What do you want from me, Jesus?

I feel that there are many who may have asked this question over the years and decades and even through the centuries. The answer surprises many people because they think that Jesus wants more than we can give. For many, their beliefs of what He wants causes them to back away from Him because they cannot imagine themselves giving Him anything, even when they know that He is the only One that can meet their needs.

How can we get around our own beliefs and cultural bias toward serving Jesus? What can we do that will make us be useful to Him? Is there anything that we can do that will answer these questions or even, can the answers be found? There is a simple, for many people too simple, answer to these questions and it is …. No!

Yes, we can get around the cultural bias, but the answer to the other questions referring to “what can we do” is nothing. We can do nothing on our own to help Jesus. We cannot assist Him in our redemption and salvation because only He could do what needed to be done and He has. His death on the cross that day in 33 AD, accomplished everything that was necessary for every person on earth to be able to come to know Him and to have access to God.

His sacrifice, His life that He lived in total obedience to His Father without sin, was what was required so that the gulf between us and God could be spanned by Him. So that we would have access to God the Father and forgiveness through Jesus as long as we believe in what He did on the cross and in Who He is.

Belief and acceptance as well as being able to follow in His steps to bring the message of the Gospel to others through our life and our witness. We don’t have to go on mission trips, you just have to represent Him through your life, your character by allowing Him to shine through your life into the lives of others, this is what Jesus wants from us. Obedience to the command that He gave to His disciples to take the gospel to everyone who will hear.

Obedience is our job in God’s kingdom. Faith and belief in Jesus and the work that He accomplished on the cross is our requirement, our part that we need to do because it is the only thing that we can do ourselves. He has already accomplished everything that was necessary for our salvation by His death, burial and resurrection because He was the only One that could do what needed to be done.

Mankind is not able to redeem himself in the eyes of a Holy and righteous God and Creator. We are His creation, the only ones who enjoy the ability to commune with God and have fellowship with Him. The angels worship Him but they don’t have the privileges which God gave to us and they long to know of it. No matter how many amino acids that are found in ice or how many theories that are put forth trying to explain our existence as some cosmic accident, there is no scientific proof of it at all. God is the only one who created this universe and each one of us!

We are the work of His hands and everything else was spoken into existence because He wanted it that way. The perfection and specific way that everything works and moves is by His design, not some accident. God loves you, each of you, and there is no denial of that if you are able to read this. Even our eyes are marvels to science because they can find no evolutionary trigger that would cause an animal to “evolve” cells which do what our eyes can do. God did it and that settles it!

Do you need God?

Every day that we live, people question whether or not they need God. In some way or another, whether it is by going to work at a job that we love or hate or in just the process of living through our lives, each one of us asks this question. Do I need God? Another question would be, “Does God need me?”.

The answer to both questions is “Yes!”. We need Him and He needs us. Truly, God doesn’t need us because we can do nothing in the grand scheme of things, or can we? I cannot create a star or a planet. I cannot create another human being from nothing. Yet, God needs us in a way that we don’t really understand but we can understand it up to a point. Does this make sense?

I know that I sound as if I am rambling and that does come with age but we need God because of His grace and mercy that is imparted to us because He loves us. He needs us for fellowship with Him. How can we understand this? Well, those of us who are friendly and have friends can understand how fellowship works. We like to be around our friends and to have fellowship with them.

God wants to enjoy this type of relationship with each of us as well. He is not a god who stands back from his creation and waits for us to really mess things up. He is also not one who does not care what we do or what happens to us. Jesus taught His disciples that “the Father notices when even a sparrow falls, how much more does He care for you. Aren’t you worth more than many sparrows?” (paraphrase of Matthew 10:29-31)

My point is this: God cares for each of us, not just for our fellowship but because we are His creation. We are made in the image and likeness of Him.

Do we need God? Absolutely we do! Many atheists and agnostics say that we don’t but they are trying to get away from the constraints that belief and faith in Him impose on us. They do not want to be responsible for their actions, especially to God! They want to claim that we are all animals and descended from animals and therefore we are not responsible for our actions. We only live by instinct and reason. If that is the way that we, as a species, are supposed to act then why do we care for others? Why do we care for our elders and those who are in need by being physically or mentally challenged? If we are only animals, living by instinct, then why not put them out of their misery and out of our way?

The reason that we care is because God cares for us. It is in our makeup, our spirit and our DNA. God said in the Old Testament that “I will write my laws upon their hearts.” This was written after the flood, but it applies to all of mankind. We are caring and kind because we know right from wrong, not because we are taught to be that way.

I know that there are “bad people” in the world and I will likely hear from some who say that if we are so good on the inside why doesn’t it show in the world? Because of the many evil things that are happening all over the world and even in our communities, we need to show the love of God to all mankind through our actions and by letting people know that they are His creation. Evil is in the world because Satan is in the world. The apostle John and others like Paul, wrote that we struggle with the “spirit of Antichrist” and this is not a specific person but the spirit of rebellion against God. In the future when the “son of perdition” is revealed, then this spirit will reside in one man but until that time, Satan’s forces of evil are spreading this spirit in all of the places where men are committing acts which we consider evil.

Do we need God? Yes, now more than ever before! Does He need us? Yes, He desires our fellowship, our companionship, our worship because He is worthy of it. He is worthy because of the grace and compassion that He shows us each day. Read and study with prayers asking Him to give you the wisdom to know Him and His Son, Jesus. Without Him, we have no hope. With Him, we have everything!

Stand tall and depend on Jesus

We need His power and strength in the time that our world is in today. We also need Him every day regardless of the circumstances or who we think that we are. How can we possibly think that we can get through our lives without leaning on and depending on Jesus? I know that we are supposed to be individuals and independent, but God made us to have fellowship with Him on a daily basis!

He wants us to lean on Him, to depend on Him when the times in our lives get to be more stressful than we can manage. Instead of drugs or alcohol, we need to depend on God for our strength because He can give us what we need when we need it. Anything or anyone besides Him is just a cop out or counterfeit and we need the real God Who can perform miracles in our lives daily!

Have you asked Jesus into your life? Would you ask Him into your life so that your daily existence is more than just existence? Your life will have a meaning and a purpose because of the One who gives life to all who ask for it.

We face many troubling times ahead from the economy to stress at work and at home, with bills and expenses that we never thought we would have or would be so unmanageable. Many in the world today are dealing with personal issues which they never thought that they would have to handle before retirement. Now, some wonder is it possible to be able to enjoy life at all? Do we really have to work until we just work ourselves into our graves? Today it seems so.

Life may be easier in some ways than it was fifty or more years ago, with technology helping us do more in less time. The problem with having technology and all of the convenience that it brings with it is that we are never away from the connectedness of the world! We are always in touch with anyone, either by e-mail or instant messages or posts on Twitter or Facebook or any number of social networking sites out there.

The fact is that we need to be connected to the One who brought all of this about. We need that connection, daily with Jesus. His signals never fade and you are never out of range with Him. You can always get in touch with God and Jesus at any time and anywhere. Regardless of how far away you may think that you are, He is beside you. He is always waiting with open arms to take your burdens and problems and give you the comfort and the strength to make it through the day, every day.

Don’t turn away from Jesus, but turn to Him especially when things don’t seem to be going your way! Because He really is the One that loves you more than you even love yourself! He gave His life for you so that you could be forgiven and be with Him in Heaven instead of being in hell with Satan and his fallen angels.

Think about it and pray about it, ask Jesus into your life. He knows where you are no matter what or where you may be in your relationship to Him.

Do you serve or do you want to be served?

In the society that we live in, we expect to be served regardless of where we go. In the mall or a store, at a restaurant or a fast food place we all have a microwave mentality today which means that we expect everything to be given to us NOW!

It is something which has been brewing in our culture ever since the first fast food joint showed up, but I am not blaming it on them. It is just a fact that since food became easy and cheap to get, the ability to cook at home has been mostly lost. Look around in a supermarket today and you will see many boxes of quick meals which can be made in less than thirty minutes.

Of course, you could just buy a packaged dinner, zap it in the microwave oven and in less than ten minutes be eating a “meal”. Except that it has been so processed and packaged it very likely has little, if any, real nutritional value, but it is quick and it tastes good.

We tend to go about our religious experience the same way. We want instant satisfaction from the preacher who can’t say anything bad so he won’t hurt our feelings to our religious experience with our Saviour. So, what can we do to change these things? Since it has been ingrained in our culture for so long, we may not be able to clear out the things which have been learned soon enough.

Some people may wonder what I mean by “soon enough”, well it means that we need to repent of our disregard for God and His laws. It also means that we need to sit down long enough to read some passages from the Scriptures and to pray over them so that He can show us what is meant by them. Don’t close your mind to the possibility that He exists, because if you are being closed to the option that He is real then you are missing the point.

What point is that? The very reason and purpose for life itself, to give glory to God for being here! I know that there are many people who don’t or won’t believe in Him, but think of it this way: what if you are wrong about His existence? What if there really is a place of punishment after you die?

Not believing in things during this life won’t cause them to not be there when you die and find out that there really is life after death. At which point it will be too late to change your mind, it will be what it is and you can only take what you have ordained for yourself.

Your life and mine are important to God or He wouldn’t have wasted nearly four thousand years trying to get people to listen. Since the time of Moses, there have been many prophets that were sent into the nation of Israel trying to bring them back to God. Many were killed, most were just ignored or stoned until they left but the point of this is that God is interested in us! He would not have done the things which He has done if He was not. He doesn’t sit up in Heaven waiting for things to get better, He knows the end from the beginning because of where He is and Who He is.

We are all privileged because, not only does He care for each person but He has cared from the beginning. It doesn’t matter if you are from Israel or Turkey or China, God knows you and He knows when you will accept Him as Savior or if you won’t. Like looking down on a parade from the top of a building, He can see your life and mine from the first breath that we take until the last. Whether we choose to allow Him into that life is our choice, no other religion or faith allows you this.

Many people are going to disagree with me on this, at least on principle, but the point is that we have a choice…life or death. Which will it be? Many people, and don’t comment saying how I know it is “many”, there are thousands or millions who don’t agree with anything a Christian says just because they are Christians!

Many don’t agree because they don’t want to be responsible for their lives. They don’t want to be held accountable for their actions and if you have children you have seen this from an early age. Even before you think that a child can lie, they will do it in order to get out of trouble or to stay out of trouble. It is ingrained in our DNA, we are sinners from birth. One lie is still a lie, even if the one who is lying is only two or three years old.

I began this with references to food because of the way that our culture has become so dependent on things like food being available as soon as possible. We have also transferred that dependence over to almost everything in our lives, from our jobs to our religion and everything in between. Instant gratification, instant answers like we get from the Internet, we want everything now and we are not content with waiting.

God has waited and is waiting for you to make your decision, either for Him or against Him so which will it be? If you are joining God’s family, then welcome home! If you have decided to wait, then I want to ask you a question: When are you going to die? It is a simple question but it is not one that we can answer. You may die tonight or tomorrow or this afternoon, I may not be alive tomorrow either so when will you make that decision? When you are standing in front of God and He shows you the things that you have done and said in your life, how many times have you heard the good news of Jesus and the facts of salvation and either ignored them or just blew it off? What will you tell Him? At this point, it will be too late. You have already made your choice.

The UN-pardonable sin is not some heinous crime, it is turning away from God’s gift of grace and not accepting it as it is. That is the only sin which will get you thrown into hell, the others which you have committed convict you of a life without Jesus. Think about it.

Beauty in Creation

Have you every noticed the sun rise? Many people don’t because they don’t wake up early enough. The problem with sleeping in is that you don’t get to see the most beautiful part of the day. Of course, there is always sunset, which depending on the weather can be just as beautiful but usually with different colors. The time in between those two, the sky is blue for the most part depending on the weather. Every time that we notice the sky, the colors and the things that we notice about it all have to do with the weather. If it is stormy in the morning or evening, then the sky is usually red and purple or a variation of those two colors. If it is about to snow or rain, then mostly what we see is the gray clouds and the haze which comes with them.

Creation is a word that is not very popular these days, mainly because it doesn’t take the “theory of evolution” into account. Why? Because it is only a theory, it can’t be proven any more thoroughly than creation can except we have God‘s Word on one and only a scientist’s theory for the other. Which one would you believe? I think that I would put more stock in what God says than what a scientist thinks, but that is just me.

We have many people in our world who can’t seem to get a handle on religion or which one they want to put their belief and their eternal destiny in. Religion is something which man created which is why there are so many different ones in the world. In the beginning, God did not create a religion. All that He wanted was mankind’s obedience and his love expressed through our thankful offerings of our first-fruits, whether it was a first lamb born or the fruit from our gardens. If it was the first crop from the vegetable garden, it was acceptable to God. Cain brought his offering in due time, his was not the first fruits which was the reason God did not accept his offering.

We have forgotten this in our culture, in this day and in this twenty-first century. We have such a instant gratification culture that no one thinks about God much anymore until they really, truly need Him! He is the Creator of all things and yet we teach our children that it was by accident that life came to this planet, through some chance encounter with a comet that had amino acids in its ice and that they congealed into proteins on their own. Nothing is created by chance or accident and this can be proven by simple experiments. Try throwing an egg, some salt, a little baking powder, some flour and some milk into a bowl and swish it around a bit then give it a little time and some heat in an oven. Will that be biscuits or bread or a cake? This accidental concoction may taste OK, but then again it may not be edible at all. Accidental creation just doesn’t work.

All of mankind is bound up in a drop of blood. All of us have red blood, whether our skin is white or black, brown or with a yellow tinge to it or some other color, darker or lighter. We are created in His image, God’s image and it doesn’t matter what color our skin is. The culture that we grow up into is the part of each of us that is hard to reconcile, not our races or at least that is what should be known. We have different views of our cultures, whether they are acceptable to each other. Racism has run rampant in our world, not just in America but in all of the world. The problem is that it is not race that is the problem, it is intolerance of the differences between cultures, between people who judge themselves better than others because of their skin color regardless of whether they are white or black or any other color.

God’s Creation is beautiful and the people that He placed in it are to, and it is time that we started acting toward each other like He wants us to and following His rules and laws toward each other. We need to come to the realization that God created us to be stewards, to be tolerant of each other regardless of skin color or culture. We should celebrate the differences that we have while also celebrating our similarities.

What shall we do then?

Should we believe the testimony of man as many seem to do in the world today or should we cling to our salvation through Jesus?

There are many today that are leading people in the wrong direction, some of them supposedly doing this from their pulpit in the church. What will become of them and their followers? If they will pray and humble their hearts toward the God that is spoken of in the bible, then they can and will be saved from their transgressions. Yet, many people today place their faith in the messenger rather than the message. This was a fine thing to do when Jesus was the messenger before He ascended back into Heaven, but today the messengers are just as flawed and sinful and the one bringing the message (yes, I am including myself in this ).

We are all flawed, sinful human beings and none of us who stand on this earth are any better than anyone else, but there are some who think that they are and they are the ones who are leading others astray. They are subtle, like the one that they are serving and not the One that they think they are serving. Many deceivers are present in this world today, but they have learned well. The message that they bring is wrapped in words that are beguiling, some of them from centuries past, some of them from recent times but their meaning is that we can do it ourselves and we don’t need God’s help.

We cannot do it without Him! Can you command a storm or rain on parched ground? Can you tell the sun to come up an hour later today? We are the created and not the Creator, only He can do those things if it pleases Him to do so! It would bring glory to Him and would make us see that He is in control and not us, but there are many today who would scoff at signs like these.

Our God, the only God, is in control even when things seem to be going wrong. We only have to place our faith and our trust in Him because He will bring about good things from what we see as bad. Our times and our time-table don’t line up with His unless we are surrendered to Him and know Him by His Word. When we walk with Him daily, then our wants and our desires will be the same as His, although we will still be attacked by Satan and his demons in very subtle ways.

Some of those will be our own feelings like depression or feelings of not being in control, which we are not, or even emotions which overwhelm us to the point of hopelessness. All of these come from the one being who is trying to derail your faith and your belief in God and His Son. This has always been the goal ever since Eve decided to follow her own desires rather than listening to Adam and God.

Before anyone gets upset or thinks that I am blaming Eve for our problems, I want to make it clear that she had encountered a master of lies, Satan himself. Adam couldn’t have withstood him either and he didn’t so it wasn’t the woman’s fault! They both knew what God had commanded, yet they chose to follow their own desires. God knew that this was coming before they did so it wasn’t a surprise but it still hurt His feelings just the same.

If we really knew Him and the awesome power that is being held back because of His love for us and the grace that has been given to us through Jesus, we would be humbled beyond measure. Considering His power to create or destroy with a word, how could you tell Him that you don’t believe in Him? What pitiful arrogance we have to confront the Creator of everything and then tell Him that we don’t think that He is real so we won’t believe in Him!!

These words and deeds are being done all over the world today. In different ways and different words but the message toward God is the same. We should be on our knees begging Him to forgive us and to take us as His sons, pitiful though we are, and make us as His servants just so we can have a place at His table if nothing else!

The time is coming when mankind will bow to Him. When that time is, no one knows but it is coming and soon. The prophecies of His Word are clear enough for all to understand and we are in what is called the “birth pangs” prior to that time. We will know when that time has come, but for many it will be too late. Read God’s Word, study it carefully, pray over it so that you will understand what you read and then get your heart ready for Him, ask Him into your life because He is the only cure for what is ailing our world and each of our lives.

Can you live without Jesus?

Unfortunately, the answer is yes, anyone can live here on earth without Jesus in their lives or in their heart, but can it truly be living? Can you really be alive without Him? I once thought so and I thought that I was enjoying myself at the time, but I was only fooling my self.

We were not meant to live without a relationship with Jesus or God Himself! Originally, mankind was created to have a daily encounter with God in all aspects of his life here on earth. We are supposed to have that close relationship with Him every day, many times during the day. I know, there are many people who will say that only preachers and others who serve in places of worship and as worship leaders are supposed to have that kind of relationship with Jesus.

But, that is not how it was in the beginning. In Eden, God told Adam that he was to have dominion over all of the animals and the birds and He also spoke with him every evening. Isn’t it strange that the Creator would want to walk and talk with His creation? God didn’t think so at the time.

Until he sinned, Adam was pure and righteous and could come before God about anything and ask anything of Him. The earth yielded its bounty to him willingly with no effort on Adam’s part before he made his mistake and thought that he knew better than God. When he chose to go against the command that God had given him, he stepped out of his comfortable life and into the one that he and generations to come would have to endure.

God knew that this would happen and He had made provisions for it, so it wasn’t a surprise to Him but it made mankind’s life much harder. Which was supposed to cause us to seek Him, to want Him to be in our lives. Of course, Satan had his plans for mankind as well and it didn’t include getting to know God.

I could recount the whole creation/pre-flood saga but the point is that since Satan was cast to earth after his rebellion he is provisionally the ruler of this world. This is the reason for the bad things which happen everywhere, although God is in control of how far Satan can go with his plans and won’t allow him to really cause as much trouble as he would like to.

In reality, religion itself is the creation of Satan. He devised all of the gods which people have been worshiping for thousands of years. He or some of his fallen angels very likely appeared to man at some point in their angelic forms or their demonic forms and that is where many of the pagan gods and myths came from.

He has always been able to stir up our emotions because he knows where to tweak our unconscious minds and hit our most vulnerable parts, the parts of us that we may not even know about having. Even after we come to Christ, Satan still hits us in those areas and will cause us to stumble and fall if we don’t lean on and depend on Jesus every day for our strength.

Our life is in Jesus and the life that we have here is better when we are His. Our troubles don’t go away when we become Christians, but they are far easier for us to deal with when we have His strength in us to help us with those troubles.

If not God then what?

There are many today that are trying to prove that God doesn’t exist and that nothing was before the Big Bang which started everything. But, let me pose a question here: What or Who started or initiated the Big Bang?

It didn’t just explode on its own even if it did contain all of the matter in the universe. What existed before the Big Bang? The singularity from which it proceeded from maybe? Just a huge lump of matter which was condensed to a point and yet contained everything? The Creator existed before the so-called Big Bang and He was the One who started it.

There is no way to prove my “theory” any more than astronomers or cosmologists can prove their theory of its going “boom” on its own so I won’t get into that discussion. Although, God was and is the Creator of all according to His Word and the discussion that He had with Job, so according to my faith that settles the issue.

Why does it seem that one of three people seem to want to ignore the facts around them especially that the order of everything is too perfect for it to have happened by chance? Perfection is the way that He planned everything, because that is His way.

Chance and accidental happenings on which evolution depends in the early part of earth’s history could not produce the variety of life or the abilities that the animals on earth possess. In the short amount of time that life has been present, even if it may have been over four billion years, life could not have changed from single-celled animals into all of the various forms of life that is present on earth.

God brought all of this into existence by His power and His voice, as the Bible says “by His Word”. So, why is everyone denying His existence? I know, not everyone is denying God’s existence but according to the news and the people in the news it seems that way.

Getting back to Creation, God created mankind and all of the animals as adults, they didn’t start life as babies so why does everyone seem to think that the universe is billions of years old? God created it with the appearance of age because only mature galaxies and solar systems work the way they are supposed to when they are created. The theories about clouds of gas condensing into planets and stars is great but how long do you really think that would take?

Our God, the Creator of everything, is awesome! He can stretch out the cosmos in all directions and place stars and galaxies in any place that He wishes to without exceeding the speed of light. There is no possibility that it created itself nor did it just go “boom” and then billions of years later solar systems and planets and animals and people just happened to appear. If God was not the initiator of it all and in every aspect of it, then we would not be here.

Give God the credit for it because that is Who did it all. Can we make it without Him? No and why would you want to try? What if He gave up on you and stopped giving you the sun to power the weather and photosynthesis in our plants which give us oxygen to breathe? Can you create these things?

I don’t think so. God loves us enough that He gives us every good thing that is needed for life plus He sent His Son to take the punishment for our sinful lives. Not just yours or mine but everyone on the planet from the beginning to the end of the age. If you decide to ask Him into your heart, please don’t think that you can take Him off like a glove and go do what you want to do when you want to do it. It will come back to bite you if you do. You very likely didn’t really ask Him into your heart to begin with if you leave Him in the church or don’t even go to church after asking Him into your life.

I mean, how would your spouse feel (if they stayed with you) if you left them at the church after the ceremony. Then claimed them the next Sunday or when you came back to church. That relationship will not last very long. How do you think Jesus feels if you ask Him into your life and then you leave Him out of your life all during the week until you come back to church? Think about it and let me know what you think too.

Jesus comes into Jerusalem

In Matthew 21, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey. The coming King of Israel rides into Jerusalem on a beast of burden and not a war-horse. Is it any wonder that He was rejected?

Yes, it is, since the Pharisees knew the Law and the Prophets! They read the Scriptures in the temple and taught them and yet, they didn’t recognize their Messiah or even the one who came before Him to prepare the way, why? In Zechariah 9:9 it says: “9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.”

The reason for His rejection is that they enjoyed the praise of men and the position that they held. When Jesus came into the temple area, He chased the money-changers and those who sold animals out of the courtyard again. This fulfilled the scripture references from Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11 when Jesus quoted them saying that: “It is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer:, but you have made it a “den of thieves””

Our Lord, the Lord of all Creation, is a jealous One and rightly so. It is He who created all of the things which we have and which we can see in the world and in the cosmos, so why do people try to worship the creation or the things that have been created rather than the Creator? He is the One deserving our praise! We are nothing without Him and the grace that is given to us in order to live and be where we are every day!

Your life is to serve Him, if it is not then your priorities are out of sync with the life that you have been given. In the world that we live in today, we must be vigilant about our faith and in what or Whom we place that faith! There are many in our nation and in the world who would like nothing better than to sweep any reference to Jesus and God completely out of our lives and out of our government’s documents, founding and otherwise. Take, for instance, the group which is working to take religion and specifically Christianity out of our military, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF). They sound like they are working for our freedom, but their purpose is hidden in their name.

Although I am not going to get on a soap-box about them, the One that I want to talk about is Jesus! He is our Savior and our Lord and yet, we forget Him and leave Him out of our lives much of the time. If we did that to our spouses or our friends, we wouldn’t have any would we? It is good that Jesus is patient and loving toward us who haven’t loved Him and may not be treating Him with love even now! Is it possible to know someone intimately and not want to know them better and more deeply? I don’t think so! To me, that would be insulting, but to Jesus your Savior and Redeemer it is just wrong!

He gave us this cosmos to live in and a planet to live on that is perfectly positioned so that it is neither too hot or too cold to sustain life. We complain about the heat and the cold all of the time, but the truth is that our next door planets in the solar system have temperatures which are too cold or too hot ( like seven hundred plus degrees hot on Venus). He knew what He was doing and who He was doing it for, so why do we complain about the little things in life? We do it because we can, but more importantly because we want to complain!

Israel, as a nation, complained to Moses and to God for forty years in the desert. It isn’t any stretch for me to understand why Moses struck the rock when God had told him to speak to it in order to get water out of it. It was their complaining constantly that had stretched Moses’ patience to the breaking point, then the consequences of his anger caused him not to be able to go into the promised land. It is our lack of patience today that causes us to ignore God’s advice and the sermons that we hear because we have become so accustomed to nearly instant gratification from drive-thru eating places to microwaves which prepare our food in minutes instead of hours. Can we change? Will we change?

No, we won’t change on our own but we can if we will submit ourselves to Jesus and humble our lives to Him. Follow Him daily, get to know Him by reading and praying over His Word. Ask Him to reveal Himself to us through it because, if you are not attending a church regularly, getting to know Him through His Word is the only way that you will! It doesn’t take but a few minutes out of every day, but it needs to be done every day!

Getting to know Him and love Him is like getting to know your spouse, it needs to be practiced every day. Not just once a week or on Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Think about it and then get to know Jesus, because you won’t want to meet Him for the first time at the throne of judgement and if you don’t get to know Him now, that is where you will meet Him for the first and last time!

What do you see here?

It has been through a tremendous fire with a lot of heat which is what did all of the damage to it. The fire was particularly hot but the safe was not breached, it seems that it was capable of still being locked even though the outside was scorched and then discarded. I see an analogy of our country and the state of religion in it.

Christians, whether black or white, have taken the heat from people who follow Islam and from people who don’t follow any religion at all. We have not been broken, we have not stopped being Christians but there are some who are discarding their belief in Jesus or their religion. Why is this happening?

Is it because of the state of our country and its economy? Is it because of the state of relations between the so-called “races” of people in our country? Now, before anyone gets all bent out of shape, the reason that I have races in quotes is because God did not make us this way! God created mankind! We are all the same race, whether your skin is white or black, yellow or brown or any shade between those. Our main difference is cultural. There are cultural differences between most everyone on earth regardless of where you may live.

We are brought up by our parents and grand-parents into a culture, regardless of where you live. You may be brought up in a community in Chicago or Detroit or New York, but your culture will be in line with those that you are around.

Christian’s, regardless of race, should follow Jesus’ example. He didn’t pay attention to the cultural norms of his people, He spoke to women and to Samaritans which other Jews actively avoided. He healed lepers, he touched them which no one in His culture would do. We are to be His hands, His eyes, His feet in our time because others need to know Him. How will they know about Him if we don’t take Him with us through our actions or our words?

How can we possibly fulfill the commission that Jesus gave us to take the gospel to every nation and tribe if we don’t do it? If our cultural differences keep us apart and separate us into “us” and “them”, how can we show each other the love of Christ?

At the beginning of this post there is a picture of a burned safe which had been discarded. It did what it was supposed to do because it protected the contents to the best of its ability from the fire. That is what Christians are supposed to be doing too…protecting others from the fire of hell by telling them about the love and forgiveness of God.

Then, telling them about what Jesus did for each of us regardless of our skin color or our race or our culture. He did it for all of us and if you need to know what “it” is I am going to tell you: He took the punishment and the torture of being apart from God as well as the punishment of the cross for our sins!

God loves each of us, and it doesn’t matter which culture we claim or what skin color we have but in order for us to be considered a child of God and forgiven, we have to accept Jesus’ sacrifice and believe that it was for us because it was! The way that the world has everyone thinking is about groups of people and we need to look at each other as individuals. Each of us is unique and different but we are all the same in God’s eyes!

The contents of that safe may have burned up, but it did its job as well as it could. It may not have been designed to take as much heat as it looks like it was exposed to, but we are. Our character is molded by our culture and that character is what we should be showing the world. If your character and your ability is modeled after Christ, then they will see Him and that is the best that we can do as individuals because we were created to be mankind and have a relationship with each other and with God.

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