Tag: Christ

Is your life yours?


This is what we think of our lives mostly…that we own it, that it belongs to us and we can do whatever we want with it. If you are not a Christian and you don’t believe in God nor have you given your life to Jesus and asked Him into your heart, then maybe you do own your life. Unless your parents do or your wife or your boss at work does. They do have a certain amount of “ownership” of your time and your life, up to a point. Our life, as we live it, is ours to do with as we please…until we realize that we need Jesus in our life and in our heart. Then we are His.

Why do I say it this way? Because He purchased us with His blood, His death and His resurrection! He paid all of our debts in regards to sin and we are His creation because He knew us before we were ever born into this world! Our purpose in this life, our REAL purpose is to serve Him in whatever way we can. Whether it is as a missionary or a teacher or a preacher or an evangelist. Our work for His Kingdom is to tell others about the gospel, the Good News of His gift of salvation! You cannot earn this gift nor buy it with any amount of work that you claim to do for Him, particularly if the work is done without Him in your life and heart.

Everything that is done prior to repentance from your sinful life and asking Him to cleanse you and make you a new creature if Him has the same value as garbage. In other words…it is worth NOTHING in relation to eternity! Life in eternity is only granted by belief in, and living your days with, Jesus. Remember the story about the thief on the cross? He didn’t have a chance to be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit nor did he have a chance to witness to many people, he only asked Jesus to remember him when He came into His Kingdom. Jesus said to him, “Today, you will be with Me in Paradise.” Because of his belief in Who Jesus was and is, his faith and belief in Jesus saved him from an eternity of punishment. He recognized the Messiah when very few did at that point.

Truly, because of God’s grace toward us, we belong to Him whether we have accepted His grace and mercy through Jesus or not. The unpardonable sin is that we go through life, having heard sermons or read the Bible and know the way of salvation and yet refuse it, sometimes you or someone you know has felt the pull or the voice of the Holy Spirit and just walked away. That is the unpardonable sin which will not be forgiven, especially if you die without ever repenting and turning to Jesus! Think about this, seek Him in His Word, listen for the Spirit speaking to your heart, pray about it and ask Jesus to come into your life and change you. Then live your life as a testimony to Him and about Him until you are called to Heaven by death or by the Angels. Just don’t wait like Satan wants you to, because his lie is that you have plenty of time yet your time may be up tonight or tomorrow!

Promises and Blessings


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

Life sometimes throws us a curve, usually one that we don’t see coming until it hits us square in the eyes. I know, some of you may have thought I would say something else, but it’s the truth. God’s promises are new every morning and they are meant to be for us as well as the Jewish people. Some of us can claim them and some of us never will claim them. It also seems to happen at the worst possible times, but I suppose that is when God wants us to depend upon Him and lean on Him more than we depend upon money or people.

Your life and mine are part of God’s creation and His Kingdom, particularly if we are Christians because we have given our hearts to Christ. We are supposed to be following in His footsteps on a daily basis, not a weekly or every few months or just when we feel like it. Studying the Bible and learning from God’s wisdom about circumstances in our lives, whether we have faced them yet or not, is the best way to learn about Him. Reading through God’s Word at least once every year is not as hard as it sounds and yet many Christians only read what is called out in church on Sunday and maybe on Wednesday night services.

How can you claim God’s blessings and His promises to you and for your life if you don’t know about them in the first place? You won’t know about them if you have never read the Bible, yet that action is severely lacking in churches today. Why is that? Very likely, it is because the Truth of the Bible cannot be ignored and you can’t disprove it. Many people say that it is just a book of stories written down by old men long ago and it doesn’t mean anything. Without faith in God and His Son, Jesus, that may be true, but if you look at the prophecies that have come true from the Bible how can you claim this?

The land of Israel was given back to the Jews in 1948, many Jews have returned to their homeland after nearly two thousand years in exile and their language has been revived as well. All of these are foretold in Scripture and very little is left to happen according to the prophecies in God’s Word before the time of Tribulation will be upon the world. Nobody knows the day or the hour of this time which is coming except God, but I don’t believe that this generation that is alive today will die before it begins to happen.

That could be within the next few years or it may be a decade or more away, but we are living on the edge, the cusp of it right now. The players are moving into position and the time is coming soon. Be prepared. Be watching and be ready!

So little time….


Why do I say this you may ask? Simply because when you compare our lives with eternity, which is ahead for all of us, your life and mine seem so tiny in comparison. I have seen scientists compare our life-span to the age of the Earth, which is supposed to be ~4.3 billion years or so, and your life and mine shows up as a speck of dust. Eternity doesn’t have an end, so our life would be microscopic compared to it. Yet, we go through our lives preparing to live a long life into retirement and many of us never think much about what comes after our life here.

What would we do if we could get a real glimpse of our eternity? The eternity that each of us will have to face eventually could be very different from the one we think we will have. Some of us will be graced with an eternity in Heaven with many of our loved ones and friends. Some of us, who have been stubborn in this life and unwilling to believe in God or Jesus and certainly not willing to give our heart to Jesus and to following Him through our lives. We want to live our lives on our own terms with no rules except our own! The independent spirit of humanity takes someone to hell every second of every day, even if they feel that they have lived a good life! Many of them would say that “I haven’t killed anyone or robbed anyone!”, really? Have you held a grudge of hatred toward anyone, ever? Have you ever taken a pen or a notebook from work? According to Jesus, the hate that we harbor in our hearts toward someone is the same as murder and as far as God is concerned, stealing and robbing are the same whether it is a pen or a pad or a bank.

Yes, we are all sinners at some point in our lives. The sins may not be BIG sins to us, but in God’s eyes and in His judgement a sin is a sin, size doesn’t matter! In front of Him a “little white lie” is just as big as a lie told to a lawyer or a teacher or your spouse. Many people today don’t even consider a lie to be a sin, but it is. We hear them every day, we see the results of them in the courts and in politics and it doesn’t seem to bother anyone. But…God knows who said what to whom about the things of this world and there will be a payday someday for all of these SINS!

In many ways, people seem to look at our life here and think that they have all of the time in the world to decide to come to God and get their life straight. How do you know? When someone has a wreck in a car, did they know about it ahead of time? Not likely. What about when a stroke or heart attack takes someone’s life? Did they know that was coming on that particular day? No, not at all. I have heard of some people who have come into the kitchen for breakfast and fell over dead right there. We are not given a set date and time for these events. When you have heard a message in a church or from an evangelist on television, did you feel a tug on your heart or a voice telling you that you should give your life to Jesus? If you ignore those Spiritual callings to you, then you are walking on a very thin patch of ice above a very real torment in hell!

You can mock me or ignore me or my message, but when you kneel before God and He asks you why didn’t you answer the call of the Holy Spirit when He called, what excuse could you give? None really, because of the miracles that we see every day, the wondrous natural beauty that is around us and inside of us because our Father created us and everything to let us see Him so that we don’t have an excuse for not believing in Him. Don’t put it off.

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!

Our Savior in the Books of the Bible


Jesus in EVERY Book of the Bible!

In Genesis he’s the Seed of the Woman.
In Exodus he’s the Passover Lamb.
In Leviticus he’s the Scapegoat.
In Numbers he’s the Serpent lifted up in the Wilderness.
In Deuteronomy he’s the Cities of Refuge.

In Joshua he’s the Scarlet thread on Rahab’s house.
In Judges he’s the Perfect Judge.
In Ruth he’s the Kinsman Redeemer.
In I Samuel he’s the Trusted Prophet.
In 2 Samuel he’s the True Son of David.
In 1 Kings he’s the Promise Keeper.
In 2 Kings he’s the Jealous God.
In 1 Chronicles he’s our Reigning King.
In 2 Chronicles he’s our Deliverer.
In Ezra he’s the Faithful Scribe.
In Nehemiah he’s the Rebuilder of Broken Walls.
In Esther he’s Mordecai at the Gate.

In Job he’s My Redeemer Who Lives Today.
In Psalms he’s the Lord who is my Shepherd.
In Proverbs he’s our Wisdom.
In Ecclesiastes he’s our True Satisfaction.
In Song of Solomon he’s the Beautiful Bridegroom.

In Isaiah he’s the Suffering Servant.
In Jeremiah he’s the Righteous Branch.
In Lamentations he’s the Weeping Prophet.
In Ezekiel he’s the Son of Man.
In Daniel he’s the Fourth Man in the Furnace.

In Hosea he’s the Faithful Husband.
In Joel he’s the One Who Restores.
In Amos he’s the Burden Bearer.
In Obadiah he’s the Mighty Judge.
In Jonah he’s the Foreign Missionary.
In Micah he’s our Peace.
In Nahum he’s the Avenger.
In Habakkuk he’s the Lord in His Holy Temple.
In Zephaniah he’s the Lord Mighty to Save.
In Haggai he’s the Lord of Hosts.
In Zechariah he’s the Fountain of Cleansing.
In Malachi he’s the Sun of Righteousness.

In Matthew he’s the Promised Messiah.
In Mark he’s the Faithful Servant.
In Luke he’s Friend of Sinners.
In John he’s the Son of God.

In Acts he’s the Ascended Lord.

In Romans he’s the Justifier.
In 1 Corinthians he’s our Righteousness.
In 2 Corinthians he’s the God of All Comfort.
In Galatians he’s the Redeemer from the Curse of the Law.
In Ephesians he’s the Head of the Church.
In Philippians he’s the All-Sufficient Christ.
In Colossians he’s the Fullness of God.

In 1 Thessalonians he’s the Lord Coming Down from Heaven.
In 2 Thessalonians he’s the Judge coming with Blazing Fire.
In 1 Timothy he’s our Mediator.
In 2 Timothy he’s our Master.
In Titus he’s the Blessed Hope.
In Philemon he’s the One Who Paid Our Debt.

In Hebrews he’s Our Great High Priest.
In James he’s the Judge Standing at the Door.
In 1 Peter he’s the Chief Shepherd.
In 2 Peter he’s the Morning Star.
In 1 John he’s the Word of Life.
In 2 John he’s the Son of the Father.
In 3 John he’s the Truth.
In Jude he’s the Lord Coming with countless thousands of his saints.

In Revelation he’s the King of Kings and Lord of Lords!

Love…do we know where it comes from?


Today, the word itself is used so much until the meaning of it is diluted to the point of the word not having a real meaning at all. Can we get back to a point where words mean something and actually are felt when they are said? Is it possible to make life itself mean something again or have we drifted so far away from our intent and our passion that life itself just doesn’t mean anything anymore? How did we get this way and why? We have drifted so far away from God until our beliefs and our character is more in line with Satan today, whether we worship him or not. Of course that is fine with him because if he can get us to turn away from God and His love and teachings, then we who follow him during this life will follow him into eternity. By then it will be too late to change your mind and he will be laughing at you when  you claim to have been a deacon in church or you taught Sunday school for twenty years or so. Those things don’t matter if you have never taken Jesus into your heart and made Him the Lord of your daily living!

Love comes from God because He is love and He showed His love for us by giving His Son as a sacrifice to die on the cross so that we can come to know God through Jesus by faith in Him! Today, the word is just that…a word. “Love” to many people doesn’t mean anything at all. It is just a four letter word like hate or some other words in our daily language. But, when you put it into action and really love someone through Christ, it doesn’t matter what they have done or who they may be, you can see them the way that God sees them. They may be filthy and covered with sin or maybe they did give their lives to Christ at one time and have fallen into a ditch full of sinful desires and things, but they are still His.

In this world, we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow, regardless of our age and yet God loves us and wants us to come to know Him, if we will only turn to Him in faith and ask Him to come into our lives. You don’t have to go across the ocean to witness to others although it is needed and if He calls you to do it then you should. But, God can use you right where you are. When I started this blog six years ago, there weren’t many Christian blogs out there on the Internet, now there are hundreds and I pray that if only one person turns their life over to Christ, that is enough.

Thank you for reading and I pray that you will turn to the Bible and read from Psalm 16 and others.

Freedom of choice


It is what God gave to all of us who have it, angels and mankind, and we must use it for the right reasons. Not to choose to be evil or sinful or a killer, but to make a choice to be a follower of Christ! It is by God’s grace that we have our being in this world and to reject His gift of life and the atonement of His Son’s death on the cross is the truly unforgivable sin.

Why many people choose to do this and think that they can live their lives without Him in a world full of sin and death and corruption is something that I will never understand. Yes, I was a sinner once and I still consider myself a sinner saved by His grace. I remember going out and partying and getting drunk as a teenager, I also remember that the results of that behavior usually weren’t very enjoyable the next day either.

Even after I thought that I had become a Christian, I still fell in with the wrong crowd and went down the wrong path for a long time. It wasn’t until I became a father that I realized that if I wanted my son to grow up to know Jesus, then I was going to have to be a true follower of Jesus so that he could see me doing it. I began to seek Him out in the Bible and learn of Him more and when I did that I finally “got it” and realized that the voice which had been there all along, was His.

I had ignored it for a long time, but I remembered it being there telling me things weren’t right. I had just thought that it was my own conscience or my own thoughts, I didn’t recognize it as the Spirit speaking to me until I got to know Him better. We have the freedom to choose, even after we become Christians, but we should choose to follow Christ every day. That is the part about “pick up your cross and follow me” that Jesus was talking about.

If this were true in his time….


“In many churches Christianity has been watered down until the solution is so weak that if it were poison it would not hurt anyone, and if it were medicine it would not cure anyone.”  A.W. Tozer (April 21, 1897 – May 12, 1963)

During his lifetime, Rev.Tozer saw a many things, two world wars, famine, the Great Depression and at the end of his life a human satellite was placed in orbit around the Earth. That is a lot to take in during a lifetime, but I wonder what he would think of us now. There has been so much that has happened since his death until the culture that was present then has nothing in common with the one that is present here, today.

Since 1963 there have been so many events which have happened in America until it would take hours if not days to catalog all of them. So much has happened in our culture since that time until I believe that he would think there are no churches left in America anymore. We have watered down the message of Jesus Christ so much that what is preached today, even though it comes from the Bible, very few people pay any attention to it at all.

It seems that our sermons have about as much meaning as a politician’s promises, which is to say that they mean nothing at all. How could we have come to this place? Because of legislation and something called “political correctness”. We aren’t allowed to say certain things anymore and if we do say them, we are preaching “hate” toward anyone or any other religion that is not Christianity.

How can our country have come this far away from God and the beliefs of our forefathers? Even history itself is coming under fire today by the very teachers who are supposed to be teaching it so that our children don’t repeat those mistakes made over a century ago! Why is this happening?

Because God has ordained this time as the one in which we will be tested, I believe. The news stories that you see and hear about, the new laws which are striking at the heart of families, the wars and the terrorists who are killing people because of their faith in Jesus Christ! If you have ever read the books of Daniel and Revelation, then many of the beginnings of sorrows that are foretold there are seen on the news almost every day. In Matthew 24, Jesus said that there would be a time when people would call good evil and evil good. He also spoke of a time when people would think they were doing God’s work if they killed believers.

If, as Mr. Tozer put it, “Christianity has been watered down until the solution is so weak that if it were poison it would not hurt anyone”, and this happened in his time…how much more has it been watered down since then? If we are to tell others about Christ, then we should be acting LIKE Christ. We should be going where He would’ve gone and doing as much as we can to make change happen in people’s lives.

Talk is cheap, sermons are given every Sunday morning and night, but if those words and the wisdom from which they come from such as the Bible are not put into practice…practically speaking, then our religion, our Christianity is just words and very little more. If we as pastors and Christians in general, the body of Christ, don’t put feet to our beliefs just as the disciples did then our message is nothing more than HOT AIR!

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.

The way to Life


This is the most important question of your life. Your joy or your sorrow for all eternity depends upon your answer. The question is: Are you saved? It is not a question of how good you are, nor if you are a church member, but are you saved? Are you sure you will go to Heaven when you die?

God says that in order to go to Heaven, you must be born again. In John 3:7, Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Ye must be born again.”

In the Bible, God gives us the plan of how to be born again which means to be saved. His plan is simple! This is the plan and the way, all that you need to do is believe!

First you must realize you are a sinner. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Because you are a sinner, you are condemned to death. “For the wages [payment] of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). This includes eternal separation from God in Hell.

“ . . . it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

But God loved you and me so much, He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus, to bear your sin and die in your place. “ . . . He hath made Him [Jesus, Who knew no sin] to be sin for us . . . that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Jesus had to shed His blood and die. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Lev. 17:11). “ . . . without shedding of blood is no remission [pardon]” (Hebrews 9:22).

“ . . . God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Although we cannot understand how, God said my sins and your sins were laid upon Jesus and He died in our place. He became our substitute. It is true. God cannot lie.

“God . . . commandeth all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). This repentance is a change of mind that agrees with God that one is a sinner, and also agrees with what Jesus did for us on the Cross.

In Acts 16:30-31, the Philippian jailer asked Paul and Silas: “ . . . ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ And they said, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved . . . .’ ”

Simply believe on Him as the one who bore your sin, died in your place, was buried, and whom God resurrected. His resurrection powerfully assures that the believer can claim everlasting life when Jesus is received as Savior.

“But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name” (John 1:12).

“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13).

Whosoever includes you. Shall be saved means not maybe, nor can, but shall be saved.

Surely, you realize you are a sinner. Right now, wherever you are, lift your heart to God in prayer.

In Luke 18:13, the sinner prayed: “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Just pray: “Oh God, I know I am a sinner. I believe Jesus was my substitute when He died on the Cross. I believe His shed blood, death, burial, and resurrection were for me. I now receive Him as my Savior. I thank You for the forgiveness of my sins, the gift of salvation and everlasting life, because of Your merciful grace. Amen.”