Tag: Christianity

Where is God when I need Him?


How much do you need in this life? God gives us everything that we need every day but most of us take that for granted and we still wonder, “Where is God when I need Him?”. As someone who has grown up in America and has so-called “privileges” because I live here, I can tell you that those privileges are few. Some think that because I am “white” I have everything but I don’t. Life and friends can be cruel at times even when the “friends” don’t intend to be. Life is what we make of it or so I am told and in many ways that is true, but when you see many people who are wealthier than you are, don’t assume that their life is a happy one all of the time. Nobody can be happy every minute of every day regardless of the amount of money they have access to.

Joy, on the other hand, can be had by someone who lives in a cardboard shack. Why? Isn’t happiness and joy the same thing? Not by a long shot. Joy is not fleeting. It is a feeling that you can have just because you were able to get up this morning and walk to the kitchen. Many people in the world don’t have that blessing. Happiness comes and goes and depends upon your situation at the time. Joy can go on forever.

Where am I going with this? In many parts of the world poverty is so crushing that even having rags on your body may be all of the clothes that you have, and yet some of those who live in this situation are joyful because they are believers in Jesus. In America, we can’t imagine being impoverished to that point, yet there are some in our country who do live that way. 

God watches over all of us whether we are rich or poor, but many still don’t acknowledge Him as their Savior because when they felt the need for Him to intervene in some way for them, He did not. We can’t know why He didn’t heal or fix a problem or disease but He does. He may use a doctor or a prayer to heal but the answer is always up to Him. As Christians, we have access to Him all of the time but many of us allow the world to dictate when we seek Him. We try all kinds of treatments and other ways of healing us before we, as a last resort, turn to Him.

Being joyful in the face of a medical problem that feels overwhelming is not something many of us even consider, but one of Jesus’ disciples said that we should “count it all as Joy”, the good and the bad days. If you have given your life to Jesus and are walking through the world feeling sad or even angry because of a prayer that hasn’t been answered, ask Him to show you why it hasn’t been. God uses the good days and the bad days to give us strength and increase our faith. We may not like the way He does it but we will see the outcome one day and realize that it was for our good and His glory that it happened that way. Seek Him today and know that He loves each of us warts and all.

He is enough.

Believe in Jesus


Salvation comes to each of us by belief in Jesus. Many people question this today and many others don’t believe in Him at all. Some don’t even believe He existed but God’s Word doesn’t lie, He came to give His life for all of mankind and He did. Then, three days later, He walked out of the grave and taught for forty days before He ascended to Heaven.

The children recognized Jesus in many ways more deeply and completely than His disciples did. We should come to Him as the children did, with complete child-like faith. Our problem is our adult knowledge and acquired disbelief that many of us have after our time in jobs and life in general. We doubt many things, even Jesus, to the point of needing some kind of “proof”. God’s Word is the proof because He cannot lie but we must believe!

Believing that He existed isn’t enough. There are many historical proofs outside of the Bible that prove He existed and was crucified. Your belief for salvation must come by your heart not just knowledge but spiritually believing that He died for your sins to cleanse you of those sins, no matter how small they may be or even how big they are. He came to bring many people into God’s Kingdom through this kind of belief and when the Holy Spirit convicts you that you NEED Him as your Savior, don’t ignore this conviction. Many people have done so and put it off for years until they died without Him and began serving eternity in punishment because they didn’t believe in Jesus while they could.

Our life here is extremely short compared to one million years and that is just the beginning of eternity. Jesus came to give us Life in eternity with Him, the Creator of all. Eternity is not going to be boring as some think. We will have many things to do for Him and living in His Presence will be far more than I can describe here. More beautiful than the most beautiful place on Earth. Most of the prophets and disciples of Jesus who were given a glimpse of Heaven couldn’t describe it other than saying “it is more than we can imagine”.

Rain forests and mountains on Earth are beautiful but those same places in the presence of God, Who gives life to everything, they would be more green, more alive than they look here. I’ve read some descriptions from people who had near-death experiences that everything in Heaven is more complete in every way. Even after seeing it, they couldn’t give a better description than that. Just like the prophets and apostles who saw a little bit of it, their description from our perspective could not do it justice. Just as a picture of say the Grand Canyon is beautiful but being there and seeing it with your own eyes…can’t compare to a photo.

Seek Him while He can be found in your life today. When the church is taken up, you truly want to be counted in that number. The next seven years after the church is gone will become “hell on Earth” for real and not a movie.

He gave us so much…


God gave us this planet to live on, with all kinds of food and the families that all of us enjoy. From the very beginning until now, God needs nothing from us but He chose to give us His grace. If you are wondering what else He gives us I’ll try to list a few here:

He makes sure your heart beats every time and He does this for EVERYONE.

He makes sure you can breathe during the night and the day.

He has given each of us the abilities that we have to do our work, for Him and for our family. 

But…most of all, He has given us the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. No other religion offers salvation and forgiveness just by believing in the Person and the Hope of Life that is Jesus Christ. Sometimes we try to help Him “save” us by doing lots of projects and work at the church of our choice but remember this: God made the ENTIRE universe a long time before you or I was born, so He doesn’t need our help. He wants us to be His children and part of His family and that is why He chose us before “the foundation of the world”.

Your name and my name were written in His book of saints before the light was spoken into existence. God has always had each believer in His mind long before we were born. 

Today, we are living at a time that is rapidly approaching the end of the church age, the age of Grace. I pray that you will seek to know Him as your Savior soon, because there is coming a time when the Holy Spirit will be taken from the Earth and it will be very hard to give your heart and life to Jesus, much harder than it is today. Seek to know Him and to give your heart to Him today. He loves you and He is waiting for you to open the door.

God’s love was proven


On the cross, His love for us was proven and the Bible verse that goes along with it is John 3:16

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son; that whosoever will believe in Him would have eternal life”. So, I will cut it down a bit and go through each part.

God so loved the world: Why would He do this? Why would God give His Son for the world’s sins? Because He loves all of us. We, each of us, were created and formed by God. He gave each of us a personality that no one else has. He gave each of us our talents and our gifts and there is only one of each person on this planet, even if you are a twin. Each of you may look like your brother or sister, but you have talents, personalities and abilities that are different from each other. God made you and me that way.

He gave His Son as a Perfect Lamb to pay for ALL of our sins. Only Jesus could live a sinless life and die to pay for mankind’s sins. Then He rose from that grave to give us eternal life, if we believe in Him. Like the thief on the cross, it only takes your belief in Jesus to bring salvation into your life. There is nothing that you can do to “help” God save you. His grace and mercy are gifts that we get when we believe in Jesus for our salvation. Your spiritual gift is one that you will have to find on your own, but God always gives each of us at least one.

God loves you and He has prepared a place for you in His Kingdom, if you will accept Jesus as your Savior, follow Him and live your life trying to be more like Him. Eternity is a long, long time, so make sure of your eternal destination while there is time. Our world is not going to drown from rising seas or be suffocated by pollution. Read the Bible, especially Romans and the book of Revelation. Your life more abundantly is waiting in Heaven, not here on Earth. Seek Him, find Him and learn from His Word. He loves you more deeply than you can imagine.

Do you really know God?


Why is our world so confused about God? Is it because He is not something or someone who can be seen or touched? I don’t believe so, since the founders of other religions are dead and cannot be contacted or touched either. The difference is that our God can be contacted and He will answer those prayers! Whether the answer will come on your schedule or not is irrelevant because God answers on His time and not yours.

God loves all of humanity, that is why He sent His Son to be the sacrifice that took the sins of all of us, past, present and future, and paid the price for them all. Our only response, the only one that is required of us, is to acknowledge that we need Him and accept that He paid that price for each of us. Then ask Him to come into our lives and make us more like Him. Once that is done, and we have taken the steps in our life to turn away from our sinful ways, we must let others know about Him!

I know that many people don’t want to testify that they have changed, that their lives have been changed by Jesus but if the change has happened people will see it in your life whether you tell them or not. The misconception that many people have is that they cannot know God.

The Bible is a collection of writings that were inspired by the Holy Spirit and in some cases, such as the books of Moses, were given directly by God Himself to the writer. All of these books are God’s way of advising us on living our lives through Hiim and for Him. God also expresses His love for us through these books and the wisdom contained within them, all we have to do is read and study them and ask Him to help us to understand. There is a passage in the Bible that says something like this, “if you feel that you lack wisdom, ask it of Him and He will give it freely”. Now that is  paraphrase, but you get the idea.

God is not someone who is billions of miles away, He is here. He occupies the entire universe and He can live in your heart if you ask Him to. You are never very far from Him and when you feel alone remember the only one who may have moved is you! God has always been close by although He will not barge into your life. He waits patiently for you to ask Him to come in.

God is the Creator and the One who sustains the universe and all that is in it. Jesus is the living Word that came to earth and became a man to take our sins and the punishment for them to the cross. He is the reason that many have trouble with accepting Christianity. They don’t want to accept Him because many do not believe that the Son of God would do what He did.

The love that God has for us is one that we cannot comprehend because it is far above what we are capable of. Yet it is because of that love for us that He came to suffer through life as we do, to be as we are in every circumstance and yet follow the will of His Father even unto the cross to pay for our sins.

Can we know God? Can we get to know Him like the prophets knew Him? Yes, we can! He wants to get to know us and He wants that relationship with us. All that we have to do is ask Him into our lives and study His Word prayerfully so that we will gain an understanding of just Who He is and what we should be doing.

We are sometimes to proud to admit that we need Him until some problem happens in our lives that punctuates the fact that we cannot handle life by ourselves. At those times, even those who claim that they don’t believe in God will seek Him! Whether they make a life-changing decision to allow Him into their lives is another topic altogether, but they will look for Him until something or someone directs them elsewhere.

Satan is very good at directing us to look to ourselves or to something in the world besides God. It is what he has been doing since the beginning and his ability to deceive us is a finely honed skill that he is very proud of. Satan is capable of twisting scripture to a point that you will think that you have found “religion”, and you have but you haven’t found Jesus!

Religion, in all of its forms in the world, cannot save you from your sins. Only believing in Jesus and asking Him to come into your life and your heart can do that. The choice must be a sincere and honest one, not lip service. Saying some words and getting emotional about it doesn’t change your heart. If the repentance of your heart is not genuine, God will know. Read and learn from the Bible. Go to a real church that preaches from God’s Word. Give your heart to Christ and ask Him to cleanse you from your sins. Once you have done this, your life and your character will change and you are a new creation. Your family will see it, as will your friends. Everything will change because you belong to Him and He will live in and through you! That is my prayer and hope for all who read this.

When I was younger…


In the seventies I felt abandoned and overlooked. I never told anyone this but that is how I felt all through junior high and high school. My parents had gotten divorced when I was about five years old and at the time, I felt or thought it was somehow my fault. No one at home knew what to tell me or say that could “make it better”, so my teenage years were my self-destructive years. I started drinking every Friday night and I didn’t drink beer, I could get whiskey or almost any hard beverage that I had the money for.

I had been to church and heard the sermons about God’s love but at the time it wasn’t much more than a fairy tale to me. It wasn’t real and I didn’t begin to believe it until later in my life. Much later.

The only reason I made it through my teens and twenties was because God wanted me to become someone useful to Him. That didn’t happen until I met the love of my life and we had a little boy. I had to come to Jesus because he needed someone who could be a father and a Daddy, and I was neither of those before Jesus changed my life.

It is true that God calls those who can be useful to Him but He also gives each of us the ability to be more useful than we could be without Him. I was reading and listening to Jesus teach about the lilies of the field and how God clothes them in splendor yet they will dry up and blow away. How much more will God change your life and mine if we keep our eyes on Him every day? If He cares for the sparrows and the flowers of the field, how much more does God love those He created in His Image?

Seek to know Him deeper every day because He formed you to be His if you will respond to His call when your heart feels it.

Jesus seeks us!


Matthew 18:12 KJV
[12] How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?
https://bible.com/bible/1/mat.18.12.KJV

He is the Good Shepherd and He does seek us when we have gone astray. We’re all human and we do get off of the pathway at times, but Jesus knows where we are and He seeks us so that we can continue our relationship with Him. Why would He do this for a sinner like me? Because He died and rose again to give us life, real LIFE!

God wants to have a relationship with us, each of us, but many of us refuse because we want to live our lives a certain way or we have too much “stuff” we want to do and being a Christian would get in the way. In some countries it would even be dangerous, although there are many who brave those dangers just to be a Christian. God protects His own and He knows the persecution that each of us faces every day.

If you feel the touch of the Holy Spirit and His call on your life, don’t turn away from it. For some people that call might be the last time you feel God’s call on your life. What I mean by this is that we aren’t promised tomorrow and your time may be up soon. An accident or a sudden health issue like an aggressive cancer or any number of other things that can take your life in a day or a week. Seek to know Jesus as your Savior. Read the Bible and attend a Bible teaching church once you have given your heart to Jesus so you can learn more about being His disciple. We are living near the end of the Church age so I urge you to seek Him as soon as you can.

Outsider?


Do you feel like you are an outsider at times? All of us were at one time but God chooses people, even outsiders or those who feel that they are unworthy, in the way that He wishes. God chooses each of us when He deems that we are ready and useful. Sometimes, His call on our lives is the very thing that will change us and make us ready to follow Him. Sometimes His call on our lives does change us in radical ways. We become His followers and His Spirit changes us so much that “we are a new creation” from that point on.

We are changed in our heart and in our soul because of the Holy Spirit’s work after we have accepted Him as our Savior. From that point on we are “made new” in Him. Our witness for Him will be changed and so will our lives be changed when we learn and read the Bible and learn how we can serve Him from this point on. Many people think that our lives in Christ will just stay that way but we should sanctify our lives by studying His Word and learning more about Him and about our place in His ministry

The Bible is our guide to knowing how to serve God and be useful to Him. We must read it and study it every day, not just on Sunday at church. Being a Christian, a follower of Jesus, is not an easy task like many people think it is. Belief in Jesus is easy but following Him every day of our lives from that point on is not easy because much of the world and many people we are around during the week don’t make it easy. Even our “old self” is still at odds with the new person that we are living as Christ-followers, so we struggle to keep the old sins from overpowering our new way of life.

God loves each of us, whether we believe in Him or have asked Jesus to save us. Life has a way of confusing our outlook toward becoming more like Jesus, because we feel that we are truly at odds with our new nature when the Holy Spirit has changed us to be a new person in Christ. That is why we need to read God’s Word after we become Christians. We have the Holy Spirit that will help us understand His ways while we read it and the understanding will come later. Salvation comes the moment we accept Jesus as our Savior, we have the Holy Spirit in our heart from that moment on molding us into the person God intends for us to be but the understanding doesn’t come immediately. It is only after we have read His Word and prayed over it, sometimes for years, that the “light” will come on and we begin to understand the why and the reason for our salvation and the struggles that come with it.

So it is our job to learn more about Him and to do that we need to study His Word daily. Even a chapter every day will get you through the Bible and help you to understand more about who you and I are in Christ. Many pastors and churches don’t tell us that we have to study to grow in our Christian walk. The body of Christ, the church, should be involved in teaching new Christians to be more involved in reading the Bible and learning about God and our place in the church, the Body of Christ.

Seek to know Jesus as your Savior if you aren’t sure of your salvation. He died for you and we should put our old self to death and live for Him until the day that He comes for His Bride.

Life sucks but…


I used to hear people talking about partying in hell with Satan but that is not how Jesus described it. He told a story of a rich man who didn’t care for anyone but himself. A man named Lazarus was a poor man begging at the gate to the man’s home but he never received anything. One day, the rich man died and was buried. Lazarus died and was taken by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. While there, the rich man called out to Abraham to ask for a drop of water to cool his tongue. No parties, no joy, no meeting with friends in hell, just punishment and pain. Abraham told him that there was a chasm between them that was there to keep anyone from crossing from the place of torment to paradise or from paradise to them.

God didn’t make hell to punish people. It was created to punish Satan and those who rebelled against God by not accepting Jesus as their Savior. That is the key to staying out of hell…believing in Jesus as your Savior. No amount of money or works will do it. Life doesn’t suck bad enough to waste your time following things that will lead you astray. But many people think that it does. Some even take their lives over trivial things that, in the long run, don’t matter all that much. I know there are veterans and drug addicts who take their lives because of the “demons” that they are living with but Jesus can fix those problems too if you will let Him.

God loves all of mankind not just one nation or a few people. Jesus died for all of us but there are so many who just refuse to believe this. It is spelled out in the Gospel but so many people won’t read it or they look at God’s Word like it is just some book written long ago and it isn’t relevant for our time. God knows each of us better than we know ourselves and when you think that the Creator of the entire universe even considers individuals on our little speck of dust, that is amazing!

We have trouble believing this but if you have given your heart to Jesus, it is easy to live this way because the Holy Spirit lives inside you. He will give you the strength and the ability to live your life this way and to forgive those who have hurt you in the past. Seek to know Jesus as your Savior because hell is the punishment that never ends and it wasn’t made for you.

The Return of Jesus


The Everlasting Hope: A Sermon on the Second Coming
Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Introduction:
Brothers and sisters, today we turn our attention to a topic that has captivated believers for centuries – the glorious return of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is not a distant, ethereal concept; it is a cornerstone of our faith, a beacon of hope that illuminates our journey.
The Reality of the Resurrection:
Our text in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 addresses a very real concern among the early church: the fate of those who had died in Christ before the Lord’s return. Would they miss out on the joy of His coming?
The Apostle Paul emphatically answers, “No!” He reminds us that just as Christ was raised from the dead, so too will those who have fallen asleep in Him. Death is not the end; it is a temporary slumber, a prelude to the glorious resurrection.
The Order of Events:
The passage outlines the sequence of events:
* The Rapture: “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)
* The Second Coming: This is the visible, triumphant return of Christ to earth, where He will establish His righteous reign.
Living in Light of the Return:
The anticipation of Christ’s return should not be a cause for fear or anxiety, but rather a source of constant hope and encouragement. It should motivate us to:
* Live Holy Lives: Knowing that our Lord could return at any moment, we are called to live lives of holiness and integrity, reflecting His glory in all that we do.
* Serve Others: The return of Christ will be a day of ultimate justice and vindication. Until then, we are called to serve others, to alleviate suffering, and to spread the good news of salvation.
* Remain Vigilant: We are to be watchful and prayerful, ever mindful of the Lord’s imminent return.
Conclusion:
The return of Jesus Christ is a promise, a glorious hope that sustains us through life’s trials and tribulations. Let us live each day with this hope in our hearts, striving to be faithful servants of our Lord, eagerly awaiting His triumphant return.
Note: This is a general framework. You can adapt it to fit your specific congregation and the needs of your community. You may want to include personal testimonies, illustrations, or delve deeper into specific theological aspects of the Second Coming.
Disclaimer: This sermon reflects a particular theological perspective on the Second Coming. It is important to remember that there are diverse interpretations of this doctrine within Christianity.
I hope this sermon provides a helpful point for your reflection on the soon return of our Savior.

I used an AI helper to put this together, but it is on point. I pray that you will take this sermon into your heart and think about His coming because it is happening soon.