Tag: Belief in Jesus

God Loves You!


Is it that hard to understand that He would do such a thing? He created the universe, including this little ball of dust that we live on. I know, it is only that small when you compare it to the size of the REST of the universe, but stick with me on this. God made all of this so that you can see how great He is and how much He really loves you and me and everyone else on this planet! Now, many of you might say that God is just showing off, that is what humans would do in His place. He ain’t human!

But, He is God! He can do whatever He wishes to do in your life and mine. It doesn’t matter how bad it looks to you or even how bad it feels, let Him know in prayer. He already knows, but He wants to hear from you! He is like a parent that knows there is a problem but until the child comes to them with it they are not going to interfere. We don’t go around fixing things in our own children’s lives when we see something happening that we know isn’t going to end well. They would never learn anything like that, so why do we expect God to swoop in here and fix every problem that we have?

I’ll admit, it would be nice but we would be a world full of lazy people if He fixed every problem that we had the second that it showed up! Nobody would do anything, we would just wait for God to fix it. But, what if He stopped fixing it one day, then what would we do? We wouldn’t know how to do anything because we had always depended on Him for everything. Depending on God is good, don’t get me wrong, but if He fixed all of our problems we wouldn’t know anything at all. There wouldn’t be cars or planes or cell phones or electricity or any of the thousands of things that we use all of the time because He had been fixing for us all of the moments that we went WAHH!!

God does love us but He allows us to go through life learning about life instead of doing it for us, healing our hurts and aches. We wouldn’t even have aspirin if He fixed everything!

Even in eternity, we aren’t go to have everything our way, we are going to be working with and for Him, not sitting around looking at stuff! God cares for us and wants to spend time with us, but sitting around in Heaven looking at each other will last about ten minutes! Get up and get going! Do something for God, ask Him what you can do and let Him show you and don’t be afraid of it

Pray, America, Pray!


Our country needs REVIVAL to break out and break down the walls of hate and bitterness in our nation! We can’t wait for Washington, DC. to fix this, because they don’t know how! God does!!

Life is hard enough without having to worry about being shot going to get gas in your car, or being carjacked at the grocery store, our nation needs God back in people’s minds and hearts! Like it was the first few days after Katrina and 9/11! People turned to the One Who could help and did help. Sometimes His help came a little slow, but it came. God doesn’t give up on us until we give up on Him!!!!

Movies can inspire us, heroes inspire us, sometimes even politicians inspire us, but God is the One with the REAL answers! Inspiration lasts only for a little while, on your knees prayer to the Creator and Finisher of your faith is what gets the job done, no matter what that job is! Whether it is fixing your marriage or your finances or a child with a deadly injury or disease, God is bigger than all of them and He can FIX them all, when we come to Him with our problems and leave them in His hands and get out of His way so that He can work!

Don’t try to do His job for Him after you have prayed to Him! If you couldn’t fix it before the prayer, what makes you think you can after you have prayed? Let Him do His work on whatever the problem is, keep praying and believing that He will and He will! Too often we are the ones that short-circuit our prayers, because we pray and hand it over to God and then tomorrow morning we take it back and try to fix it ourselves. How could your car get fixed like that? It wouldn’t.

Pray and keep praying and leave the problem in His hands, then pray some more! Remember this acronym: Pray Until Something Happens (PUSH)!

Life, as it could be….


You have heard of life, the one you and I are living here on Earth. It is nasty sometimes, its dangerous sometimes, it’s just hard to deal with most of the time, and then some days, it turns out pretty good. Those days are few but that is what makes them special! If you had a great day, every day, life would be boring, fun but boring. How has life been treating you recently? It depends on your location and your circumstances mostly. If you work for Google, you have a hectic day but you get paid well for it so it’s not so bad from what I have read. If you work for the government…I am sorry. Yes, there are many different jobs and salaries which go from one extreme to the other, some jobs are hourly which is the pits mostly. Some are pretty decent in their pay and benefits, but those are few and depend on education and experience and location, location, location.

Life…is not really fair for most of us. If there were some way that I could help in this matter, I would. I am not kidding, but right at this time I am not in a position to help many more than my immediate family. People ask, “Where is God in all of this?”, He is here with us and with you, like it or not. Why doesn’t He do something to help us? He does, every day! You got up this morning, like I did. You had something for food and drink, maybe went to a job, come home to have something else to eat and then get ready for another day of the same thing tomorrow, all because God chose not to “punch your card” so to speak.

Much of what we call life, good or bad, is a gift from God and we should accept it as such. If it involves a degenerative disease like arthritis, like I have, then just enjoy the days when it doesn’t hurt really bad. If you have other problems which are chronic or severe, then God is still there with you giving you strength and the ability to get through it. Why am I so upbeat on life right now? Because today has been a decent day. I pray that I have more of these and maybe you will too. There is no reason for looking for a dark cloud coming tomorrow because it isn’t here yet!

God can clear it up before it does get here and that is the important part, give tomorrow to Him. Then do it again tomorrow, and the next day. Let Him take care of the stuff that is coming and you enjoy what He lets you have! Keep your eyes on Him for the rest of the day, and He will take care of your tomorrows, Okay?

What do you depend on?


We all have different ways of making it through our days. Some of us start off the morning with a cup of tea or coffee and the paper. Some people get online with a cup of coffee and try to catch up with what is happening. But, who do you go to and depend upon when things go terribly wrong? I don’t mean when you spill the milk or break a nail, I mean when you get a diagnosis which makes you sit down. When someone in your family comes home with a letter that says you are being sued for something, or maybe they are the one that gets the diagnosis which is like a hammer to your head and your heart, what do you do then?

Many people turn to their best friends or even to their church, if they go to one. So, what or Who do you depend on for assurance or hope or healing? Many people look to their doctor if they get one of those diagnoses, some look to him as well if there is a wreck or accident. The Person that you and I and everyone else should be looking to and praying to FIRST, before going to the doctor or anyone else is God! He is bigger and able to handle all of your problems, to give you strength to get through them all and if it is His will to do so, He will heal you of whatever the diagnosis may be. He may do it through the doctor’s skills or it may happen by His power and your faith before your next doctor visit.

Bad days are going to happen. Accidents and diseases are going to crop up in your life and mine, we are human and that is just the way our fallen world is. Good people and bad get these circumstances added to their lives all the time, it doesn’t matter how good you are or how bad you may be. The reality you have to remember is that God loves you and will not forsake you in any of your problems, you must have faith in him and ask Him for wisdom.

You don’t have to accept a “bad day”, God can make a day which seems bad turn into a good day. Love, especially between two people as husband and wife, can make a shack into a home. Expressing your love for your children is something that many people seem to have forgotten how to do these days. Wake up people, they need to know that they are loved by you just as much as you need to know that God loves you!

If you truly want a successful life and a happy home, even if it is in a two room shack with cracks wide enough to throw a cat through, love works much better to bring this about than alcohol or drugs or anger! Where love is anger cannot stay, when you truly love your children and your wife there is no fire too hot that could keep you from rescuing them! God is the answer that everyone is looking for, they just don’t know it yet. Many people say that they can worship God in a fishing boat or a deer stand just as well as they can in church. NO YOU CANNOT! You are looking for a trophy bass or antlers that will strain the wall to hold them up, you don’t go out there thinking of worshiping God!

I used to think that too and I would pray and talk to God while I was out there. That’s probably why I don’t have any trophies on my walls. I would thank Him for His beautiful creation and the sunrise that many don’t get to see. I would praise Him for the beautiful birds and the chipmunks as they scurry around trying to find all the acorns they have hidden for the winter. Yes, praising God and thanking Him for these things is good, but worshiping Him with other believers is more gratifying and humbling than any deer or turkey. Yes, they are God’s creation and He takes care of them just as He does each one of us, but they don’t worship Him. Their instinct tells them that He will feed them so they don’t know Him like we can.

Your Spirit is lifted up and refreshed every time you hear God’s Word preached. Your soul shouts for joy and it is heard in Heaven especially when you find that the diagnosis that you thought you had is just some cells that are causing trouble and making you feel bad. Satan and his followers know how to make you feel this way and will convince you that you are going to die. They can make it so convincing that you will die, if you allow them to take it that far.

We have power through Jesus’ name to renounce the feelings of deathly diagnoses, and depression that makes you want to crawl under a rock, but it does you and me no good at all if we don’t claim the Word of God and tell Satan to back off because I am a child of God! God’s Word and the promises in it are more powerful than any drug or any situation that you have or that you will ever encounter. Don’t forsake the Word or prayer and call on His name because He can heal you of all the afflictions that Satan has placed on you and in your life.

Technology and Christianity


Some people say that the two of those don’t go together, but I believe that they are wrong. We are supposed to use any technology at our disposal to get God’s Truth out to those who are in need of hearing it. Some churches use too much technology in my opinion, but if it gets the younger generation to hear the Word of God and to learn about Jesus in a manner that honors and gives the Glory to Him then I am all for it. Many people today aren’t really sure of what they believe or even if they believe in anything at all. Some just claim that they don’t believe in any “higher power”, which is fine for them. We do live in America and are free to say or believe whatever we choose to, and today it doesn’t matter who it offends, especially Christians. Nobody offends Muslims because it is a religion of peace, meaning they will hack you to pieces if you do offend their religion or their Prophet.

It seems that everyone loves to offend Christians, although I don’t understand why? But, that is a discussion for another day. Technology is being used and can be used by anyone to promote anything today and it is used that way. Technology is not a bad thing, just as money isn’t a bad thing, but it is a bad thing when you allow the “thing” to take a place in your life or your heart that it has no business in, that is where the trouble starts. From that point, it only gets worse as time goes along.

Most people don’t think of things as being idols, but we do it all of the time. You see it at football games and basketball games, actually you see wherever ANY sport is played or watched in person or on TV. I have heard this and you have too, “People will get excited and scream until they have no voice at all when their team is playing, whether they are winning or losing, but when they get to church on Sunday if they come at all you barely know that they are there.”; I know I put quotes around it but I don’t remember who said it, I have heard it in many churches during a season of one kind or another, hunting and fishing included.

We don’t get excited about our Creator or our Savior, but I suppose its because we don’t see Him behind the scenes taking care of someone with cancer or helping a relative handle the stress of losing their spouse of sixty years. We don’t see the strength that the Lord gives to children battling cancer in the hospitals, yet many of those kids see Jesus and His angels at work around them because He allows it to give them hope. God’s technology is far above ours and it is at work all the time, we just can’t see it. But, that doesn’t mean that He isn’t there. We just don’t have the spiritual eyes to see Him. If He allowed you to see all of the angels that protect you every day, it really would give you stronger faith and hope as well. Just as Gehazi was so frightened with the army surrounding them until the Lord let him see that the number of angels that were camped around them far outnumbered the army in the camp.

Technology and Christianity go together very well, as long as we remember Who is really in control!

Birthdays and time


I know that many of you have noticed that the more birthdays you have “celebrated”, the less time it seems to take between them. Even my son, who turns sixteen today, has noticed it and he doesn’t have that many under his belt so to speak. Your perception of time changes when you get older. Days and weeks seem to run together, then the months and years, until pretty soon you are wondering “What happened?” It is true that time goes much slower for those who are incarcerated or who are in living conditions that are far from ideal, but in truth time moves at the same pace that it always has it is our perception of it that has changed.

Life is filled with experiences which cause us to take note of them and make our days either go by quickly or pass by more slowly. If you happen to have a fast paced job, then the day goes by so fast until you have to bring home work to get it finished before you go back, then again if you work at a store where people come in spurts, the days drags by between the customers. Then there is the waiting for the return of Jesus. We know that He is coming back because of the statement made by the angel, “He will return in like manner”, when He was taken up to be at the right hand of God. It has been nearly two millennia since that day. Many people say that He isn’t coming back, some think that it will be hundreds of years in the future if at all, some think that it could be tomorrow or today.

We don’t know and the Bible doesn’t tell us. Jesus gave us some signs to watch for and most of them are happening every day around us, particularly in the Middle East. He also said for us to keep watching and don’t lose faith in Him and in the words spoken in God’s Word. He will return and if you notice the prophecies that have been fulfilled, it very likely will happen in our lifetime. When it will happen, nobody knows for sure. I have noticed that some are saying that it will happen when the last lunar eclipse happens at the end of September, I don’t believe that but anything and anytime is possible.

God knows when our days are coming to an end and He knows, for each of us, how many days we actually have from the day we are born. Thankfully we don’t have access to that information or many people would have bucket lists and the world would be even crazier than it is already! Time is something which we all count during each day that we live. We count it by the minute and the seconds and the days and weeks. The most amazing thing is that we won’t have to count any of it after we arrive in eternity, because time for each of us will cease to exist if you are blessed with the love and the atonement granted by Jesus in your life.

Eternity will be very different if you have not accepted Jesus as your Savior. Time will be miserable and pain-filled and never-ending. I know the argument that “My God wouldn’t allow that to happen!”. God didn’t sentence you to hell, you did. Each one of us has had a chance to accept Jesus as Lord, yet if you don’t by the end of your life it is YOU who has condemned yourself to an eternity without God in hell! We have all seen the handiwork of God in nature and in our bodies, we have heard a sermon or a prayer about God and His grace which is given freely to us even when we don’t deserve it. Even the American Indians prayed to the Great Spirit that they believed created everything and they were right, they just called Him by a different name. That doesn’t mean that Allah or Buddha or any of the “man-made” religions are right because their gods were created by their minds or were just men and nothing more.

God is real and He is in control of time and the number of birthdays that each of us has. Seek Him out in your life while you can, give your heart to Him and ask Him to come into your life and give you the strength to work for Him during the time you have left. Even if it is only a few days or weeks, your example during this time can have a great impact on someone you love or even someone you don’t know.

Is Jesus’ message relevant today?


If you aren’t sure if that is a valid question then you probably don’t think so. In my viewpoint and many other Christians who are trying to follow His commandment to take the gospel to the whole world…Yes! His message is very relevant to our world today because it is needed by those who have lost hope or their will to go on. His message is relevant to all who are looking for something to fill that void in their lives. Jesus came and died for all of us, believers and non-believers!

I know that many of you don’t believe that this message is for you, but it is. Particularly now. Why do I say this? Because, regardless of  the way the media treats all of the things which are happening in the world today, we are on the edge of the times spoken of in the book of Revelation. True, the one called the Anti-Christ has not appeared..yet, but the other rumblings of pestilence, wars, persecution of Christians, are all happening now.

So, why do I look at this as a warning to everyone in the world? Because that is what it is…a warning! Turn to Jesus before the end of the age comes! I am not trying to be one of the nuts that you see with the signs that have been around for decades saying that “the end is near”, but in truth it actually is! Whether you believe me or the Bible or not, it is near. Much nearer than it has been in the past.

Jesus came into the world to save those who would answer the call to be saved. If you will seek Him and believe in His sacrifice and His message, you will be saved. Regardless of the sins you have committed in the past, with true repentance and a faithful heart to turn to Jesus…you will be saved!

Is there more to the message? Of course! We should strive to be more like Jesus every day! Like straining to get to the end of a race and cross the finish line, our goal is to be as much like Jesus as we can so that others can see Jesus through us and our words! We are not perfect and won’t be until we have our glorified body in Heaven, but working toward that goal daily makes us less of our sinful self and more like Him every day!

Salvation in Jesus is preferable to being in sin and yet many people reject it. To me that is like someone walking up to you and asking if you would like to have a briefcase full of money and then you just walk away from it because you don’t want to take that which is freely given. I know, the money is something that you can feel and touch so most people wouldn’t turn it down, but consider this: eternity is worth far more than one million dollars! It is worth more even than one hundred billion dollars or one trillion because none of that can be compared to eternity! We can’t comprehend one million years and that is just a drop compared to eternity.

Where do we go from here?


In the past few years there have been many books and movies about life after death and where we go afterward. It is a touchy subject because some people think that we don’t go anywhere and some think that we do and sometimes it can cause a heated exchange online and in person. Do you ever wonder about this? I used to but since becoming a Christian, I don’t worry about it any more but I do think about what the rest of the world may be looking forward to. Are you looking forward to eternity or do you even think there is an eternity waiting for you?

Some people even think that they will be having a party in hell with Satan, but according to God’s Word there will be no party. In fact, Satan HATES you and me! Specifically because we are made in the image of God but also because God placed us above him and above angels. We will judge angels one day, if we have accepted Jesus as our Savior and believe in our hearts that He died for us and our sins! Satan is not a god, although he wanted to be above God. He is not omnipotent nor omniscient, but he was a powerful angel at one time and he continues to use the power that he was created with.

Where do we go in our beliefs from where we are? Many claim not to have a religious belief in any being, whether God or Satan, supreme being of any kind. Why? If there is one which some people claim to believe in and follow then there must be the other. Evil and hatred can’t exist without love, they are two sides of an eternal coin, just as light and dark or heat and cold.

God loves us, all of us and has since the beginning of Creation. Satan has been in opposition to God and His plans, whatever they were, ever since the rebellion which got him thrown out of Heaven. Satan is opposing God right now through wars, murders, diseases, and all sorts of acts which mankind is inflicting upon each other through his influence over them. He targets those of us who are serving God by tempting us and causing problems in our lives, some of which God allows to test us and our faith to make us stronger. I know that and am comfortable with it because God will see me through it all.

What about your future? Your eternal future? Not just tomorrow or next month, but after your life on Earth is finished, have you even considered it? If you haven’t, you should because it is by God’s grace that we have our being, our lives, even our next breath. If you were to stand in front of God before the dawn tomorrow, would you be able to give Him an answer to “What did you do with my Son?” Could you truthfully say that you accepted Him as your Savior? Would your Christianity hold up in a court of law today? Is there enough evidence in your life to prove to a judge on Earth that you are a Christian? Because, if there isn’t enough evidence beyond “he was a good man or a good father”, then how will God receive you?

It is something that all of us need to examine in our lives because eternity is a very LONG time and you enter it as soon as you draw your last breath in this life. Whether that is today or ten years from now or even fifty years from now, your eternity will begin that quick. Make sure that you know and are at peace with your choice because you will be stuck with that choice, and it will be because of your choice not because God sent you there.

What do you want someone to remember?


It is an easy question and it is a hard one to answer. So, what do you want someone to remember about you or about something that you did?

Many people today seem to want to be as anonymous as possible so that nobody remembers them or what they have done. Then, of course, there are some who truly want people to know who they are and what they have done in their lives. Then…there are the rest of us. Those who want to be remembered for their life or maybe something that they said or did during their life. Hopefully, you will have met them during a good time in their life, when things are going really well and their lives are just clicking along like they should.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t have days or weeks like this. At least, not enough for someone to notice and they usually don’t until your life changes and something happens to you or someone in your family. Even then many people today don’t really care for their fellow-man, woman or children. We have become so de-sensitized to violence and accustomed to the distance between us, whether it is a few feet or miles, until we text and tweet to each other even in the same household or at the table.

Is that what you want people to remember about you? That you always had your head buried in the screen of your phone and you rarely looked up to notice life around you? I have seen many people in videos doing exactly that on streets and in the city but it also seems to happen in family gatherings and at church. Being distracted to the point of not seeing or hearing what is going on around you is dangerous. Not only to you but for your future as well.

What will people remember about me? Not much, I’m afraid. Growing up I was angry most of the time and a loner because of my parent’s divorce, but that was over forty years ago and I am over it now. My parents are dead and the memories that I have are just the good ones now. Today is the only time that we have that is available to us, so we should make it a good one. Tell those that you love how you feel and make sure they know it. Help someone if you are able to, get involved in a volunteer effort for someone.

Your life here will be remembered for only a little while by those who don’t know you well. Sometimes, even then you won’t be remembered for long unless you did something that got people to notice. In our society today you get noticed by the bad things that you do, but people rarely see or hear about the good that gets done behind the scenes.

God loves you and He wants the best for you. You may not get the best in this life, but if you follow Him and do the best that you can at being a follower of Jesus then your reward will be far above anything you could have here! Confess your sin to Jesus and ask Him to come into your life and cleanse you of the mess that you made. Ask Him to guide you into a new life that will be worthy of His Love so that you can reflect Him into other people’s lives so they will want to know Him.

Here is the basis for a sinner to receive Jesus into their heart:

Romans 10:9-10: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

Simply it could be summed up in a prayer like this:

Dear Lord, I have been messed up in my life. Please forgive me and help me to bring You and your story to others. Come into my heart, Lord, and make me a student and a teacher for your Kingdom. Thank you for your sacrifice for me and my sins. Amen.

Think about it.

What are you waiting for?


Many people seem to want to wait until their last breath to make a decision about their eternity. Some, even at this point, don’t believe in eternity or God yet when they are faced with an incurable disease or a child that is sick they begin to pray. For what, mercy? To whom? If you don’t believe that He exists why should He answer your prayers? God really does love each of us more than we can imagine, and thankfully He doesn’t react the way we would if we were ignored or shoved away like our country and almost every person living here is doing today! If He was as cold and cruel as some think that He is, this world would’ve been remade thousands of times since the time of Noah! But, He made a promise then and in the other prophetic books of His Word He says that the world will be tested by fire the next time. Many people have speculated that He means a nuclear war, but God doesn’t need nuclear weapons to destroy with fire. He could cause a comet of a size that would cause a fire storm to ravage the planet to hit in a desert area or in a rain forest. He could cause ALL of the volcanoes in the world to erupt at once, even the ancient ones like the one in Yellowstone which would take out most of the United States.

It is true that, if you truly believe that He doesn’t exist, scientists would say all of this was happening due to “global warming/cooling” depending upon which direction you want to go. Consider, just for once, that God is the Creator and that He does exist. Also consider that with Him being the Creator that nothing is outside of His power to create since He created all of the known universe. Our planet is a very insignificant speck of dirt in comparison, BUT He decided to make us special. He created man in His image, regardless of color of skin or hair or ethnic origin. Then, after Satan corrupted our ancestors to go against God’s commands, we were influenced by him to worship things, both animal and inanimate as well as the sun and the moon and the stars. Mankind did all of this by Satan’s influence on our minds, because of our fallen nature we came under his influence to such a point that God regretted making man at all. If God didn’t exist and doesn’t care about us or this world, why would He care what we do here or how we behave? If Satan exists then God exists because Satan was known as Lucifer the Covering Cherub, one of the most powerful angels in Heaven and God created him that way.

But, Satan became proud of his strength and of the power that God had given him and he coveted the place of God. He wanted to be God, and he got one-third of the angels in Heaven to follow him in a rebellion to usurp the throne of God. He should’ve known that his rebellion wouldn’t work, but he was blinded by pride and his own ego, thinking himself above the Creator that created him. At times we think this way too, but we can learn from our mistakes if we will listen to our hearts and to the Spirit of God within us.

We are loved by God because of His image in us but also because He took special care to create us the way we are, not to be servants or slaves but to be His children. Any parent can understand the closeness and the feelings that their relationship with their child gives them, how much more would God feel for those living here? That is why bad things happen to people today….Satan hates us because of who we are in God’s plan and what we represent…a relationship that he could never have with the Creator, even if he had not rebelled!

It is for this reason that the world suffers so much. It isn’t because God can’t control Satan, He doesn’t allow him to have completely free reign of his anger and hatred or we wouldn’t exist! God holds him in check enough that there will be more people who will turn to God for His help and for salvation. Just as God used other nations to judge Israel in times past, He is doing that today not only with Israel but with the world at large. He is trying to bring as many people into the Kingdom as He knows who will respond to Him.