How do you define life? Is it just living from day to day or is there more to it than that?
I like to think that it is much more than just living day to day because that’s surviving, not living life! Jesus Christ came to give us a more abundant life but what does that mean… exactly? There are lots of scriptures that point in His direction but what is a more abundant life? It is a life filled with joy because you have Jesus as your Savior and you are looking forward to eternity and not dreading it or wondering what it will be like.
Sometimes we get caught up in our problems and forget about the blessings we have in Jesus. This robs us of our hope and our joy. But…we can get back into the Bible and get our joy back because it’s not gone for good.
The joy of the Lord is my strength and we can have that joy when we think about the blessings that we have because of our relationship with Jesus. Many people don’t have this joy because they don’t want a relationship with Jesus. They may know about Him and they might attend church but head-knowledge doesn’t bring salvation.
God knows what is in your heart and He gives those who will decide enough faith to decide Who they will follow when they are convicted of their need for Jesus. Does that mean that God is choosie? Yes and no. You have to understand that He lives outside of time so He can see what you will do even before you do it. This is why we sometimes have a feeling that we should go this way rather than the other. That’s God trying to get our attention before it’s too late.
Make sure of what you believe and Who you believe in before tomorrow if possible because none of us are guaranteed to wake up in the morning. If you don’t care about eternity then feel free to ignore this advice but eternity is a long, long time regardless of where you spend it. Myself, I’d rather spend it with friends and family in Heaven.
For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts. Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord : And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. Malachi 4:1-6 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/mal.4.1-6.KJV
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. Psalms 119:105 KJV
In this world that all of us must walk in, it has become darker and more evil in the past few decades. Today it is getting darker because of the time that we are living in. It isn’t necessarily because of one religion or another. It is not because of a political party and their beliefs or even the laws that they pass. It is because the ruler of this world, Satan, knows that his time grows shorter by the day and he is moving and influencing mankind to do things that they would not do in years past. Many in our world don’t believe in God or the Devil and he likes it that way because if you don’t believe then you’ve already made your choice.
God’s light came into the world through the Word but also in the Person of Jesus Christ. He brought the Light of God’s grace and mercy to the world and his disciples wrote of the things which He did and the things that He taught. We have these words and wisdom available to us today in the Bible yet many people in our government don’t care about God’s Word or any wisdom which comes from it. They have turned away from it and they do not walk in His Light.
The church…the people who truly believe God’s Word and in His Son, Jesus, needs to be taking God’s Wisdom to their workplace and into the restaurant and into the street so that others can learn of His grace and mercy. Many people don’t attend church services anymore because this disease called COVID gave then an excuse not to. Many have not come back to church even when there is a vaccine for it. Even if they have been vaccinated, some haven’t come back. Satan is using this to keep the church as empty as possible and in the time that we live in it is not unexpected. God foretold this.
There will be a falling away in the church. In two decades since America was attacked, many have moved away from their faith in God and as society moves away from God, the future of that society will be less of a blessing to the world because we have despised our Creator and our God. We have strayed from His Wisdom and His Light and we are walking in darker and darker places. There is a reason that the West is not mentioned in the book of Revelation and this is likely the reason.
I pray that anyone who listens to or reads this will seek Jesus as their Savior while there is time to do so. In His Service
In the poem, “Footprints in the sand”, the man who had the dream noticed that at some of the most trying moments in his life there were only one set of footprints. The Lord told him that during those times He carried him through them. He was never alone.
For a married couple who is totally committed to each other and to the Lord as well, there would be three sets of footprints during their life together. During the hard times in their lives, the Lord would not carry both of them but their footprints would be closer together as they walked along. When their lives approached the end of their life together the Lord would carry them both through these really tough times. God doesn’t leave us in rough times only to show up during the best times, He is there all of the time.
Life today is tough and it seems to be getting tougher as time moves on but, as Christian believers, we are never alone. Jesus is there, the Holy Spirit is in our heart and God is always accessible to us by prayer. While we may feel alone at times, seek comfort in knowing that Jesus is always close to us. He is as close as a prayer and closer than a friend or a brother.
Why am I writing this today? Because life is hard and it is harder when we try to live through our troubles alone. Some of us aren’t made to go through life as a married couple but some of us are and we are more relaxed and able to cope with the good times and the bad when we have someone to share both of them with. The good times will be better when shared and the bad times won’t feel so bad because you are able to bear each other’s burdens.
This is how I see married life because God gives each of us a partner to live life through as a couple because, just as a rope, when there is more than one person/strand put together the bond is harder to break. Make sure of your bond as it is between three persons, Jesus, your spouse, and you.
I had a dream this morning and God used it to wake me up to the world around us. We’re living in the end times right now and if we don’t wake up to this fact, no one will recognize it. The church has to tell others before it is too late because that’s our job and if we don’t do it, who will?
Alcohol is a poison and it’s effect on families has always been to divide and cause more problems. Emotional problems and spiritual problems too. It takes your reasoning away and if you had a witness, it kills it in the eyes of those who see it or see you drinking it.
Jesus called each of us to be His representative in this generation. We have to be His if we are, if not we are fooling ourselves about our salvation and the witness that we have.
I’m no longer a pastor but I can’t lay down the calling that He placed on me. I have to be true to that and to Him or I should just go away and my heart won’t allow that. I pray that anyone who reads this will seek their Savior in Jesus Christ because He’s the only way into eternal life with God.
Some of us believe in a “god” that someone in the past or even in the recent past just made up and embellished to make it sound good. Some people during the time before Jesus was born listened to the people around them who were worshiping “gods” that were actually demons who followed Satan. In all of these scenarios can you pick one and show me a hospital or an orphanage or even a charity that any of these false religions created or started that has helped people?
I don’t know of any.
Believe in God and the Lord Jesus Christ for your salvation and you will be saved. “Saved from what?” you may ask.
That is a long story but when Satan caused the fall in the Garden of Eden, he became the ruler of this world. Not like a king but he could influence humanity to follow his suggestions and be far more evil than they would be without his influence. God loves us and the angels enough that He gave all of us the freedom to choose. God doesn’t want mindless automatons but willing servants and the freedom to choose to follow Him and serve Him out of love.
Not one of the false religions can claim this. Oh, some do corrupt the Bible and change some words and therefore the meaning of the books in it. It is because of this that many people don’t want to hear from God’s Word because they believe if one version is corrupt then all of them are. This just is not so. There are many old copies of many books of the Bible that are accurate to the word. Many Hebrew scholars have copied the Torah over the years and even the most ancient copies are accurate to the word and the punctuation. God has made sure that His Word is true and accurate and is not corrupt.
Jesus came to bear the sins of the whole world and pay the debt for them on the cross, then three days later He rose from the grave and over the course of forty days He appeared to many people to prove that He had risen from the grave. He ascended to the Father and it was witnessed by His disciples. Angels told them that “this same Jesus will come again in like manner as you have seen Him go.”
We are waiting for His return very soon. Some do not believe it will happen. Some say that it won’t happen in our lifetime but Jesus said that after “the fig tree blooms”, referring to the rebirth of Israel, that generation would not pass before His return. Israel became a nation again in 1948 and 80 years from then is 2028. Possible? Yes. No dates or hours but possible. I pray that all who read or hear this will seek to know Jesus while there is still time.
Some people can claim to know a lot about God. Some claim that they don’t believe He exists. But in the Bible, there are many people who have seen His miracles and His love for them shown in many different ways. From providing food and water for the Israelites in the desert for forty years to making sure that none of them got sick or feeble during that time. Miracles abounding almost every day and yet after they made it to the Promised Land most of them forgot about God within one generation.
Why?
I believe if I had seen the Red Sea split and I walked through it on dry ground, that would’ve been enough. If I had seen the manna and the water from the rock and the quail that piled up in the camp knee-deep…I would’ve believed in Him. When they went into the Promised Land the first city to fall literally was Jericho after their marching around it for seven days and then on the seventh day they blew the trumpets and shouted and the thick walls fell down. This was happening in Exodus and Joshua.
There are so many miracles that happen in the Old Testament and many more in the New Testament and yet there are still people who either don’t believe or just won’t. True, if you don’t believe that the Bible was written as inspired by the Holy Spirit then none of the miracles which happened in the Old or the New Testaments will make a difference in how you know God. But consider this: God created the heavens and the Earth and everything that is seen and unseen in both. Granted, it may take some small amount of faith to believe this and He can supply it. God lives outside of our “dimension” if you will and He can see and has seen everything that mankind has done and will do but He still loved us enough to send His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross so that those who will believe would have a chance at eternity with Him.
Does that mean that He knows who will believe and who will not? Yes, but He doesn’t force belief on us. That comes to each of us when we realize that we need Him by faith which He has given to us by the hearing of a sermon or by reading His Word. At that point, we know that without Jesus as our Savior we are going to spend eternity separated from God in hell. We know that if we choose not to accept Jesus as our Savior and we die before we change that, we will be going to hell. It is our choice because we know by faith that we need Him and if we don’t make that choice then our destination is set. If we do, then we will be changed when we repent of our sinful condition and ask Jesus into our hearts and at that moment we are forgiven and brought into God’s family through the blood of Jesus that paid for our sins on the cross.
In the most simple terms, God is the embodiment of love. Unconditional love. The kind that we can do nothing to earn. We just have it because He loved each of us so much that He sent Jesus to pay our sin debt in order for us to be with Him in eternity. We can’t earn it. We don’t deserve it, but it is a gift by the grace and mercy of God through Jesus Christ our Savior.
Once upon a time in the distant past there was a man named Elijah who was a prophet of God. He lived during a time when Israel was confused about their relationship with God. They didn’t know if they wanted to trust God and follow Him or follow the god of their queen and king Ahab. One day there was a declared “competition” ,of sorts, on Mount Carmel. There, Elijah had requested that all of the people come and see which God was real and for them to choose which one they would serve.
The “competition” started early one morning and the prophets and priests of Baal set up their altar with the bull on it and began chanting and praying for Baal to accept their offering and burn it up, to show that he was the god for Israel. Nothing happened. They kept chanting and cutting their skin and dancing, begging him to accept their offering. Still…nothing happened. This went on for many hours until most of them had passed out from exerting themselves so much or because of blood loss and still no sign that Baal was going to accept their offering.
Then, Elijah took his turn. He built an altar and killed the bull, placing it on the altar. Then he does something very odd. He digs a trench around the altar and asks for water to be poured out on the wood for the fire and the offering. Then, he asks for more to be poured on it. Three times he asks for water to be poured on the altar until the whole thing was saturated and the ditch was full of water.
Then…he prayed.
36 And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near, and said, LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word. 37 Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the LORD God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again. 38 Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.
God showed His power in a mighty way and He left nothing, even though it was soaked with water. His fire even consumed the water from the trench! God is still on His throne and one day soon, Jesus will return for His Bride, the church. I pray that you will be in the number of people that are taken to Heaven to be with Him forever on that day. God loves each of us and has a place for us all that we need to to is make a place in our heart and our lives for Him.
The Living Message of Christ 