Category: Religion

Do you know Jesus?


Do you know Jesus, the Son of God? Have you come to Him and asked for His forgiveness, because you know that you need it?

What if…what if it were Jesus saying those words to all of you? How would you feel then? Convicted? Ashamed? Indignant? Humbled? UN-worthy?

I write this to show you how far God has brought me from where I was, so that maybe some of you might see that God can use the most unusual things…oops, I mean people, to accomplish His will and His purpose in your life and in mine, to use you to have a positive effect on someone else and their life.

God can do great things, with a thought or by His Word and by just His Breath He gave life to a model made of clay and it became a living, human being with a soul! Then he took a bone, and made a woman who most men would DIE to have on their arms, imagine that!

The point I am beginning with is this, God can do great and wonderful things with very little or a lot. He can also do great and wonderful things with nothing at all! Because He is God! What can you do with nothing? Not very much I would guess, because I can’t either.

Yes, a man and a woman can come together and a child will be born, IF God wants you to have that child. You can’t force it to happen, you have no control over what color their eyes will be or their personality, but God does. He brought you and your wife together because He knew that you complement each other. Not in the sense of, “You sure are beautiful tonight, honey!”, but because your souls and your personalities fit perfectly.

Now, you can ignore that little voice in your mind that tells you that you are marrying the wrong one, but I guarantee you that you will regret it if you do. God loves you and He loves your children, even before you finally find the right woman to have those children with.

Thirty some years ago, I was a very confused and angry young man. I did okay in school, but I was a loner and I didn’t make friends too easily. I kept to myself and kept my mouth shut, for the most part. But, one day I got introduced to whiskey, not Budweiser, but the real alcohol! The kind that didn’t take much to gets you to feeling more oats than you have. The kind that, in today’s climate, would get you killed before lunch break was over.

For some odd reason, I liked the way that alcohol made me feel. Almost like I could do anything, say anything and live to tell about it tomorrow. Many of us feel that way in our teen years, whether we have whiskey giving us more mouth than we should have or not. Since there was an old man selling to whoever had the money to buy, I usually went to a football game on most Friday nights. That was my cover story at least. I would go and buy a pint or a half-pint of whiskey and before the night was through, I would’ve finished most of it. For a sixteen year old kid who did weigh much over one hundred pounds, to put it simply, I would be crawling home drunk. I had a wreck a few weeks after this began that put me in the hospital for about a week.

When I got out, I swore that I wouldn’t do that again. Well, that didn’t last long, although I didn’t have another wreck. I got drunk or tight as we called it, almost every day at lunch time. Sometimes, I would smoke pot, most of the time I just drank whatever I could get my hands on. I was well on my way to being an alcoholic. My teenage years weren’t impressive at all and since I didn’t live in town, I wasn’t popular at school either.

This is all old news, my past, for some it’s your past as well. But, you know, God can use anyone in anyplace at any time…but only if we are following Christ! Saying so doesn’t work, talk doesn’t work, IF you are going to live into forever you must have Jesus in your heart FOR REAL! This is not and it will not be a well liked sermon, but you know what? The sermons which Jesus spoke in front of the Pharisees and the other religious leaders were not popular, but they were full of the TRUTH!

The truth is that a ball of clay that can be made into a man by our Creator is what we are. The Light of Creation He brought into being with His Word, everything in the first chapter of Genesis was brought into being by the Word of God, but Adam was brought to life by the hands of God! He had a special plan for us, before mankind (and that includes women too), was even molded out of clay or fashioned from a bone like the first woman.

We are special to Him and have been ever since Creation began. His plan has been in place since before Adam took his first steps. God knows you and me and has known us since before Earth was ever formed into the world that we live on. Love like that cannot be ignored, should not be ignored because God does love each of us that much. It is a love that we can’t understand at all.

It doesn’t matter how little that you know about God. It doesn’t matter if you have ever read the Bible all the way through. It doesn’t matter what color your skin is. God loves you! This is the message that Jesus was trying to get across to the children of Israel. They believe that they are special because they are descended from Abraham and in God’s eyes they are BUT that alone won’t get them into Heaven. No amount of good deeds or amount of money or even the time that you have spent in church or on missions will tally up your side of the page so that you can squeeze in the door!

Just having a membership in a church makes no difference whether you get into Heaven, sitting in church for forty or fifty years doesn’t do you any good except it makes you responsible for all of the Truth that you have heard in that time. Did you accept Jesus as your Savior? That is the only “ticket” that will allow you to stand in the presence of God, having Him as your Savior is the only covering which will allow God to see you as Holy enough to come to Him as His child!

It doesn’t matter what you have done in the past, the only way that you can be of any use to God now or in the future is to truly give your heart to Jesus and let Him come in and make a true and lasting change in your life. That change has to be all the way to the core, not just a surface change that lasts until the revival is over. It has to be REAL, the change has to take over your life, your family, your business, your friendships, your finances, EVERYTHING!!!

Why does it have to be that much of a change? Because YOU ARE A NEW CREATURE! You are different, you are not the same person that you were yesterday, your wife is not the same, your children are not the same. The change has to be COMPLETE and totally committed. If you haven’t made this change, this deeply, this far-reaching, then you need to DO IT! Because, unless it has been a heart change, deep inside, the kind that it will offend you if you hear someone take God’s name in vain to be used as a curse word, if it isn’t that deep then it isn’t real and genuine!

Will you make that deep of a commitment to Jesus? We are entering a time in history that has been foretold in God’s Word and if you haven’t made this kind of commitment, you NEED to do it TODAY! If not today or tonight, then please make it soon. We are not guaranteed tomorrow, and if you are going to make a difference then you need to make this change! If that voice or some part of your soul is feeling a call from God to be that person, the one that will stand in the gap, the one who will lead their family and their business and their friends to Him, to Jesus. If you are being touched by Him and by His Spirit please answer His call on your life. Today.

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.

Be ye blessed of the Lord


This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord : we have blessed you out of the house of the Lord . Thou art my God, and I will praise thee: thou art my God, I will exalt thee. O give thanks unto the Lord ; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.
Psalms 118:24, 26-26, 28-29 KJV
http://bible.com/1/psa.118.24-29.KJV

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!

Many days start off badly


I hope that you enjoy this from another of my sites. Have a blessed day today!

Does it seem that time is going way too fast these days?


All parents know this and children learn it sooner or later. It just seems that the weeks, especially in the summer, just melt into each other and its hard to tell one week from another. How can we slow things down a bit before our children are gone and the house is empty more than it is full? Fill your time with the talents and the gifts which God has given you. It doesn’t matter what gifts or talents they may be, just get up and outside if you have to and use them. Do some volunteer work for people in the nursing homes or help someone in your community. Little things that we may take for granted and big chores for other people.

Time going by to fast happens when you are busy and sometimes when you aren’t busy enough. It doesn’t matter if you are a parent or grandparent, although our time flies by too fast for us to keep up with it most of the time. Even when you are doing something constructive for someone or maybe even enjoying a hobby or two, time just goes by too fast. That is why Jesus said to take up your cross (life), and to follow Him. Say the things that He would when they are needed to be said.

It just seems that there aren’t enough hours in the day, but the hours haven’t changed. There are still twenty-four of them, eight or so we are supposed to rest or sleep and the rest are for work, whatever kind of work you may do. Jesus said that those who love the darkness love it because it hides what they are doing. We see and hear about the sins which happen every day in and around America and the world and very little of it is good news. As a matter of fact, good news hasn’t been reported on much since a certain newsman died about five years ago. I used to love to listen to him when I could catch his show on the radio and when I was growing up, he even had a small segment on TV.

Those were the last days when we could comfortably go to sleep at night and not have to lock our doors. It seems that it has been a very long time since we could live that way, but it has only been forty years or so.

I have been watching some of the crusades which Billy Graham did years ago, the one tonight was from Dallas, Texas in 1971. I was about nine or ten at the time, but the problems that he was speaking about sounded very familiar. At that particular time, abortion still wasn’t legal in America but drugs and alcohol were and he spoke about the dangers and the consequences of them both. I imagine that Mr. Graham hangs his head if he even listens to the news at all today. If I were him…I wouldn’t watch it at all. I would just pray for America and her soul and all of the souls in America, because prayer can do powerful things, including changing the minds and hearts of people in a country that is on a very wide and slippery slope.

Jesus told those that He preached to that the way to Heaven is by a narrow way and there are few who really find it. This road isn’t as easy or as straight as the broad road, but it leads to Heaven. The rewards that you get on Earth won’t travel the road with you, only those things done for the Kingdom of Christ will make that trip. God loves us all and He has made a way for us to get to Heaven through Jesus, it is only our choices which will condemn us to an eternity of punishment away from Him.

Time does slip away from us every second of every minute, but after your death here you won’t be able to count the minutes or hours. Time doesn’t have a meaning in that life, it is eternal. Your choice will determine where you spend eternity so choose wisely and follow Jesus.

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.

Birthdays and time


I know that many of you have noticed that the more birthdays you have “celebrated”, the less time it seems to take between them. Even my son, who turns sixteen today, has noticed it and he doesn’t have that many under his belt so to speak. Your perception of time changes when you get older. Days and weeks seem to run together, then the months and years, until pretty soon you are wondering “What happened?” It is true that time goes much slower for those who are incarcerated or who are in living conditions that are far from ideal, but in truth time moves at the same pace that it always has it is our perception of it that has changed.

Life is filled with experiences which cause us to take note of them and make our days either go by quickly or pass by more slowly. If you happen to have a fast paced job, then the day goes by so fast until you have to bring home work to get it finished before you go back, then again if you work at a store where people come in spurts, the days drags by between the customers. Then there is the waiting for the return of Jesus. We know that He is coming back because of the statement made by the angel, “He will return in like manner”, when He was taken up to be at the right hand of God. It has been nearly two millennia since that day. Many people say that He isn’t coming back, some think that it will be hundreds of years in the future if at all, some think that it could be tomorrow or today.

We don’t know and the Bible doesn’t tell us. Jesus gave us some signs to watch for and most of them are happening every day around us, particularly in the Middle East. He also said for us to keep watching and don’t lose faith in Him and in the words spoken in God’s Word. He will return and if you notice the prophecies that have been fulfilled, it very likely will happen in our lifetime. When it will happen, nobody knows for sure. I have noticed that some are saying that it will happen when the last lunar eclipse happens at the end of September, I don’t believe that but anything and anytime is possible.

God knows when our days are coming to an end and He knows, for each of us, how many days we actually have from the day we are born. Thankfully we don’t have access to that information or many people would have bucket lists and the world would be even crazier than it is already! Time is something which we all count during each day that we live. We count it by the minute and the seconds and the days and weeks. The most amazing thing is that we won’t have to count any of it after we arrive in eternity, because time for each of us will cease to exist if you are blessed with the love and the atonement granted by Jesus in your life.

Eternity will be very different if you have not accepted Jesus as your Savior. Time will be miserable and pain-filled and never-ending. I know the argument that “My God wouldn’t allow that to happen!”. God didn’t sentence you to hell, you did. Each one of us has had a chance to accept Jesus as Lord, yet if you don’t by the end of your life it is YOU who has condemned yourself to an eternity without God in hell! We have all seen the handiwork of God in nature and in our bodies, we have heard a sermon or a prayer about God and His grace which is given freely to us even when we don’t deserve it. Even the American Indians prayed to the Great Spirit that they believed created everything and they were right, they just called Him by a different name. That doesn’t mean that Allah or Buddha or any of the “man-made” religions are right because their gods were created by their minds or were just men and nothing more.

God is real and He is in control of time and the number of birthdays that each of us has. Seek Him out in your life while you can, give your heart to Him and ask Him to come into your life and give you the strength to work for Him during the time you have left. Even if it is only a few days or weeks, your example during this time can have a great impact on someone you love or even someone you don’t know.

I am just a vessel


Very well said.

Catherine.'s avatarThe Great Shepherd

Redcorn VasesNothing is perfect in this world, is a common cliche. That aside, There is one though who made the whole universe, by His word and He is perfect in all ways. He according to the Gospel of John shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish Him, (crimson red sins cannot stand His presence. He makes them white as wool). He formed the Universe, told the sun and the moon how to use their different lights, He Set the boundaries for the waters, without Him we are nothing.

He created us, formed us in his own image breathed his Life in us, after creating us in his own image, so are we like Him? psalms 8:4 who am i that you are mindful of me? verse 5 says Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings  and crowned him with glory and…

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So much going on….


Looking at and listening to the news is not one of my favorite things to do, in fact I avoid it if I possibly can. There is so much going on in our world until it just brings you down in  your spirit and just gives you the feeling that nothing will ever be better in the world in which we live in.

Then…you hear a child laugh and giggle or you hear them say some of the sweetest things that can only come from their minds. Minds which have not yet been messed up by the world and education and all of the things which go on. Then, of course, you see the children on the news who are living in places where they could lose their parents or their friends any moment. Where gun shots and bombs are going off and people are threatening others for not believing in the same religion, the one that they think is the right one. Stupidity, ignorance, hatred, bitterness, heartache, fear, death are all around us today whether it is just on TV or next door, we can’t seem to get away from some or all of it. We can’t live a life of peace and harmony, not in today’s world because there isn’t a place like that on Earth anywhere!

It makes me sad to consider what our children and their children will be living in and having to try to stay alive through before Jesus comes back.

Whether you believe it or not, He is coming back to judge the world for all of the cruelty and hatred and violence that has been going on and is still going on. He will bring peace with Him because His government in the Kingdom which He sets up on Earth will not tolerate the things which are happening today. Swift justice will be the rule then, no twenty years of appeals for someone who kills a child. Our world will be run by Him from His throne in Jerusalem.

You can choose to believe it or not, but it is coming and I believe that it is coming in our lifetime. He has told us to be watching and waiting and the prophecies that were given in the Bible have all lined up. There is very little that has to happen before the day that the trumpet sounds, and I am looking forward to that day. From that day forward, for seven years there will be very little that will be good on this Earth. The wars and diseases and famines that are happening now will pale in comparison to what is coming. It will have nothing to do with “global warming”, or anything which mankind is responsible for except the rejection of Jesus the Messiah.

The last of the Blood Moons is happening in a little over a month from now. What happens in the next few months or years is in God’s hands and everyone will see and know that it is His doing, not us. Study the Bible, read the books of Daniel and Isaiah and Ezekiel and Revelation. Between these books, if you pray for understanding, they will reveal that all that is happening is happening according to God’s design and purpose. Seek His wisdom for your life and for your salvation because salvation only comes to you through Jesus and His atonement for your sins and mine, there is no other way to get to Heaven except through Him. Don’t put it off and don’t wait because the time is short.