Category: God’s purpose for you

Beauty in the Cosmos


If, like me, you watched the series Cosmos on television then you were struck by the wonder and majesty of all that mankind has discovered. The beauty of the galaxies and nebulae, and of the planets in the system where we are at home. But…did you notice that they completely disregard any sort of notion that all of this was designed by a Designer? Nowhere did they show any kind of religious splendor and humility toward the discoveries of the universe itself. Everything in our universe came from a microscopic singularity that just exploded one day and blew out all of the matter, dark and otherwise, into the universe. Then, all on its own, everything just organized itself together into galaxies and stars and planet systems and bacteria, etc.

Come on! Entropy and the universe at large does not work that way and scientists know this! What happened? They theorize that gravity pulled everything together and then nature took its turn. Really?

Yes, the galaxies and nebulae are beautiful to look at and wondrous to behold, but their beauty points not to a random accident of gases and rocks coming together but to the awesomeness of God! He is the designer and builder of all that we see in the heavens. He is the One who put the stars in their places and called them by name. He is also the One Who called forth the light to begin the whole of creation in the first place. No super-collider of any kind is going to find God in a microscopic particle that lasts for a nanosecond and then vanishes!

God can only be found in the Bible, which Isaac Newton studied. They didn’t mention that in the series. Most of the great scientists up until Charles Darwin, believed what is in God’s Word and their research in the heavens was simply to confirm God’s Word not to deny it or to refute it. The answer to your problems, whatever they may be, is Jesus and the relationship that you will have with Him when you ask Him into your heart. God can heal the hurts in your life whether they are emotional or physical and He most certainly can answer your spiritual questions and confusion.

God is the answer when all other answers fail because He is our Creator and everything which is was created by Him, including all of humanity. The ones who have committed sinful acts such as rape, murder, sodomy, stealing, disrespect toward parents and other sins are still loved by God and He will forgive them of their crimes against His commandments if they will repent and ask for His forgiveness. Then follow His ways and His Truth. When they do this, they are adopted into His family forever. You don’t fall from grace after you have received it, you may stumble and fall down by doing something out of character for a Christian but you have not been tossed aside by God. Satan is just trying to make you think that is what will happen.

The world and the cosmos are all God’s handiwork, there is no denying it. You can’t say that these things just miraculously came together without a Miracle Worker! It isn’t possible! As I have said before, your life and everything in it came from God. Your talent, your family, your job, your income, and yes even the pets that you enjoy the company of all came from God’s hand. Many are prideful enough to think that they did all of these things, but you can’t even change the color of one whisker let alone have an effect on your life! God loves you and if you have felt His call…His pull on your heart and have not answered it, I urge you to do so as soon as you can!

Think about it and ask Him to show you what He has for you.

Time…is…ticking…away…from…us


We have a certain amount of time to live, but only God knows how much each of us has. What are you doing with your time?

Do you spend it worried about your bills? Working to make more money so you can pay more of them off or are you trying to buy more “stuff”?

We need to be concentrating on things which have an impact in our life and in the lives of others. Not just as workers or business owners or …. well you get the picture, but as people who genuinely care for one another. In today’s world that is something that is sorely missing. I don’t want to bring up any news headlines, but people are not taught to respect each other nor are they taught, it seems, to respect life itself. Too many news stories are on the web and television about life being taken for no apparent reason. Yes, this has happened in the past, but not to the extent that it is happening today.

You and I only have today. We are not guaranteed tomorrow or next week, let alone next month or next year! We may live to be seventy-five or eighty-five if we are fortunate, but then there are those who may not make it to the end of this sentence or even to sundown today. The point of this is that time is precious and it begins ticking away the moment that we are born. Your heart beats many thousands of times during the day, pumping blood to all of your vital areas. But, it will only beat so long and God knows exactly how many beats that each of us has left.

Yes, God knows how long you will live and how you will die. He knows when too, so what are you going to do with the rest of the time that you have? What will you do about the eternity that you will step into when this life is over? Regardless of what you may have heard, there is a life after this one and it doesn’t end, how you will spend it is dependent upon your decision in this life, here and now. Will you give your life to Jesus and ask Him to forgive you for your sins, regardless of the sin? Will you ignore what that empty area in your life that you feel needs something in it but you don’t know what it is? That is the part of you that God created which desires Him to fill it with Himself!

Only the Spirit of God fits in that part of you, and if it feels empty now, just try to put something else in there…it will feel worse. It will feel as if it gets bigger and bigger until you decide to fill it with Him. The emptiness in your life will not go away until Jesus fills it with Himself, so to consider something else is foolish.

It has taken me about forty minutes to get this far and that is forty minutes that none of us will get back. Seek Him while you can. He will empower you to do things for His Kingdom that is true, but the rewards in heaven are such that we can’t imagine while we are alive now.

Can your life mean something?


Many people seem to be looking for something to do these days. Someplace to be or go or do because it seems that so many people are bored. Why? Is it because there is no fulfillment in your job or in your life? Do you feel that you have a purpose and a meaning in your life, but you don’t know what it is or how to claim it?

These are questions that many people besides Christians would like to have the answers for, but they don’t know where to find them. Can I give you the secret to life’s most frustrating questions? No, I can’t but God can! The answers are all found in the Bible! The meaning to life, for each one of us, is found there. Advice for life, living and for business questions as well are all contained within its pages. God is our Creator but He is also the giver of life, purpose, meaning, hope and continuity in our daily lives. He will do this for you each and every day, if you will determine to get up each morning and begin your day with Him. Listening to His prompting and His advice because if you can listen closely to Him daily, then your life will be more fulfilling and more abundant.

The purpose which we all seem to be chasing is in our grasp, if we own a Bible and will sit down and read it. Not just read it as a book, but ask Him to show you what He wants you to get from its pages. If you just read it as a book then that is all that you will get from it, which is what many people who don’t believe the words contained in it do! But, if you wake in the morning with an urgent need to find your purpose and meaning, then open it and ask God to show you what you need to know for just that day. Tomorrow, do the same thing and the next day and the next. When you have completed a week of reading and learning from it, then you are well on the way to finding your purpose and meaning for this life and the next!

In the world that we live in today, people are so concerned about offending others until we don’t even preach from the pulpit the way that God would have us to. Yes, it is true that He loves you just as a parent would a child but also like a parent, God doesn’t like the things that we are doing in our lives when those things are wrong! If you would not take your mother to the places that you go, then why go there? Would you introduce your grandmother or grandfather to your “friends”? Would you invite Jesus along with you to go to the mall or other places that you go, especially if you don’t tell your family about it? If you have accepted Jesus as your Saviour for real and not just saying some words, then you are taking Him along with you wherever you go no matter where it may be. He sees and knows where you are anyway, and He knows what you said and did while you were there. God sees all of these things, whether you have taken Him into your life or not, and like a parent He loves you even though He doesn’t like the things that He knows you are doing.

Consider giving your life and your heart to Jesus and making a change in your life so that you would be willing to follow Him wherever He leads you to go!

 

A red moon and a black ring


Both of these have been seen in parts of the world this week (or at least since Friday), but what do they mean for us? The black ring I have no clue about, likely it is exhaust from some smokestack somewhere that just floated close enough to alarm someone. But, who knows? The possible explanations will likely be numerous as well as humorous too.

The “Blood moon”, is a full eclipse of our moon but the dates that it is occurring on this year are significant. This week’s eclipse happened on Passover. The next one will happen on the day of the Feast of Tabernacles in October. NASA says that there is no “prophetic warning” to be seen or interpreted in these events but there could be in my opinion. In the past few hundred years, these events have been seen by historians and they all came before an event in the lives of Jewish people and the state of Israel itself.

Whatever happens in the near future, will be hard on the world and on the people of Israel too. What is going to happen? I don’t know and I am not going to make a prediction about it. We will all just have to wait and see what happens. I imagine that it will be something which the entire world will notice in one fashion or another. How will everyone know? The signs will be unmistakable, but most of the “enlightened” world will come up with an explanation for them in one fashion or another.

If you care to look up the tetrad (group of four) of lunar eclipses which happen infrequently, you will see that they have occurred at specific times in the history of the Jewish people. God uses the heavenly bodies as sign bearers so that the world can see the signs. Our world and the people who refuse to admit that God is real are kidding themselves into not believing in the only One who can truly save us from our own idiocy.

Yes, the Bible is real and the prophecies contained in it are true and will come to pass. Whether you choose to believe that or not, it will not change the outcome. As the cartoon shows an ostrich sticking its head in the sand hoping that the danger will go away as long as it can’t see it, we seem to be doing almost the same thing today.

The rising debt of governments and the people, diseases which were gone are coming back and are resistant to most treatments, tyrants and governments all over the world are trying to control the people that they govern by spying on them and taking their freedoms away bit by bit, specifically these things were not predicted in the Bible but the troubles of the world at the end of the age were.

All of the things that are happening around us amounts to “trouble” I would say, wouldn’t you? Prayer can fix things if you expect it to because you are depending upon the One Who can fix your problem, even the world’s problems. Living in the world doesn’t mean that you have to agree with what is happening, it means that you need to show Who lives in you so that others will see it and want it!

Just because everything else is going down the tube, regardless of the destination, you and I need to depend upon the One who can strengthen us so that we can resist any temptation as well as know Who to go to for the solution to our problems. We can’t do it on our own because in our own strength, we can only do so much and usually it isn’t enough. We can’t resist the temptation that comes in the form of money, or prestige or drugs or sex on our own.

We have to have Jesus in our lives giving us the strength to get through today and then depend on Him tomorrow for the strength to get through tomorrow. One day at a time is how you have to live with Jesus. Tomorrow is still in the future and you don’t know if you are going to get there or not. Don’t hang on to yesterday because it is already past and all of the decisions made then can’t be undone, but today is what you have! Live it with the presence and the power of Jesus in your life and it will be a good day, every day!!

Life…..


What does it mean to you? Liberty? Happiness? Freedom? Your pursuit of these things maybe? Life is more than just these feelings, it is more than we have been told to believe. So, how can we live it fully without knowing what it really is? This life that we live here and now is one that has been given to us by our Lord and Creator, God, who loves us unconditionally but this is something that we have to acknowledge about ourselves and about Him! We are here for a purpose and that purpose has nothing to do with stuff that we accumulate during our time here. I am talking about money, cars, houses, tablets and cell phones and any number of other “toys” that so many people chase after.

Your life and mine are short and since we are not guaranteed tomorrow by anyone, then what truly good thing will come out of all of the things that you have? Debt, bills, gas to be bought to run some, electricity to run others, cell phone plans and Internet connections to keep up with everything and everyone…all of this is like chains and shackles which confine and keep you from your real life. So, what kind of life am I talking about? I am not talking about living like a hermit and giving up all of today’s “wonderful gadgets” that we have come to depend on like some sort of drug but I am talking about getting your priorities turned around and going in the right direction.

God did put you here for a reason and if you are a child of His, then you owe it to Him and to yourself to find your purpose in Him. “What could that be?” you might ask? Well, the first step is to read the letters that He wrote to us and find out! The Bible is a collection of historical truths and poems which reveal God’s character to us and His purpose for us because it speaks to each of us in a way that nobody else hears. That is why it is called the Living Word, no one who reads it gets the same message as another person, and the next time you read a scripture it may say something different to you than it did the first time. Many people in the world that don’t know God can’t understand this and they won’t until they become Christians, if God calls them to Himself.

Yes, He knows who will accept the call and who will not yet He calls each of us. Whether we choose to accept that call or not is our own choice. He doesn’t shout or clout you upside your head to get your attention, but it is usually a whisper or a nudge and if you don’t recognize Him in it then you may not get another chance. Even if you do get another chance, you may not recognize His call on your life if you brushed Him off the first time. Life means more than many people realize, not only to you or your family but to God as well. Each life, each person is special to Him because no other person can do or say the things which you say like you can. Your ministry, wherever it may be, is special because only you can touch the people around you in the way that you can.

Your life here is a training ground for the eternity that is to come and the continuing work in eternity will depend on the answer that you give to God now. Believe in Jesus and the saving work that He did on the cross to redeem you. Accept Him into your heart and repent of the life that you had before, the words, the habits that you had need to be gone so that your life will point to a changed heart and one of purpose and meaning for all of eternity! The next person that you meet might take the message that spoke to them to hundreds or thousands of people! That is a life of true purpose and not just one that involves technology and stuff which has no good purpose in it except to enslave you to the world in which you live.

Give your life to Jesus and follow His example. Repent of the old person that lived in your body and their ways and determine to follow Jesus’ example. Learn His ways and His words, study the Bible and pray about the things which your heart and God brings to mind. He will give you the strength and the knowledge to carry out any task that He draws you to and He will bring you through the trials that come from this point on if you will walk with Him daily and allow Him to teach you the way that you need to go.

You are never alone


Our lives are very busy today and many people get down and depressed, especially during the winter months. What can help them? Fortunately, it is not a “what” but a Who that can be a help for you and a Comforter too. Jesus is always near and is always ready to help in whatever way is needed.

Although many people discount Him because the help that is provided is not monetary in nature. He doesn’t provide the means to buy whatever you want, but He does provide comfort where it is needed, salvation when it is asked for, security regarding your eternal destination, a shoulder to lean on and the strength to get you through any situation that you might find yourself in.

He is the Creator, the Mighty Counselor, our Everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace. What more could you want or need from anyone or anything here on Earth? Nobody on Earth could supply your need the way that God can, since He owns it all anyway. Do you depend on Him? Do you think that you can supply or in some way get everything that you want or need?

If you already have the money and a great job, maybe you can do it all on your own without anyone’s help but what can you do if you have a job that pays by the hour, or your house is about to be repossessed, or your car may be if you can’t pay a payment, then what will you do? I am not knocking hourly workers, there are more of them than there are salaried workers, but the point is that much of our livelihood is needed just to live. Buying food and paying bills are the main things that our money is being used for, but God never leaves you alone.

Granted, He doesn’t drop money from Heaven to pay your bills but He is always near to comfort you and bless you in ways that nobody else can! You are blessed to be alive and you have your family and if you have a job, then it is a blessing too. God provides for us far more than we can provide for ourselves, yet many people take all of His provisions for granted. Many people even think that they have the things that they do because of something that they did. You wouldn’t be doing your job or earning your salary or wages if God had not given you the ability and the education to do whatever you do!

God can provide all that you need, He will not provide your wants if they don’t line up with His wants and will for your life. Giving your tithe to the church will not automatically put seven or ten times that amount in your bank account! Giving money to some preacher on television won’t bring back a lost loved one or cure cancer unless it is in God’s plan and will for it to happen in the first place!

God will use your talents and your ability to glorify Himself and to bring others to Himself through your testimony and your life and He will bless you with whatever He deems necessary to accomplish that.

Realizing exactly where your blessings come from and Who provides them is something that we all should be doing. Acknowledge God’s provision and His grace to each of us that we benefit from each day, because if it weren’t for His blessings each day we would be in more dire need than we are now.

Salvation, what is it?


“Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” 1 John 5:1

What is salvation? I will tell you that it is not a creed. You might say, “Well, I believe in the plan of salvation.” You can believe the plan of salvation and go straight to hell. You’re not saved by the plan of salvation, you’re saved by the man of salvation, the person Who purchased your salvation with His blood.

Salvation is not a creed. It’s not a code. You say, “Well, I believe if you live right you’ll go to heaven.” If you could be saved by living right, then Calvary was a blunder and a colossal mistake! It’s not a cause or your church. You say, “I’m a member of a good, fundamental, Bible believing church.” It’s not any of these things. It’s Christ Jesus, the Holy One of God, our Savior and Redeemer, our Creator and Shepherd, our Protector and our Lord and King! Belief in Him, and giving your heart and life, including your money, your family, your job and your home to Him is the only way to Heaven.

I don’t mean , like the rich young ruler, that you have to sell everything to be saved, but you do have to at least acknowledge that your blessings came from Him and that you thank Him for them. Jesus did not mean that he would be saved because he sold all that he had, but that he had to turn his heart toward the Savior and turn his back on the things of this world. But, he couldn’t let go of his “stuff”, so he walked away sadly because the things of this world had such a hold on him that even when the Messiah asked him to give them up, he couldn’t.

Salvation is not believing in something, it is receiving Someone. The true gospel is one that centers in Jesus Christ. If you won’t put Christ at the center of your life and put everything and everyone in your life and family under Him, then what good are you to Jesus? We have been bought with the precious blood of Christ, our salvation was purchased by Him through suffering on the cross and giving His life as a ransom for all!

What have you given up for Jesus today? Did you decide not to eat that candy bar or maybe put down those cigarettes because your body, is the Temple of the Holy Spirit if you have accepted Jesus, and should be treated as a Holy Temple. It shouldn’t smell like the joint down the road, nor should it have garbage in it because that is what you want to eat! Change your ways, your eating habits so that it will be good for your body, your health so that you can be more useful to Jesus!
God loves us, and He created us to be the Temple not made with hands for the

Spirit to dwell in. What right do you have to mess up the living area of the Spirit of God? Would you smoke and leave garbage inside your church along with magazines and other things which you wouldn’t want anyone to know about, especially Jesus? He already knows what you are doing anyway, so why not admit it and allow Him to change you! Then, treat your body the same way. If Jesus is the Lord of your life and you worship Him with your body, mind, soul and your strength then show it…act like it!

The love of God is expressed through Jesus and the Holy Spirit and it is the true manifestation of God and we, as Christians, need to learn to notice it and accept it. Allow God to come into your heart and your life in a way that you have never experienced before. Many Christians have not even allowed Him to come deeply into their lives, every part of their lives, and that is what He wants of us. Because if He isn’t part of your life at home, at school, at work and at church then you may believe in Jesus but you may not have asked Him to come to live in your heart!

There are many people who can do a great job of acting like a Christian all the way to the pulpit even, but acting like one and being one is totally different. We can go through the motions and say all of the right things, but when it comes down to what or rather Who is in your heart, it is still you and not Jesus. Many people have died in this condition thinking that they were saved, when they had just been playing the role of “looking like a Christian”! Examine your own heart, ask God to examine it and convict you of anything that you may not be doing or of the fact that you have left Him out. Because, when your life is over there are no second chances to make it right.

Think about it.

Patience and time


What do we need to do each day that requires all of our time? Very little actually. Nothing in your life should take up that much time during your day. So, what should we do about our time and cultivating patience?

practicethepause Prayer does wonders for your life, your doubt, your anger and hurt feelings, and your life. Prayer relieves stress and anxiety and the time that you take to pause during the day can yield time to think in a world that is so full of information.

Can you do this during your day? Of course you can, taking a few minutes to speak with God about what you need is no more intrusive than Tweeting or posting on Facebook and the results of your prayers are much more rewarding. Pausing occasionally can yield an awful lot of time, even when those pauses are only for a minute or two at a time. A pause during your day, during your drive to work or back home is more than enough for you to speak to God. The time that you have is given to you by God, the job that you have was given to you by God, your family that you love is a gift from God so when you do pray, thank Him for everything that you have.

The timing of God is perfect because He knows when you were born, who you would marry and He knew when and how many children that He would give you, and He also knows when  your last breath will be drawn. Your life is in His hand and where you will spend eternity is decided so all that you have to do is to make up your mind to follow Him and believe that He did come and die for you and your sins just as He died for my and your sins.

The only thing that you have to do is to believe that the work that Jesus did was enough. There is nothing that you can add to His death and resurrection that will help get you a better spot in eternity. The only thing that we have to do to receive our salvation is to believe Jesus’ sacrifice was enough and that He did it because He loves you. Believing “in” Jesus or God is not what is required because Satan believes “in” them because he knows Who they are, but he doesn’t have the ability to humble himself to them in submission to serve them. We can and should because it is necessary if you want to have a joyful eternity.

Your life doesn’t stop when you stop breathing as some people suppose. Your next breath will be taken in Heaven but before that you will stand for your life to be judged by God. If you have accepted Jesus as your Savior, then your life and your judgement is covered by the blood of Jesus and His righteousness. If you did not accept Him, then your eternity will not be enjoyable. The choice is yours now, so choose how you want to spend it.

Where is God?


“Can you show me ONE place where you know for sure that God is?”, this was a question asked of a small boy years ago, and supposedly the man asking it told the boy that he should think about it during the day and when he came back, the man told him that he would give him a dime. At the time when this was supposed to have happened, a dime was a good deal of money. Because fifty years ago, a dime would buy a lot more than it does today.

Later, that day the boy was walking by the place where he had met the man earlier and the man was still there. The boy stopped and told him that he had been thinking about that question and it occurred to him to ask a question of him: “You wanted to know of a place where God is present, mister, I would give you a dollar if you can show me a place where God is NOT!?”

This verbal exchange was and is being sent through the e-mail channels because the first time I saw it was a few years ago and it got my attention. It got me to wondering about God’s presence in our world and in our lives. Do we acknowledge Him every day? Do we seek Him every day?

Those of us who are or claim to be Christians are supposed to, but do you? Some people, many of them church-going Christians, claim to be following Jesus but do you really seek Him as He said for us to do? What does it mean to “seek Him”?

Seeking Jesus and the will of God is a practice and a discipline that we should attempt every day. The act and the process of it is not as hard or complicated as it seems. The will of God and seeking His wisdom can be accomplished by the same way…by actually reading and studying the Bible.

I know that many people say that understanding the Bible is not an easy thing to do, but if you pray for God to reveal His wisdom to you as you read it, and He will. God’s Word is a living document because it was sent from God through His prophets to give a specific message to Israel, but the message contained in it as it is revealed by the Spirit, is different for each of us. Which is why it is revealed and interpreted to each of us by the Holy Spirit in different ways for each one of us. What one person gets out of the 23rd Psalm will not be the same as what you may get, but the message will be what you need at the time.

The most wonderful part of this is that you will gain new insight each time you read it, regardless of whether you read the entire Bible or just one book from the sixty-six contained in it. As long as you read it while asking Him to reveal His wisdom for you as you read through it, then it will not remain a mystery. The wisdom contained within it comes to each of us by the will of God and the context of each passage needs to be taken with the rest of the chapter that it is contained within so that each passage won’t be taken out of context.

Taking a passage by itself, without the context of the chapter it is contained within, is dangerous. Satan did this by misquoting scripture and quoting it out of context, as have other people in history. Scripture can be twisted to mean almost anything if you do this and that is not what the Scripture was written for. Give it some thought and see if you can find where God lives at all times.

God is closer to you than your sister or your spouse or even your parents and yet many people think that He is somewhere out in space in a place called Heaven where we can’t even talk to Him. This is not the truth because His place is as near as your heart. He is as near to you as your skin is. God is with you in whatever circumstance that you may be in, good or bad. He doesn’t leave you and has never left you at all. If you feel that He has, the only person that has moved is you!

Time, do you have enough?


It seems that when we wake up in the morning, the day just seems to be on meth (or so I’m told). When your feet hit the floor, the minutes just seem to fly by you without stopping. There never seems to be enough time to finish all of the tasks and errands for one day before another starts! I have also noticed that once the number of your birthdays gets past that all-important “21” marker, it seems that someone puts grease on the “line” and time and dates just slip by faster and faster from that point on.

Is it possible for us to take a step back and look at things without getting run over in the process? Actually, no you can’t. When you are born, your life has a certain number of days and years allotted to it by God and just like a pot when it is tipped to a certain point, that time just spills over and pours out faster and faster. As the numbers get larger, your time seems to go faster, at times, than at others.

When you were small, waiting for your birthday to come around took a whole year, but it seemed to take two or three. The same thing happened at Christmas, the time between did not change but it seemed to get longer and longer, until you got older and realized that Santa wasn’t real, he was just the “spirit” of Christmas.

So, do we have enough time? As Christians, yes we have eternity awaiting so we have time. We may not have enough time to tell all of our friends about Jesus though. Many friends don’t want to hear or they have already heard and really don’t want to hear it again. Some think that a decision that they made many years ago, even though it didn’t make a real change in their lives, is enough. The only person that knows for sure is God. But, I still want to tell them and I don’t know if I have enough time!

God will make the time, in His time. He will bring them about to Him, in His time and in His way. The only thing that I can do is present the good news of Jesus here and then hand it over to God and let Him take it from there.

God loves each one of us enough that He sent Jesus to die on the cross as a substitute for us, all of us. That sacrifice of His Son’s blood opened the way for each of us to come to the Father through the covering of His righteousness and ask forgiveness for our sins and our decisions, good or bad. Once we have come to the place where we know that we need Jesus, the rest is simple…ask Him to come into our heart and forgive us for waiting so long so that we can be made whole through Him. That’s it! We can’t add one drop to it at all and what we do add to it, can only be done through Jesus and by Him and His glory.

Give Jesus a chance in your everyday life from your rising up in the morning to going to sleep at night. Your day won’t slow down any, but you will be able to get more done and it will be done for Him and through Him as well which will make it much more worthwhile too.