Category: Only Jesus can save you

Should you forgive others?


Matthew 6:15
But if you do not let men have forgiveness for their sins, you will not have forgiveness from your Father for your sins.

We are to forgive others so that we can be forgiven. There are over one hundred verses in the New Testament about forgiveness and most of them apply this concept from you to another who has wronged you in some way. Will God forgive you? Yes, but He won’t forgive you if you are holding a grudge or some other hurt in your heart toward someone else and you won’t let it go.

We are called to be more like Jesus and He forgave those who nailed Him to the cross just before He gave up His spirit. We are supposed to be more like Him in our walk with God in this life but many of us hold on to bitterness from years ago even though it is giving us an ulcer. Being a forgiver of others shows that your heart has changed and it is now the home of the Holy Spirit of God. We couldn’t forgive without His Spirit within us because it is not in human nature to forgive. But with Jesus as our Savior and with His Spirit living within us ALL things are possible.

Can we forgive perfectly and completely? Eventually. Even with the Spirit of God living in your life and your heart, Satan will bring to your remembrance the wrong that you have tried to forgive. He will pester your mind with it and try to ruin your life with it, but with prayer and by seeking the strength of Jesus to help you to forgive it can be forgiven. Our mind may not let it go immediately and it may take a good deal of Bible study and prayer to let something go if it was a really bad hurt in your past but with God’s help you and I can do it.

Jesus taught that it is our duty, as believers, to forgive others. There is no limit to the number of times that we are told to forgive for an offense, and it is to be done completely and immediately. If you will not forgive your brother, then God will not forgive you for your sins. As I stated in a paragraph above, it may take some study and prayer to completely forgive and forget but with God all things are possible.

Amen

Why did He ride a donkey?


This is a question which I thought of while I was young and I have had others ask me too. Why did Jesus ride into Jerusalem on a donkey? To fulfill the prophecy in Zechariah 9: 9-10 for one reason and so that the people would know that He was bringing salvation to them, not war, and not as a conquering King. A king would normally ride into his city on a white horse, a charger symbolizing victory over the enemy or enemies. But, Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on the colt of a donkey, the foal of a beast of burden. What is the message here?

The message from our point of view is that He was letting the people know that He was NOT going to overthrow Rome, but that He was to be recognized as Israel’s Savior, their Messiah. Unfortunately, the people and the priests did not see Him as the Messiah, they only saw a prophet who could do some really great miracles, like healing a blind man or a leper or even bringing one who had been dead for four days back to life again! But..they did not see a Messiah.

The most telling part of this, at least to me, is that He rode on a colt which had not been broken to riding yet. Why is this significant? Because the colt knew that this is my Creator and I MUST do whatever He tells me or asks of me. He could’ve ridden into Jerusalem on an unbroken horse and it would’ve submitted itself to Him the same way. God is the Creator of all things, great and small, therefore He is in command of them all. Which is why the waves and the wind obeyed Him in the boat when the storm came upon them.

Jesus was and is just as much God as His Father, He is just a little different. The attributes of Jesus showed His love, compassion, care, and tenderness toward all of His disciples and those to whom He preached. So, what would you say about Jesus? Is He the King and the Lord of your life or do you just know about Him?

If He’s not your Lord, then what are you doing here? Did you come to church just because you are expected to? Did you come because that’s what you do on Sunday morning?

God loves you far more deeply than we can even understand, so why don’t you love Him in the best way possible? This is a relationship after all. Consider this for a moment. Our very lives depend upon His blessings and His grace and yet we seem to discount this all of the time. Your breath and mine come from Him and we are His in spite of our decision to follow Him or not. I don’t mean to say that nobody is going to hell if they die or if they don’t give their life to Jesus and ask for His forgiveness but what I do mean is that God loves all of us in His way and it is a deeper love than we can imagine.

The only human foreshadowing of God’s love for us is the love that we get from our mother and father. It is a love which is deep enough that no matter what we do or say, we are always loved by them. God’s love for each of us is deeper than that even before we come to Jesus and ask for Him to be the Lord of our lives. Does that love become deeper when we become a follower of Jesus and a believer? I think that it does because we are covered in the blood of Jesus which has cleansed us of our sinful stains, so in that sense, I do believe that God sees His Son more than He sees us from that point on.

Is it well with you?


Many times, in church and even on social media sites, I get requests for prayer either in person or by a message. Prayer is a necessary part of a Christian’s life, just like breathing or drinking water, yet many people don’t seem to think that God listens to them so they ask their pastor to pray for them. I don’t mind, but if you are a child of God you have the same privilege and right to step into His Presence at anytime.

1533781_811048015579131_2056361741_nSometimes, people just don’t exercise their right as a Christian until it gets to be so bad they just hit their knees in agony. God can and will answer your prayers, particularly when you pray about a family member’s illness or an accident. I don’t mean to say that He won’t answer a prayer about your children or your keys or other “small” thing, but God looks for ways to bless you in areas where He is the real solution for the problem!

So do you seek out God when things are going good or do you wait until He is the last resort? Don’t you think that when things aren’t going very well, you should seek out the One Who can do something about the situation? The Creator that made all of our universe and every molecule in your body can fix any problem in your life, regardless of the cause! If you will give Him the chance to do so.

When life throws a curve ball at you, swing at it because you might hit it. God can give you the strength and the ability to make it through any real problem in your life, regardless of whether it is one involving your spiritual condition or a medical problem. God is bigger than ALL of your problems or any of the problems in our world today or at any time in the future.

Each of us has a choice to make. To ask Jesus into our lives and repent of our sinful ways or to keep doing what we feel is right, what makes us feel good. To keep being selfish and prideful in what we can do and to do it without anyone telling us that it is wrong. In reality, the Bible doesn’t tell you anything like that. There are no rules about what to do or not, but when you truly realize that you need Jesus and you come to Him in repentance…then you will change. You won’t do it on your own but you will change by the influence of the Holy Spirit after you ask Him to live in your heart!

When that happens, and you begin to change into a new creation, a new person. Then you won’t crave those things which you did before. You won’t go to the places that you went to before. The rules have changed because you aren’t the same anymore. Not because of rules from the Bible, but because your heart, your soul, your inner person has changed and is changing. While you learn more about Jesus and read His Word and pray about this new life, you are changing and becoming the person that God has always known you were since before you were born.

When this change occurs then it will be well with you no matter how life turns out, good or bad. Why? Because you are an adopted child of God! The Creator and King of the universe! How could you possibly feel down or depressed or unloved when God loves you more deeply than anyone on Earth could ever understand? Yes, there will be days which you may be depressed, but with prayer and reading God’s Word it won’t last for long. Seek Him and His Kingdom and all of the things which God has prepared for you will be yours.

Miracles


MiraclesIn everyday life we see them but we may not recognize them for what they are. Some of them are little miracles that don’t seem like God had anything to do with them at the time. Some that we hear about are easy to recognize as a miracle because the healing or the shrinking of a tumor just doesn’t happen on its own. God works like this, in the background doing little things which will accomplish His Work and His purposes even when it seems that things aren’t going very well.

Our lives are like that too. Some days they are very good and some are, well not so much. Do miracles happen in your life? Occasionally you may notice something that couldn’t happen that way otherwise, but I would bet that many of our miracles happen when we don’t know about it. A guardian angel slips between you and someone intent on robbing you or maybe they redirect a car or truck from slamming into you. If you don’t think that God uses angels to do this kind of work, I imagine we will be surprised when we do get to Heaven.

We are His adopted children after all and if you have not given your heart to Jesus and asked Him to forgive you for waiting so long, then you need to get it done! Whether the world believes it or not, this age of grace which we have lived under for almost two thousand years is nearly over. A lot is going to happen in the next decade or two, maybe less, who knows? God does. He knows the day and the hour of your death as well as the time when He will send for all of His Church to be brought to Heaven.

The signs are in the heavens but many people are just saying that this is just astronomical signs and nothing more. The Bible clearly states that God intends to use the heavens to declare seasons and times and we are coming up on one of those times, the end of days or the Tribulation. Whatever you want to call it, it will be a time of war and disease and death as well as the judgement of God, all of it spelled out in prophecy.

Choose today who will be your Savior because your tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.

Come as a child


The obvious reason that Jesus told His disciples not to hinder the children from coming to Him was and is that they understand His message better than any adult can. As soon as a child is old enough to know that He can’t earn salvation, they know that they have to ask Jesus into their heart and their life. It doesn’t take a lot of sermons or education for a child to just “get it”, they do.

madewholeinHeavenAnd they get it far better than we do. After we become adults, if we haven’t truly accepted Jesus as our Savior, we are so covered in education and pride and all sorts of other “filters” until we can barely see the message of the cross, let alone the real message of salvation. The world itself places those filters on us and our hearts and we allow it to happen. Most of the time we don’t even realize that it is happening, just as when we were sinners.

We didn’t know that we needed Jesus at that time and we didn’t really feel the need for Him. Until the Spirit of God touched our hearts and we noticed all of the sins we had committed and that they were separating us from God, most of us didn’t even know that we needed Him. We were comfortable with our lives and the sin that we lived in.

Don’t think that your life and your righteousness is good enough because it isn’t! If Moses couldn’t get into the Promised land because of his sin, then we are not close to being able to get into Heaven without Jesus! Regardless of which religion you follow or have been raised in, your goodness, your righteousness is as filthy rags next to the grace, mercy and forgiveness which comes from your belief in Jesus!