Category: Salvation

Scrollin’, scrollin’, scrollin’


How much time do you spend doing exactly that? It seems that many people spend far more time on all platforms of social media than they realize. I heard this on the news today and I have a son that has been on Facebook longer than he should’ve been and it just hit home I guess. The story on the news was about how easy it is to find and get illegal drugs on any platform. The right keywords or hashtags that trigger a need or a buy and it won’t take long for someone to contact you.

I know that seeking any knowledge of Jesus is not a high priority for many young people these days since many of them claim that they don’t believe in any religion. Why? Religion has caused so many problems in the past and even today but that shouldn’t keep you from seeking your Savior. Having a relationship with Jesus is not “religion”! He had many arguments with the religious leaders of His day mainly because they thought that their strict adherence to their religion would save their souls.

They were teaching their religion and its rules as the way to heaven and it is not! Belief in Jesus as your Savior is the only way to gain salvation. Then you live your life trying to be more like Him. Without the Holy Spirit’s help we can’t begin to be more like Him but we won’t go back to the life we lived before. We can’t “work” our way into heaven by keeping the Ten Commandments because nobody can keep from breaking even one of them. From God’s perspective, even breaking one commandment makes you guilty of all of them. Because one sin, no matter how insignificant, is enough to condemn you to hell.

That is why Jesus had to come to Earth and live as one of us “yet without sin“, died an atoning death on the cross and then rose from the grave as the victor over death and the grave. It is your belief in Him as your Savior, not a set of rules, that grants you salvation and His righteousness by the grace of God. No extra work or abiding by a set of rules will gain you eternity…only your belief in Jesus as your Savior. Just like the thief on the cross. He believed in Jesus as the Savior, his Savior and Jesus said to him, “today, you will be with Me in paradise“.

That is why my advice to anyone who may be depressed or down or anxious is to seek the One Who can save your soul and give you a joy in Him that no drug can ever match!

When we are at our worst…


God still loves us. Even if we haven’t accepted Him as our Savior yet, He still loves us. When we have finally accepted Him as our Savior and Lord…His love surrounds us and binds us to Him for eternity. That is how awesome our God is!

Even though we may not feel like being loved, God loves us. When we are depressed about something in our lives or we just wake up feeling down…God still loves us. Our feelings and our outlook on our lives don’t have any impact on His love toward us because He loved us long before we were even born.

Don’t think of your life as if it doesn’t have any meaning because I have those days too. Think about your life as if it was a new life every morning. God gives each of us another day to live and be useful to Him, so when you wake up thank Him for the day and whatever comes in that day. He may use your outlook on life to bring someone to know Jesus as their Savior, even if you don’t get a chance to witness to them. They may see His work in your life and decide that He is needed in their life as well.

The love of God…


God’s love for you began before He created anything. His love for you is everlasting and deeper than you will know until you are in His Presence. Many times it seems that we take His love for granted and all of His blessings and mercy too but He still pours them into our lives even when we don’t acknowledge them. Why do we act this way toward the One Who loves us most in all of creation? Because, even though we may belong to Him and claim Him as our Savior, we are still flawed human beings.

Your life is precious to God and He holds you in His hand because He knows what His plans are for you. He will never leave you or forsake you even if you forget about Him from time to time. Have you considered that He holds the entire universe together but He also knows how many hairs are on your head? I’m not speaking of one or two people, I am talking about every person on the planet! Even those who don’t know Him as their Savior. God is our Savior and our Redeemer and our Creator. Doesn’t He deserve to be praised and thanked for waking us up every morning?

Thank God for your day and for all of the blessings that you have because if you truly think about it…everything that you have is a gift and a blessing sent to you from God.

Have you thanked God today?


Most of us wake up and just get up, if possible, and make coffee to start the day. We don’t wake up and thank God Who gave you the breath during the night to see this morning. We don’t thank God for the strength and the health that He gives us each day to do whatever we do. God gives each of us a number of days and years to live on this Earth and He gives us the strength to serve Him every day if we will live our lives doing that. So…why don’t we?

I wake up and try to remember to thank Him for allowing me to have one more day to serve Him. There are some days that I forget to thank Him but I usually get around to it before the day is too far gone. My point is that He gave His Son to pay the penalty for our sins so we could be useful and able to be His servants while we have the time to do so. Therefore, why can’t we thank Him every day for the blessings that will come on that day? The blessings may not be financial or healing but they could be a friend dropping by or the way your dog or cat makes you laugh. Some blessings aren’t easy to see but many times you will realize a blessing after it has happened and you will recognize it because it could only come from God.

Thank God for all of the little things and the big ones and your health and your family because you wouldn’t have them if it weren’t for His pleasure in giving them to you.

Pride…


Our lives are filled with times of pride and times of loss. Which one is worse or better doesn’t matter because our pride causes many problems in our lives because it is the chief sin from which all others spring. It was because of pride that Satan rebelled against God and was cast out. It was because of pride that Cain’s offering was rejected because he was showing what he had done and not offering a sacrifice to atone for his own sins.

It is pride that brings so many families to a point of splitting apart and it also causes many churches to split as well. There are many other problems in our world that are caused by pride and many times they become bigger than they should. But…what are we to do? Truly, we are supposed to “love the Lord with all of our heart, mind, soul and our strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves“. But do we really do this? Jesus was explaining the parable of the good Samaritan when He said this, so should we do this too?

We should but many times in our lives we don’t. God loves us deeply because He gave His Son for our sins so that we could come to Him whenever we needed Him. He already knows what we need but He does like to hear our prayers about those things anyway. We should pray to Him not only for the things that we need but also for just praising Him for His goodness and His love for us too. Make sure that you tell God how much He means to you because He does like to hear it. He knows your heart and more about you than you know yourself, but like any father, He still likes to hear from His children.

There may not be many more years until Jesus comes to take the church home so make sure that you know Him as your Savior…but most of all make sure that He knows you too!

Overcome with prayer


Help, this morning I woke up at 2:35 am. Thinking about all of the people that I might’ve hurt in my lifetime. With an ill-spoken word or by ignoring them or some other way that I didn’t think of at the time but for some reason it is coming back to haunt me today. This morning it woke me up and all I could do from then on was pray and ask for forgiveness. I know the Lord has forgiven me but I pray that the spirits of those that I have hurt will convey this message to them as well.

“I am sorry for whatever I said or did in the years past.” I can’t do anything more than this.

Our lives are too short to push each other away or to cut each of us out of the other’s life. It won’t be long before that day comes when Jesus will come for His church, His Bride and if you aren’t a part of that then your eternity will be very different from mine. Whatever happens in this life is meaningless unless it is done for Jesus Christ. Friends, family, and acquaintances, and Facebook friends are great when the times are good but when things go wrong or your health is getting worse you will find out which ones are really your friends.

I am not bringing this up as a rant but as a call to repentance. Our country and the whole world needs to seek Jesus as our collective Savior and repent of our sinful lives and of pushing Him away. If you have felt His touch in your life, especially with the troubles that we have all had these past two years, seek Him to be your Savior. He is waiting, all you have to do is open the door and invite Him in.

Let us reason together


Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. Isaiah 1:18‭-‬20 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/isa.1.18-20.KJV

Amen

The Lord is my strength


The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: Therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him. Psalm 28:7 KJV https://bible.com/verse-of-the-day/psa.28.7/56536

Amen

If we were on our own…


If there was no Savior. If there had not been a Seed of the Woman…humanity would be lost and without hope. At the very beginning, we would’ve been walking east from Eden as Cain did. We would still be worshiping idols in Haran. We would be living in slavery under a Pharaoh or serving Goliath and the Philistines. All of this would’ve happened if God did not care about us. He would’ve just created humanity and then sat back and watched. He would have seen mankind wipe each other off the face of the Earth long before Abram was born or even soon after Noah was born…if God didn’t love us.

If He had left us on our own, He would’ve had to create mankind over and over again until we finally understood that we needed to follow His wisdom and His way. But God didn’t do that because He can see down through time what was going to happen and that He would have to “move the pieces” so that things would work out the way He wanted them to. If you don’t believe that God is in control of this world, read the book of Daniel. 

God places kings and Presidents and others who think they are in “control” and He does it so that His glory will be seen when His plans come to pass. Nothing happens here that He is not aware of. Can we make our decisions? Of course, we can but God is still in the background making sure that His prophecies come about.

Soon, the whole world will know that He is God and that the Bible is true. When the dead in Christ rise into the air and those of us who are Christians join them to be with Him forever, the whole world will know it! They will come up with some crazy story about what happened but anyone who has heard an End-Times sermon will know what happened and many people will be looking for the Truth but it will be too late. The Tribulation and the wrath of God will be coming soon after this and there will be no escape.

The deep love of God


According to David in the Psalms, God’s love is unknowable and it is beyond our comprehension. If you are in hell, His love is still there. If you are on a mountain, He is there. If you are in the depths of the ocean, He is there. His love is everywhere that you are because He loves you. So why does the whole world act as if God is a Bad Person? The whole world seems to think that God doesn’t care about His Creation at all. 

If God didn’t care about His Creation, everything in the universe would just vanish into nothing. “He holds all that exists by His Word”; the entire universe is held together by His power. Nothing that we see or know would exist, not even us, if He did not have the power to keep it all together.

Your life and mine, the fish in the sea and the birds of the air are all a part of His daily work. Not because He has to do it but because He wants to keep creation going until His Word is fulfilled. God has decreed that until everything is accomplished that He intended for His creation, not one part of His Word would be nullified.

God knew each of us before the Garden was created or the Earth or anything in the universe so why do we doubt Him in everything that He says in His Word? Jesus came to save mankind from themselves and from their sinful ways. He came to give us a chance and a choice but there are so many who either don’t want His offer of grace and mercy or they don’t believe in Him, to begin with. “A fool says in his heart that there is no God”; what does that say about most of the world?

Our country and the entire world are running as fast as possible away from God. The problem with this is the same problem that the prophet Jonah had. When you try to run from God, you usually run into Him. You can’t run from God!