Category: Religion

What is in a name?


Immanuel meaning “God with us”

Isaiah 7:10-16 King James Version

10 Moreover the Lord spake again unto Ahaz, saying,

11 Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.

12 But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord.

13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also?

14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

15 Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.

16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.

Even today there are many men named Yeshua, Jesus, and other Biblical names but that doesn’t give them the ability to be that person. God foretold that Immanuel would be born and that He would be the Messiah, the Christ. In order to be the Messiah or Christ, He would have to be God in man’s flesh, there is no other way to do this! This only happened one time!

When you have or are given the name of a famous person, does that make you into that person? Of course not! A name is just a name, unless it is given to you by God Himself. Then it becomes a calling and a purpose for your life. God had seen this from the beginning and He knew that Jesus being born of a virgin would literally be “God with us”, as the prophecy had said that the seed of the woman would be our Savior. That is Who Jesus is and always has been!

Why did He have to come in this manner? Because, only a perfect and sinless sacrifice could cover the sins of the World and the only way for this to happen would be for this Man to have the Spirit of God in Himself, not the spirit of sinful man. God could’ve made Him a body of sinless flesh, but He chose to do it by natural birth by a woman because Jesus had to be born under the Law in order to begin a new Covenant with sinful mankind.

Christ the Lord!


This was part of the message that was given to the shepherds on the night of Jesus’ birth and it is a great and wondrous thing to know! Why? Because, not only is He the Lord but He can be your Lord and Savior! Jesus loves you so much that He gave up His place in Heaven for a time in order to come to Earth and give His Life for you and me and every person living or who has ever lived!

He is our Creator and our Lord but He is also our Advocate with God in that He refutes Satan’s claim on your life or any of Satan’s accusations against you when you have given your heart to Him! You are never alone in anything that this world throws at you because of His love for you.

If you have never given your life to Him or asked Him into your heart, it is not a hard thing to ask. In fact it is as simple as, “Jesus, I can’t do this on my own anymore. Please come into my heart and fix what is broken and give me the strength to get through each day. Make me more like you, Jesus and in your name I ask for this. Amen.”

IF you mean every word in that prayer, then you are a child of God and you have Jesus in your heart and life from this point on. Now, you have to live it one day at a time, one step at a time. It is hard at times, but with His strength you can do it!

Are you under His influence?


We talk about being in love with someone when we are in a relationship with them and for most of us that is how it goes. But, have you ever considered that your life should be under His influence ALL of the time?

When we consider people who are “under the influence”, we usually think of someone who is drunk from alcohol of one type or another. Being under the influence of God and His Spirit is something totally outside the ideas and experience of many people because they just don’t know how to handle it or even if they can!

My inspiration was a comedy routine by a Christian comedian and it fits perfectly. When you give your heart and your life to Him, you are supposed to be under His influence spiritually from that point on. We are supposed to die to our own lusts and ways each day and walk with Him so that we are walking as He did! Doing the things that He did for those that He helped during His ministry!

That is the very definition of a Christian, to live and be more like Jesus the Christ! So, are you under the influence of His Spirit? If you are not, then you aren’t living your Christian life to the fullest that it can be! It can be so much more rewarding in many ways, for you and for others that you will touch with your witness for Christ!

His influence in your life will cause you to be more like Jesus in everything that you do. Whether it is being a father or a grandfather or a husband, His influence in your life changes a lot of things. Things which people see in your life can change their lives and the lives of many people around you, so give His influence more influence in your life with Him!

Twas the night before….


Those words are what many of us grew up hearing around this time of year. It begins a wonderful poem and I have always enjoyed it, but do we ever think about the person that is supposed to be celebrated at this time of year? It is true that the research shows that the Christ child, Jesus, was not born on or around December 25th, but what else are we supposed to celebrate at this time of year?

There are pagan holidays like Saturnalia (which does fall on the 25th I believe), which the church tried to use as the time of year to celebrate the birth of Jesus and it stuck. So what else are we co-opting that really doesn’t belong to our faith? Actually, I am not going to get into the entire holiday debunk mode but many of our “holidays” really don’t belong to the church.

In truth, we should be celebrating more of the Jewish holidays because that is where all of the Bible came from. If it wasn’t for the Jewish culture and their religion and the writings which go with it, Christians wouldn’t have a Bible or a religion. Jesus was Jewish, brought up in their culture with their holidays and Holy days, so why doesn’t the church cling to them more?

Because, we run after a higher calling I suppose. One which aspires to be more like Jesus and His disciples and their beliefs and their ways or at least that is what we are supposed to be doing. If the outside world cannot tell if you are a Christian or not, then you need to check and make sure if you REALLY are! This same advice goes for churches as well.

If your church seems to be more of a club or a social gathering place, then something needs to change, drastically! We are held responsible for the light and the knowledge that we have been given, so if you have been in church and have heard many sermons then you have at least heard about salvation and Jesus! If your church is not acting like a real church, then there needs to be some real soul searching done…SOON!!

What Child is this?


To many in the church, regardless of the denomination, this Child is Jesus the Savior and our Messiah! But who is He to everyone else? Yes, Jesus has a name in many languages and in every book of the Bible but Who is He to you? See if I count His name in this list and if not, comment it for me…OK?

He is a Priest of the order of Melchizedek and before him. He is the Seed of the Woman and the Righteous Branch of Jesse. He is our Creator and the I AM. He is the Son of the Most High and the Son of Man. He is the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world. He is the Captain of the Lord’s Army. He is the fourth Man in the furnace. He is the Rock which gives water in the desert. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords!

He is the Babe wrapped in cloths lying in a manger Who was born to die on a cross. He is the One Who vanquished Satan’s temptations in the wilderness. He is the One that is greater than all, yet He was humble enough to wash His disciple’s feet. He was the Suffering Servant and the Lord’s Christ! He was wounded for our transgressions and it is by His stripes that we are healed! He is God with us, Emmanuel and our Advocate with the Father.

I have tried to remember most of the names which are given to Him in God’s Word but the one name that we should remember Him by is our Savior. Yours and mine and anyone else’s who will believe that He came here to take the sins of the WHOLE world on His shoulders…and paid the price for them by dying on the cross and then rising to life eternal on the third day! We can have hope in Him because He said that He would be coming again and being God, then He cannot lie! He will return and set the world back to the way it was supposed to be.

God loved us so much until a part of Himself came down to take our sins and the punishment for them on Himself in order to be able to forgive each and every person who would receive His grace and mercy by faith. It can’t be done any other way and there is nothing that you can add to it in order to make it better or more complete. He accomplished it all in those few hours on the cross and what we should do is accept it by faith in Him and then tell others about Him!

Consumption


This word is what our entire economy is based upon these days. We do not produce anything which is exported to other countries, except for printing money. So, what is our country good for? Even the value of our money is suspect and dropping in the eyes of the world, so why do we live this way?

Mostly because of the culture that we live in today, but it started about fifty years ago and it has only gotten worse. When fast food became popular in the fifties, actually that was the start of “instant gratification”, so my estimate is off by about ten or more years. My point is this…when we got to the point of getting something fast or for free, things really started going downhill from there.

Our world was not designed by God to be based on consumption in this manner. We are supposed to produce our food, eat it and work to produce more. In today’s society, this has been replaced with our governments providing for us without even the need to work at all! The Bible says that “if you don’t work, you shouldn’t eat”, but we ignore that and go right along with all of the consumer driven economies and businesses that are available. The chart below shows that the number of structures (buildings) in each area have crossed over, so that now we have more retail structures than production facilities.

My ideas don’t really go along with our economy because we have more electronic consumer abilities today than we have ever had before. I use them as well, so I am not trying to get rid of it entirely. But, when I was growing up, my grandparents grew their own vegetables and we had a herd of cattle which we could choose to have at least one butchered each year for our own use. So our trips to the grocery store usually had to do with getting things which we did not grow or produce like coffee, flour, corn meal, cooking oil, and bacon (although we did have a few hogs which we could use at times too).

Our country and the people in it would be more healthy in every way if we went back to at least a partial agrarian economy where there were more local farmers who produced wholesome, organic foods. The problem is that we don’t have anyone to teach us how to do this anymore! Big farms and the regulations from the FDA have pushed small farms like this out of business.

We were meant to live this way, but we have allowed so much regulation and rules to interfere with our daily lives until the freedoms which our grandfathers and great grandfathers fought for don’t really exist like they once did. It is nobody’s fault but our own, so we can’t blame anyone but ourselves.

God’s Word says that we should live on and work the land that we have and eat the produce of it. Are we doing this? No, we are not and have not been for quite a while. We need to learn God’s way of living and working so that we can be more productive for Him and for us. His advice for this is in His Word, all we need to do and should do is to read it and learn from it.

 

God’s Gift to mankind!


Some may wonder why I placed an exclamation point at the end of the title and it’s because of the importance of that Gift. God gives each of us life and breath each day that we live, which is a good thing and a great gift to be sure, but His most wonderful Gift came in the form of His Son, Jesus.

In the beginning, according to Christian and Biblical Scripture, the Godhead was/is made up of three Persons of the Trinity. In Genesis, God’s Spirit was hovering over the waters. This was the Holy Spirit which was searching for a place for us. Then God the Father said, “Let there be light”, and all of Creation lit up with Light. The Living Word of God had begun Creation, and one day the Living Word would be known as Yeshua, the Son of God.

So, in the beginning there were the Three Persons of the Godhead. There are other places where they all show up, but that is the first one. The Gift which God gave to us, all of humanity that has lived or will live, is the Son of God Who gave up His place in Heaven to be placed in the form of a child which was born to a virgin in Bethlehem.

Many of you will know the story from Scripture or from watching Charlie Brown’s Christmas, but the point is this: IT HAD TO BE DONE!

Why? Because, human beings are sinful and we can’t keep God’s Law perfectly because our nature won’t allow it. But, Jesus did it because His very nature was God’s nature even though He was living among us as a human being! He walked with His Father throughout His life here, He spoke with Him every day about the things which were happening and His concerns about the state that humanity lived in.

Jesus came to us, not to show us that we are imperfect and can’t be like Him, but to give us a gift which would allow us to become more like Him one day. I don’t mean that we will become gods, but that we will have His righteousness to cover our sinful life’s failures! His blood is the only spotless sacrifice which could do this. Lambs and bulls and the blood from their sacrifice were able to give a temporary satisfaction of a sort in the Old covenant, but it was only temporary and had to be done daily or weekly or even yearly.

The blood which Jesus shed for us permanently covers our sins, all that we can do is accept it by believing that His atonement was for us! Each person on this planet had their sins covered, but each one of us has to accept it and turn away from that life and those sinful behaviors. Then we begin a new life of walking with and trusting in Him to give us the strength every day to do this for the rest of our lives! That is our gift to Him, to keep walking in His strength daily to show our lives to others as a reflection of His Life in us.

I have had people ask me, “Why should I do that?”, like they are supposed to get something out of this deal too?!  You do get something out of it! Eternal life with God and with all of your family who have learned this as well!

If you were offered one million dollars with no strings attached, except with one requirement, that you had to use it not only for your family but to bless others along the way in your life, would you accept it? Could you live by that requirement? With today’s technology, you could be monitored so that if you failed to fulfill that requirement you had to give up all that you had bought with the money which didn’t fulfill it. Now, could you do it?

Most of us could not do it completely and to the letter. That is what the Christian life is supposed to be like, except that we don’t have to give up or give back the salvation which we gain through belief in and acceptance of His Love and sacrifice for each of us. We are supposed to go through life-giving His Life and His message to every person that we meet, if they will accept it. Sometimes its hard to tell others about your Savior, because when they get upset when you tell them that they are sinners and they reject Him, it feels like they are turning on you, rejecting you. When they are actually rejecting Jesus’ message and His offer…His Gift to each of them.

Nativity-29

Are you a Christian?


This is a question which really shouldn’t have to be asked. People should be able to tell from your speech or your life if you are a Christian or not.

Why am I specifying this in this column today? Because, if you are wondering about yourself or someone else’s walk with Christ then you need to make sure of your place in God’s Kingdom. Is this important? YES!!

Think of it this way…I am a pastor and I preach God’s wisdom from His Word every week. I am required by God to give an account of my testimony and for those who have heard, but have not given their hearts to Christ. Am I responsible for their decisions? No, because I delivered the message and it is their responsibility to choose to give their heart to Jesus or not. I am just the messenger!

It is the same with all who have heard a message from a friend or at church or from the television. If you have heard the message of salvation, regardless of where you heard it, then it is your choice to make. God will not push it on you or into your heart, He will touch your heart and you will feel the pull or call of the Spirit to respond and it is your choice to do so or not.

It is that choice which will bring you into Heaven one day or not. Please, don’t turn away from your Creator and your Savior. If you are feeling His presence and His call on your life, make a decision to turn to Him and follow Him. God is real and He loves you, don’t give up on an eternal blessing which is waiting for you because of some temporary pleasure here and now.

5 things which God wants you to know


5thingsgodwantsyou2knowTruly, not much more I could add to that except…Amen.

Magi, who came to see the King


threemagiIn the days of King Herod, there were three magi (not kings) who came from the East. When we think of the East with respect to Jerusalem, many people in the past have portrayed these magi as the rulers of their countries. Many times they were also portrayed as Oriental and possibly from India, the truth is much different from fiction.

These three magi are also portrayed as astrologers, but they were not in the sense that we know it today. They watched the stars for signs of a King. Most, if not all, of the magi came from the area around Babylon. The school of magi which Daniel began when Israel was in captivity for 70 years is where they were from. They studied the scriptures which foretold of a coming King, One Who would be born of a virgin in Bethlehem.

Specifically, they were studying Isaiah and that is when they saw the “star” and decided it was time to go and see this King born in Bethlehem. These magi did not do magic nor were they into the occult, they were simply educated men who had been studying the prophets of Israel. It was those prophecies which brought them to Israel and then to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, looking for the One Who would be King of Kings!

The announcement went out to the shepherds that night when God put on flesh and came to be near His Creation, so that He could pay the penalty for our sins and make right what had gone wrong at the first. He was the only One Who could pay the penalty for ALL of mankind, past, present and future. All that we need to do is believe in His sacrifice and accept the grace given to us.