Tag: Christianity

A new beginning!


We are coming to the end of one year and the beginning of another, so what do we do with it? Celebrate the fact that the world did not end as the Mayan’s predicted for one thing! We could begin our new year with a passion for living to start the year off right. If you intend to do that, what kind of passion and for whom would you begin with? Many people would like to say that their life and their passion comes first and to many people that is exactly what the New Year is about. There are also many people who are in need of basic necessities for life, what about them? Can we start a new tradition by giving of ourselves and our money to those in need. Not organizations mind you, I am talking about finding people in your community or your state that really need help! You could give of your time to help fix up someone’s home or bring food to someone who may be going through a hard time financially.

There are many ways to help others and you can think of other ways but what about the church? Those who are supposed to be servants of God are supposed to be doing this already, so what is the hold up? There are people in the church and around churches all over this country who really need help. When the church first began to take shape at Pentecost, they were selling what they had and giving to whoever had a need. Now, I am not saying that we should sell what we have in order to give to those who need but we can give what we can. God blesses a cheerful giver and He will bless your gift no matter what the amount or what the gift may be. If it is time, He will bless you with more. If it is money, your finances will be blessed. There are multiple ways that God can and will bless you when you give, but you must give expecting Him to bless and not expecting that the person that you are giving to will give to you. If your heart is right with God and your motives are right then you and the gift that is given will be blessed.

The new year also comes with other beginnings, such as your walk with Jesus and your commitment to Him and His kingdom. Have you committed your life to Him? Many people across the world have decided that they don’t believe in Him which is a sad situation. Even Satan believes in Him because he was created by Him! Belief doesn’t mean that you have to follow Him, but the consequences are not good if you don’t.

Your life here is like a rehearsal for eternity and your performance (belief or non-belief) determines your place in eternity. Your sins that are committed here, big or small, don’t really matter much but your acceptance of Jesus as the Son of God and as your Savior does! What you do with the knowledge that you have gained from attending church services or listening to sermons on radio or television is your choice. No one is going to force you to accept Jesus or even to follow Him once you have accepted Him, but the rewards in eternity are totally different from not accepting Him. Will you give Jesus a chance in your life this year?

The only things that you may lose by accepting Him are: an eternity in hell, habits which may be bad for your health or your marriage or both, so-called friends who may not be your friends when your life changes after accepting Him. These are things which you could do without anyway, but doing without Jesus is not a good decision in light of eternity! You may enjoy temporary joy or other things in this life without Him, but you will not enjoy eternity at all without Him. Think about this decision because it really is one that will affect your life long after your life on earth is over. Remember, this life only the beginning!

Happy New Year!!

So much misconception about 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 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 much. If the repentance of your heart is not genuine, God will know. Read and learn from the Bible. God 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 will it end?


The time is not yet for our world to end. The looming date set by the Mayan calendar is going to come and pass but we will have Christmas and New Year‘s day to follow. The ending that I am speaking of is the hatred toward Christians. Every news outlet that I know of, with the exception of one, seems to discount or discredit only one religion and that is Christianity. Every other religion in the world, regardless of how silly it may be, is fine. Why is that?

The only reason that I can think of is because Christianity has a living Savior and the Bible to back up its claims. No other religion does this. The places and people of the Bible can be traced by history and archaeology to the places that are referenced in the Bible. A few other religions have this as well but not to the extent that the Bible does.

Many people have claimed that the Bible is just a made up story, a book full of fairy tales. The historical record of the Israelite people shows that this book is true and that it is linked to them and their history, so why is it so important that the Bible be discredited? I think it is because of fear.

People are afraid that it may be true and if it is, then all of it is true and our world needs the hope that is found in it. If the words and the message of it is true, then there are many people who are needing salvation through Jesus. Why is that such a bad thing? He doesn’t require you to go by the rules of the Old Testament Jewish laws. The only ones that are even mentioned in Jesus’ teachings are the Ten Commandments.

Is it possible that people just don’t want to be responsible for their actions and the things that they say or do? Have we become so callous that we want a society that is that “self driven”? Humanity has always had a tremendous capacity for evil thoughts and actions, regardless of the religion of the time. We have never shown, in any redeemable way, that lack of religion has made things better. In countries where organized religion was outlawed, the people were controlled by fear of the government itself.

That is no way to live. Satan fell from his position because of pride and we are subject to the same thing. Without Christ in your life and sometimes with Him, pride still gets in the way but you can overcome it through Him. Our world is going to end. When will it happen? No one can predict that because God is the only one who knows the day and the time. The surety and the hope that we have through Christ is that His word is true and the prophecies contained in the Word are sure to come to pass because most of the prophecies that are in it have already come to pass.

There is no part of this book that is fiction, nor is it fantasy, it is real and true. You can choose to believe it or not, but that doesn’t change the words or the prophecies contained in it. You can choose to believe or not believe in gravity but that won’t change the fact that it is there either. When the time comes for you to stand in front of God at your own judgement, you will realize too late that the Word and the truth contained in the Bible are true. Although nothing can be done about it then.

We only have the time that is given to us on earth to realize what is true and what is not. The decision is yours to make. So which will it be? Follow Jesus into eternity or spend eternity wishing that you had?

What can we do for the world?


We as Christians, are supposed to be the light of the world but are we? The few of us who are dedicated to furthering Christ‘s teachings in the world have little influence in it. Our sphere of speaking engagements and preaching opportunities doesn’t extend very far from our homes. We are not international evangelists, so how can we possibly make a difference?

In all seriousness, we can’t do it without Christ’s help and influence behind the words which we do speak and the limited amount of influence that we do have. Without Him, we are nothing but with Him our words and our actions can make a difference. The difference will be in accordance with His will however so don’t expect things to go as you might hope. Our own feelings and wants are not a part of the equation when God‘s hand and His Spirit are involved. Our prayers to Him are for our benefit but ultimately, He is in control of everything.

I am not writing this to dampen the spirit of those who truly are followers of Christ and have their hope in Him but we have to face reality. The reality of our world is that even though Satan has control over most of the governments of earth, God is still in control of what he can do. We are not left alone, without help. God is behind the scenes, but in control and that is what we have to hold on to in order to be strong enough to stand up for what is right and for those who need to know Him. Even though there are many places where God is not known, His presence and the works of His hands are always visible to everyone. So no one has an excuse for being unable to know about God or who He is.

God’s handiwork is evident in the night sky or the cry of a newborn baby or a new sunrise. The beauty of His creation is that it is because He put it there. Nothing and no one is here by accident or evolution, regardless of the scientific community believing otherwise and trying to teach it as fact.

There will always be people who don’t want to hear about religion or God or creation and that is fine. They are free to believe whatever they wish to believe, but what if all of Christianity and the Bible is true? When you die you don’t get a second chance. There are no “do-overs” or re-incarnation for anyone to fix what was done wrong in their previous life. Your life here and now is the chance that you get, regardless of how long it is. If you choose to believe that there is no God and that you just go to sleep when you die and that is it, no one on earth can change your mind.

Although, when you open your eyes in eternity after death what will you say to the One that you stand before? It won’t be a blank screen staring back at you and it won’t be a computer asking for your ID card. It will be the Creator of the Universe who may ask you “What were you thinking?” or “Did you really think all of this was an accident”? It is possible that the Bible is true because the Creator does not lie! The words that He gave to His prophets and to His disciples are all true, whether you choose to believe it or not!

Yet, there are many who will wake up in eternity to find that it is real. Then what? At that point for them, the Truth is standing in front of them and cannot be denied except that it is too late. You can only accept Christ while you are alive, in the flesh. Once you have crossed over into eternity, what decisions were made here are cast in stone and cannot be changed. Make sure that you have checked all the possible explanations, especially the one about Christ and His saving grace for you before you die. Decide to make a difference in your life, because He will.

You almost persuaded me to be a Christian


 

“Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian”. Acts 26:28

King Agrippa’s comment to Paul is the only time in the New Testament that anyone said to a disciple that they were almost persuaded to become a Christian. These eight words give a sad testimony to King Agrippa and yet, many people say this today, nearly word for word. It is a frightening thought to me to see or hear someone say that because the punishment for those who have rejected God‘s offer of salvation is spiritual death, eternal separation from God!

God loves all of us and yet we, in our own ignorance, tell lies, we cheat, we commit all kinds of sinful acts daily which cut us off from communication with Him even now. He can’t and won’t hear us when we have become defiled by the world and the things in it that draw us away from Him. In many people’s eyes, the things which come between us and God on a daily basis doesn’t matter in the here and now. But, just for a moment, think about this: we are going to be in eternity whether we are in heaven or hell!

True, what you say or do on a daily basis may not hurt anyone right now but if you are the one saying something hurtful or out of character for a true Christian, who is it hurting? You in the long run, because you are going to pay for it by losing something which you would have gained in eternity! It also may hurt someone who hears what you say or sees what you did. Your witness as a Christian is visible to those around you all the time, especially your family but also your students, your friends and co-workers. Every word and deed, small or large will have an impact on your life now and in eternity and it will have an impact on someone else’s life too!

Being “almost” a Christian is like not being one at all! Any little misstep that you make in front of someone, regardless of who it may be, can be eternally damaging. That is why we have to crucify our “self”, the person who wants to say what they always said or do the things that they have always done; it has to be done daily because if you don’t stop that “old you” from showing up, it will happen again and again until no one will be able to tell if you ever changed or not!

Jesus was ordained to follow the path that He did from the beginning. It was not as a result of what happened in Eden, God knew it was going to happen. and we were purchased with His blood, every person from that point until the last person on earth is born and chooses to follow Christ or not. They and we are all forgiven, it only matters who decides to choose and which choice is made, whether to follow Christ as your Savior or not. That is the only choice which really makes a difference in your life now and in eternity!

What about those people who have not accepted Jesus as their savior, do they have to follow the same rules as we do? Actually, they don’t because they are not bound to any commitment to Jesus. They are free to do as they please. Many people would comment that that is unfair but how is it unfair? Being bound to Jesus is a choice, a choice that we make as Christians, while the same is also true about people who have chosen not to follow Christ. They have chosen to be committed to their own beliefs and moral codes, regardless of the eternal consequences.

Their choice is for their immediate satisfaction, right now and they choose not to worry about eternity until it gets here, if it ever does. Now, we know that eternity is true because Jesus spoke of it in the Bible, by many who do not believe don’t think that there is anything beyond this life. Many who do not follow Jesus, don’t come to church and even if they do, they don’t believe what the Bible says so they don’t “listen” to what they hear in church anyway. Their ears heard it but they choose not to listen, yet when they cross through the door of death and find their judgment waiting for them, it is too late to decide then.

What can we do for our loved ones if they are un-decided about their Christian life or whether they will even follow Christ? Pray for them, witness to them, answer their questions, bring them to church with you. After all of this and they are still un-decided, pray for them some more, but don’t push because other than prayer will seem as if you are doing just that, pushing. Many people don’t like “pushy Christians” and they will put even more distance between themselves and you and Jesus! At this point, the seeds have been planted so let God grow them. The Holy Spirit will take over as the gardener and it is out of your hands.

How can we know that we are saved?


Is it possible for us to really know that we are saved? According to the Bible and most preachers, yes it is possible for us to know for sure. How many people know for sure? There is no answer to this question because the relationship that you have or don’t have with God is your business and it is between you and Him. There is no foolproof way of knowing if someone is saved by talking with them or looking at them because we don’t look any different from the outside. The proof is on the inside and that is where God sees the change and knows that there has been a change. We see it from the outside by the lifestyle that the person leads or the changes in their lifestyle.

When there is a true spiritual change in your heart and your soul, then it will show by your character and the changes in that character. If you were a person who got drunk every weekend, like I did when I was young and foolish, and after you accept Jesus you don’t want to do that anymore then that is the first visible change in your life. The language that you used before may change immediately or gradually, but eventually it will change. People will notice these changes.

I am not saying that it is required of every person to go through these changes, but consider this: if you wouldn’t do certain things in front of your mother or grandmother, then you shouldn’t do them when you have given your life to Christ. Mainly because He and His spirit are with you constantly after you have accepted them into your life. So, they are with you no matter where you go or what you are doing or saying from that point on. Would you take your pastor to a strip club? If you wouldn’t then you shouldn’t be going either is the point I am making.

In the book of Romans, Paul wrote: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. Christ died for your sins and mine and everyone else on the planet, but He was raised to life everlasting on the third day. He did all that was necessary for us to become Christians, all that we have to do is believe in Him and ask Him into our hearts. Then, follow Him like the disciples did. Follow Him like many people follow their favorite singer or sports figure, but follow Him!

The change that comes into your life after receiving Christ is not immediate, but it is miraculous because you are not the same person that you were before and you can’t go back to the life that you had. Your life and your outlook on life is different, because your heart has changed. Once that has happened, everything that you are and everything that you do will reflect Christ to the rest of the world. You are responsible for your witness and everyone will be watching!

How does death affect you?


The life that each of us lives here is dependent upon the life that we are brought up in. How we are brought up by our parents or even the lack of parental figures can have a great impact on our life. But, what about our spiritual life? Our parents or grand-parents have a tremendous impact on how we view God or our belief in Him.

What about death? Does it have an effect on your life? It depends on who dies. If they are close to you like your father or mother, then yes it has a great impact on your life for years to come. Whether you admit it or not, it does have an impact on your life. Whether the death happens at a young age or if you are an adult also makes a difference.

What about your knowledge of their relationship with Jesus. Does that make a difference in how their death has an effect on you? For Christians, it does have a great impact because we have the hope of seeing them again in heaven one day. Then we will have an eternity to truly get to know them and understand them instead of the limited amount of time we have in this life.

Time, during our life on earth, takes away many joys of living because between our job and the things that have to be done for our children such as school, home-work, games, recitals, etc. all seem to get in the way. We do enjoy our children and being with them but wouldn’t it be better if we could get to know them individually, rather than watching them grow up in relation to other kids and their peers? I don’t mean to take their friends away or to school them at home (although that is what I do because I can’t afford the schools in our area), but to really get to know your children you have to spend time with them.

To get to know your friends, you have to spend time with them as well. “Facebook friends” are acquaintances, unless you live in a town that includes all of them and you take the time to get to know all of them! Many people could not know, really know, all of the people in their friend’s list. What about knowing Jesus? He is the most important friend that you can ever have and yet many just know about Him. They have heard about Him in church or from family, but they don’t know Him!

Death may not seem to have much in relation to knowing your friends or Jesus, but it does. Your friends’ death impacts your life. Your death will impact your family and your friends lives. If you are close friends, it will be a more profound impact. Just as the death of Lazarus had an impact on Jesus, it also had a profound impact on his sisters. When Jesus came to the tomb, “he wept” but He did not weep for Lazarus. He was weeping because of those who did not believe who He was, even after raising Lazarus from the dead.

Death is a great equalizer. No one can escape it and it comes to rich and poor, old and young, Communist or Democratic, and all continents and to those who believe in Christ and those who do not. Compared to eternity, which comes after death, our life is like a puff of smoke. I know that some may not believe that they have an eternal soul and I don’t have the proof to give you. But we will all find out about it after our death and our belief in eternity or not won’t change the reality that we will find ourselves in at that point.

Look for Jesus and salvation through belief in Him because eternity is a long time and I would rather meet you in Heaven than find out that you are in hell because of a decision not to come to know Him.

Do you know Jesus?


There are many in the world today who have either turned their back on Christ or they have never invited Him into their life in the first place. Many people live in areas where belief in Him would mean their death or imprisonment, but there are still followers of Christ there anyway. In my home country of the United States, there are many who are turning their back on religion, Christianity in particular and yet in other places in the world there are many who are embracing Jesus and the love that He offers them.

Why are there such divisions, so many who just turn away from Christ and from the way of life that He offers? It seems that there are so many choices, so many “ways” to serve a god and so many “gods”, how can this be? The trees and the fish cannot save you from going to hell. Your job, your spouse, your children or grand-children cannot save you, your grand-parents or your ancestors cannot save you either. What is the attraction to everything that is created, the creation instead of the Creator? Why can’t we realize that the One who Created it all is the One that we are to humble ourselves before?

The life that you have, and everything that is yours was given to each of us by God. We have these things because of Him, not because of something that we have done. Your job, your pay, your home, your family was given and provided for you by God because everything belongs to Him and always has. God’s Son, Jesus, came to give us a chance at being adopted into God’s family. All that we have to do is believe that He died for us and ask Him to come into our hearts.

When that happens, we change from the sinful people that we are into children of God. The transformation doesn’t give us the ability to be “gods”, it gives us the ability to come before Him and serve Him. I know that there are some people, in fact there are many people, who don’t like the idea of serving or being a servant. But, consider this, you and all of us were born as rebellious children. Our nature is that way from the time that we are small and only gets more so as we get older. Notice, I did not say “as we mature”, because we don’t mature until that side of our nature is either under the control of Jesus or by some force of our own will through meditation, martial arts or some other “mind over self” control.

When you have given your heart to Christ, He will come in and begin to clean things up, but this process is not immediate. Just as polishing a piece of brass takes time, so does our “clean up” take time. It may not be enjoyable and it likely won’t be fun but it is necessary. When you see an artist or a sculptor working on something whether it is a painting or a bowl, it doesn’t show up as a finished product immediately. It takes time. Just as when we pray for something like a healing in our family or a job, the answer doesn’t come the next day. It may not come for a week or two or maybe even a few months, but it will come in God’s time.

We have to understand this and at the beginning of our walk through life with Him, it is difficult. It is the most difficult lesson that we have to learn, but until we learn patience enough to wait on God and His answer, in His time, we will be frustrated and sometimes angry with Him. Asking for patience from God is a prayer which will be answered but you may not like the answer. Because in the cultivation of patience, God will try yours to the point of breaking. As the adage goes,”be careful what you ask for”!

God loves each of us far more than we can understand because He knew us before the foundation of the world. He could see into the future because He is outside of time itself and knows the beginning from the end. He knew then and knows now what you are doing and what you will do in the next second, the next minute, or hour or week or even the next decade if you have that long. He knows when you are going to die and the cause of your death, but He also when you will decide to give your life to Him or not. Nothing is a surprise to God!

The time and place of your birth, your life and your death are all known to God and have been known by Him since before the world began. Adam‘s sin the the Garden was known, Satan‘s rebellion against God was also known before it happened. God would not be God if He did not know these things, but He does. Give Him a chance in your heart and in your life before your life is over, because once you are before Him at your judgement it is too late. Your chance to come to Him is now during your life here, once the door to this life has closed and you stand before Him there is no second chance. Salvation is only a prayer away, just a few seconds of time to change your life forever. Think about it.

Is atheism better?


 

Is is possible to believe in nothing or no one but yourself? It seems that it is in the culture that we live in today.

The number of books on the rejection of religion and God has exploded in the past few years. Is this something which could have been foreseen? Yes and it was foretold but there are many who have refused to teach or preach on this subject.

Your life and mine would never have happened if God did not exist. Chance and accidental combinations of chemicals can produce nothing. If that were possible, Europe and all of the countries and towns that were bombed during WWII would have never had to rebuild. The pieces would have flown apart and rearranged themselves and all would have been as it was.

Chaos does not create order, it destroys it by rearranging order into disorder. It seems that it would take an awful lot of faith in accidental order causing what we see in the universe. Is it possible that all of the whole cosmos came from an explosion with no intelligence directing it? According to scientists in our day and time, it is possible because natural forces would take all the matter from that explosion and arrange it where it needed to be. But..what about you, the fish in the ocean, the bacteria that live in total darkness at the scalding vents in the ocean, the redwood trees? These did not come about by accident and they did not evolve over millions or billions of years. The Creator, God, created those and many more. He is the “director” of the universe.

He is the one who put you together in your mother’s womb to be the person that He knows that you can be. Not what society says or dictates but what God knows you can do and be in His kingdom! Since the world that we live in is part of His kingdom and everything in it belongs to Him, why not accept it? A belief in the existence of something does not dictate whether it exists or not. If it exists then your belief in it or not has no effect on its existence. We can’t change the way the universe is or the order of things just by our thoughts and feelings.

If that were the way that things worked, then we could choose not to believe in the tax code and just not pay our taxes and everything would be fine, right? No, because as rational people we have to go along with the laws in the country that we live in and belief in those laws has nothing to do with the consequences or whether we think they may be right or not.

The world that we live in was created by God and the laws of the universe were too. Regardless of your belief or unbelief in the existence of God, He is there and always has been. His love for each of us has been there from the beginning as well and your belief or not doesn’t change that. God did not trouble Himself when He created you or this universe because it was no trouble for Him at all! He spoke and the universe and most everything in it came into being. The only created being that He took time with was man and He didn’t have to do that, but He did. God used His hands and formed mankind out of the clay of the earth and blew into his nostrils the breath of Life. We hold a special place in creation because of that.

Belief or not doesn’t change it and never will. God sent His Son, Jesus, into the world to take the sins and the punishment for them on Himself so that we could find grace in Him and put on His righteousness. He died and then rose again so that we will be able to have eternal life through Him, if we will just ask Him into our lives. Being saved by God’s grace through Jesus is our choice, just as believing in God or Jesus is a choice. The choice that you make will determine your place in eternity. Which choice will you make?

 

Your life’s purpose


Did you know that just twenty-one days elapse from conception to the first heartbeat when you are still in your mother’s womb? From that point on your life is begun and your parent’s lives will never be the same. The things that you desire in life that give you a purpose or worth, make you feel significant or accepted, give you security or cause you to feel loved or allow you to experience the beauty of God’s creation. These are the things which you will follow after and crave  most of your life. Can they be found in one place or person?

The answer is yes, they can be found in one person and His name is Jesus. The creation, of which we are a part of, is His doing. We are special to Him and to God, so why don’t we feel special? Did we do something wrong? Can we fix it if we did?

Some of us do feel special because our parents and grand-parents reinforced that feeling. But are we special? To God we are special because He created each of us for a purpose and we are made for that purpose especially by Him.

The second question: Did we do something wrong? No, not exactly. We all do or say things that we regret later, it is just our human nature. That is the problem but we can’t blame everything that we say or do on that. We cannot abrogate or refuse to acknowledge our responsibility in life because of “human nature”. It is that nature that we have been handed down from antiquity that we must take control of but we cannot do it on our own strength. We have to allow Jesus into our life and our heart so that we can become someone better than we can become ourselves.

We can’t do it on our own. Regardless of the science-fiction stories of a utopian future where we all get along and disease and poverty don’t exist. That world is not possible without the rule of Christ in our lives and even then it would not work unless He was the ruler of the world as He will be.

But, the most important decision that you will make is whether to accept Him as Lord and Savior in your life and your heart. When you give your life to Him and give up your way of doing things in favor of His way, your life and the influence that it has on others will be changed dramatically. God loves you far more than you or I can possibly imagine and He wants the best for you. That does not mean that you will have millions of dollars or houses or anything that the world recognizes as “success”, but you will be successful in other ways, eternal ways.

The life that we have does not end when our physical body dies because God created us with an eternal spirit which will live on. Eternity makes this life seem like a puff of smoke so the influence that you have here needs to be based on following and loving Jesus, not on following what the world wants you to do.
Think about it. Pray about it and seek the wisdom that only God can provide through His Word, the Bible. Don’t just read it like a book, because it is the Creator‘s conversation with us and His people. Pray and ask Him to show you the wisdom that is intended for you and your situation. He will open your eyes and your heart so that you can see and understand that which you need.