Category: God’s purpose for you

We love and feel loved but….


Humans are selfish beings, you know it and I do too, and when we feel loved by someone we want it to go on forever but there is only one love that can and will do that very thing and it is the love of God toward you! He has loved each one of us for a very long time. He loved us so much that He allowed His Son, Jesus, to die on a cross and take on your sins and mine and everyone’s since the beginning until the last person dies, just for the purpose of giving us grace and forgiveness and a way to become His children!

Isn’t that WONDERFUL!!

He isn’t fickle like we are with our love because if we can’t feel another person loving us then we will find a way to end the relationship and find someone who will love us. God is patient and loving, so deeply and so much until we cannot understand His love. We cannot believe HOW could He love someone who has never gone to church, never read His Word, never prayed to Him, and all of the other sinful things or thoughts that we have had or done in our life. We feel as if we are not worthy of His love. It hurts to think that someone can love us in spite of those faults and sins that we know that we have.

God’s love is so deep and warm that it can wrap you like a blanket that has just come out of a dryer when you are cold and lonely and you really NEED that kind of love and forgiveness. To quote a character in a popular film: “I like warm hugs!”; God likes to give them away! He doesn’t care what you have said or if you are in a gang or part of a squad of soldiers who have killed people for no reason except they don’t believe they way you do. Yes, He can forgive you for those things. He can forgive the doctor and nurses who work in an abortion clinic who murder children every day for money, and they think that they are doing the world a good service. Except, it isn’t. Choice is the god that people use to make them feel better about it, but what does choice do for you? Yes, you can wake up tomorrow and go about your life without worrying about a child to care for and feed but that child was sent to you by God for a reason. You killed him or her before the reason for their life could become real! But God can forgive you too.

We do sometimes find love and feel loved by another person and it is a blessing when that happens, especially when it produces a child to care for and help to see the world that God made for us to live in and to wonder about. Every day should be an experience of childlike wonder at the sky or a butterfly or a puppy but the most wonderful experience is watching a child find things to wonder at and about. To discount that as an inconvenience is selfish in the extreme.

Give God a chance in your life so that you will have a chance to experience His. I heard these words in a movie recently and they are so important, especially today: “We all have two dates on our tombstone a birth date and the day that we die but the important and amazing stuff happens where the dash is that is between those dates.”  

That is where your life can mean something, so live it like it really does mean something. God put us all here for His purpose and the only way to find that purpose is through reading His Word and praying that He will show it to you!

God Loves You!


Is it that hard to understand that He would do such a thing? He created the universe, including this little ball of dust that we live on. I know, it is only that small when you compare it to the size of the REST of the universe, but stick with me on this. God made all of this so that you can see how great He is and how much He really loves you and me and everyone else on this planet! Now, many of you might say that God is just showing off, that is what humans would do in His place. He ain’t human!

But, He is God! He can do whatever He wishes to do in your life and mine. It doesn’t matter how bad it looks to you or even how bad it feels, let Him know in prayer. He already knows, but He wants to hear from you! He is like a parent that knows there is a problem but until the child comes to them with it they are not going to interfere. We don’t go around fixing things in our own children’s lives when we see something happening that we know isn’t going to end well. They would never learn anything like that, so why do we expect God to swoop in here and fix every problem that we have?

I’ll admit, it would be nice but we would be a world full of lazy people if He fixed every problem that we had the second that it showed up! Nobody would do anything, we would just wait for God to fix it. But, what if He stopped fixing it one day, then what would we do? We wouldn’t know how to do anything because we had always depended on Him for everything. Depending on God is good, don’t get me wrong, but if He fixed all of our problems we wouldn’t know anything at all. There wouldn’t be cars or planes or cell phones or electricity or any of the thousands of things that we use all of the time because He had been fixing for us all of the moments that we went WAHH!!

God does love us but He allows us to go through life learning about life instead of doing it for us, healing our hurts and aches. We wouldn’t even have aspirin if He fixed everything!

Even in eternity, we aren’t go to have everything our way, we are going to be working with and for Him, not sitting around looking at stuff! God cares for us and wants to spend time with us, but sitting around in Heaven looking at each other will last about ten minutes! Get up and get going! Do something for God, ask Him what you can do and let Him show you and don’t be afraid of it

Pray, America, Pray!


Our country needs REVIVAL to break out and break down the walls of hate and bitterness in our nation! We can’t wait for Washington, DC. to fix this, because they don’t know how! God does!!

Life is hard enough without having to worry about being shot going to get gas in your car, or being carjacked at the grocery store, our nation needs God back in people’s minds and hearts! Like it was the first few days after Katrina and 9/11! People turned to the One Who could help and did help. Sometimes His help came a little slow, but it came. God doesn’t give up on us until we give up on Him!!!!

Movies can inspire us, heroes inspire us, sometimes even politicians inspire us, but God is the One with the REAL answers! Inspiration lasts only for a little while, on your knees prayer to the Creator and Finisher of your faith is what gets the job done, no matter what that job is! Whether it is fixing your marriage or your finances or a child with a deadly injury or disease, God is bigger than all of them and He can FIX them all, when we come to Him with our problems and leave them in His hands and get out of His way so that He can work!

Don’t try to do His job for Him after you have prayed to Him! If you couldn’t fix it before the prayer, what makes you think you can after you have prayed? Let Him do His work on whatever the problem is, keep praying and believing that He will and He will! Too often we are the ones that short-circuit our prayers, because we pray and hand it over to God and then tomorrow morning we take it back and try to fix it ourselves. How could your car get fixed like that? It wouldn’t.

Pray and keep praying and leave the problem in His hands, then pray some more! Remember this acronym: Pray Until Something Happens (PUSH)!

What do you depend on?


We all have different ways of making it through our days. Some of us start off the morning with a cup of tea or coffee and the paper. Some people get online with a cup of coffee and try to catch up with what is happening. But, who do you go to and depend upon when things go terribly wrong? I don’t mean when you spill the milk or break a nail, I mean when you get a diagnosis which makes you sit down. When someone in your family comes home with a letter that says you are being sued for something, or maybe they are the one that gets the diagnosis which is like a hammer to your head and your heart, what do you do then?

Many people turn to their best friends or even to their church, if they go to one. So, what or Who do you depend on for assurance or hope or healing? Many people look to their doctor if they get one of those diagnoses, some look to him as well if there is a wreck or accident. The Person that you and I and everyone else should be looking to and praying to FIRST, before going to the doctor or anyone else is God! He is bigger and able to handle all of your problems, to give you strength to get through them all and if it is His will to do so, He will heal you of whatever the diagnosis may be. He may do it through the doctor’s skills or it may happen by His power and your faith before your next doctor visit.

Bad days are going to happen. Accidents and diseases are going to crop up in your life and mine, we are human and that is just the way our fallen world is. Good people and bad get these circumstances added to their lives all the time, it doesn’t matter how good you are or how bad you may be. The reality you have to remember is that God loves you and will not forsake you in any of your problems, you must have faith in him and ask Him for wisdom.

You don’t have to accept a “bad day”, God can make a day which seems bad turn into a good day. Love, especially between two people as husband and wife, can make a shack into a home. Expressing your love for your children is something that many people seem to have forgotten how to do these days. Wake up people, they need to know that they are loved by you just as much as you need to know that God loves you!

If you truly want a successful life and a happy home, even if it is in a two room shack with cracks wide enough to throw a cat through, love works much better to bring this about than alcohol or drugs or anger! Where love is anger cannot stay, when you truly love your children and your wife there is no fire too hot that could keep you from rescuing them! God is the answer that everyone is looking for, they just don’t know it yet. Many people say that they can worship God in a fishing boat or a deer stand just as well as they can in church. NO YOU CANNOT! You are looking for a trophy bass or antlers that will strain the wall to hold them up, you don’t go out there thinking of worshiping God!

I used to think that too and I would pray and talk to God while I was out there. That’s probably why I don’t have any trophies on my walls. I would thank Him for His beautiful creation and the sunrise that many don’t get to see. I would praise Him for the beautiful birds and the chipmunks as they scurry around trying to find all the acorns they have hidden for the winter. Yes, praising God and thanking Him for these things is good, but worshiping Him with other believers is more gratifying and humbling than any deer or turkey. Yes, they are God’s creation and He takes care of them just as He does each one of us, but they don’t worship Him. Their instinct tells them that He will feed them so they don’t know Him like we can.

Your Spirit is lifted up and refreshed every time you hear God’s Word preached. Your soul shouts for joy and it is heard in Heaven especially when you find that the diagnosis that you thought you had is just some cells that are causing trouble and making you feel bad. Satan and his followers know how to make you feel this way and will convince you that you are going to die. They can make it so convincing that you will die, if you allow them to take it that far.

We have power through Jesus’ name to renounce the feelings of deathly diagnoses, and depression that makes you want to crawl under a rock, but it does you and me no good at all if we don’t claim the Word of God and tell Satan to back off because I am a child of God! God’s Word and the promises in it are more powerful than any drug or any situation that you have or that you will ever encounter. Don’t forsake the Word or prayer and call on His name because He can heal you of all the afflictions that Satan has placed on you and in your life.

Technology and Christianity


Some people say that the two of those don’t go together, but I believe that they are wrong. We are supposed to use any technology at our disposal to get God’s Truth out to those who are in need of hearing it. Some churches use too much technology in my opinion, but if it gets the younger generation to hear the Word of God and to learn about Jesus in a manner that honors and gives the Glory to Him then I am all for it. Many people today aren’t really sure of what they believe or even if they believe in anything at all. Some just claim that they don’t believe in any “higher power”, which is fine for them. We do live in America and are free to say or believe whatever we choose to, and today it doesn’t matter who it offends, especially Christians. Nobody offends Muslims because it is a religion of peace, meaning they will hack you to pieces if you do offend their religion or their Prophet.

It seems that everyone loves to offend Christians, although I don’t understand why? But, that is a discussion for another day. Technology is being used and can be used by anyone to promote anything today and it is used that way. Technology is not a bad thing, just as money isn’t a bad thing, but it is a bad thing when you allow the “thing” to take a place in your life or your heart that it has no business in, that is where the trouble starts. From that point, it only gets worse as time goes along.

Most people don’t think of things as being idols, but we do it all of the time. You see it at football games and basketball games, actually you see wherever ANY sport is played or watched in person or on TV. I have heard this and you have too, “People will get excited and scream until they have no voice at all when their team is playing, whether they are winning or losing, but when they get to church on Sunday if they come at all you barely know that they are there.”; I know I put quotes around it but I don’t remember who said it, I have heard it in many churches during a season of one kind or another, hunting and fishing included.

We don’t get excited about our Creator or our Savior, but I suppose its because we don’t see Him behind the scenes taking care of someone with cancer or helping a relative handle the stress of losing their spouse of sixty years. We don’t see the strength that the Lord gives to children battling cancer in the hospitals, yet many of those kids see Jesus and His angels at work around them because He allows it to give them hope. God’s technology is far above ours and it is at work all the time, we just can’t see it. But, that doesn’t mean that He isn’t there. We just don’t have the spiritual eyes to see Him. If He allowed you to see all of the angels that protect you every day, it really would give you stronger faith and hope as well. Just as Gehazi was so frightened with the army surrounding them until the Lord let him see that the number of angels that were camped around them far outnumbered the army in the camp.

Technology and Christianity go together very well, as long as we remember Who is really in control!

Give something back


You have heard about those who “pay it forward” haven’t you? Oh, they have dropped out of the main news lately because there is so much more meaty and interesting things to show than some person paying for an elderly couple behind him or her in line. I think those people are still around, but it just doesn’t carry the same interest factor as shootings, and rapes and robbery or a wreck that killed a family. Yeah, paying it forward doesn’t do that much anymore. But, how much interest could it generate if you gave someone something. Something that they needed for class or a project in school or even for someone who could use it at their job, would that stir someone else to do something? Would that get the attention of the news media?

Of course when I mention giving someone something, everyone thinks of money but it’s not always money that is the need, at least not for most of life anyway. Yes, money is necessary today but an excess of it doesn’t really do most people any good. Look at the lives of the people who have won lottery winnings, most of them don’t have the money that they won after five years or so, no matter how much they won to begin with.

Giving away something that is tangible but useful is better than money. Getting people to really think about what they can give is even more useful, but idealists don’t last long in our society. It seems that most people want to either poke fun at what they are doing or they just look at what they are doing and treat it as an oddity or something unusual in a good way but nothing more.

Life, yours and mine, is more than just getting stuff or at least it should be. Please, leave me your thoughts on this. Think of something like a real movement that we could implement, not just me alone but all over America or even the world itself! We need something today that gives people hope for the future, regardless of the situation that they find themselves in. Yes, this is a hard request but I pray that between all of us putting our “thinkin’ caps” on maybe we can come up with something.

Love…do we know where it comes from?


Today, the word itself is used so much until the meaning of it is diluted to the point of the word not having a real meaning at all. Can we get back to a point where words mean something and actually are felt when they are said? Is it possible to make life itself mean something again or have we drifted so far away from our intent and our passion that life itself just doesn’t mean anything anymore? How did we get this way and why? We have drifted so far away from God until our beliefs and our character is more in line with Satan today, whether we worship him or not. Of course that is fine with him because if he can get us to turn away from God and His love and teachings, then we who follow him during this life will follow him into eternity. By then it will be too late to change your mind and he will be laughing at you when  you claim to have been a deacon in church or you taught Sunday school for twenty years or so. Those things don’t matter if you have never taken Jesus into your heart and made Him the Lord of your daily living!

Love comes from God because He is love and He showed His love for us by giving His Son as a sacrifice to die on the cross so that we can come to know God through Jesus by faith in Him! Today, the word is just that…a word. “Love” to many people doesn’t mean anything at all. It is just a four letter word like hate or some other words in our daily language. But, when you put it into action and really love someone through Christ, it doesn’t matter what they have done or who they may be, you can see them the way that God sees them. They may be filthy and covered with sin or maybe they did give their lives to Christ at one time and have fallen into a ditch full of sinful desires and things, but they are still His.

In this world, we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow, regardless of our age and yet God loves us and wants us to come to know Him, if we will only turn to Him in faith and ask Him to come into our lives. You don’t have to go across the ocean to witness to others although it is needed and if He calls you to do it then you should. But, God can use you right where you are. When I started this blog six years ago, there weren’t many Christian blogs out there on the Internet, now there are hundreds and I pray that if only one person turns their life over to Christ, that is enough.

Thank you for reading and I pray that you will turn to the Bible and read from Psalm 16 and others.

We are real!


baby development You hear so many times in the news and the media that abortion is a woman’s right to choose whether she is going to have a baby or not. Great, then DON’T have UN-protected sex! If you must have sex outside of being married, then make sure that you don’t get pregnant! That way you won’t have to exercise your right to kill that child which came from your own mistake.

That child is not a collection of cells and body parts, it is a life, a baby and a human being and it deserves to live just as much as any other child does. I know a woman has the right to do as she wishes with her body, but if you are going to enjoy sex and don’t want to have a child then get “fixed” just like a dog or a cat so that won’t ever happen! You won’t have to worry about it, ever!

God created mankind male and female so that we could be “fruitful and multiply”, not so that we could pick and choose which child is the one that I want to keep and just throw the rest away! When He sends a child into the world, regardless of who may be the lucky parents, He has a reason and a purpose for that child to fulfill. If you take the life of that child because you don’t want to have it for one reason or another, you have taken a human life. One that had meaning and purpose which God had plans for and you took it away. If you never come to a saving knowledge of Christ, the question will be why did you kill my child?

HowmanymoremustdieSo, look at this picture and tell me who is the most dangerous person or regime on the planet? War has taken only about two and three-quarters of a million lives combined in the past 239 years since America became a country. Abortion has taken over fifty-five million lives in the past forty-two years! Lives that never had a chance to learn to walk and talk or go to school or go to a prom and college. Which sin is the reason for all of this death? Selfishness for the most part, convenience would be another part of the equation.

It is a very sad comment on our culture when we are so selfish that we can’t allow another person to live, even if we gave them up to adoption. That would be preferable since there are many people who can’t even have children and would gladly take a child in and love it and take care of it if you don’t have the time or money to do so.

Another sad thing about this is that you will be held responsible for the lives that have been taken, especially if you have done this more than once.

Yes, God loves each of us and there will be many people in Heaven who never had a chance at a life here on earth. They never took their first breath here, never even had a chance to poop in a diaper or drink some milk from their mother.

I know that this sounds like a rant about abortion and it is to an extent, but God loves all of us even if you may have done this. Please consider that if you do give your life to Christ in this life then you will very likely meet your child in the next one.

Just a thought from a preacher.

What is it which gives you strength?


Is it your food or drink? Is it your will to do what needs to be done for today, no matter what it is? Our strength comes from our bodies to work and to do what is needed every day and our body gets that strength from our food. The quality of that food and the amount that you need to do your work is what gives you the calories to keep going to finish your work for each day. All of this is known by each of us as we live through our lives every day in the world, but how can you get the strength to do things for God? True, sometimes your food is all that is needed, but most of the time that is not all that you need.

We are spiritual beings because the spirit that we have that is in us, our soul that is immortal, needs to have contact with God the Creator. That contact comes through reading God’s Word and by prayer. Prayer is a direct line to God and His Spirit! Not only are you in contact with Him with your words and your spirit but He is in contact with you, giving you the strength to pray for the things which you need to be able to do. It may be that you are in need of His strength for a problem in your life, whether it is grief or a loss or some physical ailment in your life or a family member’s life but prayer is the line…a lifeline that is a direct transmission line from God to you!Ican'tmakeit He knows exactly what you need and how much, all that He is waiting for is for you to ask Him to do this.

God doesn’t intrude on your life without you asking Him into your heart and your life. Nothing about the walk..the life of a Christian is forced on us by God. We participate in it with Him as our Strength and our Comforter and many times we find that when those days sort of pile up on us, He is exactly what and Who we need to make it through them. Being a non-Christian is somewhat easy because you don’t look to a “higher power” for inspiration or strength, you are your own strength and inspiration.

So, what do you do when the strength and inspiration that you have available to you isn’t enough? You have come to the end of your rope, a deadline is only a few hours or days away and you have nothing to bring, the chemotherapy isn’t working and you are in hospice waiting to die…your own strength is mostly gone at this point, so now what or who can you look to or call on for help? Do you just give up and die? What could possibly help in this instance? It’s not a what but a Who. God can help you in every situation and it doesn’t matter whether it is big or small because the Creator of the universe can handle it all! He may not fly in and heal you from a serious illness, but He will give you the faith and the strength to make it through with dignity and when you are taken to Heaven…the pain is gone, your worries are no more, you have an eternal home which is yours FOREVER!

I know that to our small minds dying is not a fix to a situation, but if you have given your life to God and asked for Him to forgive you, then your witness to others during your pain and suffering will be your witness and your sermon. It may not impact their life now and it may be years from now before it takes root in their lives but that seed…that spark that they saw in your life, even if you were suffering, can make a big impact.

God can use the most unusual people to get His point across. Homeless people and those in countries where Christianity isn’t tolerated at all have a very big impact on people because of their faith and their life that they live for Him while they have the time. Christians, since the time of Christ, have given their lives because of their faith in Jesus. This is not a blind faith or a cult, belief in Jesus is belief in the Truth and the Life that is available to you from God! People don’t die a martyr’s death for something which they don’t believe is real, but there have been thousands of people who have been burned at the stake, frozen in winter by exposure, torn to shreds by lions, or mercifully shot in the head because of their faith in Jesus and His atonement for them, even if it was against the “state church” like it was in the middle ages.

God loves you because He has a purpose for your life, no matter when you truly come to know Him. Even if it is at the end of your life, your decision to come to know Jesus will have an impact on someone else’s life and they will make a difference in another person’s life. Like a neatly stacked line of dominoes which expands into the shape of a tree, one person may affect two, they may impact four, they may impact sixteen, those sixteen may impact sixty-four until God has used up your impact but it is never really used up. Because the effect of one person can make a difference in millions of lives, especially today and with God and His Spirit powering the effect that your prayer or your reading of the Bible may have on others, you may be astonished at how many people you find in Heaven who will say that something that you said or wrote or shared online made a difference in their life.

Think about that. I do and I pray that all of you who read this might pass it on to someone else who needs it too.

A living Message


Jesus was and is considered the Living Word of God, so our message about Him and salvation through Him should be different for each person. Truly, it is different for all those who seek Him because nobody gets the same message from the Bible. We all get a different meaning and purpose from the words which we read in it and since there are many on the web who are writing about Jesus, all of our messages are different too…at least in some respects.

First and foremost, God loves all of us whether we think so or not. It grieves the Spirit of God when a person dies who has not found Jesus to be their Savior and Lord. Some may not see it this way, but it is true and it says so in the Bible. One of the first instances of this is found here:  Judges 10:16 “And they put away the strange gods from among them, and served the Lord: and His soul was grieved for the misery of Israel.”

God loves us far deeper and more intimately than we can understand, so it shouldn’t be unusual for Him to grieve when we go astray or refuse to become an adopted child of His through Jesus. We don’t have to do it and we aren’t forced to do it but your life and mine are so terribly short compared to eternity and yet it is only during our lifetime that we can make this choice of asking Jesus into our lives. God loves each of us even to the point of the parable which Jesus used about the sheep that went astray out of a flock of one hundred. We have all gone astray at some point and some of us haven’t become the sheep that God wants us to be, meaning that He wants us all to come to know Him and His love for us.

We can’t do that walking around in the world looking for something or someone who we feel the need for but don’t know who or what it is that we are searching for. God sees us all wandering around but He won’t intrude on or in our lives until we ask Him to come in and help us with our lives. Just as love for another person can’t be forced or “made to happen”, your love for God can’t be a forced love it has to be one that you initiate. Once you make the step of asking Him into your life, to forgive you of the sins that you feel can’t be forgiven, then He will work in your heart and your mind to help you to conform…help you to become more like Jesus. This is our ultimate goal, to become more like Jesus. Like it or not, that really is your purpose in life because life is the training ground for so much more.

What are we training for? I don’t really know and I probably won’t find out until I get to Heaven. The point is that we are to strive toward the goal of being as much like Jesus as we can, with the Holy Spirit’s help, while we are here. Don’t judge people or look down on them because they have less than you do or more than you do because stuff is not what’s important in this life, people are. We are called to be mirror images of Jesus and for a while our reflection of Him will be a bit blurred but it takes a bit of polishing to work out those rough spots. Getting through the polishing phase is the toughest part that you will find yourself in during this life, because you will feel like God has left you to fend for yourself when He is actually using those trying times to get your faith and dependence upon Him to work together.

As long as we keep our eyes, spiritually on Jesus, then we won’t falter when the going gets a bit rough. We may have to endure some hard times with our children at home or with a disease or a family member but as long as we keep God in the center of our lives and depend upon His strength to get through today and the next day then we will come through just fine. This is what I am having to deal with today. A teenage son that, unfortunately, is just like me at his age and I have forgotten what he is going through. I have to give this struggle to God and let Him work it out because all that I can do on my own is make it worse. Lord, give me the wisdom to keep my mouth shut until he is ready to really talk to me about what he feels.

See, I may have some good advice but I have to take it too.