Being a mouthpiece

Since I am a preacher, that is what I am seen as by most people…a mouthpiece for God’s Word. I read a few verses or maybe a chapter during the service on Sunday morning and then expound on what I have read and what the wisdom that God has given me tells me about this scripture. Moses was a mouthpiece and all of the prophets in the Bible were too. Jesus is a direct mouthpiece because He is the Living Word of God and His disciples were mouthpieces and teachers just as we are today.

Bridge2Salvation What is my point in this article today? Simply that God is awesome, Jesus is sitting at the right of His Father and the universe is under their control! Being the person who tells others about God and His Son, and thankfully I am not the only one doing this, is an awesome responsibility! But, I enjoy it!

God loves us and the story that is told in the Bible, from the beginning to the end, is the story of His love and compassion toward us all. While it is true that it starts out being a story about Creation and the Israelite nation, the wisdom contained within its pages is for all of us! Jesus came to tell that story more personally so that we could understand that God’s love doesn’t just mean something to one particular people, but it is expressed toward all of humanity through His death and resurrection!

God’s love and compassion for us are also expressed in His patience toward us because we are very stubborn in our sinful lives and we don’t want to follow His ways until we are ready. The problem with that is that we don’t have a clue about our the brevity of our lives! We are not guaranteed tomorrow or even tonight, so as the saying goes “today is the day of salvation”! Tomorrow isn’t here until it is and you may not have much time in the day or the week ahead to give your life to Jesus and repent of your sins.

None of us can know if we are going into the new year in a couple of weeks because it isn’t a certainty. A wreck or a heart attack or a stroke could take your life at any time between now and then and if you haven’t made the decision to follow Jesus and believe in His atonement for your sins, then you will cross from this life into judgment and hell.

God loves each of us and this is shown in His Word, so don’t wait until you find yourself in front of God and being judged for a life lived without Jesus or even believing in Him. Yes, each of us will be judged in one way or another. If you are a Christian and have Jesus as your Savior then you will be judged by what you did for God’s Kingdom.

If you are not a Christian, then every word and deed that you have ever done in your life will be brought before you to convict you of your sins and to prove that you deserve to be punished in hell. Not for the sins, but for refusing to give your heart to Jesus! That is the sin which condemns you to hell. Make sure of your salvation while you can in this life because when this one is over you can’t rewind and fix it.

Contentment

Are you content with your life? Sometimes I am but there are some months where the money and the bills don’t quite get together and I am sure that I am not the only one going through this! But, contentment with life or with your family and your Savior is another step in a totally different direction. Being content and happy with your family is an up and down ride. One day or maybe next week or an hour from now, it could all blow up in your face. That is what “walking with your family” means and just as Jesus spoke of walking with Him, your spiritual life can have ups and downs too.

There are times when you may have a day or two off from work and everything goes pretty well….then all hell breaks loose and things get sour quickly! A bill didn’t get paid on time or the dishes aren’t washed yet or someone woke up on a tack because of a dream or something. Yes, there are times where a pastor’s family life goes to hell too!

RomanRoad2Salvation Those are the days when I need a place to go to my office or even to the church and just pray and read the Bible with no phone calls or anything to interrupt the relative quiet. I say relative quiet because we have a couple of gravel pits close to us and there is always traffic going by, sometimes loudly.

Seeking God’s peace in spite of the sounds around you and the problems which will still be there is imperative for anyone, not just a pastor. You have to seek out the calming Presence in the midst of the storm because He is the only One Who can bring calm to it and give us the wisdom to get through it too. God loves each one of us, regardless of our religion or lack of faith and He loves us perfectly even when we haven’t made a decision to follow Him.

Some might wonder, “Why does God care about me?”. It is because He is our Creator, whether you believe it or not and He knows if or when you will seek Him out. He also knows the circumstances which will bring you closer to that point as well. Since God is omniscient then He also knows how to bring you into His Kingdom to do those things which He has planned for you to do.

Sometimes it takes many years to bring each of us to that point, then some of us hear His call when we decide to give our hearts to Jesus. Thankfully, God understands people being stubborn and hard-headed because He has had to deal with us from the beginning. I am not speaking about His people, the Israelites, but the entire human race. We have been rebelling against His ways for a long time and we are still doing it.

We don’t like some passages in the Bible or we don’t think we should be told what to do with our lives and we certainly don’t like His Truth to be absolute, even though it is. I pray that all of you who read this blog have given your heart to Jesus and are following Him in your life. If you are not or have not made that decision, then I suggest that you not wait too much longer. I don’t know when He will call the church home, but when that happens it will be much harder to make that decision from that point on.

So much disagreement!

5thingsgodwantsyou2know Why do we disagree with each other so vehemently? It seems that it doesn’t matter what religion or race or political party you belong to at the time, our differences of opinion and culture divide us so much that we can’t seem to find any common ground to work on!

Why!?

As a species and as actually ONE race being human beings or Homo sapiens if you want to get scientific about it, our skin color and our hundreds of different cultures divide us to the point of barely being in any kind of collective community! It seems that, if you ask a question on one side of a room and then ask the same question on the other side, you will come up with many, many different answers to that same question…even if it is a simple one!

We just can’t agree on much at all, except what color the Sun is and that grass is green when it has water.

Is it possible for us to work around those differences or maybe work through them in order to find a way to get along long enough to NOT kill each other over ideology or religion?

Truly…in the world today, with all of the “politically correct” police all over the place, I doubt that we would ever fix any of the problems which are in our society now! When people are being told that they can’t say certain things or they will be put in jail for using the improper pronoun in reference to a person, regardless of their “born gender”; I don’t see any possible way of getting our world into a more compassionate and tolerant world.

Search the scriptures to find the wisdom of God in all of this. Because His Word is the only truth which is actually True. I understand that is a statement which is intolerant and narrow-minded but consider the same restrictions from Islam toward many of our freedoms and the lifestyles of people in the world? They don’t just preach and tell unbelievers that their sins according to Allah and the Holy Koran are wrong, in many instances the infidels are shoved from a rooftop or in some other way killed!

Has a Christian or Jewish church or temple ever done such a thing? I realize that during the 1500’s and 1600’s there were beheadings and wars and things such as that by the “church” of the time, but I am speaking of now…today!? No, the church of today doesn’t condone any kind of killing because you are sinning against God, because Jesus said that we are to love our fellow-man as He loved the people around Him. You cannot love someone and kill them!

Seek Jesus out in your situation and in the lives of those around you. Tell them about His love for them and that it is available to all who will believe in Jesus! Do this while there is time and breath in our bodies, because when the Trumpet of God sounds it will be too late.

Do you believe?

There are many reasons today for belief in Jesus and yet there are many who do not believe in Him. How is this possible? Because, so many wish to choose their own truth, their own version of “Jesus”, their own version of “God” even. Do people do this? Absolutely!

You hear it in the news and on other websites where people express their beliefs like, “Truth is relative”, “My truth is different from yours”, etc.

Truth is NOT relative! The Truth of God’s Word is absolute which is what frightens people, because they don’t know what to do with it or how to live by it! In the book by A.W. Tozer The Crucified Life, Mr. Tozer tells us that “The Christian should not have a secular mind at all. If you are a Christian, you should “seek the things which are above”–there should be WomanbytheWell no worldly mind in you at all.”

Some people might ask, “Then how am I to pursue a career or do my housework or run my business?” Do all of these earthly things as sacrificial offerings to God, just as you give your life to Him and you give in tithes. Like the widow who gave two mites into the Temple offering, our daily work and our lives should be given to God as a sacrifice to Him daily.

A.W. Tozer died in 1963 yet much of the writings by him and others who knew him still apply to our churches today. Many of his books which were written nearly a decade before his death sound as if they are speaking directly to our generation. Just as the Bible speaks to us through prophecy in Daniel and the book of Revelation, his book speaks of the church leaving its first love.

Is belief so hard to accomplish in our time? I mean, it is or seems to be politically incorrect to be a Christian these days since all of our views are based upon the Bible. If you haven’t noticed this then you haven’t been watching much news today, although I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. There isn’t much good news on TV or the Internet these days.

That is why we must hold onto our beliefs as Christians. Study God’s Word and pray that you will not be deceived in the coming trials or hopefully you will be taken up when Jesus comes for the church one day. Remember, there are very few prophecies which need to happen before His call to the church to “come up here”. Make sure that you know where your heart is and whether you have given it to Jesus. If there is any doubt, be in prayer and ask Him to come into your life and change you from the inside out!

He came so that the debt for all would be paid, all that we have to do to receive eternal life is to believe in Jesus and ask for forgiveness, repenting of our old ways and turning toward Him, to follow His lead in our lives! A time of testing and tribulation is coming upon the world and if you haven’t given your life to Jesus, you will be tested through it. You can be saved during this time, but it will be harder to make that decision and stick to it through the persecution and hunger. Seek Him out while there is time to do so, please.