Category: Salvation

Where are you, Lord?


Have you ever been tempted to ask this of Him? I have. The reasons are many and it has happened many times in my life but I’ve come to know that we don’t have to ask this at all. He is always with us if you know Jesus as your Savior. God keeps up with everything that is happening on Earth and He is in control regardless of how things look from our perspective.

Some people are truly wondering if Jesus will come back for His church but be assured, He will. Why am I convinced of this? Because He is our Creator and He cannot lie. He told His disciples that He would come back one day and take every believer to be with Him in Heaven, to His Father’s house, and He will. I know it has been a long time since He left but God has His reasons for not sending Jesus to gather His Bride and bring her to His house. One of those could be that He is waiting for some who haven’t given their hearts to Jesus yet. He knows how many more there will be and He’s waiting for them.

There are other reasons as well and we don’t know what they are. Only the Father knows, just as Jesus said. Are we living in the “last days” or the “end times”? Yes, the time just prior to the Tribulation is where we are right now. If you are not sure of your salvation then you need to make sure before that day comes. The trumpet of God will sound and the dead in Christ will rise first and then we who are alive and remain will be caught up to heaven to be with Him forever. Some people think that everyone will hear the trumpet of God and some believe that only believers will hear it. Either way, the world will know that something momentous has happened.

I pray that anyone who has questions about salvation or eternity will seek a pastor or even contact me. I’m not a scholar but I have read through God’s Word more than ten times and I study His Word daily. I was a pastor for nine years and I pray that you will seek Jesus for your salvation soon.

Where do you find…


All of us ask this in one way or another because we are all looking for something. Whether it is food, money, healing, or love we are looking for it. God knows this and He knows what and Who you need to fill that empty place in your life. He is the God of plenty and the God Who provides for all who believe in Him. He supplies the needs of everyone whether they believe in Him for their salvation or not but HE will abundantly supply the needs of those who are following Him and learning wisdom from Him.

Life with God as your Savior and Provider is not easy but it is better than what we have now. God loves us and He watches over every person even if they don’t follow Him. When they are living by their own leadership, He allows it because they are rejecting Him. When He touches their life and their heart, they will seek Him to fill that empty place. This is not a vain belief, it is the truth! Your life can be useful and fruitful for Him if you will believe in Him for your salvation.

God’s inspiration will get you through all of your toughest days. No matter what might be happening, God is with you. He cares for the birds so He cares even more for you because you are made in His image!

Don’t think that He has abandoned you because He has not and He will not. Give your heart and your life to Him and follow Him every day because your eternity depends on it. Each of us has a soul that will live into eternity. The question that remains is…where will your soul and your eternal body live? Now, you can deny that this is the truth but Jesus mentions it many times and if He says that it will be this way then it will be. The determining factor of your eternity is your steadfast faith in Jesus or your rejection of Him.

You choose where you will spend eternity when you decide to either follow Him for the rest of your life or not. God doesn’t send people to hell. They make the choice when they decide to put off the decision of following Jesus or just reject Him altogether.

Those who will be in hell


He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.
Revelation 21:7‭-‬8 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/rev.21.7-8.KJV

When it says, “He that overcometh”, Jesus was speaking of those who have given their hearts to Him and follow Him during the Tribulation. But…if you choose to follow the world and all of its “pleasures” and choose not to give your life to Jesus and be His disciple so you can overcome the world, then you will be thrown into the lake of fire one day and that will be your eternity. God loves all of His creation including you and me and everyone on Earth, but if you choose to live your life without Jesus it is your choice that will send you to hell.

You have this life to choose your pathway and it is your choices that will determine your eternal home. Make the right choice and choose Life with Jesus.

Forsake me not, Lord!


They also that render evil for good Are mine adversaries; because I follow the thing that good is. Forsake me not, O LORD: O my God, be not far from me. Make haste to help me, O Lord my salvation. Psalm 38:20‭-‬22 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/psa.38.20-22.KJV

Does this sound like today’s news? Calling good evil and evil good is the condition of the world that Jesus foretold about this time prior to His coming for the church. His second coming, when He puts His feet on the Mount of Olives, won’t happen until the end of the Tribulation. God has not forsaken us and He has not forgotten anyone but He also will not tolerate sinful lifestyles and actions. You can choose to believe what God’s Word says or you can say it is just an old book, but you will be judged by the Word if you have not accepted Jesus as your Savior and changed your ways.

Can a broken vessel be useful?


Can you be useful to God when you feel broken? Many of us are actually broken in some way. It may not be a brokenness of spirit but it could be because of personal tragedies. So…could you be useful to God’s Kingdom even though you are broken?

Most of us could even if we don’t feel like being useful. Most of the time, when we are broken, our spirit is broken and our emotions feel all mixed up during this broken time. God refers to us as vessels of His Spirit and vessels should be useful but if they are cracked they can’t hold much. The vessel will leak. 

Whenever God calls you and you feel broken would you answer His call? You are being called by God so the task can only be accomplished by you. If you are feeling like you can’t do it because something is missing in your life or in your walk with Him…God can fix that part and give you the ability to accomplish the task at hand. Your emotional baggage and your depression and brokenness should bring you closer to God.

All of us are broken in some way and it doesn’t take a genius to know this in our world today. With the pandemic and the wars and all of the other problems like inflation and high fuel prices, how could we NOT be broken in one way or another? So much uncertainty and anxiety about all kinds of problems that most of us can’t fix in our daily lives can cause even more of the same. It just keeps repeating.

Compounding the problems around us is the media’s ignoring signs that life is not getting better but more complicated. Then there is all of the social media drama that keeps cropping up about one thing or another that has no real meaning in the long run. Life at the point that we are living in right now has more than enough “drama” without the nit-picking stuff that shows up on Twitter or Facebook. 

There are days that I would like to go back to the days when we had AOL and email and that’s it! No cell phones, no Twitter, no Facebook, no TikTok. Granted, the generation that has grown up since 2007 could not handle being without a cell phone. But, we could truly do without most of the social media that it seems everyone obsesses over today. All of the angst that people have to handle from life itself is enough without adding to being socially acceptable and not hurting someone’s feelings.

Consider the day when the Trumpet sounds and the church is taken up to be with Him in Heaven…social media won’t matter at all on that day. There isn’t a single story or tweet or post of any kind that will be taken into Heaven and your status or how many “friends” you had on Facebook or Twitter won’t matter one bit.

The only friendship that will matter is the one that you have with Jesus. If you don’t know Him as your Savior and He doesn’t know you, then you won’t be taken up into the clouds. Knowing about Jesus will not save you. Being a member of a certain church won’t provide entry into Heaven. Only belief in Jesus as your Savior and a life that reflects a change in your heart will make a difference. So, if you don’t know Him yet I suggest you need to search Him out in the Bible, pray and ask Him to come into your heart and repent of your sinful life today! Not tomorrow or next week because none of us is guaranteed even to wake up in the morning. Make sure of your salvation before it is too late.

Prayer is effective


Put on the armor of God


Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Ephesians 6:10‭-‬12 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/eph.6.10-12.KJV

There are many times in a Christian’s life that we feel like we’re being targeted by Satan, at least I do. Sometimes he will target people who are not Christians too but the point is that without faith and prayer and our knowledge of God’s Word, we have no real weapons to fight him with. God gives us faith when we are convicted of our sins and turn to Jesus for our salvation. Sometimes we feel that it isn’t very much faith but even a little bit can go a long way if we use it without doubting that God can bring us through our problem whatever it may be.

Why is the church today so ineffective in reaching out to people? It is because the body of Christ, the church, isn’t using His Word effectively and defending itself from Satan’s attacks. God has given us a way to triumph in every situation that Satan can throw at us but until we use the spiritual weapons that we have access to we will fail every time. We are able to be victorious in the fight as long as we have faith in Him and use that faith to call on Him to fight for us. God doesn’t leave us defenseless against the enemy.

But, like any weapon, if we don’t use it correctly it doesn’t help us. A gun can’t kill people unless there is a person behind it aiming it and pulling the trigger. In the same way, the weapons that we can use against Satan are useless if we don’t know how to use them. An excuse for not knowing that we have them will not help us. Just as not having a life preserver won’t keep you from drowning if you don’t have it. We don’t have an excuse for not having faith if we are Christians. We have faith but we don’t know how to use it.

Learn from God’s Word about the weapons that you need before you need them because getting them after being attacked will not help you at all.

The Ten Commandments


Can you keep these completely? Have you considered that God wrote these on stone tablets and gave them to Moses? Have you ever considered that GOD is the Creator of EVERYTHING? That is the Person that you pray to and worship every Sunday morning! When we pray we are speaking to our Creator and most people just shrug their shoulders like it’s no big deal. Why?

Jesus came because He wants a relationship with you, me, and everyone who will give their hearts to Him. He knows when you will follow Him but why do so many of you wait? You don’t know if you are going to wake up in the morning! None of us knows how many days we may have left and it is only in this life that we can come to know Jesus as our Savior. Once you die, that’s it! You don’t get a second chance. 

Once, I was accused of trying to scare people into giving their hearts to Jesus and I’ll admit that I tried but only God can bring you to the point of knowing that you NEED Him. The Holy Spirit has to touch your heart and bring you to the knowledge of your sin and that without Jesus as your Savior you will go to hell. Some of my friends from years ago, when I was a firefighter, said they would have the fire put out by the time the rest of us got there. No, they won’t! There is no light in hell, only heat and an absence of God’s Spirit and presence. There is no way that there will be a party in hell the way many people used to say. There is no water in hell either!

Remember the parable that Jesus told about the rich man and Lazarus? The rich man asked Father Abraham to let Lazarus come and just dip his finger in some water and put one drop on his tongue to cool it in the heat. Hell was made for Satan and his demons because they wanted to rule in Heaven. It was not made for mankind but Satan likes to trick people into thinking that it doesn’t exist or that they have plenty of time to make peace with God. The only peace you can make with God is by accepting Jesus as your Savior!

Your life here is short compared to even one thousand years. Imagine living in your eternal body in hell. Your body can feel the heat and the separation from God and at that point, you know that you can’t get out of hell. The pain that you will feel will be from the separation from God but it will be from the heat of the lake of fire too because your body cannot die even though you will want the pain to stop. 

The only remedy that will keep you from going to hell is by giving your life and your heart to Jesus. There is no other path and no other remedy for your sins. Jesus paid the price to buy your soul with His blood and He paid for all of your sins with it as well. All you have to do is accept Him as your Savior and repent of your sins, then follow Him until He comes again. The period of grace for this world is drawing to an end and His coming could be at any time. Don’t wait until it is too late.

Have you encountered your Savior?


What kind of question is that? What do you mean?

I don’t mean have you heard about Him or even accepted Him as your Savior. I do mean, “Have you had an encounter with Him?”

We go through life every day passing by people on the road and on the sidewalk…but we don’t know them. We may never know who they are even if we pass them for many days or weeks or even years. But, what about Jesus? Do you just pass by Him in church? Hearing messages about Him but not really getting to know Him. You might ask me, “How am I supposed to get to know Him?”. By surrendering your heart to Him and reading the gospels about Him and what He did. That is the best way to get to know Him and actually have an encounter with Him.

Some of you might say, “I don’t need Him. Not right now, I’m too busy to worry about my salvation”. Do you truly believe that you have many more months or years ahead of you? Not one person on the Earth knows if they will wake up tomorrow morning…not even you or me. So, how can you just push Him or even the experience of Him away so easily?

We are living at the end of the church age. Jesus could come to take the church, those who have given their hearts to Him, at any time. He has loved all of humanity since the very beginning, although He has not loved their sinful ways. Can you say for certain that you will be a part of the church, the Bride of Christ when He comes to take her to His Father’s house? If you are not sure, then you need to make sure.

Jesus looked at those He ministered to with a love that we can’t understand because it didn’t require anything from those He was ministering to. He didn’t need money or jewels or a home. He already had access to all of that and more. God doesn’t require anything from us except our obedience and our devotion. No amount of work is needed for us to be saved from hell. Only our belief in Jesus and our repentance, turning away, from our sins. Why does an encounter with Him seem to frighten people away?

It could be that the price of following Him is too high. How could that be? He doesn’t require you to spend your entire savings to follow Him. All He asks for is your heart and your belief in Him to be His disciple. Then go and tell others what He has done for you. It’s not required but your testimony to others will show how much He has done for you and maybe they will want Him as their Savior as well. The blind men that He healed only asked for their sight back and He healed their blindness. He also gave them “spiritual eyes” to see Who He was and to know that they needed to follow Him and they did.

With everything that is happening in the world today, we need a Savior in more ways than we know. The Savior that can give you an eternal place in Heaven is Jesus Christ. Seek Him while there is time.

When will You show up?


We want to ask this especially when we are going through a tough time. The bills can’t be paid because the money isn’t there. You can’t buy groceries, again, because of no money. You get a diagnosis that frightens you and surprises you at the same time…so when will You show up in all of this, God?

The days that we are living in and through today bring questions like this to mind. We may not voice them aloud but they are there. There is something that we need to remember in all of this: God is always here with us. He knows when a sparrow falls, so don’t you think He knows when you are having trouble? Even if you haven’t given your life to Him yet, He still knows and He is never more than a prayer away.

God loves every one of us. He loves us even more than we think anyone could and He does. So, why do we feel alone and abandoned at times? Don’t blame it on Him because He hasn’t moved. Most of our loneliness comes when we either push Him away or we don’t invite Him into our problems. We think that He isn’t interested. Realize this: If God knows how many hairs are on your head, don’t you think He cares about every other part of your life? God knows you and me far better than we know ourselves.

Your life is precious to God and He wants to treat you as such but when most people don’t believe in Him as their Savior why should you receive any help from the God that you don’t believe in? Many of us have made “god” in our image and that is the god that we worship, even in church. He is not judgmental. He doesn’t require us to do anything for His Kingdom. We have created an idol with our idea of who god is and we have placed him in a box to be brought out when we want him and need him. That is not God the Creator and Father of Jesus.

We have to follow our Savior, Jesus, every day. Make sure you read the Bible so you will know exactly Who you are following and why. God loves you!