Category: Salvation

Where is God when I need Him?


How much do you need in this life? God gives us everything that we need every day but most of us take that for granted and we still wonder, “Where is God when I need Him?”. As someone who has grown up in America and has so-called “privileges” because I live here, I can tell you that those privileges are few. Some think that because I am “white” I have everything but I don’t. Life and friends can be cruel at times even when the “friends” don’t intend to be. Life is what we make of it or so I am told and in many ways that is true, but when you see many people who are wealthier than you are, don’t assume that their life is a happy one all of the time. Nobody can be happy every minute of every day regardless of the amount of money they have access to.

Joy, on the other hand, can be had by someone who lives in a cardboard shack. Why? Isn’t happiness and joy the same thing? Not by a long shot. Joy is not fleeting. It is a feeling that you can have just because you were able to get up this morning and walk to the kitchen. Many people in the world don’t have that blessing. Happiness comes and goes and depends upon your situation at the time. Joy can go on forever.

Where am I going with this? In many parts of the world poverty is so crushing that even having rags on your body may be all of the clothes that you have, and yet some of those who live in this situation are joyful because they are believers in Jesus. In America, we can’t imagine being impoverished to that point, yet there are some in our country who do live that way. 

God watches over all of us whether we are rich or poor, but many still don’t acknowledge Him as their Savior because when they felt the need for Him to intervene in some way for them, He did not. We can’t know why He didn’t heal or fix a problem or disease but He does. He may use a doctor or a prayer to heal but the answer is always up to Him. As Christians, we have access to Him all of the time but many of us allow the world to dictate when we seek Him. We try all kinds of treatments and other ways of healing us before we, as a last resort, turn to Him.

Being joyful in the face of a medical problem that feels overwhelming is not something many of us even consider, but one of Jesus’ disciples said that we should “count it all as Joy”, the good and the bad days. If you have given your life to Jesus and are walking through the world feeling sad or even angry because of a prayer that hasn’t been answered, ask Him to show you why it hasn’t been. God uses the good days and the bad days to give us strength and increase our faith. We may not like the way He does it but we will see the outcome one day and realize that it was for our good and His glory that it happened that way. Seek Him today and know that He loves each of us warts and all.

He is enough.

Temporary are our lives


We are living a life that is so fleeting that it is described as a puff of smoke, why do we think we have plenty of time to accept Jesus Christ as our Savior? If you have asked Jesus into your heart but you are still living the life of a sinner, one that doesn’t look like a Christian life, then you are fooling yourself by saying “I am a Christian”.

When Jesus is truly asked into someone’s life and heart and it is sincere…there is a change that comes over your heart. Yes, you will slip up and say things that you shouldn’t but you will be convicted by the Holy Spirit, that what you said or did is wrong. You feel the wrongness of it because you do belong to Him. If you never feel that conviction, then you don’t belong to Him and you are not saved.

Saying a prayer and having someone tell you that you are a Christian doesn’t save you. If your behavior doesn’t change, then you haven’t received Jesus as your Savior. There is always a change in your life and your heart when Jesus comes in to be your Savior. Your life changes because the Holy Spirit comes into your life and into your heart and you are saved by believing in Him and the sacrifice that He gave His Life for all of us and it is a gift from God through faith in Him by our acceptance of Jesus as our Savior.

Nothing really


What are you most worried about for the future?

I mean… what’s the point? Worry only gives you ulcers and gray hair and it doesn’t accomplish anything. You’re just bringing tomorrow’s trouble into today.

He gave us so much…


God gave us this planet to live on, with all kinds of food and the families that all of us enjoy. From the very beginning until now, God needs nothing from us but He chose to give us His grace. If you are wondering what else He gives us I’ll try to list a few here:

He makes sure your heart beats every time and He does this for EVERYONE.

He makes sure you can breathe during the night and the day.

He has given each of us the abilities that we have to do our work, for Him and for our family. 

But…most of all, He has given us the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. No other religion offers salvation and forgiveness just by believing in the Person and the Hope of Life that is Jesus Christ. Sometimes we try to help Him “save” us by doing lots of projects and work at the church of our choice but remember this: God made the ENTIRE universe a long time before you or I was born, so He doesn’t need our help. He wants us to be His children and part of His family and that is why He chose us before “the foundation of the world”.

Your name and my name were written in His book of saints before the light was spoken into existence. God has always had each believer in His mind long before we were born. 

Today, we are living at a time that is rapidly approaching the end of the church age, the age of Grace. I pray that you will seek to know Him as your Savior soon, because there is coming a time when the Holy Spirit will be taken from the Earth and it will be very hard to give your heart and life to Jesus, much harder than it is today. Seek to know Him and to give your heart to Him today. He loves you and He is waiting for you to open the door.

God’s love was proven


On the cross, His love for us was proven and the Bible verse that goes along with it is John 3:16

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son; that whosoever will believe in Him would have eternal life”. So, I will cut it down a bit and go through each part.

God so loved the world: Why would He do this? Why would God give His Son for the world’s sins? Because He loves all of us. We, each of us, were created and formed by God. He gave each of us a personality that no one else has. He gave each of us our talents and our gifts and there is only one of each person on this planet, even if you are a twin. Each of you may look like your brother or sister, but you have talents, personalities and abilities that are different from each other. God made you and me that way.

He gave His Son as a Perfect Lamb to pay for ALL of our sins. Only Jesus could live a sinless life and die to pay for mankind’s sins. Then He rose from that grave to give us eternal life, if we believe in Him. Like the thief on the cross, it only takes your belief in Jesus to bring salvation into your life. There is nothing that you can do to “help” God save you. His grace and mercy are gifts that we get when we believe in Jesus for our salvation. Your spiritual gift is one that you will have to find on your own, but God always gives each of us at least one.

God loves you and He has prepared a place for you in His Kingdom, if you will accept Jesus as your Savior, follow Him and live your life trying to be more like Him. Eternity is a long, long time, so make sure of your eternal destination while there is time. Our world is not going to drown from rising seas or be suffocated by pollution. Read the Bible, especially Romans and the book of Revelation. Your life more abundantly is waiting in Heaven, not here on Earth. Seek Him, find Him and learn from His Word. He loves you more deeply than you can imagine.

Do you really know God?


Why is our world so confused about God? Is it because He is not something or someone who can be seen or touched? I don’t believe so, since the founders of other religions are dead and cannot be contacted or touched either. The difference is that our God can be contacted and He will answer those prayers! Whether the answer will come on your schedule or not is irrelevant because God answers on His time and not yours.

God loves all of humanity, that is why He sent His Son to be the sacrifice that took the sins of all of us, past, present and future, and paid the price for them all. Our only response, the only one that is required of us, is to acknowledge that we need Him and accept that He paid that price for each of us. Then ask Him to come into our lives and make us more like Him. Once that is done, and we have taken the steps in our life to turn away from our sinful ways, we must let others know about Him!

I know that many people don’t want to testify that they have changed, that their lives have been changed by Jesus but if the change has happened people will see it in your life whether you tell them or not. The misconception that many people have is that they cannot know God.

The Bible is a collection of writings that were inspired by the Holy Spirit and in some cases, such as the books of Moses, were given directly by God Himself to the writer. All of these books are God’s way of advising us on living our lives through Hiim and for Him. God also expresses His love for us through these books and the wisdom contained within them, all we have to do is read and study them and ask Him to help us to understand. There is a passage in the Bible that says something like this, “if you feel that you lack wisdom, ask it of Him and He will give it freely”. Now that is  paraphrase, but you get the idea.

God is not someone who is billions of miles away, He is here. He occupies the entire universe and He can live in your heart if you ask Him to. You are never very far from Him and when you feel alone remember the only one who may have moved is you! God has always been close by although He will not barge into your life. He waits patiently for you to ask Him to come in.

God is the Creator and the One who sustains the universe and all that is in it. Jesus is the living Word that came to earth and became a man to take our sins and the punishment for them to the cross. He is the reason that many have trouble with accepting Christianity. They don’t want to accept Him because many do not believe that the Son of God would do what He did.

The love that God has for us is one that we cannot comprehend because it is far above what we are capable of. Yet it is because of that love for us that He came to suffer through life as we do, to be as we are in every circumstance and yet follow the will of His Father even unto the cross to pay for our sins.

Can we know God? Can we get to know Him like the prophets knew Him? Yes, we can! He wants to get to know us and He wants that relationship with us. All that we have to do is ask Him into our lives and study His Word prayerfully so that we will gain an understanding of just Who He is and what we should be doing.

We are sometimes to proud to admit that we need Him until some problem happens in our lives that punctuates the fact that we cannot handle life by ourselves. At those times, even those who claim that they don’t believe in God will seek Him! Whether they make a life-changing decision to allow Him into their lives is another topic altogether, but they will look for Him until something or someone directs them elsewhere.

Satan is very good at directing us to look to ourselves or to something in the world besides God. It is what he has been doing since the beginning and his ability to deceive us is a finely honed skill that he is very proud of. Satan is capable of twisting scripture to a point that you will think that you have found “religion”, and you have but you haven’t found Jesus!

Religion, in all of its forms in the world, cannot save you from your sins. Only believing in Jesus and asking Him to come into your life and your heart can do that. The choice must be a sincere and honest one, not lip service. Saying some words and getting emotional about it doesn’t change your heart. If the repentance of your heart is not genuine, God will know. Read and learn from the Bible. Go to a real church that preaches from God’s Word. Give your heart to Christ and ask Him to cleanse you from your sins. Once you have done this, your life and your character will change and you are a new creation. Your family will see it, as will your friends. Everything will change because you belong to Him and He will live in and through you! That is my prayer and hope for all who read this.

Love endures


You need to know…


Why does God want us to be broken and humble? Because it is at that point we will be receptive to the calling touch of His Holy Spirit. At any other time we could ignore it or say “I’ll do that later.” The problem with that thinking is we might not have a “later”.

Life has a way of proving that we need God whether we want to believe in Him or not. I stuck my neck out for many years before I finally gave my heart to Jesus and actually asked Him to come in and make me a new creation. I found out I was going to be a Daddy and I knew that my life needed to change and that’s when I found out about the change that would happen if I gave my life to Jesus. From that point on I started reading my Bible and learning more about Him. Why? Because He showed me that I couldn’t be a Daddy until I learned how from Him.

In the beginning…


How much?


Our veterans have given their lives willingly, we think, but do we as a nation take care of those who come home from the wars? Do we help them translate their skills from their service to a civilian job? If we aren’t doing at least that, we don’t deserve their sacrifice. They deserve our respect and our help in anything that they do, whether it is fighting cancer, finding a job, or just dealing with the consequences of being in a combat zone.

How much does it take to help someone come home to a society that cares very little about their sacrifice? Life after service in whatever branch they served in can be very difficult. Adjusting to life without a limb or living with PTSD is difficult for anyone but when you have to go through a VA doctor or clinic to get your treatment…it’s like trying to hit a baseball with a broken bat. You swing and miss, you wait and wait and then you are told that the doctor has gone home for the day…come back tomorrow.

I pray for all of our Veterans and their families because our “government” has dropped the ball on so many fronts regarding their treatment after their service. There are organizations that do the work that our government and the respective branches should be doing but they can’t keep up. Please keep our service-men and women in your prayers because they deserve so much more than a pat on the back and “Thank you for your service”.