Tag: Christianity

Do you serve or do you want to be served?


In the society that we live in, we expect to be served regardless of where we go. In the mall or a store, at a restaurant or a fast food place we all have a microwave mentality today which means that we expect everything to be given to us NOW!

It is something which has been brewing in our culture ever since the first fast food joint showed up, but I am not blaming it on them. It is just a fact that since food became easy and cheap to get, the ability to cook at home has been mostly lost. Look around in a supermarket today and you will see many boxes of quick meals which can be made in less than thirty minutes.

Of course, you could just buy a packaged dinner, zap it in the microwave oven and in less than ten minutes be eating a “meal”. Except that it has been so processed and packaged it very likely has little, if any, real nutritional value,  but it is quick and it tastes good.

We tend to go about our religious experience the same way. We want instant satisfaction from the preacher who can’t say anything bad so he won’t hurt our feelings to our religious experience with our Saviour. So, what can we do to change these things? Since it has been ingrained in our culture for so long, we may not be able to clear out the things which have been learned soon enough.

Some people may wonder what I mean by “soon enough”, well it means that we need to repent of our disregard for God and His laws. It also means that we need to sit down long enough to read some passages from the Scriptures and to pray over them so that He can show us what is meant by them. Don’t close your mind to the possibility that He exists, because if you are being closed to the option that He is real then you are missing the point.

What point is that? The very reason and purpose for life itself, to give glory to God for being here! I know that there are many people who don’t or won’t believe in Him, but think of it this way: what if you are wrong about His existence? What if there really is a place of punishment after you die?

Not believing in things during this life won’t cause them to not be there when you die and find out that there really is life after death. At which point it will be too late to change your mind, it will be what it is and you can only take what you have ordained for yourself.

Your life and mine are important to God or He wouldn’t have wasted nearly four thousand years trying to get people to listen. Since the time of Moses, there have been many prophets that were sent into the nation of Israel trying to bring them back to God. Many were killed, most were just ignored or stoned until they left but the point of this is that God is interested in us! He would not have done the things which He has done if He was not. He doesn’t sit up in Heaven waiting for things to get better, He knows the end from the beginning because of where He is and Who He is.

We are all privileged because, not only does He care for each person but He has cared from the beginning. It doesn’t matter if you are from Israel or Turkey or China, God knows you and He knows when you will accept Him as Savior or if you won’t. Like looking down on a parade from the top of a building, He can see your life and mine from the first breath that we take until the last. Whether we choose to allow Him into that life is our choice, no other religion or faith allows you this.

Many people are going to disagree with me on this, at least on principle, but the point is that we have a choice…life or death. Which will it be? Many people, and don’t comment saying how I know it is “many”, there are thousands or millions who don’t agree with anything a Christian says just because they are Christians!

Many don’t agree because they don’t want to be responsible for their lives. They don’t want to be held accountable for their actions and if you have children you have seen this from an early age. Even before you think that a child can lie, they will do it in order to get out of trouble or to stay out of trouble. It is ingrained in our DNA, we are sinners from birth. One lie is still a lie, even if the one who is lying is only two or three years old.

I began this with references to food because of the way that our culture has become so dependent on things like food being available as soon as possible. We have also transferred that dependence over to almost everything in our lives, from our jobs to our religion and everything in between. Instant gratification, instant answers like we get from the Internet, we want everything now and we are not content with waiting.

God has waited and is waiting for you to make your decision, either for Him or against Him so which will it be? If you are joining God’s family, then welcome home! If you have decided to wait, then I want to ask you a question: When are you going to die? It is a simple question but it is not one that we can answer. You may die tonight or tomorrow or this afternoon, I may not be alive tomorrow either so when will you make that decision? When you are standing in front of God and He shows you the things that you have done and said in your life, how many times have you heard the good news of Jesus and the facts of salvation and either ignored them or just blew it off? What will you tell Him? At this point, it will be too late. You have already made your choice.

The UN-pardonable sin is not some heinous crime, it is turning away from God’s gift of grace and not accepting it as it is. That is the only sin which will get you thrown into hell, the others which you have committed convict you of a life without Jesus. Think about it.

Can you live without Jesus?


Unfortunately, the answer is yes, anyone can live here on earth without Jesus in their lives or in their heart, but can it truly be living? Can you really be alive without Him? I once thought so and I thought that I was enjoying myself at the time, but I was only fooling my self.

We were not meant to live without a relationship with Jesus or God Himself! Originally, mankind was created to have a daily encounter with God in all aspects of his life here on earth. We are supposed to have that close relationship with Him every day, many times during the day. I know, there are many people who will say that only preachers and others who serve in places of worship and as worship leaders are supposed to have that kind of relationship with Jesus.

But, that is not how it was in the beginning. In Eden, God told Adam that he was to have dominion over all of the animals and the birds and He also spoke with him every evening. Isn’t it strange that the Creator would want to walk and talk with His creation? God didn’t think so at the time.

Until he sinned, Adam was pure and righteous and could come before God about anything and ask anything of Him. The earth yielded its bounty to him willingly with no effort on Adam’s part before he made his mistake and thought that he knew better than God. When he chose to go against the command that God had given him, he stepped out of his comfortable life and into the one that he and generations to come would have to endure.

God knew that this would happen and He had made provisions for it, so it wasn’t a surprise to Him but it made mankind’s life much harder. Which was supposed to cause us to seek Him, to want Him to be in our lives. Of course, Satan had his plans for mankind as well and it didn’t include getting to know God.

I could recount the whole creation/pre-flood saga but the point is that since Satan was cast to earth after his rebellion he is provisionally the ruler of this world. This is the reason for the bad things which happen everywhere, although God is in control of how far Satan can go with his plans and won’t allow him to really cause as much trouble as he would like to.

In reality, religion itself is the creation of Satan. He devised all of the gods which people have been worshiping for thousands of years. He or some of his fallen angels very likely appeared to man at some point in their angelic forms or their demonic forms and that is where many of the pagan gods and myths came from.

He has always been able to stir up our emotions because he knows where to tweak our unconscious minds and hit our most vulnerable parts, the parts of us that we may not even know about having. Even after we come to Christ, Satan still hits us in those areas and will cause us to stumble and fall if we don’t lean on and depend on Jesus every day for our strength.

Our life is in Jesus and the life that we have here is better when we are His. Our troubles don’t go away when we become Christians, but they are far easier for us to deal with when we have His strength in us to help us with those troubles.

What do you believe?


On any given day there are many news stories about people who believe many different things about religion. Some may not believe in any sort of god, man-made or otherwise. Some believe in only a man-made religion which is so focused on its “prophet” that they will kill you if you say anything bad about it at all. Some people believe in a religion which focuses on re-incarnation or coming back after death until you get it right. Boy, would that get old!

I don’t have the time nor the room to speak about all of the hundreds of religions in our world, but there is one that many people don’t like and some that do and it is Christianity. Some people hate it and the people who practice it just because and for no other reason than it has Jesus as its Messiah. Some hate it because He is a Jew and was raised that way so they won’t have anything to do with “that religion”.

Aren’t we supposed to be living in the twenty-first century? All of these racist ideas and bigoted ideas are supposed to be behind us aren’t they? I know that some of the references that I used in the first paragraph sound racist too, but that is not how they were meant. I am just pointing out that many, if not most, of the religions in our world are or were created by men. Some would even argue that Christianity was too but at least it does have a book which points to its Savior from beginning to end even if it started with Moses‘ books.

Jesus is even in the news today because they are reporting that they have supposedly found a piece of the cross that He was crucified on. Great news if it is but how are they going to prove it? Blood, tissue and DNA doesn’t survive that long (even if it did come from the Son of God)!

We are coming into a time in world history that, whether you believe it or not, is part of prophecy and is foretold to be the worst time in the history of the world. I don’t know when this time will come about but according to what has already happened, it won’t likely be long in coming. It is prophesied to be a time that according to:

Matthew 24:21-22: 21. For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. 22. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.

The Truth of God‘s Word speaks it as plainly as it can be said so will you examine your belief, your life against it and decide? We can and have come up with so many religions in the past two thousand years and many just in the past two hundred and yet only one holds the hope of eternity. I know it sounds narrow-minded, but if you had two paths that looked like you would survive a cataclysm and yet only one were solid enough to travel on, which would you choose? Especially if the safe one were narrow but solid and the other was wide but slippery, which would you choose?

 

What do you see here?


A picture is worth 1000 words. This safe has been through a lot. Image credit: “safe” – © 2007 Paul Keller – made available under Attribution 2.0 Generic

It has been through a tremendous fire with a lot of heat which is what did all of the damage to it. The fire was particularly hot but the safe was not breached, it seems that it was capable of still being locked even though the outside was scorched and then discarded. I see an analogy of our country and the state of religion in it.

Christians, whether black or white, have taken the heat from people who follow Islam and from people who don’t follow any religion at all. We have not been broken, we have not stopped being Christians but there are some who are discarding their belief in Jesus or their religion. Why is this happening?

Is it because of the state of our country and its economy? Is it because of the state of relations between the so-called “races” of people in our country? Now, before anyone gets all bent out of shape, the reason that I have races in quotes is because God did not make us this way! God created mankind! We are all the same race, whether your skin is white or black, yellow or brown or any shade between those. Our main difference is cultural. There are cultural differences between most everyone on earth regardless of where you may live.

We are brought up by our parents and grand-parents into a culture, regardless of where you live. You may be brought up in a community in Chicago or Detroit or New York, but your culture will be in line with those that you are around.

Christian’s, regardless of race, should follow Jesus’ example. He didn’t pay attention to the cultural norms of his people, He spoke to women and to Samaritans which other Jews actively avoided. He healed lepers, he touched them which no one in His culture would do. We are to be His hands, His eyes, His feet in our time because others need to know Him. How will they know about Him if we don’t take Him with us through our actions or our words?

How can we possibly fulfill the commission that Jesus gave us to take the gospel to every nation and tribe if we don’t do it? If our cultural differences keep us apart and separate us into “us” and “them”, how can we show each other the love of Christ?

At the beginning of this post there is a picture of a burned safe which had been discarded. It did what it was supposed to do because it protected the contents to the best of its ability from the fire. That is what Christians are supposed to be doing too…protecting others from the fire of hell by telling them about the love and forgiveness of God.

Then, telling them about what Jesus did for each of us regardless of our skin color or our race or our culture. He did it for all of us and if you need to know what “it” is I am going to tell you: He took the punishment and the torture of being apart from God as well as the punishment of the cross for our sins!

God loves each of us, and it doesn’t matter which culture we claim or what skin color we have but in order for us to be considered a child of God and forgiven, we have to accept Jesus’ sacrifice and believe that it was for us because it was! The way that the world has everyone thinking is about groups of people and we need to look at each other as individuals. Each of us is unique and different but we are all the same in God’s eyes!

The contents of that safe may have burned up, but it did its job as well as it could. It may not have been designed to take as much heat as it looks like it was exposed to, but we are. Our character is molded by our culture and that character is what we should be showing the world. If your character and your ability is modeled after Christ, then they will see Him and that is the best that we can do as individuals because we were created to be mankind and have a relationship with each other and with God.

Your life and mine is but a whisper


If we look at the time of our existence, the time that we have to make a difference, it truly is but a whisper. Like smoke or your breath in winter, there but a moment and then gone. I know that many look at this and say: “What about those who live to be 8 or 9 decades old or more?”

Is that a really long time in comparison to one thousand years or more? It is not and we were created by God with an immortal soul, one that will never die. So, when you compare our lifetime with an eternity that doesn’t have an ending, it doesn’t matter if we lived for five hundred years it is still like a puff of smoke.

What will you do with the little time that you have? Will you use it selfishly, doing what you want, playing around like a child most of your life and then wondering why you feel so empty? Many people try to fill that empty space with all sorts of fun things like drinking alcohol or using drugs to make them “feel better” but what do those things do for you? Make you feel worse in the end. I know because I have been there. I did those things, even though at the time I supposedly knew Jesus. I wanted to see what the fuss was about.

I didn’t like the way that I felt afterward because I usually felt worse than I had before. Our life and what we do with it is supposed to mean something, we are here to do the work that God has placed us here for. But the only way that we will ever learn that purpose is to submit our life and our hearts to Jesus. I know, submission is not something which we like to do. But, consider this: Jesus came from Heaven to be clothed in humanity in order to be the perfect sacrifice that would pay the penalty for everyone’s sin (from the beginning to the end of the age).

He did this for each one of us and He would’ve done it even if there was only one person to be saved! That kind of love is the kind that we don’t understand and cannot understand with our limited perspective.

God loves each of us enough that He sent a part of Himself to take the punishment for us because there was no other way to do it. He knew this from the beginning, but He allowed us to try our way first and He still allows us the choice, even though it grieves His heart when we don’t choose to ask Jesus into our lives.

Our purpose which we were created for is to glorify God and His mercy and to tell others about Him. The talent that each of us has in our chosen profession, whatever that may be, is secondary to this. The short time that we have to accomplish our life and our purpose is the only time that we will have prior to eternity. Life doesn’t end when your body dies, because your soul lives on.

God is in control of all things and works toward the completion of His purpose whether we can see it or not. The so-called “ruler” of this world, Satan, thinks that he can win but a created being cannot overpower the Creator! Satan hates us because God intended to give us dominion over the earth and all of creation which God placed here. He also hates us because of the favor that God bestowed on us even though we are made of clay. The favor that we received is our soul, the breath of God which made us the way we are and what we are to be!

Nothing can separate us from God’s love except us. We can choose to walk away from it, not believe in it or deny Him altogether…but He still loves us! It is our pride that causes most of our problems today because it is the principle sin! It was pride that was used against us when Satan tempted Eve and Adam and we have been falling into it ever since. Comments are welcome, but advertisements will be deleted.

Being a religious person doesn’t make any difference?


I saw this on the news today and I wonder just what people think will make a difference in our society? Religion itself has gotten a bad reputation in the past few years because of the problems which have cropped up in churches in many places. But you know you can be religious about many different things. You can be religious about the way you cook your food or how you put your clothes on a certain way or even about going to the golf course or fishing. People can make a religious experience out of most anything, but what about your faith?

Do you have faith in the sun coming up in the morning? You really don’t have to, because you know it will. What about the moon rising later in the day or after the sun goes down? Faith doesn’t really come into play there either because you know that these things will happen.

Religion and faith together can be an explosive combination, especially when you are so caught up in emotional issues and a religion which stirs these to a point where many people get uncontrollably caught up in what their teachers teach them. I am trying to be as politically correct as possible here so I really won’t offend anyone. The point is that our individual faith, regardless of which “religion” it happens to be in, is our own.

But, what will you do with that religion or lack of faith when you are confronted after your death by God Himself who is the final judge of our lives? What can you say to Him about your religion which will make a difference? If you never accepted Jesus and the sacrifice which He made to reconcile us to God, there isn’t much that you can say. God knows your heart and every word which has come from your mouth. If you have accepted Jesus as your Savior, then He will be beside you as your life is judged, if not you will stand alone.

What then? Would you want to be standing in front of the Creator of the universe with nothing except your deeds and your personal “righteousness” which is as Isaiah 64: 6 says:

“But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags;
and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”

Unless we have put on the righteousness of Christ, God sees us as we are and we cannot enter into Heaven in that way. What many people today do is to create their own version of “God”, one that is acceptable to them and doesn’t judge them for their personal faults but this is doing nothing except delaying the inevitable. We will all be judged by God, the One True God, whether we are clothed in the righteousness of Jesus or not. If we did things in this life while belonging to Him, we will be rewarded if not then those things will be judged on their merit if any, except without Christ those merits will mean nothing.

How can our lives really mean anything or have any meaning at all without Christ? To each of us, our lives do mean something, but when you look at eternity once your life here ends, without Jesus eternity is not something that anyone would want to experience.

I know that there are many who think that life ends completely when we die, but we were created as eternal beings and part of us does live on. Without Jesus, it will not be an enjoyable eternity but with Him we will not be without anything good . You can choose whether to believe and accept Him as your Savior or not, many don’t wish to believe in Him at all. Satan knows that He is and believes that He is but he won’t worship Him and that is his downfall, don’t let it be yours.

What is the truth?


Is the truth found in our everyday lives? Can each of us have our own version of what is true or not? If we did, then everyone would be fighting over which truth was or is the real one! How can we know which truth is the right one? Is it the one that we are taught as children by our parents or is the truth that we are taught in school or college the correct one? What about if we make up our own truth, wouldn’t that be the one for us? If so, then which truth is the one for my next door neighbor or the people who live in the next country?

People have been arguing over the truth or a lie for centuries without either side knowing which one is correct. So, how can we be sure about the validity of the truth? The only real, way is to ask the author and finisher of Truth, Jesus! How can we know what the truth is if we don’t read God‘s Word on it because His Word is truth!

The Word of God is the truth regardless of what truth you may be looking for. So how can we know that it is the truth? Simple, if God’s Word is not the truth, then we have absolutely no hope!Nothing in the mind of man can save us from the judgement to come if we have not accepted Jesus as our Savior!

There is no religion which was conceived by man which will get you into Heaven because we are sinful creatures! We are not able to save ourselves from destruction and judgement and we cannot be sinless on our own merits. Jesus came to pay the price for us because He is the only One who could and He did! He obeyed the Father‘s will and submitted Himself to the hands of man to be put to death on the cross! The only thing that we can do is to trust in Him and believe in Him and the work that He did for us, then submit our life to Him so that we can tell others!

The Truth is that God loved us before we were born and sent His perfect Son to be the sacrifice which would satisfy all of the requirements of the Law that we cannot! Jesus did this for all of mankind, whether we each accept it as a gift of grace from God or not is our choice! It is not forced upon us, we are not required to act on this knowledge but it is for our own good that we do so! It is provided for us, without cost or obligation, but we need to realize that it is for our own salvation and for the glory of God! It is our responsibility to give our lives as living sacrifices to God daily because it is the least that we can do in light of what He did for us.

The truth is that God does not need us, but He wants us to know that He loves us and has provided all of the provision, the sacrifice needed for us to have the righteousness of Christ imputed to us through our acceptance of Him! God created each of us with knowledge of Him and the moral goodness that is needed for us to live in our societies, whether we have lived that way or not is our own choice and the product of our upbringing. Even those who have never had a sermon preached to them know that there is something more than what they have, and they search for it. They try to find it in many things or in drugs or alcohol or even sex but none of these satisfies their craving because the only way to fill that empty space is with Jesus!

 

Our cluttered, busy lives


Have you noticed that your life and the lives of many people are so cluttered with stuff to do and things which need to be done that there is no time to do them all? All of these electronic devices and gadgets which were supposed to make our work life and our daily lives more relaxing and easier to manage have actually done the opposite! Those of us who have cell phones and the coverage to use them, are constantly connected to e-mail, Facebook, Twitter or some other service that pings us all of the time. We are never disconnected unless we get to an area that doesn’t have coverage and even then…we panic! Until we are connected again, then we feel that life can go on. Why?

Why do we have to be connected all of the time? Our data, our lives should not revolve around a device or a service that is not much more than a way to keep up with everything and everyone that we have added as a friend! Your life was not designed to be this way, your brain was not created to do this! Even though the use of these devices (I have one too) has caused many to seemingly attach them to their ears and never put them down, we are supposed to be following and speaking to God in this way as well! In Deuteronomy 6:7 it says: “Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” Of course it is referring to the Ten Commandments, but the point of this is that we are to think about, meditate on God’s Word during our day, using its wisdom as a guidebook for our life. Many of us have replaced it with our cell phones. Granted, there are “apps for that” which will allow you to read God’s Word on your phone, but do we do that?

Being connected to the world through our phones is fine, but we need to stay connected to God as well. If you are not saved or have just brushed off religion or Christianity all together as a bunch of nonsense, I pity you. Many of you will be thinking at this point that you don’t want my pity, but the reason for it is simple. If you don’t accept Jesus as your Savior, then your eternal destination will not be an enjoyable experience at all. Each of us has a choice and it is simple, which is why many people think that it is too simple! That choice is between doing what we feel like doing or giving our heart and our life to Jesus and submitting ourselves to His will and not our own.

The consequences of not giving your life and your heart to Him, in this life, are few. You will be able to live and go on with your life without Him, but the comfort and strength that you would’ve had access to won’t be there. There will always be an empty space in your soul and in your heart where He should be, and you will feel it. Trying to fill it with something else or someone else won’t work until you realize Who needs to be there and ask Him to come in.

Being connected to the world all of the time is fine, but being connected to Jesus is much better! It is better for you, it is better for your friends and family, and it is better for eternity! Think about it.

The Love Revolution – Sermon of the Week


I am a pastor of a small church and I really liked this post. So much so that I re-blogged it here. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did. 🙂

What is the difference between religion and Christianity?


There are thousands of religions in the world, but there is only one Christianity. Religion from a Christian perspective and viewpoint depends upon the doctrine that you hold to, whether it is Mormon, Baptist, Methodist, Protestant, Episcopal, or Catholic or any number of other doctrines in the world. Religion can be anything that you might want to worship and there are enough religions in the world to prove that, and yet other than Christianity none of them have a living Savior! Their founders are dead or imagined, made up in the minds of men, and yet each of those religions may have thousands or millions of followers, some may have billions of followers. The point that I am making is this…has anyone thought about which way, which path or road should you be following?

I am not trying to cause any more divisions between churches or denominations. What I am trying to point out is that true Christians are in all denominations, Christian denominations. There are also many who believe that they are Christians when their heart and their life doesn’t show it.

Here is a graphic which shows how much the world’s beliefs have changed in the past one hundred years or so: christianity-graphic-01

In 1910, America had 27.1 percent of the world’s Christians while Europe had over sixty-five percent. In 2010, the percentage in America has grown as well as other parts of the world, while the Christian population of Europe has shrunk to 25.9 percent. In the same amount of time, other religions have taken hold in many parts of the world which were Christian at one time. This graphic is seen more clearly if you open it in a new tab of your browser. The point that I am making is that our world is changing rapidly, especially when you consider cultures and their religions. Many things have happened in our world to cause this such as airline travel and other technological advances. The point is that there are more people claiming to be Christians but there are also more people who claim to adhere to other religions or even no religion at all.

What can be done about this situation? If you can evangelize those who have not chosen a religion or a belief, great. But many people who have chosen or may not have chosen, don’t want to be bothered by us or the religion that we represent at all! They don’t want to hear it and have closed their minds and hearts to anything that might point them in the direction of salvation.

It wouldn’t matter if you were the greatest evangelist in the world for some people, they have their minds made up and nobody is going to change their view except God Himself! If God has determined that they are going to be used by Him for some purpose, then He will get their attention eventually.What about those who are modern day Pharisees? They see themselves as Christians and don’t believe that they need salvation but are not followers of Jesus. I am not trying to be a judge of their faith, but if the fruit is not visible in their lives, then what are they?

Usually their reasons go something like this: “I have always been a member of this church, since my youth. I have served as a teacher in Sunday school and on various committees in the church as well as giving my tithes on a regular basis. How dare you question my faith!” Well, as a comical story I heard once went, “I could live in a garage all of my life but I still wouldn’t have four wheels and an engine!” You do not become something or absorb a faith and live it just because you have been exposed to it for many years! The messages that you have heard over the years may have been good, but they did not penetrate the soil of your heart and take root there!

We are accountable to God for the light that we have heard and read and lived by whether we have taken it into our heart and our life or not.Because of this there will be many who will be astonished on that day when Christ says, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” Don’t let that day be the day that you hear those words, give your heart to Jesus while there is life in your body so that you can serve Him until He calls you home! Then you will hear something like: “Welcome home, good and faithful servant!”