What does that mean? It means that when you get to the point that you can’t fix it yourself…God can. Let go of your pride and give God the permission to take your problem and fix it His way. Don’t take it back from Him just trust that He can take care of it and let Him work on it for His glory and to your good!
People have wondered this and pondered this for centuries and nobody really knows the answer. Some think they know, but if you have ever read some of the prophetic books from God’s Word and not taken them out of context then you know that we are very close. What do I mean by that? According to God’s Word, “a thousand years is as one day“, so we could be only a bit more than two days past Jesus’ resurrection and ascension to Heaven.
Even Jesus said that “no man knows the day or the hour, not even the Son but only the Father“. We need to be reading and studying His Word and making preparations for the departure of the church. Not any specific church but those who truly belong to God and have given their hearts and their lives to Jesus. These are the ones that will leave this Earth on that day when the trumpet of God sounds and the dead in Christ rise from their tombs and those of us who are alive and remain will be caught up (taken up) to be with Him forever.
God’s time and His timing will happen in the way that His Word says it will because He is God and He cannot lie. There are many who do not want to believe this and many who don’t put their faith and trust in Jesus for their salvation. Many of them think that because they have been in a church service for their whole lives that they have Jesus. Others think that just because they do all of the things that Christians do and attend church and all of the other outward signs of being a Christian that they are a Christian. They may be but if they haven’t truly given their heart to Jesus and begun following Him on a daily basis and not just when they need Him or on Easter and during the Christmas service…then they are fooling themselves.
Outward appearances and working in a church, even being a pastor, doesn’t make you a Christian. The Holy Spirit comes into your life and makes you see that you need Jesus in your life and in your heart and when you acknowledge His calling on your life and turn your heart over to Him, repenting of your old life, then you begin your daily walk with Jesus. It can last as long as God needs it to last. A few hours or days, maybe a few years or even decades but usually He calls you to be His witness to a specific person or people because you are the only one who may be able to reach them and turn them toward Jesus.
Why do I write these words? Because this is the only way that I can be a witness to other nations around the world. God gives me these words to say because He gave me a gift to write in ways that others can understand. I don’t have fancy seminary degrees but I am a pastor and I’ve studied the Bible every day for the last ten years. It never gets old and it always has a different message in some small way or another when I re-read it. I’ll see something or understand something about a passage the second or third time around that His Spirit didn’t reveal last year or from two years or more in the past.
I am writing this now because the time is growing short, the church age is coming to a close. When will this happen? I don’t know. It could be tonight or tomorrow. It could be next year or five years from now…maybe even ten years away but it is coming to an end. When that happens there will be lots of confusion in the world and many disasters will happen because of those who were driving or flying a plane suddenly vanish. Make sure of your destination and your salvation because things will get worse once this does happen. I pray that you will be taken on that day to be with the Lord.
This is what we’re called and commanded to do as followers of Jesus Christ. Go into the world and take His message with you to those who need it because everyone does.
What most don’t realize is that all of us are sinners, even if you go to church regularly. God loved us so much that He came to Earth in the form of Jesus, and He died for your sins and rose from the grave. We have the hope of eternity because He did this.
We hear a bit of wisdom from Jesus’ own words many times and we don’t even realize where it came from or who said it. It is mentioned in movies and in books. It is used for many purposes, good and bad. Yet it was meant as a way that Jesus was making a point to His enemies when they were trying to catch Him with a politically charged question. They asked Him, “Teacher, should we pay taxes to Caesar?” He then asked a question or two of His own. “Show me the coin. Whose likeness is this?” Of course it was Caesars likeness and Jesus knew this. Then He told them flatly: “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21).
Each of us owes a debt to Jesus and to God Himself that we could never pay and it concerns our salvation and the price that was paid for it. Even if you have never given your heart to Jesus or asked Him to cleanse you and make you a disciple of His, He paid the price for your sins. When you feel the touch of the Holy Spirit in your life and on your heart, it is Jesus Who is knocking on the door to your heart. You might tell me or someone else that God wouldn’t accept me because I’ve fought with that Spirit for a long time, so long in fact that I barely feel or hear it anymore. If you feel a nudge or a very slight touch from Him I pray that you will answer that call, that feeling, His touch the next time that you feel it.
God can use your talents for His Kingdom. Even if you feel that they don’t amount to much, God can change your direction and give you the ability to be His watchman or His prophet. He used many men in the past and He is still giving out abilities to those who will answer His call. We may not see miracles happen when we want them to but they will happen when the time is right and it fits His time. Jesus said that “faith the size of a mustard seed” can move mountains. God can give you more than that but your faith still has to be turned on by your belief in the Creator of the universe. Faith to move a mountain won’t lift a grain of sand if you don’t believe.
God has been in our past and He is here today. Watching and seeking anyone who will hear His Word and take it to heart and believe what is there in the Word, the Bible. Many people in government and in some other organizations work very hard trying to take any reference to the Bible out of public view. If they would realize that God loves them and seek to do what it says in the Bible…taking the good news to everyone who will believe, with the same passion that they use trying to get rid of it the whole world would have a revival of faith in the One True God of the Bible.
But…because of the time that we are living in at the end of the church age, there are so many false teachers who are preaching and teaching doctrine that sounds good and it may even have some references to the Bible in their doctrine, but it has been twisted out of context. Scripture has been used by thousands in this manner over the centuries. Taken as one verse and used as a doctrine or a rallying cry but when a verse is used like this its power is twisted and can be used to enslave people or to turn their beliefs toward something or someone who is not who they say they are.
I pray that everyone who is seeking to know Jesus will seek Him in His Word, Old and New Testament, because He is there and we carry His image within us even when we were sinners. We should all consider that fact and seek to be worthy of His image until the day that He comes to take the church home with Him.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Matthew 5:7 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/mat.5.7.KJV
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Matthew 5:7 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/mat.5.7.KJV
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:18 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/2co.4.18.KJV
We shouldn’t look at this world around us but we can’t help it. This world is physical because that’s how God created it. We can see, hear, smell and taste everything around us for the most part. Our world is moving toward the time foretold in the Bible and we are very close to chapter three of the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ.
But many people refuse to believe that the Bible is true and they will refuse to believe even when they can see prophecy coming true before their eyes. God knows what will happen and He knows exactly when these things will come to pass. The world doesn’t believe that it will happen but one day they will understand, because on that day there will be no doubt about Who He is. Choose this day to follow Jesus Christ so that you will be counted worthy of His love and His eternal Kingdom.
In our country and in our communities and in our homes we need the answer to this question. Many of us don’t even know how to finish the sentence though. How can we feed the homeless? How can we get our country back to belief in God and His Word? How can we be a light to the world when we are in the process of turning the lights out in our country?
America has had a responsibility for over two hundred years as a Christian nation and now we are denying that it was ever built on His principles. We are pushing hard to get any mention of God out of our education systems and even out of the public square. So…why would God bless America today when we are pointing fingers and shouting so loudly that we want nothing to do with your religion!
I realize that the last few posts here have had a lot of my opinion in them but if you look around in America and listen to our media outlets all that I’m doing is pointing out the obvious. There will come a time, likely sooner than most think it will happen, when God will withdraw His Spirit from the whole world, not just from America. He will do this because we are rapidly becoming a world like Noah’s world was. The hearts and minds of people are evil, in God’s eyes, continually. We are calling good things evil and evil things good.
So many young people have turned their backs on religion, especially Christianity. Why? Because of its claim of Truth and what they see as restrictions on their lives. No one wants to be told that they shouldn’t do this or that because it is sinful. Everyone sees that their friends are doing these things and they seem to be having a good time so why can’t I do them as well? The only way that I can get most young people or anyone else to realize what they are asking is by asking another question: would you take your Mother or your grandmother with you to see what you are doing? Would you be comfortable if Jesus was there? If the answer to either of those is no, then why would you do these things?
Most would answer: Because I want to do them! It is my life and you can’t tell me what to do!
While it is true that I am not your father or your preacher, God can still see what you are doing. He knows the words that you’ve said during your “fun”. He can see every thought and every action that you are doing which is against what you learned in Bible school or Sunday school. The point I’m making here is that most of you have likely been in church at least once in your lifetime and you’ve heard the good news about Jesus taking your sins to the cross and paying your penalty for them. All that you have to do is believe that He did this for you and know that unless you ask Him to be your Savior and repent of those sinful actions and turn away from them to follow Him you will be lost.
Many of us…in fact most of us shook our fists at God in our youth saying that we were going to do what we wanted and there was no way that He was going to stop us! Some of us were smart enough to not really mean it but only God knows who meant to repent from their sins one day and which of us would not and only He knows your heart’s direction from this point on. God loves His creation, each of us is a part of His creation and He knows your heart and the path that you will take. I pray that you will seek Him out as your Savior and lay aside your sins and your selfishness and turn toward Him and give Him your heart from this point on. Read the books of Romans and John in the New Testament so that you can come to know Jesus as your Savior.
The Living Message of Christ 