Jesus. So, let’s go to a few of them.

We are a people of God’s own possession (1 Peter 2:9), chosen before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), destined to be like the Son of God (Romans 8:29), bought with divine blood (Acts 20:28), acquitted and accepted before the court of heaven (Romans 5:1; 15:16), a new creation on the earth (2 Corinthians 5:17), indwelt by the Creator of the universe (1 Corinthians 6:19), sanctified by the body of Jesus (Hebrews 10:10), called to eternal glory (1 Peter 5:10), heirs of the world (Romans 4:13; 1 Corinthians 3:21–23), destined to rule with Christ (Revelation 3:21) and judge angels (1 Corinthians 6:3). In church, there is a gathering of people who are like-minded in their belief in God and their faith is in Jesus for their salvation. No other religion besides Christianity can boast of this in any way.

When Romans 8:29 says that we will be like the Son of God, it is referring to having an immortal and glorified body. We will not be gods like some believe. God is the only God and He reigns supreme in the universe. Eternity is ahead of us, regardless of which place we spend it in so I would suggest that you make sure of where your eternity will be while you are yet alive because there are no second chances. This life is the precursor to eternity so make it count.

We are bought with divine blood, the blood of our Savior. Who came from heaven and lived as a human in order to know the trials and temptations that we know and yet He overcame those temptations. Now, some will say this “Yeah, but He was God in the flesh, of course, He could overcome the troubles of life!” While this is true and He did have the nature of God rather than the nature of mankind, He still faced those temptations. He also paid the price for your sins and mine through the shedding of His blood and bought our salvation with His suffering on the cross and His resurrection.

Can we know what it is to be like Christ? No, not in our mortal bodies but we will be in glorified bodies in Heaven if we have given our hearts and our lives to Him while in this life. Your belief in His work on Earth is the key to heaven for you. We are sanctified in Him if we believe that He did the work for us as it is written in the gospels.

But, what if I don’t really believe? What if I read those things and listen to sermons but I consider them just stories and nothing more?

Well…until you feel convicted by His Spirit and search for the Truth in Scripture and believe it, you will go to hell when you die.

Unbelief is the one sin which will send you to hell and there is no way to undo this after you have died. Seek out the truth and search for Him while there is time to do so.

In the book of Revelation, it says that we will judge angels in Heaven. That is a task which I don’t understand and likely won’t understand it until we are there. I mean, angels are divinely appointed messengers in the Old Testament so why would they need to be judged? They followed their Lord’s commands, at least the ones who did not rebel against Him.

We are also destined to rule with Christ during His one thousand year reign on Earth. What does that mean? Well, I am only guessing but I think it means that we may represent Him in places where the knowledge of Him is lacking in the world. He will be ruling from Jerusalem physically so we will likely be governor of those areas and consult with Him on things we need His advice on. This is all speculation of course, but you get the idea.

So, to conclude, we will not be sitting around on clouds strumming on harps as so many paintings like to portray. We will be doing something for our King and our Savior and we will be doing it for eternity so it will not be boring. The poor souls who chose not to believe…well they will be in torment forever and they won’t even have the time to consider having a party like so many believe.

God’s Word is the Truth and the Life, so if you haven’t given your heart to Him and trusted Him as your Savior then I suggest that you “git ‘er done” before you stand before Him one day.

Are you free?

This weekend in America, we are celebrating our Veterans and the sacrifices which all of them have given in the cause of freedom. From those in the Revolutionary War all the way to the war which is ongoing against terrorists today. Every man and woman who has served in a conflict of one type or another should be recognized for their service. The question remains, even today, are you free?

We believe that we are and have freedoms which few in our world have but do you truly enjoy your freedom from tyranny and persecution and the freedom from a possibility of war coming to your country? In my country, there are no guarantees anymore. Granted, war is not likely to break out any day but there are still criminals with guns, even in places where the laws are very tough on ownership of guns. Freedom today in America comes with a sense of anxiety sprinkled in because wherever you go someone may not like the car you drive or the clothes you wear and decide to shoot you just for fun.

No, freedom is not free. Our military men and women have paid the price for what we enjoy and Jesus paid the price for our freedom from the burden of sin as well. It was a high price to be paid because He paid for the sins of all, not just from the day of His crucifixion and resurrection. He paid for the sins of the entire world which came before His birth in Bethlehem as well as for all of the sins since then up until the end of the world!

God sent His Son to do this so that we could find freedom through Him. Not the freedom to sin and then be forgiven of it over and over, but when your heart is changed completely and you realize that you are a sinner in desperate need of His grace and mercy, this burden of sin is lifted and frees you to become the person that God intended for you to be from before the world was formed!

There are many who think that they are “saved” because they walked down the aisle at church one day and said a few words and then submitted to a baptism. But…performing a ritual of motions like those will NOT save your soul, only by believing in Jesus can you be saved! The belief which I am speaking of is the deep and heartfelt belief that He came to give His life for your soul. Not the feeling of “I need to get saved because my friends are doing it”. You are only following the crowd when you do this and it doesn’t really change anything.

When your heart is broken because of the sin that you have lived with for a very long time and you realize that God can’t let you into Heaven because of it, then and only then will you fall to your knees and know that you need Jesus in your life and your heart. If you don’t do this or if you think that you have some sort of arrangement with God about your soul, I can assure you that you will go to hell when your last breath is taken on this Earth.

Only the belief in your soul that you are a sinner, unclean and bared naked before God, will bring you to the point of giving your heart to Jesus! Only this action will save you and if you have not given your heart to Him fully and learn to walk with Him daily, then you will stand before God and before your “imagined” Savior and you will be judged as a sinner who remains unclean and is destined for eternity in hell. HELL-105818653518

The smoke of their torment rises for eternity. That is a long, long time to know that your eternity could’ve been so much different. Make the right choice before it is too late. Give your heart and your life to Jesus and ask Him to make you clean and whole in Him.

Abounding Grace

Death Through Adam, Life Through Christ

12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people because all sinned—

13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16 Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!

18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

20 The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

OurGodisAble In these verses, Paul writes that because the knowledge of sin increased, grace abounded even more through the man Jesus and His sacrifice for our sins. We are made free from sin in Christ, not because we don’t sin anymore or that we are made sinless but because through Him our sins are forgiven and we can be made free from the burden of sin. Sin has made mankind slaves to its influence for thousands of years and yet through Jesus’ sacrifice, we can gain our freedom if we will put our faith in Him and believe that He did this for us!

In Jesus, we can have life eternal because He is the Author and the Finisher of our faith.

But…sitting in church or having knowledge of Jesus and Who He is, yet without accepting His gift of eternal life through belief in Him and what He did for you will gain you nothing! Satan knows about Jesus, the demons in hell know about Him but knowing about Him is not enough. Believing in Him and what He did for you is the key when you feel convicted of your sins. Don’t turn away from Him when He calls at the door of your heart.

God loves each of us dearly or He would not have sent Jesus to go to the cross and die for your sins and the sins of all, past, present and future! He knows which of us will accept this gift but it is available to everyone who will believe in Jesus and ask for His forgiveness of our sins. Don’t throw this opportunity away.

tick, tock, tick, tock…

Every second which passes by you and your family is gone for good. There is no getting it back and it can’t be recovered in any fashion by any means. So…why do we allow the time that we do have to slip from our grasp with impunity? It seems that work and life, in general, gets in the way or just takes up our time as we live it second by second.

Telling your wife or husband “I love you” gets pushed away at times because of other pressing matters such as work and time taking care of the yard or the dishes or some other “busy work”. Then, when it comes to the end of the life of our significant other, we want to run time back so we can have more time to do those things which they enjoyed.

You never know when your life or mine or your wife or child will be taken from this life, so make sure that you spend time with them, love them and tell them so. Make sure that you know Jesus and that your family does too because you don’t want to spend eternity in Heaven knowing that they aren’t there.

Time slips by one second at a time and I began this post 24 hours ago! Those are hours which none of us will ever see again. What you did last night or yesterday is in the past, but God knows what you said and what you did with those minutes and hours. Life is precious and so is the time that we have to spend in it so don’t waste it…ever! Cherish those around you and enjoy the time that you have with them because when it is gone, you can’t get it back.

God loves each of us which is why He came in the flesh of man to redeem us from sin and its sentence in our lives bringing death to all who don’t repent. Jesus, the Son of God and second in the Trinity, came to bring a sinless man to the cross and die for all of mankind which paid the price for all. No amount of work or gifts to the church will help in your salvation, only by accepting Jesus as your Savior and giving up your old life can you be saved from an eternity in hell.

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A child’s story

There was a young child many years ago who was in kindergarten. He didn’t know much about the world around him except that Mom and Dad loved him. He went to school and played with his friends and went to stay with one of his mom’s friends until she got out of her classes in the afternoon. Life went on like this for a while and not much changed until one fall when his Dad came over before his Mom did and he saw Daddy kiss the woman who was keeping him.

Still too young to understand or even comprehend what was happening, he just shrugged it off. For years it never entered his mind until the memory surfaced when he was old enough to put the pieces of the puzzle in his mind together. From that point on he carried anger along with him. Not the kind you see in movies which causes a lot of pain but the kind that you bury inside. Where it festers like a splinter that you can’t remove. At some point in his later teens, he wanted to die but he couldn’t bring himself to the point of suicide, although through drunkenness, he did come close at least once.

Even though he managed to drive home many nights after attending a football game, most of those nights he was drunk or at least buzzed to the point of not walking very good. Thankfully, his grandmother was praying for him and that very prayer was the reason that he didn’t kill himself on a road somewhere.

That child was me.

In many ways, we are all like children even as we get older. We add years to our life but the child is still inside us. We leave home, go to school, get a job, maybe get married one day, but we are still seeking a mother or a father in some way. Someone who can show us how to be the person that we never learned how to be. Some of you can relate, if you were a part of a home which was broken or in some way detached from being “normal” with both parents in a loving home.

I am not telling you this to show how broken my life was, just that my early life and my teenage years weren’t what they should’ve been. This is not who I am today because I do have a father in Heaven and He is my Savior. I never had a chance to know my biological father so I really don’t know if he is in Heaven or not.

To get to the point of this side trip into my life I will tell you this: God LOVES you with the deepest, most profound love that you can imagine.

Remember these verses in John: “16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

The love of God for all of humanity is such that He made our world perfect for our life and for everything that is needed for us to live. The right temperature and the right mixture of gases in our atmosphere as well as the fertile ground where our food can grow and the animals and fish and all of the other life on our planet. God did this not because He had to but because He wanted to. Life is not an accident or an evolution of chemicals and other adaptations to be more complex.

The universe doesn’t work that way. Entropy doesn’t go from simple to complex, it goes the other way. That is easy to see when you find an old implement in the field. A saw blade will continue to rust away into a red powder, iron oxide until the entire thing is gone. Now, what does this have to do with the child who started this story? LOVE

Without the love of God and the effect that it had on him and his life, he (I) wouldn’t be speaking to you today. I would never have gone down the pathways which God guided me toward to get to this place. I did take a few detours and ran off on my own path a few times but when God has a plan for your life, He will bring it to be…to fit His purpose for His Kingdom. It may take some time, but eventually, your path will intersect with His intended path for you and when that happens, hopefully, ourlovingsavior your Spiritual eyes will recognize where you are and where you should be.