There isn’t much more to say about this subject that God’s Word doesn’t already say! Have a wonderful day!
Tag: Belief in Jesus
Can I know Jesus?
It seems that some people do wonder about this question. Is there a real honest answer? Yes, there is! You can know Jesus and have Him as your personal Savior. The first question is: Are you seeking Him today? If you are, then the rest is easy.
The sinner’s prayer goes like this: God, I know that you are real and that I have messed up in my life. I have heard that you can help me to be more like your Son, Jesus. I am sorry for the sinful life that I have lived, the things that I have said or done and I ask you for Your forgiveness. I open my heart to You and I want You to cleanse me and make me more like Jesus. I need Him to be my Savior, Lord. I thank you for your grace and mercy and for my new Life in Jesus. Amen.
Belief in Jesus and His saving grace that was finished on the cross is the first step, then a simple prayer like this one. It doesn’t have to be word for word like this. This prayer is just an example, and it doesn’t have to be this long either. Knowing Jesus is not hard to do, learning about Him is a daily walk with Him by reading the Bible and prayer. He loved each of us enough to come to Earth and live like us, but His nature was from God not from man so He lived a sinless life. We can’t live a sinless life, but by submitting our life and our heart to Him we can become more like Him.
Opinion, everybody has one
It has been said that the realists and moralists are on opposite sides of a fence. Are they really? Education in high school and college tells us that Darwinism and Creationism can’t exist together. Why not? Modernists demand freedom from a moral code for individuals but they turn around and demand a moral code for society at large.
You can’t have it both ways. Either you have moral codes for individuals based upon an actual moral code or you don’t. Taking morality out of education and then expecting the product of that education system to abide by a moral code in society is just dumb. Everyone will have their own idea of morality but mine won’t be like yours, neither will line up with the other because there is nothing to compare them to! We as a society seem to be against any type of moral code or moral truth, and yet we expect our children to know how to act in school and society. If they aren’t learning it at home and we can’t or won’t teach any type of morality to them in school, where will their morality come from?
Human beings in the past and in today’s world are not the moral giants that Darwinism wants us to believe. If a child is not brought up from an early age to know right from wrong and have something to turn to as a standard or an example of how to act and be in the world at large, how do you think they will know? They won’t. Their perception of behavior will be whether it is right for me, not if it is right as compared to…what?
The only standard that they will have will be what they have been taught from an early age. Whether that is “kill or be killed” or “do unto others and you would have them do unto you”, today it is dependent upon the parents to teach their children about morals and what is right or wrong. If they don’t or if they weren’t taught themselves, what standard do we need to look at then? Each of us can live our lives one way or another, even without the Word of God as a guide. This is true because many people in the world do just that.
So how can I or anyone else say that taking the Bible out of schools or taking prayer out was the wrong thing to do? Look at the statistics of the children and their performance after these events took place. Grades in school began to go down, teenage pregnancies began going up, problems in school and out began getting worse almost every year. When you don’t have a standard or an edge or a line to follow, how can you possibly keep a line straight? Whether you are drawing a line on paper or trying to point a person in the direction that they should be going, there needs to be a standard which doesn’t change.
God created us with a need to know Him and to know about Him, and when we can’t find Him to fill that need, then we search for something or someone who makes us feel like it is being filled. Whether it is drugs or alcohol or money or things…stuff like everyone else has, we will chase after it until we can fill that empty place or at least feel that it is full for a while. God loves you enough that His Son came down here, became a human being and died on a cross, shedding His blood so that ALL of our sins would be forgiven! We don’t have to do anything other than ask for His forgiveness and determine that we will follow Him daily in our lives from that point on. None of our works or our money will avail us any extra points, because to God without the love of Christ in our lives, they mean nothing!
We are blessed by God!
Do you know this?
“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19
“Worship the Lord your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you,…” Exodus 23:25
We have many promises in the Word of God, and yet many people seem to ignore them or reject them. The reason usually is that they don’t believe God’s Word or they don’t want to believe in Him period. We are blessed by God because He loves us and cares for us, if He did not our world would be much worse than it is today! Truly, our world is in bad shape as it is but if God had abandoned us entirely it would be in much worse shape spiritually and morally than it is now.
We are made in the image of God and we should act like it. I don’t mean to think of ourselves as gods, because we aren’t and we can’t be, but we should act like His children. Yes, many of us are rebellious children and have been since the beginning, but shouldn’t we try to come near to Him? To get to know Him as He knows us and loves us? God does meet our needs, not our wants, and He will heal us if it is in His will to do so. Why doesn’t He heal all diseases and hurts? He is God and He does what He wants for our good and His glory!
If healing a person will bring the entire family to a saving knowledge of Him, then He will do it. If changing a person’s life from one of following Islam to being a Christian will enable more to come to Him, He will do that too. Even if that person has never read the Bible or heard a sermon! God changed Saul from a Pharisee who was intent on wiping out these followers of the way into Paul the apostle who wrote most of the New Testament from his jail cell in Rome!
God can do anything that He wishes or is pleased to do with each of us, if we will let Him and then follow His leading. He will not drag you into a pulpit to preach, but He will give you the desire to be a teacher and a preacher. He asks us to follow Him but He doesn’t force us, because when you are forced to do something then your heart isn’t in it. That is what God wants…your heart, just as when you fell in love with your spouse. You couldn’t force someone to love you and God doesn’t do that because love can’t be forced!
We are also blessed by Him in our lives because we have His Word as a guide or even a moral compass. The Word of God is absolute Truth so therefore we should learn from it and use the wisdom contained in it to pattern our lives and our societies after. We look at Christian values and morals today as antiquated and out of date, but morality and character can only be learned from One that is absolutely true! God’s Word is that standard that we should be learning from and teaching to our children and grandchildren!
Looking at morality and truth as “quaint” and “old-fashioned” is just a nice way of saying that it is outdated and it isn’t. There are truths in the natural world which cannot be undone, such as the law of gravity. If you drop a glass it will fall and possibly break! If you drop a pen it will hit the ground just as well as the glass did. The laws of God need to be taught to our kids because our society today and for many years has been eroding, not because our education is lacking but because we don’t have a moral standard that is taught to our children.
American society and many of the other countries societies are unraveling at an alarming rate because of the lack of standards that people have to compare to. God’s standards haven’t changed, we have! We have walked away from Him and now it seems that we are running as fast as possible toward a culture that will be more like the days of Noah, and it may already be there!
Religion and the practice of it cannot save you from an eternity in hell. Christianity and living daily for Jesus, giving your heart and life to God as a daily, living sacrifice can do more for society and for you than anything that you can do with your own idea of morality or what is right for you. Because today, moral relativism is taught in colleges so that people are graduating with the idea that “what is right and true for me may not be right or true for you”. With those kind of ideas in their heads, how can any law that is on the books be followed?
Are you following the right one?
There are many ways in today’s world to find your way in the world, but are you on the right path? Are you follow
ing the right One? The world itself is split into many different camps. Some are following their own ways, some are following Christianity, some aren’t following any “religion” at all, some are following man-made religions. It seems that confusion should be the norm in the world and it is indeed happening in many places. Why? For thousands of years, mankind has followed his own path in regard to whether to worship a god or create their own. Some even chose to follow the one, true God.
So, what should we do today? The road is easy and wide when you are following a god created by man or even when you aren’t following anyone but your own ideas. That is the reason that many people follow that path, because it isn’t hard and you don’t really have to give up much to go on that pathway. Some people have told me that you are forbidden so much in following God and Jesus until they just decided not to follow anyone at all. That is not true at all.
It is true that many of the rules in the Old Testament do forbid many things regarding the enjoyment of life’s riches, but the new covenant that was brought about by Jesus doesn’t follow those old rules. It doesn’t do away with them, but your salvation is in Jesus and not in following rules that you can’t keep anyway! Those rules were put there to show the people that they needed a Savior and couldn’t be righteous by keeping rules because unless you are perfect in obedience you can’t do it! Jesus did it because He is the Son of God and did not have the nature of Adam to trip Him up.
We are saved by His grace that poured down from Heaven through the blood of Jesus to us and it paid the price for ALL of our sins! It is a free gift that we only have to accept through faith in Jesus. He did it all so that we could be His feet and hands to take the message, the gospel to the world until He comes again.
Those other gods and paths that some follow may be fun for a while, but where will you spend eternity? I know some of you don’t believe in it but what if I am right about it? You will stand in judgement by God after your last breath here. Are you perfect and sinless, holy in all of your ways?
Think about it now while there is time.
Be watching….
Be attentive and watching because you know not when the Master comes. (paraphrase of Matthew 24:32)
Many things are happening right now and we must not be deceived by those in power or those perceived to have power by others or the media. Keep your eyes on the sky and in the Word of God. Daniel 9 shows many things are coming which will show us the times that we are living in.
There are also many who don’t want to hear anything about religion in general regardless of the eternal effects that learning about Jesus will have on their life. Even if it is true that religion should stay out of the public arena, which I don’t agree with, God does have a hand in this world and on each of its citizens. Like it or not, you will appear before Him one day even if you don’t believe in Him! It seems that many people in the news are taking the view that if they don’t believe in God or the religion which shows them Who He is then He doesn’t exist! How ridiculous is that?
That is like someone saying that they don’t believe the sun is a star or that it won’t rise this morning, if God chose for us not to have the sun to rise today it wouldn’t but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Life is hard enough to get through without Jesus in your life, but it is so much better when He is because you can lean on Him when you need it the most. God does love each of us and whether you believe in Him or not doesn’t change that. Today, it seems that so many people are searching for something, Someone to believe in above themselves mainly because we can’t do or be the person that we need to be without something…Someone to help us! Some look for and chase after money or prestige or even drugs to be that “something” that helps them to get through the day and for some it may work for a while, but it isn’t permanent and it doesn’t fill that space that we all have.
Jesus came so that He could identify with us and our problems and fears and He came to be the One sacrifice which would take care of the debt that we owe because of our sins, no matter what they might be. We look at sins as small or large like lying to someone is usually considered small and killing a person is a pretty big one, God looks at sin as sin. So, we all need Him. Every church is full of hypocrites because, even if we are saved and practice our Christianity every day we are still sinners saved by His grace and mercy. If we weren’t convicted by the Spirit to change our lives in the first place then we may have gone down the aisle on our own because we felt emotional, not because we wanted or needed to get saved. If that is the case, then it may not be genuine but only God knows your heart and He is the one who will judge you when you stand before Him one day.
Life…again!
You know, there are many people in the world that think that we just cease to exist in any form after we die. Not true at all! God can’t lie and He speaks about life after you die. Jesus said that God is the God of the living, not the dead. Your life, your spirit keeps on living long after your death. Think about this, when Jesus was transfigured on the mount in front of His disciples, He met with Moses and Elijah and spoke with them! Both had been dead for hundreds of years and yet the disciples could recognize them! They were talking with Jesus!
God gives each of us a body, a soul and a spirit. The body dies at some point in our lives, but the spirit lives on and if you are a Christian so does your renewed soul! The essence of who you are lives on into eternity, especially if you are a Christian because you have Life everlasting through Jesus! If you are not a Christian…then your spirit goes to a place of torment for eternity. Your choices take you there, not God. God’s love is still shown toward you in that it is your decisions which have condemned you, not Him.
He loves the person, the spirit that is you regardless…but He doesn’t love or even like the sinful choices that we sometimes make. Which, if you die in your sinful condition having chosen NOT to give your heart to Jesus, then those sins actually convict you and send you to a place outside of God’s realm, into hell. It has many names right now. Outer darkness, Hades, hell, but the part that is most painful is the torment that you are in because of your choices!
We have been given and shown God’s grace by the life that we have here, the blessings that most of us enjoy and because we have been given the choice of following Jesus while we are here or we can choose not to follow Him and live life by our rules. Something that many don’t take into account is that you are responsible for what you have heard and learned while you are living. What does that mean? It means that if you went to church or Sunday school or Bible school growing up, from that point on you are responsible for all of the messages about salvation that you have heard. Even if you live to be 100 years old and you begin going to church when you are fifty, if you have never asked Jesus into your heart and life and you die at 100 then you will be sent into outer darkness away from God’s presence.
Sounds terrible doesn’t it? If you have spent fifty years being a faithful church attending “Christian” why would you be sent to hell? Because, you never gave your heart to Jesus. Going through the motions doesn’t mean anything. It is like going to work and sitting at your desk looking at Facebook all day, looking like you are doing something and then coming home. What did you accomplish? Nothing. You went through the motions of “working”, but you never accomplished anything unless you were confronted and forced to type up something. Jesus said “many will say to me ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we do great things in your name? And I will say, depart from me because I never knew you”.
Sad words to hear from the One Who could’ve saved you from the torment to come.
God’s viewpoint
The title sounds a bit grandiose doesn’t it? How could I possibly know anything about His viewpoint? Well, if you read the Bible which was inspired by His Holy Spirit you can find His viewpoint on many different subjects. Life, love, hate, anger, fear, jealousy, foolishness, adultery, the list could go on and on. He gives His view on these things in a format that is similar to an instruction manual. Some of the books rattle on about how the priests are supposed to carry out their work, but somebody had to tell them!
God views each of us as a child, His child. Those who are following Jesus are adopted into His family because they have washed their sins away by accepting the atonement and His grace. It is a gift which we can’t do anything to purchase or add to because we have nothing to purchase it with on our own! God gives it to us freely, all we have to do is realize that we are sinners and that it is His grace and the blood of Jesus which will save us from an eternity in hell.
Many people will think that, “God wouldn’t send you to hell for your mistakes if He loves you so much.” He doesn’t send you there, it is a consequence of your decision NOT to accept Jesus as your Savior which sends you there. It pains God to see us refuse a free gift which provides us with an eternal home that otherwise we couldn’t have. The love of God is deeper than we can imagine just as the hatred of Satan for us is far deeper than we could imagine.
God sees us when we make all of our decisions, good or bad, and He sees the results of them before we do. That is why we should always consult Him in all things, seeking His guidance and direction first before we make a mistake. If you could step outside of time and see all of the mistakes that you have made and where you could’ve made a difference in your life or someone else’s but didn’t, you would understand how God sees all of us. The difference between us being able to see those mistakes and God seeing them is that, if you are a Christian, He can work out your bad mistakes so that you will make a better choice the next time. Sometimes, He will take you down a path that will bring you to a better place or choice than you had hoped for.
Think about all of the lines and paths that God can see each of us walking, good or bad, and how He can guide you and me without being intrusive so that our decisions still turn out for our good and His glory! Read the Bible because it gives us wisdom to live by, advice in our time of need, and hope for a better tomorrow with Jesus as our Savior.
Some deny it, others await it….
Many in the so-called “liberal”media deny that Christians are right. I don’t mean that we are on the right or the left, but that we believe the Truth of God’s Word! Watching the news, seeing all of the prophecies coming true before our eyes, if you can’t see it then you need to get into God’s Word! Pray about what you are reading so that He will open your eyes spiritually and allow you to see what is there!
Why am I asking many of you who DON’T believe in Jesus or God to at least try praying for Him to show you the Truth in His Word? Because if you don’t find it out, if you won’t go to a church or read God’s Word, then when you stand before the One that you don’t believe in…uh-oh won’t cut it! Your life will be shown to you in vivid detail down to the words and thoughts that you had. The time for learning the Truth is now, not at the end of your life! Yes, you could be saved on your death-bed, but you may not get that chance.
Christians don’t say these things to scare you exactly, but what if you had a wreck on the way home from the bar or from a meeting. What if you had a heart attack on the way home or in your bed tonight and didn’t live long enough to ask Jesus into your heart and life? We are trying to get as many people to open their eyes to the reason that Jesus and the Bible are REAL! This is not a “fake religion” like so many of them are!
Being religious can get you a ticket straight to hell, being saved by Jesus will cover your sins and allow you to get into Heaven. If you are able to do some things for Christ while you are here, you may have some rewards in Heaven, but the reward that I am looking for is eternity with Him! God in the person on His Son came down and became as we are so that He could provide a way for us to be saved from an eternity away from Him! He planned this long before any of us were born, even before our world or the universe was made by Him!
God loves you! It doesn’t matter what you have done, when you did it or how, all He wants is a repentant heart and your realization that you have sinned and you want Him to come in and fix the broken pieces and make you whole in Christ! Believe me, since He made the universe and mankind in six days, I think He can handle anything that you ask Him for, don’t you?
Love others as He loved us
The video above was shared with me on Facebook. It is sobering and it steps on “church people’s” toes and it should! Because if we can’t show Jesus to someone else, then how do we know if we actually have Him in our hearts? How can we be sure if we are true to our calling and our Savior if we can’t at least be like Him? He didn’t pre-judge people. He had dinner with those who were considered sinners, prostitutes and tax-collectors. He LOVED them! This is what we are supposed to do, as Christians, we are supposed to reflect Him to others and be as much like Him as we can in our lives, not just at church! He loved us while we were yet sinners, before all of us were born and yet He loved us anyway.
We have to be more like Him every day because if we aren’t then we may not have Him in our spirit, our spiritual heart, to begin with! Consider this, think about it, read your Bible, see what and who Jesus really preached and taught every day. It wasn’t just His disciples, it was everyday people…sinners just like you and me. The only difference between them and Jesus was that He was perfect and holy, we are not but we are still supposed to reflect Him to the world. If we can’t do that every day then are you a Christian? Really?
The Living Message of Christ 