Patience

This word is something many of us could use more of but right now we had better be thankful that God has an immense amount of it. Why? Because of all the fighting and fussing over the “right” to kill babies that He has sent to us as blessings! I know, some people look at children, babies in particular, as an inconvenience but God has His reasons for sending that soul to you to be in your care. He doesn’t have to ask if it’s okay with you. If you are putting yourself in the position to have a child then God will oblige by sending you one. Whether you are ready for it or not!

Many new parents find that the job of being a parent is overwhelming at times and just plain exhausting during the first few months but most of us can get through it. Sometimes it takes a lot of prayer and “on-the-job” training but for those of us who truly want to be parents, it is worth it. Speaking of being worthy, none of us has the market on being worthy to be parents. Life happens and sometimes it is messy but with help from God and a little time, you can learn to be a good parent depending on your living arrangements.

Why am I focusing on this issue? Because that is one of the “big” stories on the news today. There are many other newsworthy things happening in the world but it seems that having the “right” to kill your child in the womb is more important right now. I worked as an EMT for a number of years and I carried a few expectant mothers to the hospital to have their babies. I never heard even one say that they didn’t want this child regardless of their age. As I said earlier, God sends these souls to Earth to fulfill some need or a specific calling that He has in mind for this child.

God knows what He is doing, whether we agree with His idea or not, is not supposed to be part of the equation. A child is supposed to be celebrated for their potential…their future. He or she is not supposed to be judged as useful or a nuisance. If your life doesn’t have room for a child, then give them a chance at life with someone who can’t have a child. Seek a way to give life a chance because this child may be the doctor that finds the cure for cancer one day.

How can I come to Jesus?

How can I come to Jesus? I am a sinner and have been doing these things for most of my life. Why would God want me?

Because God knows who you are and he has known you since before you were born. He created you, placed all of your talents and abilities in your DNA, and brought you to the place where you are for a reason. Because there is someone possibly in your family or someone you work for or with that is also unique to God and you are the only person who could bring Jesus to them. They will likely listen to you more than they would their parents or other friends.

God can take your faith, even if you think it is weak, and use it to touch someone with the love of Jesus. You may not have to speak to them at all. They may see you saying the blessing over your meal at a restaurant and realize that you have something that they need. Not money or possessions but a friend in Jesus Christ and they want that. God has used people to be prophets and priests who were unacceptable in society but He used their willing hearts to touch kings and kingdoms.

When you read the Bible from cover to cover, you find that the genealogy of Jesus had people in it that were outside the family of Abraham. Rahab was a harlot in Jericho but she is part of the genealogy of Jesus and there are many in His family line who murdered people and many other types of sinful things. But God still placed them in Jesus’ lineage because He can use anyone’s ability and talent to bring His purposes to fruition.

John 3:16,17 is a very powerful verse: 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

If you will believe in Jesus, like the thief on the cross did, and repent (move away from) your old sinful habits so you can walk with Him for the rest of your life then you will be saved. It’s so simple yet some people think that they have been too bad. Nobody has ever been turned away from salvation because of what they did if they were willing to leave it behind and follow Jesus’ teaching from that point on. Your heart will be changed and you will be completely new in Christ. Everything that you do is ordained by God and nothing has ever caught Him by surprise.

Ever present help

What are you doing for Him?

What are you doing for Him? Have you ever wondered about your life as a Christian? We usually ask God for our provisions, our needs, and our problems. Do you see the pattern here? We are called by God, prompted by His Holy Spirit to give our hearts and our lives to Him as our sacrifice to Him because of His grace toward us through Jesus’ sacrifice. We are supposed to give because He gave His only Son’s life for you and me.

Yet we have the audacity to claim Jesus as our Savior and then pray for our selfish desires and our problems without a thought for His requirement of us being His servants and His disciples. And we expect Him to answer our prayers right now! Not next week! How arrogant we are. Can you see what I’m trying to illustrate here?

Your life, as a Christian, should be centered on doing the work that we have been called to do by Jesus. What is that exactly? First and foremost it is being a witness to those around you at home or at work or even in public. Remember, Jesus told His disciples to go and tell others about Him and what HE did for them. That same command is extended to each of us today because people need to know about their Savior. If you and I don’t tell them, how will they know?

When I was lost, the only reason I went to church was that I had no choice. My mom went to church on Sunday and I had to go with her. I had been in church for as long as I can remember but when I became a teenager is when I began to rebel against my “expectations”. I’m not going into all of the details of my early life but I was a part of a “broken home” as they called them in the 70s. It isn’t uncommon today but back then it was. I didn’t get into drugs much but alcohol and a little “weed” were my friends or so I thought.

When you accept Jesus as your Savior, you are supposed to move away from your old self and follow Him into your new life. I thought I did this for a long time but I kept drinking and smoking for a long time. I was doing things that a born-again person isn’t supposed to do. It wasn’t until I became a father twenty-two years ago that I really began to reach out and seek God for my salvation. I had been baptized a couple of times but all that did was get me wet but I was still lost.

It has taken twenty years of study and seeking God to bring me to a point where I feel comfortable telling others about my Savior. I even served as a “lay-preacher” for almost ten years and there was a lot of growing in Christ that happened during that time as well. What is my point? It is this: If you truly belong to Him, you should be telling others about Him.

Don’t back up or think they will be offended. Some of them may be but they still need to hear it because you might be the only person who will tell them. God can use your talent to touch those around you and sometimes you are the only person that can get His message to at least one person in particular. It may be someone in your family or someone you work with but they may not listen to anyone else but you and your story. Plant the seed of your story in Christ so that they may decide to turn to Him as well. You may never know if they gave their heart to Jesus until you see them in Heaven but you may be surprised by how many you did influence that you never even spoke to.

Christ lives in your heart

If you are saved by His grace and you truly and completely believe this then He does live in your heart. Believe this and don’t listen to those who say that Christianity is foolish. It is foolish to those who don’t want to believe, but God loves them anyway.

How does God love me?

God loves each of us completely. Now, what does that mean? It means that God loves every fiber of your being right down to your DNA. He put it together and placed all of your gifts and abilities in those strands of your building block molecules. So, when you are called to become an adopted child of His through your acceptance of Jesus as your Savior, you are supposed to give your complete life and love back to Him.

How can I give my life and my love to Him? The first act of love from yourself to Him is to accept Jesus as your Savior and learn about Him and His commandments in the Bible so we can be the best person that we can be. With the Holy Spirit’s help, we can live our lives daily trying to live according to those Ten Commandments. I can’t live my life according to and following those commandments without His Spirit living in my heart and neither can you! God desires our obedience more than anything.

Jesus, the Son of God, came to live here as a human being so He would know our weaknesses and our temptations. He also knows our fears and our feelings of rejection and He came to walk where we walk and be connected with us. While it is true that God knows these things too, Jesus needed to do this as part of the Trinity so that He could truly relate to and understand us with our physical limitations and our sorrows and our joys too.

A better way of understanding this would be the relationship between a dog that you have in your household. They are part of the family. You take care of their needs and love them as much as you can but you can’t relate to them on their level unless you were able to become one of them. Live your life as a dog even with their short life spans. Enjoy all of the things that they enjoy and feel and smell all of the things that they feel. This is a very simplistic way of looking at our relationship with God and Jesus but I know that all of the dog owners out there can relate to this.

God loves us far more deeply than we can imagine. Just as most owners of Dachshunds can relate to this relationship. Any dog, regardless of breed, that you take into your home and care for will become a part of your family. Usually so deeply loved until their death will affect you more than you ever thought possible. That pain is the kind of pain that I believe God feels when we reject His love and His offer of forgiveness through believing in Jesus for your salvation. It may be even worse than that. My point is this: He loved each of us enough to send Jesus to die on the cross so many years ago just to pay the debt for our sins that we cannot pay.

God cares for you…

Sometimes, in life, we feel that we have done so much that He wouldn’t accept us. But…when you read God’s Word you find people that He has used in His plan who were murderers, killers, adulterous, liars, harlots, even some who were not Jewish and a few who were people that God condemns completely, yet they were all used in the family line leading to Jesus. I know that was a very long sentence but to give you the backstory of all of them is just too much.

Why did I include all of the different people in the paragraph above? Because, when you begin to think about Jesus or even if you are thinking that He can’t use me or even why would He want me? God used a donkey to speak to Balim when it was needed. He knows you down to your molecules because He created you in every way by knitting your DNA together and giving you your talent and your personality. Why am I telling you this? Because there are so many people who think that God doesn’t exist or that He doesn’t care about us or more personally…me or you!

Jesus came to take your place on the cross. It was your sin and my sins that He came to pay the price for and it was those sins that nailed Him to the cross. So in the most intimate way, God loves you. He knows each of us more deeply than we know ourselves and He wants a relationship with us. He wanted this relationship in the beginning with Adam and Eve and for a while, He had it with them until Eve started talking with a snake.

It only takes a second for you to realize that you need Jesus in your life. Sometimes, that second that you say, “Jesus help me!” is all that you will have. If you know that you need Him in your life, I pray that you will make that decision soon before it is too late.

Commandments, not suggestions

Have you noticed how much people want to get rid of any mention of God or Jesus and especially their laws? The Ten Commandments were never “suggestions”, they are commandments and we should obey them.

The first four commandments tell us how to obey and worship God. The other six tell us how we are to behave toward each other. That is why Jesus said that “we should love the Lord with all of our hearts, all of our souls and with all of our strength and all of our minds and the next commandment is that we should love our neighbor as ourselves”. Jesus didn’t dilute them, He just made ten into two but the two that He told the Pharisees about ARE the essence of the TEN.

Why can’t the church live by these commandments today? It seems that much of our problems in America could be fixed if these were taught in our homes and in our churches too. Life would be so much better if this was what we taught in schools to the children, but there are too many people worried about lawsuits and the separation of church and state. Teaching these is not an endorsement of any specific “religion or church”, it is teaching our young people the way they are supposed to act when they become adults!