Category: God’s Love for us

Death…and Life!


I am not sure how many people look at Jesus’ life and death and resurrection in that order, but I do. I have to, I am a pastor after all. Yes, life comes after death! It is not an “if” situation it is a when. When you die you will live somewhere forever, the where is up to your decision in this life. Which decision you may ask? The one about giving your heart to Jesus and asking Him to come into your life! It is not a decision which will ruin your life. Your life will change for sure, but it will be a more sure and hopeful life. Sure because of the promise of God, if you accept Jesus as your Savior you will be saved from an eternity of torment. Eternity is a very long time, so I would really think it over if I were in your place.

I was in your place once. I had never given my heart to Jesus, I just thought that I had. I had gone through all of the motions of going to church and Sunday school and Bible school. I had even gone down front and joined the church and even got baptized. The only thing that really happened during all of this was..that I got wet with my clothes on in front of some people. That is it! Nothing changed in my heart and I went through this more than once. Until I felt the Holy Spirit calling me and I answered Him honestly and truly, nothing changed. When I did answer His call on my life, I knew it!

Some people have said that they can name the day or date that they gave their life to Christ. I never have worked that way, never even tried to remember it but it really did happen. It has been about ten years or so now, but the relationship has grown so much closer and warmer than I could have ever imagined. It truly is like being in love because you are loved so much more deeply than you can be by anyone in the world!

Jesus loves each of us far more than we can understand and I know I have said that before, but it is true! Seek Jesus out in the Bible or at a church where they teach from God’s Word. Learn about Him if you don’t know Him yet and ask Him to come into your life. Read and study the Bible, not because it is a good book to read but because it is a collection of God’s Wisdom and His love letters penned through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to all of us, not just the Jewish people.

In His Service until He comes or I go home.

Life, what will you do with it?


Since we are all alive if we are breathing, then we are all living right now…today, but have you considered what tomorrow might bring your way? Have you even thought of what will happen or may happen in an hour or two? We are not gifted with that kind of sight, thank goodness! We can’t see into the future even a few minutes from now regardless of where we are or how much we may like to see the future. So, how are you living your life right now, this very instant? Have you ever thought of that or even considered it at all?

Life is something that we live one tick of the clock at a time or one blink of your eyes at a time. Just fractions of a second stand between you closing your eyes in a blink and then opening them again and it only takes a fraction of a second. But, there are times that just that tiny fraction of a second could make the difference between having a wreck in a car or not. But, we can’t stop blinking or driving or walking because that is what we do while living!

Faith in God’s provision brings us through those milliseconds of time when we blink. He will see us through and bring us out the other side. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but consider all of the milliseconds that people experience every day, every month, every year and you realize that we all live faithfully in God’s grace whether we believe in Him or not! Isn’t that great? He loves each of us THAT much regardless of our faith or belief in Him.

Some of us are given much in goods and things that the world sees as our blessing from God. In the eyes of many people of the world, outside America, each person in this country is wealthy. Most of us have a place to live that is warm or cool according to the season, many of us have food on the table or in the house every day of the year, many of us have jobs which pay us a nice wage or if we happen to own a business it may be doing well enough to provide us everything that we need in this life. The problem with looking at our “material wealth” from the perspective of those outside of our homes or our businesses is that they don’t see or feel the loneliness and fear and helplessness that comes with being “well off”.

Many of us don’t even consider ourselves well off in wealth at all. Business owners have payroll and insurance and overhead expenses like utilities and such. Homeowners and those in business have insurance and grocery bills, utility bills, cable bills, dental and clothing bills, tuition bills, etc. So much so that after you take out all of the money for bills and life, there isn’t much wealth left at all! But, to those who live in Africa or India or Turkey or China or North Korea our way of life and the apparent wealth that they see is far above anything that many of them will ever attain.

That is why America and Americans are not on the lists of people who are liked or loved, because we are seen as a culture and a country that has it all. Everyone else wants what we have, up to a point, but they also want to bring us down a notch or two if possible. The biggest realization that the world needs to find out about is that we can’t fill that spot that has always been empty or hollow. No amount of money or stuff will ever fill that empty part of your soul until you realize that Jesus is the One that does fit in that spot! Once you understand that, all of the stuff that most are holding onto for dear life just doesn’t matter! Yes, you still have to have money to pay your electric bill and your other bills, but the i-Pads and the i-Pods and the phones and computers and any other amount of things which this season tries to tell you that you HAVE TO HAVE…they don’t matter at all!

Jesus said that your life is like a puff of smoke and compared to eternity it really is! Your life doesn’t matter much unless Jesus and belief in Him is a part of your everyday existence. No amount of time or effort or money invested or given to any charity will make an eternal difference unless you are doing it with faith and the love of Jesus in your heart.

The Preeminent Christ!


Have you ever heard a preacher call Jesus that? I don’t believe that I have and I have been going to church for about fifty years (although I don’t remember much of those first few years). Jesus was elevated to His position when He returned to Heaven and sat down on the right of His Father. Why doesn’t anyone preach this or tell about Him being in this position today? Because it is not in the Bible, I believe.

Yes, it does say that He occupies the right hand side of the throne but we never hear about what that includes. Why? Because it would be mostly speculation on our part. Jesus never explicitly told His disciples that He would be in control of all of creation, it is just assumed because He is the Creator along with God! It seems that nobody considered that He would be anymore than a man, even if He is the Son of God.

Consider this: He is already on the throne of David even though He is not on Earth yet. He is in control of all of creation because He is the Creator, the Living Word of God. He loves each of us with a love that goes far beyond anything that we can conceive or imagine, even if we haven’t accepted Him as Savior yet.

He is the I AM! He is part of the Trinity! He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords! He is Alive and He is RISEN. Our Savior and Lord, so why is it that His name and the church which began from His disciple’s going out to tell about Him causes so much strife and problems? The “church” from ages past, which sent Crusaders into Jerusalem and lands occupied by the followers of Islam, is not the church that I belong to. Though many people seem to associate Christians with it and lump us all together as one big group. We are so fractured and splintered into denominations and beliefs which don’t follow all of the teachings of Christ or have changed those teachings to reflect what each one wants to believe. How can we be so split up like this? The Bible is still the Word of God. It is still the same whether it is in a different language or translation. So what happened to the Christ and to Jesus and the message that He taught before He went to be at the right hand of the Father?

The scriptures and the words contained in them are still the Word of God, so why can’t the church act like a unified body of believers?

Because of our own beliefs and individual ideas about what should and should not be taught in church. It seems that church squabbles and divisions start because a few people don’t like the sermon which was preached last week or last month. Then, they go and stir up trouble by finding a few more people who agree with them. Pretty soon they have enough people that they can demand that the preacher leave or they can go start another church with another pastor. Who is behind all of this in-fighting and bickering? Satan.

When he was defeated at the cross, he purposed to tear the church apart by quarrels and in-fighting and he and his demons and principalities have done a very good job of it over the past two thousand years or so. The church has splintered into hundreds of denominations with different doctrines. Some which follow the teachings of Jesus and some which don’t recognize His deity at all. It is no wonder that there are so many people who are confused and have decided not to believe what our message says. All that can be done is to keep telling people about Jesus and His teachings and that He is the only way to salvation because that is His message. Don’t add to it and don’t take anything away from it and let the Spirit do its work in the world. That is the job that we have as His church.

No violence, no argument and no pushing “religion” on anyone, just tell people about His love and that He died for them so that they might live…forever.

In His Service.

Too much information….


Everywhere that we go today, whether it is to work or school or to a favorite store or even a restaurant, we are assaulted with advertising of some kind. In our email and text messages, sometimes we get sales calls from people and companies which we might never have had a relationship at all! We watch videos and read posts on twitter and Facebook and many other social media sites…for what? The information? The news, if there is such a thing anymore, is old five minutes after we see it or hear it and we move on to something else. Have you ever wanted to get away from all of this connectedness? I certainly would like to, although I wouldn’t be able to keep this site up if I did. But, it would be like a vacation just to have a few days without cell service and Internet. I would likely go through some withdrawal for the first day or so, but I think I could adjust and cope with it.

Life today is so covered in information until it is causing stress when and where there was no stress before. Even children feel stressed by it today, because of too much information and the fact that it is so pervasive in our society today. There have been plenty of theories about doomsday scenarios with electromagnetic pulses and such. If such a thing did happen over a country like the USA, there would be many people who would likely have a heart attack because they couldn’t check in with their friends and family every few minutes! I have heard some people say that something needs to happen to push us back into life as it was in the nineteenth century with no phones, no electricity, no food unless you grew it yourself, no milk unless you had a cow or a goat that gave milk. Sounds like fun doesn’t it? Not really. More than half of the people of America would die if this happened. Some because of violence, some because of starvation, mostly because of boredom on top of the other two!

There was a speech given once by a great President where he was consecrating a battlefield. One that had come on our soil because of stubbornness and laziness and the ideas of a privileged few that wouldn’t give up their way of life to set men free. Here is that speech, not because it is a light in a dark world but because the man who wrote it and gave it was:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that our nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The ideas that Abraham Lincoln espoused in this speech which we do still remember, if you have taken American history that has not been altered, come from a faith in God because even though slavery was OK in the Bible it wasn’t supposed to be life-long. Unless the slave loved you and didn’t want to be set free, they were supposed to go free in seven years. All debt was cancelled and land was returned to the original owner every fifty years. Life, given to us by God and His grace, is a precious commodity not to be used or squandered. We should honor it and celebrate it, even if someone doesn’t believe the same doctrine that you do or live according to the “book” that you do. We are created in His image and created equal in His sight, regardless of our skin color or religion and that is the code…the doctrine that we should live by!

 

What is happening?


The world is burning and many people are applauding the fact that it is, why? No, it isn’t literally burning yet, but the fires which fuel the hatred and violence which precedes the end times which are taught in the Bible and in the Koran are burning and getting hotter. Believe it or not, call me crazy if you wish, but the  problems that are in this world are here because of sin, period! There was an exchange of a BBC show about sin and other topics and I have given the link to it from theblaze.com. In essence the host of the show is calling the Truth in God’s Word bigoted and hateful. It hurts when you find the truth of scripture that applies to your life. It hurts when you realize that some of the sinful things that you condone and agree with are shown to be the sins which God abhors.

Preachers don’t teach bigotry, we teach and preach the Truth of the Living God! If you don’t like it, don’t come to church, don’t read God’s Word at all! But…if you are looking for the truth and the way to live your life by God’s laws and God’s ways, then by all means learn about Him! God loves those on Earth, each of us, but He doesn’t condone nor approve of our sinful lifestyles or the sins which we live in every day! I may be a preacher but I am a sinner too. I don’t claim to be pure or holy, the only righteousness that I have has been imputed to me through Jesus because it is His righteousness that I have in my heart!

No, I am not perfect in fact I am far from it. Not one person on Earth is righteous enough to get into Heaven on their own and whether you agree with me or not, you know this to be true! God provided us with a Savior through Jesus and all that we have to do to have His righteousness is to believe in Him and give our lives to Him through faith. No amount of works or actions on our part will ever help us get into Heaven because He did all of the work necessary and it is our responsibility to either accept it or not. God doesn’t send anyone to Hell, you do that by rejecting Him and His love for you.

Understanding…


I have read many books, scientific and novels, books to waste time with and books which help you in ways that you need help with. I have come to understand much of the Bible itself but I am still studying it and will be until my death. I won’t understand all of it even then.

Yet, I am a father to a teenage son who is very much like me in so many ways, and I can’t understand him. I suppose it is because I have never fully understood myself. Which is something that I doubt that very many people in the world can claim truthfully. Why am I writing this on my blog? I suppose to vent a little, but more to the point I am doing it because I need to.

Most of the words which I have written here I don’t believe were entirely my own, but were inspired by the Spirit of God. I have never been very eloquent or well spoken, especially in public, but I seem to be able to write things that people have told me seem to be inspired wisdom. Surely the wisdom that I have written here is from God because I don’t consider myself to be a wise man. Yes, I am a preacher and I do preach on Sunday morning every week but most of that is reading from God’s Word and then trying to explain it in the best way that I can. The wisdom that is there in those sermons comes from God, not from me. It comes from the Holy Spirit guiding me in my sermons and I believe that He does that here as well.

So, the reason that I am writing this is to help me understand myself and my son and possibly to help others who may be going through the same issues in their lives. God knows each of us far more intimately than we know ourselves and He can reveal things in your life and mine that we didn’t know, even pertaining to ourselves. So, what can I find out about myself from God today? I am not sure if He will reveal much to me that I don’t already know.

I am stubborn, and I have a temper which I pray that He will help me with every day. Some days it is hard to focus on the project at hand and stay focused until it is done, so I likely have a bit of ADD but that is okay too. God still uses me in ways that I never thought possible, as for understanding myself and my son that is going to take a lot more time and effort than just writing an entry here. God will help me with that as well.

We all need to understand each other and ourselves just in order to get along better. The problem is that we are never taught any of this in school and very rarely at home. The understanding part only comes from God and He only hands that out to those who ask for it. If you don’t ask, you don’t receive. Please don’t ask God for patience though, your learning about that may be entertaining for Him but you won’t like it at all! Patience comes through reading the Psalms and prayer. Learning about God and His ways gives you the understanding that you need in all situations. See, God gave me my answer just as I knew He would!

Applying it to a teenager is a different story altogether, so I will try to learn more about God’s understanding so I can cultivate some of my own. I pray that all of you who read this will be safe and secure in God’s love and know that He does love you no matter what! I am also praying for the families and friends of those killed in France. There will be a victory in the fight against evil one day, just make sure which side you are on!

Amen

 

Is it possible to commit an unpardonable sin?


The point of no return is the same as an unpardonable sin, when you die there is no return and if you have refused the grace of God all of your life there is no pardon available! You don’t get a second chance after death because you have had many opportunities in this life. What can you do? What will you do with your eternity now?

For many people, that decision has already been made and there is no changing it. For others there is still hope. If you still breathe and walk this earth you can change and seek out your Creator, today. Tomorrow is still ahead and yesterday is already gone, consider this before you go to sleep tonight. Like the farmer in the story who said, “I have enough. I will build more barns and take life easy. Eat, drink and be merry and take life as it comes. And God said, you fool, tonight your soul is required of thee.” Granted, this is a paraphrase of the scripture (Luke 12:19,20), but you get the idea.

Your life and mine are not guaranteed. We don’t have a certificate which says “you will have 58.5 years before you die” when we are born. Even in the Bible it says that man has appointed three score and ten or seventy years, anything beyond this is due to God’s grace alone. Yet, even that isn’t guaranteed. Consider that you live X number of years, after this there is eternity in one place or another. Which one will you live in during that time?

Consider this the next time you are in a close call on the highway. Why do I emphasize this today, now? It is truly because our lives are just a puff of smoke compared to eternity and whether you believe it or not, that is where you will spend most of your actual life. Seventy years is not a long time compared to even one million years, it is just a dot on a very long line. Even one million years is only a dot on a line that never ends! That is why I am speaking this way today because your eternal life will be either in the presence of God in Heaven or it will be with the demons and Satan and everyone else who refused God’s gift of grace through Jesus Christ our Lord.

It is your choice. God doesn’t require it of you nor does He force you to serve Him, ever! You cannot force anyone to truly love you and if it is forced, it isn’t love at all. It is done out of fear and that kind of devotion is NOT what God seeks!! God is not Allah and Allah is not God! Radical thinking, huh? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not Allah, it is Yahweh Elohim! Seek Him out and learn of the One True God because beside Him there is no other!

Amen

I can only imagine!


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Not much to add to this! Amen!

Life….


Where do we find life? Here on Earth we can see it in all of its forms and shapes. It is all around us, everywhere. We can’t escape life except when we take it.

Do people here respect and revere life today? No! The evidence shows on the television and on all news media outlets that there is no respect for life anymore. Why has this happened and who allowed it to happen? The answer to both questions falls to our love of convenience and our disdain for rules. We have allowed our country to be overrun with people who have grown up with instant communications, drive-thru windows, microwave meals and popcorn, even drive-thru marriages in Las Vegas. Why would anyone care about life when things are so easy and simple and quick? What do you care that someone just shot a child because his dad was from a rival gang? It isn’t your kid, so stay out of it!

Our hearts have become numb and hard to the point of being heartless and uncaring in this world. What happened? Fifty years ago prayer was taken out of schools along with the Bible and gradually we have moved any mention of God away from children, unless their parents brought them up in church. Yet, today almost any mention of Jesus’ name is called offensive. Prayer isn’t even allowed at sporting events for the most part. Is it any wonder that our country is about to go the way of Rome? We have pushed God away so many times that, if He was human He would never come around here again!

Jesus was and is human but He is also the Son of God and He has not forsaken us nor has He forgotten us. He is the Author of Life, the Creator and the King of Kings! One day, likely very soon, He will come back and everyone will bow to Him and call Him Lord! Life comes from Him, eternally and yet we throw it away as well as our own chance at eternity because of unbelief or rather we choose not to believe because “we are not ready yet”. Today is the day of salvation, not tomorrow because it isn’t here yet and yesterday is already gone! He seeks out those who will have Him, He waits patiently for those who are seeking Him, so what will you do?

Do you believe?


I do! It is evident in my preaching and in the content here, so yes I do believe in Jesus as my Savior and I know that He can be your’s too! If you will believe in Him. Will you?

Remember, today is the only day that we have. Yesterday is history and tomorrow is a mystery, neither one of which we can do anything in, but today is the day of salvation and life and love. Use today as if it was your last day, seek the Savior’s love and find it today while today is still here.