Category: Faith

God’s creation is beautiful!


Have you ever noticed a butterfly or a hummingbird? How wonderfully made they are and the beauty in their creation and God made them that way. Just as He made each of us beautiful in our own right and also as He intended for us to be. Adding to our bodies or taking away from them, doesn’t really change us because the person that each of us really is happens to be the one that God sees. The one that our soul or spirit is inside our hearts, not the one that is on the surface for the world to see.

Also, when we decide to become a Christian by asking Jesus to come into our hearts, the change is miraculous and on-going…until we reach our perfect home and place in Him which is in Heaven.

You know, there are times that we all see and feel things differently from day-to-day, but creation is still the same. It is all around us and we are part of it but most people tend to ignore it and take it for granted. Why? Because the sun comes up and goes down and the moon rises at night and sets in the morning. Everything that is going on around us has been going on for hundreds, if not thousands of years in one form or another. Granted, the newest technology might not have been there, but even in the days of pharaoh they had messengers to take messages across the kingdom, even if it wasn’t instant like it is today.

Your life today, regardless of whether you believe in Jesus or not, is in God’s hands. If you have felt His calling on your life or your heart and have not answered Him, why not? Just because some teacher or philosopher tells you that “God doesn’t exist, He is just a way for primitive man to make sense of his world”, don’t believe that! If you wish to, I can’t stop you. But, the point is this: Jesus came  and died for your sins, whether you wanted it or not! The only way to get to Heaven is to ask Jesus to come into your life and your heart and cleanse you and make you whole.

Some people might ask me, “What do you mean, “make me whole”? Well, you know that little feeling that you have had like something was missing and you couldn’t quite figure out what it was? It is Jesus. That empty feeling inside that you have had…some of you for a long time, is the place where He is supposed to be. Ask Him to complete your transformation into His image and bring His grace and goodness into your life. Because if you don’t, that empty feeling won’t go away and it might feel even bigger at times. If you reject His call on your life long enough, He will just let you go on with your life. Jesus doesn’t push or force you to do anything, He wants and needs for you to come willingly to Him and ask Him to come in with you.

God has loved you from the beginning of time because He has known each of us from the beginning. He knows what we had for lunch two years ago last Friday and He knows when you will die. There is nothing hidden from Him, no matter how dark the place where you “hide” might be. He loves you and is waiting for you to decide to come with Him on the rest of your journey. The trail that He travels on is not very wide, but He is able to take care of you all along the way, all that He asks is that you follow Him. Don’t step off the path, just follow Him. Please consider your life not just as you are now but in the eternal life that you can have with Him in Heaven.

What do we leave behind?


10561767_743035049071205_2362292510227829463_nThe genius that left us behind today was a great man of talent. He is going to be missed by many, not only in Hollywood but all over the world. His comedic genius and wit has been entertaining audiences for over three decades and it was a shock when I heard that he was gone. Could we have done more to help him? Could the world or his friends come along side him and helped to get him through his deep depression? I don’t know!

I have been through a few months of depression myself, though my depression wasn’t as deep as his was. I will truly miss his life being in our world because I was looking forward to another Mrs. Doubtfire. But, I will be happy to watch the original over again as well as his other television shows and movies. It is a shame that many people don’t leave a lasting impression on humanity like celebrities and sports figures. Yet, even their influence will be felt less and less as time goes on. We still see and hear Elvis and John Lennon and Michael Jackson, but the impact that they made begins to fade after a time.

Do we really leave a legacy to society when we are gone or do the memories fade as the audience that we had dwindles with age? I will never know, because I don’t have a following such as any celebrity does. Some of you might miss my writing one day, but it won’t last long in Internet time. I will be replaced with the newest and best that is out there.

The thing that I hope that I have left you with is that Jesus is the answer to all of your problems. Not Muhammad or Buddha or any other god or religious figure. Jesus came and died for you and me and He is the Savior of us all. The only requirement of you is your belief in Him and your request for Him to come into your life and make you into a new creation in Him. That is all that you need to do. There is no money required, no sacrifice that you have to give, only that you believe in Him and in what He did for you. He made more of an impact on our world with His death but it was because of His resurrection that we still have hope!

No matter what the problem or your circumstances may be, He is the only real answer for it and the only One that matters! Please give Him your heart and your life, then you will see what true eternal life will be like!

Lies, lies, lies


In one sense all lies are lies to God. However, as the passage below shows, there is a particular type of lie that qualifies specifically as lying to God. I think of this as “lying on steroids.” Often, this lie is not about hiding things that are wicked, but about misrepresenting things that appear to be good, even righteous. This is where the greatest danger lies for children raised in Christian homes. That is why your parenting must go beyond addressing just their behavior.

“Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet. Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God.” Acts 5:1-4

Each day you challenge your children to obey God. In each home this challenge comes with the promise of some kind of negative consequence for not obeying and some type of reward for obedience. Even when you neglect to follow through with the consequences of disobedience, the specter of accountability hangs in the air. Given their sinful nature, the tendency of children is to find ways to avoid these consequences. At the same time, there is also the promise of reward attached to requests for obedience. So again, even when the reward is not consistent (or even not biblical), human nature desires the reward, whether it is deserved or not.

For example, one sibling sees that his sister is rewarded for cleaning. So, he is careful to mention that he too, helped, even if he did not actually do anything. This child realizes that he can achieve what he wants if his parents perceive that he is doing good things. Thus, he might participate by appearing to be busy, but only when mom is looking. Internally, he may be resentful of having to do something he doesn’t want to, but he is motivated by the reward or praise he thinks he will receive. He may even agree that God helped him to obey because he knows that is what his parents want to hear. This deceptive, self-serving attitude may eventually lead to the kind of deception that Ananias and Sapphira practiced. They were seeking praise and status without the sacrificial spirit of truly loving Christ. It was in this way that they lied to God.

As parents, you must not become complacent when your children give only outward compliance to your directions. If you put up with a grumbling, complaining spirit as the price for your children following your directions, you open the door to lying to God. God desires obedience from the heart, not the outward form of ritual sacrifice. (Amos 5:21-23; Isaiah 29:13) So, the mindset that says, “At least he took the garbage out, even though he moaned and groaned about it,” totally misses the point of loving God. This child is not being shepherded. Rather he is being encouraged to believe that God will be satisfied with mere outward compliance to his commands, even when his heart is not involved in his obedience.

Ananias and Sapphira believed that they could trade the appearance of obedience for spiritual status—for recognition from others that they were devoted to the church. But God is not mocked. He cannot be deceived. Lying expresses the hypocrisy of the human heart. This is why the Lord detests lying lips. As lies progress beyond mere self-protection to the point of lying to achieve personal desires, the danger of lying directly to God increases. Ananias and Sapphira tried to manipulate the appearance of doing good. The fatal mistake they made was thinking they could deceive God as well as people.

Lying is not something to ignore, deal with lying whenever you discover it. Don’t allow the busy routine of life to cover patterns of outward compliance. But we must address this sin carefully and wisely. This requires a substantial investment of time and biblical wisdom.

God’s children


Who were the first children of God? Many people think that Jesus was the first, but He wasn’t. Adam was the first human son of God and Eve was His daughter. Have you ever considered that? When God told the creation story to Moses, we aren’t told how long they existed in the Garden. The best part about it is that God came down and walked with them in the cool of the evening. We aren’t told what they were discussing, but I am sure that they had plenty of questions just as we do when we are young. We all ask “why is this the way it is?”, and I am sure that Adam and Eve did the same.

What can we learn from their story, their lives? One very important lesson is to experience God’s presence every day, not just on Sunday morning! God wants us to talk to Him about what is going on in our lives. He loves you because He is LOVE, perfect and holy. It doesn’t matter about your faults or failures, God knows about those but He loves you anyway. So, will you give Him some time in your schedule every day? You know, we don’t really grow up until we graduate from this life to our eternal home, right now we are just practicing.

Can you see the beauty of the creation around you? The strength of a horse or a cow and how wonderfully they are made. The strength of an oak tree and how it bends and sways with the wind, yet it remains strong as long as its roots are planted in God’s earth. That is where we draw our strength from, only when we are planted in the Word of God and cling to Him every day do we draw strength from Him and His wisdom. Our wisdom is foolish and futile because it is finite, God’s is infinite. He knows what you said last night and what you said or even thought this morning. Going fishing instead of going to church is not a worship experience. You are in the world that He made, but you are not worshipping Him. Hunting instead of coming to church is the same, you see the majesty of His handiwork all around you in the trees and the animals but unless you are there to worship God you are just hunting.

We all tend to hunt for things and stuff that satisfy for a while, but will that trophy or that ribbon be with you when you appear before God? No, everything that you have now, will be left when you stand before Him. None of your things will accompany you unless maybe your family is there, because showing them the way to Jesus will allow them to be there too. The fruit of your salvation, those who you have shown Jesus to, will follow you to paradise with Jesus. That is the only reward that will be worth having in Heaven. Those that have heard about Jesus from you or from someone who you might have told about Him, that is the fruit which will follow you or arrive before you into Heaven.

Think about how wonderfully you are made. We all have something about us that maybe we don’t like, but God put it there for a reason. It doesn’t matter what it is, God put it there to make you unique and special because you are. Each person on this Earth is unique, no two are alike exactly, not even twins. They may be similar but as any mother of twins can tell you, they are different too. Personality and differences in temperament are evident regardless of how much they look like each other.

Think about this today and ask God to show you what is special about you. It might surprise you.

Consider the names of God


He is El Shaddai (The Almighty)
He is El Olam (The Everlasting God)
He is El Ohiym (The Strong One)
He is Adonai (Master)
He is Yahweh Shalom (The Lord is Peace)
He is Jehovah-Rapha (The Lord Who Heals)
He is Jehovah-Hoseenu (The Lord our Maker)

God is all of these. He has been for eternity and will be for eternity. We do not have to wonder if He is because…He is. God is able. God is the Holy Spirit. God is Adonai…our Master and Lord. All of these are true, but do we accept them when we become Christians? Do we truly realize exactly Who we are dealing with or even praying to?

In our daily lives, whether we are Christians or not, do we ever come to grasp that it is this Presence, this Person Who came and died for each of our sins and then rose from the grave to conquer death and prove that we will also? If we allow Him into our lives and into our hearts so that He can cleanse us from our previous Earthly selves and change us…each one of us into a new Creature in Christ. This is the message that Jesus wants us to take to the world. This is the testimony that we have to let others know about by telling them in some way, because if we don’t tell them…who will?

Sure, there are books and Bibles and tapes. There are DVD’s and CD’s that people can listen to, but did you listen to them? Did you hear or see those messages before your heart was broken into thousands of pieces? Did you want to know God prior to His touch…His call on your life? I doubt it. You did just like the rest of us hypocrites, you went about your life doing the same things day in and day out with no more thought about eternity than your thoughts about the economy or even what you would eat for lunch!

But, you know, when your heart got a crack in it….when something got your attention to come around to see that there was more to life than hunting and football, then you began to look for a meaning, for a purpose. You felt that things wouldn’t be enough, stuff wasn’t important any more just because you had more expensive stuff than someone else! This life…this time that we have only has meaning and purpose when you give it to the One that Created it, so that He can make you into what you were…what you ARE supposed to be. You can’t do it alone. You can’t be “the one” in your life or anyone else’s life until you allow the One into yours!

Yes, today is today and tomorrow is still yet to come but if you give your heart, your life to God and ask Him to make you into His idea of what or who you should be then your tomorrows will never end. Even if your life here does, the effect that your words, your actions, your character had on even one person may go farther than you ever could to make an impact on more people than you will ever know on this side of Heaven. Consider that and think about His Names.

What has been your “test”?


Have you been blessed with a “test” in your life? Many people don’t think of these as tests but as trials. In reality, it is a learning time or a teachable moment, even if the so-called moment lasts longer than you wish or want it to. Think of Job, in the Bible, his teachable “moment” took away everything that he had including his health. So much so that his wife advised him: “His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!“. ( Job 2:9)  What kind of nonsense it that!?

Giving up on life or cursing God…neither option is a good one and could actually make things much worse! God loves each of us far more than we can understand and He is always near us, especially if you are a Christian. Although many who are going through times that are hard, especially now, may not be Christians. So, what can they do? If things seem to be too hard to bear, cry out to God! He is the Great Physician and is able to do above and beyond what we can know or think to ask for!

Jesus died for us so that we can come to the Father at any time and if your heart feels that there is no hope, there really is! Through Jesus’ sacrifice for us, He gave us the access to God directly. We no longer have to go to a priest or a rabbi to know that our prayers are being heard. There is nothing that we can do that will aid our prayers about whatever it might be that is tasking us and trying our faith. God hears what you need, especially when we are seeking Him for His ever-present help and understanding!

We are not to test God with irrational things like jumping from a building or handling snakes or drinking poison. Our faith may save us in some of those situations, but God will allow gravity to have its way. The other so-called “tests” are just against common sense, period!

The point that I am trying to make is that God loves us and will save our souls if we come to Him, seeking Him for our salvation. When we add suicide into the mix of “issues”, God will allow your soul to be saved if you have given your heart to Him prior to this, even though some might argue this point. My actual point is that if you have given your heart to Jesus and truly asked Him into your life, I don’t believe that He will allow you to get so far down that you take your life. During my month of feeling this way, I have thought of suicide but that is as far as it went…just thoughts and nothing more.

I love my wife and son too much to leave them like that and even though I love Jesus more, I don’t believe that He wants me to do something that stupid with my life. If for no other reason than it doesn’t honour Him at all if I kill myself! Writing this out seems to be helping in many ways because it is almost like talking to a therapist without the bill. Besides, they have no interest in you anyway. All that they want is their fee. I may be wrong about that, but consider that they don’t really know you at all, you are just a patient to them.

Anyway, God created you and knows you far more intimately than anyone. He knew that this was coming and why. He also knows when it will end and will enable you to get through it, and you will by depending upon Him, trusting Him and having faith in His provisions for you.

 

Who is this Man?


 “Nobody knows the exact date of His birth, and yet His birth has divided all of history to A.D. and B.C. He never, so far as we know, wrote a book, and yet more books have been written about Him than any other person. He never painted a picture or composed any poetry or music that we know of, and yet He has been the inspiration of the greatest music, art, and poetry that the world has ever known. He never had any formal education, yet more schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries have been founded in His name than any other person who ever lived.” – part of a devotional that I received from Love Worth Finding Ministries

Of course the man in the reference above is Jesus the Christ, our Messiah, the Son of the Living God. His influence on the world is undeniable, whether you believe in Him as the Messiah or not, and the effect that Christianity has had in the past two thousand years is polarizing. So, what is it about Him that makes people either love or hate Him and His followers? There is not middle ground concerning Christianity either, it is black and white.

He said it Himself, “And if the world hates you, know that it hated me before you.” John 15:18; so why does the world truly hate Christianity and Jesus in particular? Because of many things which don’t have much to do with the religion, such as His race and because His blood had to be given in order for us to be justified and sanctified by belief in what He did for us. Those are the two main points that I have noticed about those who are against believing in Him. What has that got to do with anything?

Just because He was born into the Jewish culture and God required a blood sacrifice to atone for sin? Big deal! The sins of Adam and Eve were covered by the blood of an animal that had to be killed in order for them to have clothing and from that point on the blood of an animal was required as the sacrifice of atonement for sin. The only difference is that on the cross, the perfect Son of God is the One Who gave His life as a ransom for all, not just a few but all! That is the part which the world wants to reject. Nobody wants a gift that cost that much to be given to them for free, everyone wants to earn it, but there is nothing that you or I can do to earn and be worthy of His sacrifice! Everything was done on the cross that needed to be done and we can’t add to it!

No amount of work on your part or mine will aid in any way your entrance into heaven. Accepting Jesus as your Savior and Lord and believing in what He did for you and for everyone else is all that is necessary. Though, you will be led to do more after you are saved by His grace it will not add anything to your entrance into Heaven except that you may bring a few people with you. Please, pray about the scriptures that point to Him in the Old Testament while you read them, then look up the references in the New Testament that show the fulfillment of the Old. Once you realize that He was there from the beginning as the Son, until He came as the Son of Man and He will come as the King of Kings, you will know your Savior is Jesus the Christ as the Son of the Living God!

 

 

How wealthy are you?


There are many people in the world who don’t have anything at all. They make less than one hundred dollars in a year, so why are we so worried about a piece of plastic and electronics which cannot do anything, yet we guard it like a precious child? I am speaking of the way we, in America, treat our cell phones of course. It seems that many people almost have one permanently attached to either their hands or to the side of their head, but IMO, unless you are spreading the gospel of Christ over your conversation there is nothing that is THAT important!

The Christians in China and North Korea are being jailed and persecuted every day, yet their numbers are growing…why? Because God is blessing the message that they are getting out! They don’t have mega churches, they have to meet secretly in rooms inside their homes like the early church did, but their message is being blessed!

If the church in America would get up off of the couch and begin having study time instead of watching TV, then America wouldn’t be in the situation that it is in! Jesus didn’t lounge around and wait for people to find Him, He went out and found them first and asked “What do you want me to do for you?”, read it because those words are there.

In our country, we don’t think of ourselves as wealthy but to many people in the world all Americans are wealthy. We spend hundreds of dollars on plastic phones to talk and Tweet and surf the Internet with, then we wonder why we can’t get much done everyday! Many in other parts of the world could live very comfortably on what we spend on just one cell phone, even if it is subsidized by the carrier.

I don’t mean to be knocking cell phones, I use one myself, but the point is that we should be doing more for the Kingdom of God and less for our own little kingdoms that we live in everyday. Why don’t we try to do more for Him, instead of being so selfish? It is because of our nature, the one that we have grown up with for our entire life. Our nature, even if we have given our life to Christ, is one of being selfish and concentrating on what each of us want, sometimes just what I want. And, we want it NOW!

The entire culture of the past twenty or thirty years has revolved around personal gratification in meals, cell phones, work, and even when we come to church. People hop from one church or another trying to find a “preacher” who will tell them what they want to hear and not what they should and need to hear from God’s Word! Our culture and the way of life that seems to be in front of the world is that we have everything and are lacking nothing, when the opposite is true! The perceived way of life here is that we have more than enough of food and money when the majority of Americans barely make it from paycheck to paycheck. Even though our paychecks may be a bit more than many in third-world countries have in a year, the culture is different as well as the lifestyle.

Honestly, that is not really the point anyway! We depend more on our stuff than we should and the stuff that we depend upon is just plain junk when you get right down to it. Depending on God and His grace which we receive every day, is the way that Christians are supposed to live out our faith and our lives. When people see us stressing over things that don’t really matter, they think that our faith in God isn’t real or that we don’t think that God can handle it. This is false, since He is the Creator of everything. Our problems are but small trifles to Him and all that we need to do is exercise our faith and put our trust in Him so that the world can see it.

The Bible is not Dead either!!


There is a great movie out called “God’s not Dead” and it is one which all of us need to promote and go to see with someone who needs to see it or even a bunch of someone’s! A survey came out today that I heard about and it talks of how the church, the body of believers, has failed to defend the Bible.

It doesn’t need to be defended, it needs to be read and taught, faithfully and truthfully because it is the inspired, truthful Word of God!! Written down by men who were moved by the Spirit of God to write His wisdom and His Word’s down so that others might be able to read and understand. The Bible is relevant to us today and it was relevant to those to whom it was given as a message or advice or even a warning at the time, but the message is the same today.

We are moving away from His teachings, even some church leaders are watering it down and changing it so that it doesn’t mean what it originally did. In some ways, it has been changed like our history so that it really doesn’t say what actually happened. We are supposed to take the Message of the Bible as God’s Word and since He cannot lie, we are to believe it as the Truth. If you are not a Christian, it is certain that this won’t mean anything to you, faith and the belief which comes with it are things which people who belong to the world can’t understand.

I apologize for offending you with the statement above, but it is the truth. Just as someone who is not a computer programmer would not understand the instructions of a programmer, the words and the promises of the Bible are meaningless to those who have not accepted Him by faith either. The Bible is just a book of the history and ancient stories of the Israelite nation and the heroes and the patriarchs and none of it is useful for today. Faith is required in the service of God and in understanding His Word and the promises contained in it and if you are not willing to give your heart to Jesus in faith, then you are lost.

If you are serious about seeking Jesus, then pray about what you need to learn from God’s Word and ask Him to give you the message and the wisdom to understand it. Seeking Jesus is a daily task, it is not something which is accomplished and then you move on. It is a daily reading of the Word, prayer about what you have read and the knowledge contained in it, asking God to reveal Himself to you through the reading of His Word as well as prayer about your own salvation.

If you have not been drawn to Jesus or felt that you truly needed Him in your life, then seeking Him is going to be a very bland experience. You will know if you have felt it because you will have felt that something is missing in your life and that there is something which will fill that empty spot. But you don’t know what that “something” is, it is not a thing….it is Jesus. The Bible speaks of Jesus from Genesis all the way to Revelation. He is the Seed of the Woman, the Rock that the water came from in the wilderness, the Tabernacle, the Spotless Lamb for the sacrifice that was required for the remission of sins. Give your heart to Jesus and learn of Him through reading God’s Word and praying for Him to come into your life because your life and your work will be so much more fulfilling now and in eternity if you do.

Edit: I was pointed toward a website which showed some disturbing things about the movie which I refer to in the first paragraph and I need to address the points of that now. I have been writing this blog for a while now and I have noticed that there are many in the movie industry who believe with their heads and not their hearts and it seems that the producers of the movie “God’s not dead!” are only intellectual Christians. They have knowledge of God and believe that He exists but they don’t have faith in Him nor do they give His Word any credibility as being factual at all. They try to insert man’s wisdom, such as it is, into the Creation account as well as in other places. Changing what they wish along the way so that it fits their life and what they want to do instead of changing their lives to learn about God and changing themselves by His grace to be able to do what He calls them to do.

Also, there are many true Christians who are doing this as well today. Allowing evolution and the big bang to be placed in between the first verse and the second verse in Genesis. Anything could be put there in someone’s mind and it would fit whatever you wish, but the Truth which resides in the Word of God is that all of it is true or none of it is. The truth contained within it must be the Truth because God cannot lie, and if we are trying to change the Word in any way then we are nullifying it and we will pay the price for our arrogance.

Read God’s Word as the Truth. Pray about it, investigate any book, movie, or television show and compare it to the Truth found in God’s Word. If it can’t stand the test of Truth, then regardless of who is promoting it, don’t go to see it. I haven’t seen it yet and likely will not go to see it. Thank you for pointing me to the right review of the movie so that I could fix my own assessment of it.

Think about it, please,while you have the time.

What would your friends say?


If you came up to them and told them that they needed to know Christ? Ask them one day, you may be surprised. Are you sure that they know Him? I know that we can’t judge people and their relationship to Jesus and we don’t have the right to do so but don’t you think that we should try to at least tell them about Him? In the politically correct world that we live in today, would it be appropriate to approach your friends to tell them about Jesus? Probably not, but what do you have to lose?

Jesus gave all of His followers the command to “go and preach the good news”, which means that we cannot keep this to ourselves! We are not supposed to keep it bottled up inside. The Living Water of the Life that we have within us has to come out…it has to go somewhere and it needs to go to our friends and family and everyone that we can tell it to. If every Christian told one person and that person accepted Christ and then each of them told one more person and so on, eventually we would win the world to Christ. In today’s world it really wouldn’t take very long with planes and the Internet, the world can learn of Him very quickly.

But, the message about Him doesn’t seem to be getting out does it? Oh, there are many people who are telling His story and who are witnessing to others about Jesus but it seems that we are outnumbered by the people who don’t want to know Him and don’t care whether you tell them or not. Because of Satan’s influence, it seems they want whatever is in the world and not those things which point to a life with Christ. Many people seem to what the quick fix, immediate satisfaction of getting what they want right now and not waiting for it to come to them in eternity.

We have all been brought up in a world where we want faster Internet speeds, instant meals that taste like home cooking, fast food, disposable cell phones, lives and relationships, all in search of something that we don’t know but we feel inside that we need “it”, whatever it may be. The answer to our search is found simply, but we don’t want simple, easy answers. We always try to make something harder than it should be so that we feel like we earned it. The problem with that kind of thinking is that we can’t earn our way into eternal life or into Heaven itself.

The answer to our search and to all of the empty feelings is Jesus, plain and simple. We were designed with a need for Him, but we are born not knowing Him. When you find out about Him and what He means to your life, then you have a choice to make: follow Him and ask Him to come into your heart or turn away from Him and walk away, choosing to do things your way because you know better than God how to handle your life.

What a preposterous idea and attitude! How could you know better than God about anything? He is the Creator and Sustainer of it all, especially of our lives and what we can do with them. I agree that we each know what we want out of life, most of the time, and we might be able to get it. But is it the right thing or the right way to do it? Are you going to get yourself into more trouble and heartache because of the decisions that you make on your own? It is possible, you know?

We don’t make the most intelligent choices sometimes when it comes to choosing our spouse or our cars or even our jobs. Sometimes, we don’t even make the best choices when it comes to choosing our friends. The best choice is to choose to be friends with Jesus. Talk to Him about your other problems, regardless of how small they are or how big they might seem to be. God is bigger than all of your problems and He can handle them all, even the little ones and all of the ones in between.