Tag: Bible

It’s your decision, so make it a good one


This question or rather this statement was made by Jesus two thousand years ago, He said: “What will it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet lose his soul.” Our world is on the verge of doing just that, losing our collective souls because of our tendency to reject the Truth. Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to be forgiven of your sins and to gain access to Heaven itself!

Just as in John 3:16-17 it states: 16“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17“For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him

Yet, many people today reject this teaching, this prophecy, and some even reject the entirety of the Bible itself. That is, of course, your choice even if it is a bad choice. We are allowed to choose our own way and our own destiny, but what good will it do you if you come to the end of your life and find that God does exist and you didn’t believe in Him?

It may not seem to be important now, while you still live, but just a few seconds after your death it really won’t matter. This life is the only chance that you get to make that decision and once it is done, you will face your judgment by God. That is how it is told all through the Bible, when a man dies he faces the judgment of God. What you did throughout your life, good or bad, is taken as evidence and shown to you. It is your decision about Jesus and His atonement for your sins that will cast you into hell or not.

If you have accepted Him as your Savior, then your sins are covered and you are assured of eternity in Heaven. If you rejected Him as your Savior, then your soul will live on into eternity but it will be in hell, separated from God, forever. There is no gray area, no waiting for someone to pray you out of. The Bible is clear on this, and there are only two sides just as with a coin, heads or tails, right or left, black or white.

God loves all of us, no matter what color you are or where you are from, but the choice that we make about Jesus Christ will determine the direction of your life for eternity, Heaven or hell. Many people say that “My God would not send anyone to hell”, God doesn’t but He won’t force you to choose one way over the other. So, it is your choice which condemns you to an eternity in hell, not God. It is your decision only and you have your entire life to make up your mind about it.

But, when your life is over then your choice for going to Heaven or hell and your ability to choose which direction you will go is over. There was an old commercial that said something like this: You only go around once in life, so grab all the gusto you can! This was a commercial about a beer that you should buy, but the message is true. You only have one life in this body, when you die your soul and your spiritual body will stand in front of God to be judged for your life and what you did with it. Did you grab all of the gusto or were you scared? By gusto, I am speaking of Jesus because if you took hold of Him in this life, eternity is assured for you in Heaven! If you were scared of asking Him into your life or you just didn’t want to accept Him, that is okay but your eternity will be much different. Satan’s lies that many people believe say that God wouldn’t send you to hell for not accepting His Son. Maybe you’ve also heard this one: You will have plenty of time, don’t worry about that until you get old.

What about the drive home today? What if you don’t make it home? Your time may be up this afternoon and when you stand to be judged all that you can say is “I thought I had more time”. You will be welcomed into hell but it won’t be a loving welcome.

Seek Jesus in His Word, the Bible and pray that you can come to know Him before you life here is over. God loves you and wants to bring you to Himself, but if you keep pushing Him away then one day He will give you over to your life the way you want it to be and He won’t bother you anymore.

Think about it.

Is your life cracked or broken?


 

(This post is my 500th post on this blog! I would’ve never thought that it would grow this big, but God is good and has allowed me to do this. I pray that you are all finding some bit of wisdom and knowledge that He has given me while I have been writing here. This knowledge comes from the Bible and from the wisdom that God has given me. I never would nor could I come up with these ideas or writings without His influence. Thank you for being here with me.)

I know, I have asked this before but it seems that our world and the people in it are more like this than they are whole and happy. We have more shootings and killings over nothing these days than we have ever had in the past fifty years. I know, there were many senseless killings during the time when our country was still divided by race relations but isn’t that what we are seeing today? It seems that there is so many problems with race relations, particularly in the past ten years or so. I thought that we were past this! What happened to the so-called “age of Aquarius” that was supposed to take over when the new millennium began? What became of the racial equality and tolerance that was supposed to be part of our culture when we elected an African-American President?

Our country and the culture that we once enjoyed has become cracked and broken, but there seems to be nobody who has a clue how to fix this mess! Any ideas?

My only idea is that we need to bring God and the Bible back into our cultural world. In the schools, in businesses, in society and especially in our homes! If we don’t repent of our ways, and turn back to God and ask for His forgiveness for all of the atrocities that we have allowed to happen in the past fifty years, then this country and the world itself is headed for a big wake up one day.

I am not going to try to bring this post up to a sermon level, but I do want anyone who reads this to think about what you can do to make this happen. In your church or community or your state even. If we don’t get started, and we should have done this many years ago, then we have gone too far to be able to turn back. Mostly what we can do is to seek God out in His Word and in prayer. We can also try to get others involved in putting the Bible and prayer back into our schools.

Individually, we can pray and seek Him out in the Bible and at church or in home Bible study. God wants to have a relationship with you and me, but He will not force this relationship on us.We have to initiate the contact by seeking Him out and learning more about Him. Occasionally, you will feel a prompting from Him or rather the Holy Spirit and that is Him calling to you. If you have felt it, but have ignored it please seek Him out! He will keep the contact and the prompting going for a while, but at some point He will let you go your own way. Don’t wait until that point. If you can feel even the smallest voice or nudge to come to know Him please do so!

 

We are only human


In today’s society, it seems that when you are a pastor of a church you are held to an almost god-like standard. One which penalizes you and calls for your resignation when you fail or when you fall like everyone else does. It’s like walking a tightrope, one misstep and you will fall to your death unless there is a forgiving net to catch you. I have felt the stares of people, watching me because they know that I pastor a church. It doesn’t matter if it is a small church or a huge church, the standard is the same. Just because we are preachers, proclaiming the gospel of Christ and His forgiveness, we are not perfect! Our sins are covered by the blood of Jesus, so God has forgiven us, but when you see us sin and fall from that pedestal the forgiveness doesn’t seem to follow.

People, humanity has a very long memory when it comes to its teachers and preachers. Nobody is forgiven it seems, when the sin is made public. It is more akin to being tarred and feathered in the public square and then having that picture put up on Facebook or Instagram where it will never go away. On the other hand, if you are a politician or a lawyer or maybe a football star your sins will be overlooked and forgotten in a few hours or days.

Why are we held to such a high standard? Because we are telling you about the love and the forgiveness found in Jesus Christ and that you can have it for the asking. It isn’t a magic formula or a potion that you have to buy, it has been paid for through the blood of Jesus. All that you have to do is believe in Jesus’ sacrifice for your sins, just like the thief on the cross. He couldn’t get baptised and there was no way that he could tell others about Jesus, but he could believe and he did! Jesus told him that “today, you will be with me in Paradise”, if that isn’t an affirmation of being saved I don’t know of one!

The apostles and all believers were given a command to go and tell the world about the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. Telling is what preachers do and it is up to you whether you believe the good news and ask Jesus into your heart or not. Do we fall sometimes? Of course. Do we say things that we shouldn’t? Yes, we are human. The difference is…we are forgiven. All that we have to do is to repent and ask forgiveness for the slip or the fall that we got into. You can too! Grace, love, hope, peace and forgiveness are all offered to you from God through Jesus. It is your responsibility to ask for forgiveness and repent of your sins, not just lip service but real honest repentance!

Why do I say it that way? Because, that is what I did for many years. I would go down and feel sorry for my sins and pray and even get baptised. Then, I would attempt to read and understand the Bible for a while, but I would eventually follow a friend to a bar and get drunk, or take a girl home for a night and I would be back in my same rut again. Some call it back-sliding, but I don’t think I was true to the repentance that I professed so it wasn’t real. I was just going through the motions, doing all of the things to “look good” when I was still just as lost as I was before.

Think about it and seek God in His Word, then pray and ask Him to show you what you need to do to truly become a child of God and a Christian.

Acceptance or Rejection


Which would you choose? In life, we would rather be accepted as friends or classmates. Rejection is something that most of us try really hard to avoid if possible. So, how do you feel about an offer of eternal life? We all get this one you know, it just depends on your acceptance or rejection criteria regarding where you spend eternity!

Humanity was created with an eternal soul, so it doesn’t matter how good or bad or indifferent you may be, we all have eternity stretching out in front of us. We don’t go into an abyss and we don’t just go “poof” after death, like a bowl of bad chili.

Yes, there is a heaven and a hell and whether you believe in one or the other doesn’t matter, they are both real. God doesn’t send you to one destination or the other based upon His whims either. It is your decisions in this life which determine your destination in the next one. Actually, it is just one decision in this life and that is whether you will accept Jesus as your Savior and live your life following Him or if you will reject Him.

That’s it!

Your eternal life and the destination in which you live it, depends upon that ONE decision, before you die. After you are dead, you can’t change your mind. Eternity starts when you breathe your last breath in this life. So, the question is when are you going to die? You don’t know for sure do you?

That is so true. None of us knows our expiration date, if you wish to call it that, so you are gambling with a future that you really can’t pin down with any certainty aren’t you? This is your decision and yours alone, no one can make it for you. My messages are just here for information, whether you follow any of these suggestions about salvation or not is your decision, nobody can make it for you.

Acceptance of the gift of salvation is an individual decision, just as taking any gift is…it is up to you. The value of your salvation is far beyond any amount of money on Earth, though you can’t spend it here. Which is one of the drawbacks of many people looking at its value today or even if it has any value for them at all.

Truly, God loves each one of us. Whether you believe in Him or not, He knows and cares for you. The truth of Scripture cannot be known or understood by reason or science, only by faith. If you don’t or won’t seek Him out by faith, then your eternity will be decided whenever He calls you into it. Rejection of God’s gift is a choice, just not a very good one.

Where does your strength come from?


To many people in this world today their strength comes from themselves and their own actions. It comes from their ability and their job or from their family and the strength that they gain from them. But, what happens when one of those is not able to strengthen you or keep you going? What do you turn to then?

Where do you look for strength and compassion when just one of those pillars cracks, when something goes wrong in your life? The people that we depend upon and the strength that we depend upon in life usually are just as weak as you are, spiritually and physically! We are weak, some of us are physically strong but without spiritual strength and our dependence upon Jesus for our strength in Him you will not be able to stand.

Not only to be able to stand up in the morning, which is not the strength that I am referring to, but the spiritual strength to stand against the sins which can drag us down. Standing against Satan and his demons and the temptations which are placed in our way every day, that is what spiritual strength is for! You can’t get it from a job, your family, your bank account, your friends, none of these worldly things can provide for you spiritually!

Yes, they can give you advice, but is it Biblical advice? Did they get it from God or their own mind or their own experience? What good will that do you? Your own advice and experience has not really helped, so why would you listen to them? God knows you and He knows what today had in it and what tomorrow has coming. He will be with you through all of these problems and pain and He will give you the strength to get through today and tomorrow and the next day.

Life is always one day at a time, one minute or hour at a time. Days don’t go by any faster for you than they do for me. The problems that we see each day, the pain that we feel each day are ours, but we don’t have to handle it alone because God is always available and He is with us no matter what or where we may be.

Seek God through His Scriptures, especially in the Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. These three books have more wisdom in them than all of the “self-help” books combined. Learn of God’s ways, not just the way that He guided the Israelites but also the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels. He loves us, all of us, so much that He sent His Only Son to die on a Roman cross for the atonement of ALL of humanity’s sins, not just a few but all of them.

He will strengthen you in all of your problems and give you the wisdom to get through them. He will do this, not because He has to but because He wants to help you with your life. The lost keys, the misplaced bills, the bad grades or the forgotten birthday. He will get you through them all and give you wisdom in all that you do, IF you will trust in Him and follow His teachings for your life every day.

So much love


Yes, I know that there are many of you out there who may not know the One of which I speak. Yet, He does love you with such a deep and abiding love that it is indescribable, at least in human terms. I have felt it at times in worship and in reading and studying His Word, yet I can’t give you a description of it any more than you could tell someone about the color blue or red!

There are many ways that we feel love in life. Through our families, our friendships, even from people who somehow helped us when we didn’t know it. Love can be expressed in ways that defy description, even from human terms, but God’s love is a kind of love that goes as deep as your cellular structure, even into your atomic structure. That kind of love, agape’ love, is the kind that asks nothing in return and never expects anything more than love to be given away. In doing this, you glorify God and that gives Him pleasure too.

God created us, each of us, with certain talents and abilities and we are to use them for His Glory and purpose. But, many don’t do this because they don’t want to or they don’t want to believe in God or in His Son, Jesus. The reasons for this are many. Some say that Jesus was just a prophet and nothing more, some say that God doesn’t have a Son, that He is One and none others are involved. The tiny, relative to the universe, ball of dirt that we live on is the one place which God has focused His attention on at this time. He may create another place and other people in the future, but as far as we know right now we are it. This is not arrogance, it’s just that we don’t have any proof of anyone else so we can’t say for sure.

If there are others, God loves them too wherever they may be. Love covers many things in life. Real love, not just lust or infatuation, doesn’t get jealous or angry because true, abiding love doesn’t stray from a relationship. In the past and right now too, people are moving away from a belief in God because He is not seen or they just don’t want the Bible to be true. That way, they don’t have to be responsible for their sins because of the Truth in the Bible.

God loves all of us and cares for us just as He did for Israel in the times of their slavery. He brought them out and into a land where they could have served Him in a fantastic way, but they didn’t obey Him and the commandments given to them. They mingled with the inhabitants of the land and began worshipping their gods who were not gods at all, but were likely demons.

We have our own version of this today. We worship money, fame, beauty, sex, drugs, alcohol. Though we may not bow down to them, we give our attention and our lives over to them in ways that are very similar to the pagan worship of trees and the earth and stars. Reading through the Bible brings forward some very interesting parallels to life today if you notice it.

Seek Him in His Word, find the love that He has for us as His creation. Then, ask Him to change your heart and your life so that you will know Him even better than you have known anyone before. I promise, you won’t be disappointed if you are repentant and desire to know Him as your Savior and Lord.

Success in failure


This speaks to all of us who need it. Today, at this time, we need Him.

Tracy Eldridge's avatarA blog about living well and successful today

You might want to ask me “How does that work?”. Success in this life, as many people see it today, means that you are successful…period. You have graduated from school, whether it is high school or college or even medical school, you have made it. That is the first step on the road to success. Then, there is the debt that you owe for that education which you are saddled with to pay off, what a bummer. Depending on the size of the debt, your payment could take years and most of your hard-earned money if you get a job.

We were usually told by parents and teachers and counselors that a college education was the ticket, the way up and out. Not anymore it seems. So how can you become successful in life when so few jobs exist for college educated people? I don’t have that answer, I…

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Life, healing, comfort, hope


The title says most of what our lives in Christ are supposed to be. We have eternal life through Jesus Christ Who has saved us from an eternity away from God and His Love. We have healing by His power and by His grace toward us through Christ, not because we deserve it but, again, because He loves us. We have comfort in His love and His grace because of the promise of eternity, not because of a promise of riches or an easy life on Earth. The comfort that we have is in knowing that eternity is sure through the sacrifice which Jesus made to cover our sins and to give us His righteousness. We have hope because of all of these because of the Life, death and resurrection of Jesus! No other name, given among men is worthy to be praised than His name, Jesus! Why? Because of the things that He has done for us because of His love for us, each one of us. Not because we deserved it or earned it because you and I can’t earn salvation and we certainly don’t deserve it on our own!

Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father but through Me.” John 14:6 He is the Author of life, our Creator and Redeemer and since He is also part of the Trinity and God, then He can’t lie! No part of the Bible is a lie, many don’t believe it or they believe parts of it, but the truth is that even Satan believes all of it! He knows that it is true, because he has been here testing, tempting, trying the servants of God from the beginning.

Give your heart and life to Jesus because life without a point or a purpose is meaningless and empty. Hell won’t be empty throughout eternity because of unbelief and rebellion from the followers of Satan and all of those who have decided to do things their way instead of listening to the Word of God and giving their lives to Him.

Hope, comfort, healing, restoration, and life are gifts given to us by God at some point in our lives, specifically when we determine that He is truthful and that He is the One that He says that He is.

Think on this. Pray about it if you have questions. Seek Him in the Bible and learn of His ways because He loves you!

You are a good work…


“Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
Philippians 1:6

Being loved by the Creator is a wonderful feeling, if you know what I mean. If you don’t, then you likely think that I am delusional. God is our Creator, belief in this is possible because of faith and today our world is condemning people who have faith, especially if it is faith in Jesus! He is still in control, whether you believe it or not and your lack of belief doesn’t change this!

God loves you. Radical, huh? The Creator loves you because you are part of His Creation and He knows your life from the time the first cells came together to form you in the womb. He knows when and to whom you will be married, if ever, He knows what you are capable of doing for His Kingdom even if you don’t! You are created in His image! We are made specifically to be priests and prophets for Him, in our workplace and in our homes! This doesn’t mean that you have to preach on the street corner, it just means that you are supposed to let others SEE Jesus in your everyday life!

Tell your children about Jesus, if you haven’t already. Tell your family about Jesus, if you know that they don’t know Him (this is the hardest witnessing that you will need to do). Why? Because they know you! They knew you before you became a Christian and the type of person that you have been, so they need to see the person that you have become! The work that God has begun in your life when you came to Him, may have started years ago. You may have walked away for some reason and you have been away from church for years, but He hasn’t stopped. He doesn’t let go. There is still a voice, the Voice of the Spirit within you that has not been completely quieted. Listen to Him, trust in Him, learn more about Him and follow Him because by doing that you can make the demons surrounding your home flee!

The time is nearly here that we truly NEED men and women of God to rise up and be counted in our homes, in our churches, in our states and in our nation because God has been reviled in the news media and in many countries and it is getting worse. This is just the beginning of troubles for the church of Jesus, the body of believers in the world that claim Him as their Savior. Stand firm in your faith, read and study God’s Word, pray about what you read and think on it (meditate) because the time that we are in now is very close to the trouble times. I don’t know when the treaty with Israel will be signed or when the ruler of the world will be brought out into the open, but I don’t believe that it is far off.

Yes, very possibly in our lifetime, it will happen and it will happen because God said so in His Word! Give our God the credit for being our Creator and our Redeemer because that is Who He is!

The significance of the Word


You don’t just read a cookbook, you fix and eat the meal. It is the same way with the Bible, God’s Word, if you don’t assimilate it, no matter how much you appreciate it, what good is it? And with the Bible, it means that you are to take it into your mind, to thoroughly comprehend it, to use it as nourishment for your mind and heart and your eternal soul!

Just as with a cookbook, the words and the recipes don’t help you much by just reading them. Reading the recipe of a fabulous meal or dish is not very satisfying, you have to do something with the information that you have in front of you. It is the same with the Bible. Read it, of course, study it and think on what you have read…definitely, then you have to put it into practice. Just as the recipe won’t do you any good if you don’t put your hands to work and put it together and cook it, God’s Word won’t help you in your daily life unless you act on it and use it!

Our lives are complex and we meet people in all sorts of situations every day. In many of our situations, we don’t interact with too many of those that we meet very much, especially not today. We text, we tweet, we post on social media, occasionally we will call someone, but we rarely speak to each other. It is even more rare that we sit down and have an actual conversation about our lives and the things which make our lives meaningful!

Why have we moved away from the interaction that was once a daily activity just as walking or breathing? Too much stuff has gotten in the way I believe. Too much technology is interfering with our lives. Especially when it comes to family members and our friends, we turn to our phones and our computers more often than we do to our pastor or our next door neighbour.

God’s Word is alive and it has been with us for over two millennia, yet it is not a book which is out of date. It is fresh and new to all who read it. The wisdom which it contains is relevant to today in the twenty-first century just as it was when it was written. It seems that many people think that coming to church on Sunday or having a Bible in their house does the trick and makes their lives better. Coming to church can do that and the fellowship which we have there does help us, but don’t leave the teaching that you receive on the pew.

The Bible, like a cookbook, won’t do you any good at all unless you open it, read it and apply it to your life. Allowing it to collect dust in your home doesn’t help your spiritual life because you aren’t taking in any spiritual nourishment to help you to grow in your walk with God. He sent the Word to us through His prophets and scribes so that we could learn of His love for us and so that we can learn of His wisdom.

Don’t just read it like a history book or an interesting book but as the actual Word of God. It is Truth, it is also a Life-giving book and a book of truth and wisdom, not of mankind’s wisdom but from God Himself! Apply its wisdom and words to your life so that others will benefit from your walk with Jesus. After all, He is the Living Word made flesh which dwelt among men. Take Him with you in your heart and in your everyday life, because without Him nothing has any meaning or substance in all of Creation.