I am a pastor of a small church and I really liked this post. So much so that I re-blogged it here. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did. 🙂
Category: Salvation
What is the difference between religion and Christianity?
There are thousands of religions in the world, but there is only one Christianity. Religion from a Christian perspective and viewpoint depends upon the doctrine that you hold to, whether it is Mormon, Baptist, Methodist, Protestant, Episcopal, or Catholic or any number of other doctrines in the world. Religion can be anything that you might want to worship and there are enough religions in the world to prove that, and yet other than Christianity none of them have a living Savior! Their founders are dead or imagined, made up in the minds of men, and yet each of those religions may have thousands or millions of followers, some may have billions of followers. The point that I am making is this…has anyone thought about which way, which path or road should you be following?
I am not trying to cause any more divisions between churches or denominations. What I am trying to point out is that true Christians are in all denominations, Christian denominations. There are also many who believe that they are Christians when their heart and their life doesn’t show it.
Here is a graphic which shows how much the world’s beliefs have changed in the past one hundred years or so: 
In 1910, America had 27.1 percent of the world’s Christians while Europe had over sixty-five percent. In 2010, the percentage in America has grown as well as other parts of the world, while the Christian population of Europe has shrunk to 25.9 percent. In the same amount of time, other religions have taken hold in many parts of the world which were Christian at one time. This graphic is seen more clearly if you open it in a new tab of your browser. The point that I am making is that our world is changing rapidly, especially when you consider cultures and their religions. Many things have happened in our world to cause this such as airline travel and other technological advances. The point is that there are more people claiming to be Christians but there are also more people who claim to adhere to other religions or even no religion at all.
What can be done about this situation? If you can evangelize those who have not chosen a religion or a belief, great. But many people who have chosen or may not have chosen, don’t want to be bothered by us or the religion that we represent at all! They don’t want to hear it and have closed their minds and hearts to anything that might point them in the direction of salvation.
It wouldn’t matter if you were the greatest evangelist in the world for some people, they have their minds made up and nobody is going to change their view except God Himself! If God has determined that they are going to be used by Him for some purpose, then He will get their attention eventually.What about those who are modern day Pharisees? They see themselves as Christians and don’t believe that they need salvation but are not followers of Jesus. I am not trying to be a judge of their faith, but if the fruit is not visible in their lives, then what are they?
Usually their reasons go something like this: “I have always been a member of this church, since my youth. I have served as a teacher in Sunday school and on various committees in the church as well as giving my tithes on a regular basis. How dare you question my faith!” Well, as a comical story I heard once went, “I could live in a garage all of my life but I still wouldn’t have four wheels and an engine!” You do not become something or absorb a faith and live it just because you have been exposed to it for many years! The messages that you have heard over the years may have been good, but they did not penetrate the soil of your heart and take root there!
We are accountable to God for the light that we have heard and read and lived by whether we have taken it into our heart and our life or not.Because of this there will be many who will be astonished on that day when Christ says, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” Don’t let that day be the day that you hear those words, give your heart to Jesus while there is life in your body so that you can serve Him until He calls you home! Then you will hear something like: “Welcome home, good and faithful servant!”
The one who sees me
This is a great post and couldn’t have been said any better. Just as in the days of Hagar, the Lord sees all of us and cares for all of us. He is with us through all of the times of our lives, good or bad, thick or thin whether that is regarding health, money, relationships or whatever. God never leaves us nor forsakes us. Great message!
“The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.
Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”
The angel of the Lord also said to her:
“You are now pregnant
and you will give birth to a son.
You shall name him Ishmael,
for the Lord has heard of your misery.
He will be a wild donkey of a man;
his hand will be against everyone
and everyone’s hand against him,
and he will live in hostility
toward all his brothers.”
She…
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Live according to the Spirit
“Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” (Romans 8:5)
What do we do when we get into a bind? Usually, we cry out for help in some way to someone or sometimes some “thing”. Whether it is a friend or co-worker, a family member or even Facebook, we lean toward finding someone to help us deal with whatever the problem may be. When the One who can help the most in any and all situations is not even consulted in whatever the problem is, then your life could take a very different direction.
I am not saying that God will punish you for not consulting Him but the results could be very different than what they would’ve been had you spoke to Him first! Remember, we are to seek Him first in all things…this is what God’s Word says. We are not to seek out help from those who are powerless to help, especially if the situation requires the One who can affect all parts of a problem, even those that we aren’t aware of yet!
Can you have an effect on all parts of a problem? God can and He does, but only when you ask Him. Many people blame all of the bad things which happen on God, but all things are known by Him yet this world is under Satan‘s rule at this time. He cannot do things without God allowing him to, but he is in control of all the evil and bad things, whether it is natural disasters or from mankind’s own evil ways. We, as Christians, can have an effect on this world through prayer and by living our lives according to the Spirit’s leading.
We have a responsibility to do just that. It is not thinking that you are better than anyone else, but we are to let people know that there is a better way, the way that Jesus lived! By allowing yourself to be led by the Spirit of God, submitting yourself to Him daily, you can be a force for good in the world. Others will see what you have and they will want it, although many will persecute you for not following their religion instead of yours.
Religion by itself is not bad, but those who try to push their religion on others is. Telling people the truth about Jesus and letting them make up their own mind is not the same as forcing them to be or worship one way over another. We, as Christians, don’t force anything on anyone. We just tell others like our Lord told us to do, and then let them make up their own mind whether to believe in Him and change their lives or not…it is your choice.
Your salvation is exactly what Satan doesn’t want you to have! He doesn’t want you to belong to God, because he hates God and us with a hatred that we cannot know. Don’t fall for his lies and the lies of the world. Listen to your heart, read God’s Word and ask Him to show Himself to you through it and He will! There are many in the world who don’t want to believe what the Word of God says and they try to convince others that it is false, but it wouldn’t have been such a popular Book and one for whom many people died for if it wasn’t the Truth! You wouldn’t die for a lie and nobody else would either. God’s Son, Jesus, came to give us eternal life through Himself and belief in that is what many have sacrificed their lives for over the centuries. We are awaiting His return now and I believe that it will be soon, although no one knows when except God Himself, although all of the prophecies have been fulfilled leading up to His return with the exception of the appearance of the world leader that will usher in peace for Israel for a short while.
When that happens, the world and every religion of the world will take notice, but those who have truly been following Jesus will still have hope and the assurance of life everlasting.
Trying to reach the moon
Three men were being chased. Suddenly, they came to a cliff top with the ocean waters far below. Seeing the moon shining brightly in the night sky, they agreed that if they could jump to the moon, they would be safe. The first man, a cripple, hobbled as fast as he could and leapt from the cliff. He jumped less than a metre before he fell screaming to the jagged rocks below.
The other two men agreed that he hadn’t jumped far enough. So the second man, of average fitness, took a running leap. He flew out five metres before he, too, plummeted to the jagged rocks far below.
The last man, the strongest of the three, decided he should take an extra-long run-up to reach the moon. So, at great speed he leapt from the cliff. He soared through the air with outstretched arms in order to reach the moon, but he, too, fell short and plummeted screaming to the jagged rocks below. He had leapt an impressive eight metres; however, he didn’t realize that the distance to the moon was 221 463 miles.
The distance between our righteousness and God’s righteousness is greater than the distance between the earth and the moon. It is the distance between imperfection and perfection; the finite and the infinite; the east and the west. It would be easier for us to jump to the moon than work our way into Heaven. No matter how moral or how many good deeds we have done, we will always fall short. If we could earn our own salvation, Christ died needlessly on the cross. We are only saved through faith in Christ not by our meager good deeds. As Ephesians 2:8-9 states, ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast’. The big question now is do we accept God’s gift or try to get into Heaven by our own merit? (Romans 3:23)
This is a copy of an e-mail that I get from Ian and Sue Coate and it illustrates the problem of us attempting to reach Heaven on our own merit. We can’t do it! It would be like trying to span the distance from the East to the West, it is infinite so it is impossible for us, but it is not impossible for God. He does span the infinite because there is no beginning nor ending to Him. He stretched out the heavens and placed the stars and galaxies in their places so infinity is like walking in a park to God, since He created it! Yes, I did ask permission to use this. Think about the message contained here please! Remember, we are not guaranteed tomorrow so get your heart right with God today while you are here!
Bashing Christian beliefs
When you hear about people doing this in the news and on the web what does it make you think of? It makes me think of children who can’t have their way who are throwing a tantrum!
“I don’t want to believe in God and they are forcing it in my face!”; “Christians are so dumb, they think that the universe was brought about by a god with his voice”; “The bible is not true, it is just a book of made up fairy tales and myths”; “Not one of the stories in it are true”.
OK, yes, I have heard these statements on television news shows and on web-casts as well as on twitter, face book and other sites. The point is that these so-called “arguments” are just that, arguments for the sake of arguing. Not one of the people who call themselves atheists has ever given it a second thought. How can a book which has been around for over two thousand years (I know that the English translation came about in 1611). The writings which went into it were written before that point in time.
Religions and the books which support them have been around for centuries, but the prophecies contained in the Torah were mostly fulfilled when Jesus came. The only ones left to be fulfilled are the ones relating to the end of the age, the Tribulation or whatever you want to call it. The places and people spoken of in its pages existed and have been proven by archeology, so saying that it is a book of fables is wrong.
You can’t get rid of something that you don’t like by not believing in it. Satan is laughing at you because even he knows that the scripture that you deny is true and he will likely point that out to you when you come to visit, even though it will be a long, long visit.
Penn Jillette has stated in the past that if it were true, Christians should be begging people to listen in order to keep them from ending up in hell. If you do not change your mind about what the Word of God is and the message that it contains, you will find out one day, but it will likely be too late for anyone to convince you.
Burning our book won’t anger us, it is just paper. Throwing all of them in the trash won’t change anything either. The Word of God is true and until the world wakes up and realizes that fact, there is very little we can do except tell you about it and the message that it contains. Whether you choose to believe in it or not is your own choice. It cannot be forced down into your being, God doesn’t work that way.
I challenge anyone who doesn’t believe in God and His Word to read it with an open mind, not a closed one. Sincerely ask God before you begin to read the book of John to reveal Himself to you if He is real, if He is not you haven’t lost anything and yet you won’t gain anything either. If He is real and He does open your eyes and your heart, don’t shut them tight and act like a little child saying, “I will not believe, I will not believe!”
The only thing that you will lose by believing in Him and the grace that has been given to you is that your eternity won’t be so uncomfortable!
The Lord is my Strength!
In Psalm 28:7 David writes: “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped; therefore my heart greatly rejoices; and with my song I will praise him.” This verse was George Beverly Shea‘s “life verse” and it should be ours too!
The Lord does give us strength and He keeps us daily in His sight and in His grace. How else could we possibly be the people that God intends for us to be without Him? We cannot do it on our own, we must have the Lord with us every day, throughout the day. Our Lord and our God is the One Who is able to sustain us through all of our trials of life, regardless of what they may be.
In your walk through life, have you considered God? Have you trusted in Him and His grace? He is the only One that can save you from an eternity of torment which was not meant for you in the first place! God loves you and gave His only Son for your life and mine and the only way to come to the Father is through knowing and coming to know the Son, Jesus Christ!
The Father, our Creator, knew each of us before the foundation of the world and He wants us to know Him. Yet, we are just as stubborn and hard-headed as He said the children of Israel were in the wilderness. We turn our eyes toward things which don’t matter especially when we haven’t turned to Him. While we are still dead in our sins, we turn to money, power, greed, fame, or even to things which we own like cars or homes to bring us happiness. Sometimes people still do this even when they believe that they belong to Christ, but if your heart is not full of Him it will turn to stuff which doesn’t matter.
It is time for us to put our lives on the right path and follow the One that came to give us an example to strive for. We may not be able to attain it while we are yet on earth, but the striving for it will make an impression on those who are looking at us and living around us. Your life has meaning and it has so much more meaning when Christ is a part of it because when you are following Him, people can tell whether you say so or not. Your life and your imitation of Christ which reflects Him, shines through the darkest of days and everyone can see it, especially those that need to see Him.
I am trying to emulate Paul the apostle so that I strive to finish the race. I am stretching toward the prize and that prize is eternal life with Jesus. I pray that I will see many of you there too. Please give Jesus a chance in your life.
Consider God today
Have you considered Him today? Have you thought about God today? We have many reasons or excuses for not thinking about God in our daily lives, such as:
“I am too busy to bring Him into my thinking today”; “God doesn’t belong where I work, so why bother?”; “He doesn’t want to be with me, so I am going to leave Him out of my life until I am ready”; “God doesn’t care about me, so why should I care”.
These reasons or excuses for not letting God into your life are all wrong! He does care, He loves you whether you love Him or not! He does want to be involved in your life. These reasons are also selfish, because you may not feel worthy of having Him in your life. You may be feeling that you aren’t good enough, well guess what? God does care! He sent His Son to die for us and pay the penalty for our sins long before we were ever born!
Jesus did not think of Himself when God asked Him to come to earth and be the spotless Lamb of God! He just obeyed the Father and now we have the ability to come before God’s throne whenever we need to or want to and for whatever reason…or even no reason at all! If you have not given your heart and life to Jesus, please consider Him today! We are not guaranteed tomorrow so don’t think that you will always have time to make this decision.
Your life and mine matter to God! He doesn’t turn away from us, even while we are sinners. If we repent of our sinful ways and turn and seek Him, He will hear us. He already knows what we need, He is only waiting for us to acknowledge that we need Him! Yet, today, many people refuse to admit that they need God. How will you feel after you die and you are standing in front of Him and He asks you about your life and why you didn’t come to know Jesus, His Son? Denying His existence will not help you at all at that point, just as not believing in gravity won’t make it go away.
You should care about your eternal life because it is a fact, proven or not, because Jesus spoke of living saints (Moses, Jacob and Isaac) and told His disciples that God was the God of the living not the dead. Another reason you need to consider is that eternity is a lot longer than your lifetime on earth, which is more like a puff of smoke in comparison. Our Creator has given us all sorts of time to decide, we have the testimony of many who have come before us as well as the testimony of nature itself. As David wrote in the Psalms: “the heavens declare your handiwork”; we cannot refute this because the beauty is there to be seen, on earth as well as in the heavens!
That testimony doesn’t even need translation into any language, the beauty of the heavens and our earth itself declare the handiwork of God because of the perfection of the way everything works together. It doesn’t matter about the man-made theories that science has been clinging to for over a century, there still is no proof of evolutionary transition forms of any animal anywhere on the planet, so if you can’t prove it then it is only a theory and not fact!
I am not writing to debate or disprove evolution, all that I am writing for is to bring a message to you about giving your life to Christ, because eternity is a long, long time and I don’t want to be responsible for anyone missing it. Read God’s Word, pray about your life and what it might mean to you and to God if you gave your heart to Jesus. My life was made far more rewarding and fulfilling by asking Him into it and I have learned more from Him than I did in college and I am still learning every day. Give Jesus a real chance in your life, you won’t regret it at all!
Do you know Jesus?
We live our lives in a world full of technology. People are connected today in ways that only thirty years ago was not possible. What about being connected to your Redeemer? The signal clarity never goes away and it is always a clear signal because He hears our every prayer. So why do we not hear Him when He calls? Maybe because we are not listening? Or it might be possible that we just can’t hear that small voice for all of the electronic stuff that we have ringing in our ears between us and Him.
When we have come to know Jesus, do we decide or does our heart feel the pull of the Holy Spirit? Your only decision is whether or not to answer His call on your life, we don’t decide to get saved just on our decision alone. Unless your heart feels the pull of the Holy Spirit, you won’t feel the conviction to ask Jesus into your heart, that is why we can’t just decide to be saved on our own.
Jesus said that the only way to come to the Father is through Him and the only way that you will know that you need Him is by the conviction of your soul and your heart. Just as Peter was broken after he denied the Lord, we have to be convicted and broken to know that we need Him. We cannot save ourselves and through no action on our part can we be justified before God. Our justification comes through Jesus and faith in Him alone.
“Is it possible that you can lose your salvation?” is a question which gets asked many times. The answer is no, you can’t lose your salvation if you truly have it. If you were “saved” during an emotional event and your life didn’t change afterward, then you may not have been saved. If your character, the person that you truly are, didn’t change and your habits didn’t change then you likely didn’t truly ask Jesus into your heart. Yet, many people think that they are saved because of these things and in many instances they will not listen to anyone from that point on regarding their salvation.
This is a deception that Satan has used for many thousands of years. People think that they have their salvation, their so-called “fire insurance” and no amount of preaching or prayer will get their attention unless God does. They remind me of the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. So wrapped up in their religiousness until they didn’t recognize the Messiah when He came.
Why do we do this? We make up our own worldview, our own comfortable spot that makes us feel all fuzzy and safe, and yet we are deceiving ourselves. Still being taken in by Satan’s schemes, we walk in our comfortable religious “feeling”, and fool ourselves right into hell itself.
Now, I don’t want anyone to think that I am judging anyone, all I am doing is pointing out what some people do. The only One who judges is Jesus and He knows the condition of your heart, regardless of how well you may hide it from others.
God’s Word is the only text that we need in order to know how to be saved and then how to follow Jesus afterwards. It is our instruction book for life everlasting and for life here while we can make a difference in other people’s lives.
We have pushed God’s Word from our lives and from the education system that our children are indoctrinated in and yet we want them to grown up into moral, law abiding citizens. How can they when we have removed the teaching and the influence of God in their lives? Many people don’t go to church regularly anymore so their children are not brought up hearing God’s Word! We are creating a culture that has no fear of God because they don’t know Him or even know about Him.
This fact alone is shown in our culture today because of a small group of people who want freedom from religion, of any type. They don’t want to be told that anything that they may say or do is morally wrong, and yet they will have to account for every word and deed when they face God one day.
The answer to all of life’s questions is found in God’s Word and yet there are many who don’t even have a copy of it in their home. I have read through its pages many times and each time I get a sense of peace and security that I can get nowhere else, because it is a living Word and each of us gets a different message each time we read it or hear it.
Pick up a copy of it at the library or at a book store. Ask God to show you His wisdom for your life through His Word. You won’t be disappointed with the answers to many questions that you have had and you may be surprised about the answers that you never thought would be there. May God richly bless each of you!
Pentecost
Repentance is not a single event but rather a point of crisis along with a continuing relationship choice. Repentance is part of a Christian’s regular spiritual life and routine. When you repent of something, regardless of what it may be, you turn away from it and choose another, better path.
Acts 2:1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. 5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language?
11 b, we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”
Our lives in Christ are important to God, which is why He sent His Son to take the punishment for our sins and die on the cross so that we might be able to receive forgiveness through Jesus. The only requirement on our part..that we have to do is to repent and ask for the forgiveness that has been provided. Now, some might say that they don’t feel compelled to repent of anything in their life so why should they? In that instance, either you are not ready or it isn’t the time yet for your spirit to be called. Which doesn’t mean that you are not wanted by God, He is just waiting until the time, His time, is right. He alone knows when that may be, although you can still pray and ask Him into your life. You will not be refused.
God never will turn away a sinner who asks from their heart and truly repents of things that they know that they have done. It is not a one-time event in your life, just as changing the oil filter on your car isn’t a onetime maintenance item either. We are all sinners and we do it on a daily basis. Nobody is exempt from this fact, even Jesus was tempted but He didn’t sin. What can we do about those temptations? Are we able to control them and ourselves? In many instances, no we are not able to do this with our own strength. But God provided us with the same Spirit that was given to Peter and the disciples that day, which will enable us to resist temptation.
Many people think that He didn’t sin because He was God in the flesh, but it was because He yielded His will to God each and every day..every minute. This is what we are supposed to do, but many think that once they have given their life to Christ, they don’t have to do anything else. If you don’t do anything else, your life won’t really change at all from what it was before you accepted Christ.
Then you will be counted among the hypocrites because you didn’t allow the Holy Spirit which you received to really change your life. This is why there are so many who are not in church, they know the Truth, they may have accepted Christ but they have not followed through with Bible study, daily prayer asking for strength to get through the day, etc. The spiritual fire that some have and many do not and the reasons for the difference is found in that, follow through. The gospel could be preached simply by saying “Believe in Jesus who was sent to die for your sins and ask Him to come into your heart and cleanse you from your unrighteousness”. One sentence, but without prayer and study of scripture allowing you to get to know God, what will change in your life?
William Blake wrote a poem about Pentecost and a few lines from that poem read:
Unless the eye catch fire, God will not be seen.
Unless the ear catch fire, God will not be heard.
Unless the tongue catch fire, God will not be named.
Unless the Heart catch fire, God will not be loved.
Unless the mind catch fire, God will not be known.
We are to be on fire for our Lord because He came down to us. We are to be on fire for God because a part of Him resides within each person who has accepted Jesus as Savior. If we are not on fire for God, why not? Do you not realize that the Creator of the universe came to earth specifically for each person here? Not only here in this church building, but all people are the ones that He came for, whether they know Him or not at this moment or even whether they care that He loves them, he still came.
I have seen a book called “gods at war” and it is written by a pastor who teaches a study based on it. The problem is that there are no gods at war, there is only one God, all these others are inventions of men. These man-made gods cannot fight with the One True God. They have no power because they are man’s imaginings of the “god” that he wishes to be the true god.
Even many people who are in church do this. You may hear people say that “My god would never condemn someone to hell”; in fact, it is not God that condemns people to that place but we ourselves.
Getting back to the day of Pentecost, those who heard the sermon in their own language wondered what they must do when confronted with the truth of Jesus. During the Festival of Weeks, many Jews would come to Jerusalem because they were required to by their religion. All of those that Peter spoke to were from Rome, Crete, Turkey, what is modern day Iran and many other places. Peter answered them and said that they must repent of their ways and be baptized. We can do no less than this.
Are you content in your life? Are you satisfied that you are in a right relationship with our Father in heaven? Many people are and the truth of it will condemn them. They are like the Pharisees, they see no need to repent because their religion and their practice of it feels just fine. As time and our lives will show that one day every person will bow before the King of Kings and we will all be shown the truth of our life. What kind of truth will your life show you?
The Living Message of Christ 