You are special!

God loves you and He created this world and each of us in it to be a blessing to Him and to each other. Do I believe this? Yes, I do. Why do I believe this? Because He says so in every book of the Bible. The entire Bible is God’s letter of love to us and an instruction book so that we know how to live in this life and prepare for the next life!

Some people, even professing Christians, don’t believe that the Bible is a document of infallible words and promises. I do believe it and I will tell you why. Because simply if there is an error or a man-made lie in any part of it, that invalidates all of it. Jesus said that “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Matthew 24:35 If the words written by the disciples will not pass away then it is inspired by the Spirit of God and that inspiration proves that God cannot lie! If He did, then He isn’t God! Also, if the New Testament is valid and it validates the Old Testament because when Jesus came that was the only Scripture available. God’s Word is true, Jesus was the Living Word, so there is no part of Scripture from the first line in Genesis to the last line of Revelation which isn’t true, period.

we obey

He loved us, so He obeyed the Father and went to the cross to pay for humanity’s sins. It is just that simple! The Creator became a human so that He could live a sinless life to pay for our sins. Is that enough to make you think that maybe I should be grateful and ask His forgiveness for those things which I have done? Consider that God, the Son and the Holy Spirit all were present and with each other before they created the universe and it was brought into being by the Word of God until they decided to make mankind in their image. Then, God formed man from the mud or clay and breathed the breath of Life into him and he became a living person, with a soul and the Spirit of God in himself!

Each of us has this same privilege and honor because we were known by God before we were born! He knew each person on Earth before they became a person and He knew their personality and how their life would be. We are created in His image uniquely because no other person on Earth is exactly like you or me. Even twins or triplets are different, although they may look similar to each other. Give Jesus a chance to show you how your life is supposed to be and what you can do with His strength and with Him working in your life. It is far more than you could accomplish alone I can promise you that!

Worry, doubts and fears

It seems that every day people are bombarded with more things which cause fear and anxiety. We doubt ourselves at times, and we have fears which cause us to worry about things which we can’t control. What can we do about this? Can we do anything about this situation? It depends upon your situation and your faith.

Some people claim that they can handle their own lives and they don’t need to have “blind faith” in religion to help them get through life. The problem with this kind of attitude is that when push comes to shove and things get a bit out of hand, most will seek out a “higher power” for comfort and direction even if they claim that they don’t believe in a “higher power”. God is that One Who is higher than all, Jesus is the One Who can relate to our suffering and our pain and they can help in all of life’s situations no matter what!

With all of the news that is available to us on the Internet and television today, there is very little which goes on in the world that we can’t keep tabs on whether we truly want to or need to or not. All of this information can cause us to worry far more than is healthy, and the worst part is that we shouldn’t worry about it at all. God is in control of it all. He is watching and guiding your life and mine toward that day when He will call us home.

Yes, one day the whole world will see that we are important to our Creator. Important enough that He will be returning soon, much sooner than most think. Many people are going to be surprised and terrified when that day comes and the church, the believers who are waiting for His call, all disappear and are taken to Heaven. Then they will want to believe, but it will be harder to do so. Many explanations will be given which have nothing to do with God or the Bible’s prophecies but just as in the days of Noah, when the door to the ark was shut the only ones saved were the ones inside.

We don’t have “blind faith” in a God Who is not there. He is the Creator because there is no way that all of this universe could come into being as it is because of an accident. Our own solar system, out of all the ones that have been discovered, is the only one that is stable and with orbits for all of the planets that allow for life to flourish. All of the hundreds of solar systems that have been discovered are too close to their star or too far-flung to harbor life.

God loves all of us, no matter what your skin color is or your culture, but we refuse His provision and His grace when we try to take His place. When we think that we know better than He does how to fulfill our lives in this world, we are deluding ourselves. Seek God in the Bible or at a church which teaches from His Word. Pray that your life can have meaning in and through Him and seek His wisdom every day. This is the best way to relieve stress and worry because He is the One Who holds tomorrow in His hand. All that we have is today.

Live today for Jesus and then do it again tomorrow, then repeat until He comes again. That is the prescription which will conquer worry, doubt and fears far better than anything that a doctor can give you.

One breath away

Every day each of us is only one breath away from meeting God personally. Why can’t people realize that their lives aren’t guaranteed? You are not granted 80 years on the day you were born. If you make it to the next day then you were under the grace of God and that grace continues until the day you take your last breath. It may be tomorrow or tonight, it may be next year or seventy years from now but there is a day and a date which God knows will be your last. Are you ready to meet Him? Have you given your heart to Jesus and secured your eternal home?

We live in a temporary world and it is on the fast track toward an ending. We don’t know the day or the hour when that ending will come and your life’s end may come sooner than you expect. Consider this before you head out the door for a trip in a car or plane. Think about what may happen should you die before coming back home. I know that these are not easy thoughts to have, but if you don’t consider it and you haven’t prepared for it…where will your eternity be spent?

God is closer than you think and He hears the prayers which are sincere in their petitions for repentance and salvation. Seek Him out while you can because there is never a better time than right now to give your life to Jesus.

Are you for real?!

Many times when we are honest about our faith with someone, this may be the response. But, Jesus told us that if we deny that we know Him here then He will deny us in Heaven. I don’t want that on my conscience and I would rather be true to my faith in Him than not. Am I a Jesus freak? Well, I am a pastor of a small church and I have a ministry on facebook and here too, so I would say that yes, I am a bit of a “Jesus freak”. That is just fine with me actually. Why? Because it is my job and my calling. Why do Christians think that we are not supposed to tell others when Jesus Himself told the disciples to go and tell everyone about the Gospel? We are part of that company if we have given our life and our hearts to Him!
Is Christianity real? The religion is but the commitment of the believers is questionable. Why? If you were told that you had a gift waiting for you, if you would claim it and tell others how to get the same gift, would you?

In today’s world, if that gift were a million dollars, some would claim it and then tell others how they could get it. Some would hoard the information and not tell anyone else, why? If you knew that there was a cure for cancer would you give it to just someone in your family or would you spread the news about this cure, particularly if it was a simple cure that anyone could have? Some would and some would keep this information to themselves. Why?

If you knew about the end of life result for someone that would result in their eternity being an endless torment and you knew that they needed Jesus in their heart…wouldn’t you tell them about Him? Wouldn’t you read the Bible to them and try to explain the salvation message to them? Some people would tell them, others would say that is someone else’s job, not mine. Everyone needs to know about the way to salvation whether they choose to act on that knowledge or not is their decision.

Life, what will you do with it?

Since we are all alive if we are breathing, then we are all living right now…today, but have you considered what tomorrow might bring your way? Have you even thought of what will happen or may happen in an hour or two? We are not gifted with that kind of sight, thank goodness! We can’t see into the future even a few minutes from now regardless of where we are or how much we may like to see the future. So, how are you living your life right now, this very instant? Have you ever thought of that or even considered it at all?

Life is something that we live one tick of the clock at a time or one blink of your eyes at a time. Just fractions of a second stand between you closing your eyes in a blink and then opening them again and it only takes a fraction of a second. But, there are times that just that tiny fraction of a second could make the difference between having a wreck in a car or not. But, we can’t stop blinking or driving or walking because that is what we do while living!

Faith in God’s provision brings us through those milliseconds of time when we blink. He will see us through and bring us out the other side. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but consider all of the milliseconds that people experience every day, every month, every year and you realize that we all live faithfully in God’s grace whether we believe in Him or not! Isn’t that great? He loves each of us THAT much regardless of our faith or belief in Him.

Some of us are given much in goods and things that the world sees as our blessing from God. In the eyes of many people of the world, outside America, each person in this country is wealthy. Most of us have a place to live that is warm or cool according to the season, many of us have food on the table or in the house every day of the year, many of us have jobs which pay us a nice wage or if we happen to own a business it may be doing well enough to provide us everything that we need in this life. The problem with looking at our “material wealth” from the perspective of those outside of our homes or our businesses is that they don’t see or feel the loneliness and fear and helplessness that comes with being “well off”.

Many of us don’t even consider ourselves well off in wealth at all. Business owners have payroll and insurance and overhead expenses like utilities and such. Homeowners and those in business have insurance and grocery bills, utility bills, cable bills, dental and clothing bills, tuition bills, etc. So much so that after you take out all of the money for bills and life, there isn’t much wealth left at all! But, to those who live in Africa or India or Turkey or China or North Korea our way of life and the apparent wealth that they see is far above anything that many of them will ever attain.

That is why America and Americans are not on the lists of people who are liked or loved, because we are seen as a culture and a country that has it all. Everyone else wants what we have, up to a point, but they also want to bring us down a notch or two if possible. The biggest realization that the world needs to find out about is that we can’t fill that spot that has always been empty or hollow. No amount of money or stuff will ever fill that empty part of your soul until you realize that Jesus is the One that does fit in that spot! Once you understand that, all of the stuff that most are holding onto for dear life just doesn’t matter! Yes, you still have to have money to pay your electric bill and your other bills, but the i-Pads and the i-Pods and the phones and computers and any other amount of things which this season tries to tell you that you HAVE TO HAVE…they don’t matter at all!

Jesus said that your life is like a puff of smoke and compared to eternity it really is! Your life doesn’t matter much unless Jesus and belief in Him is a part of your everyday existence. No amount of time or effort or money invested or given to any charity will make an eternal difference unless you are doing it with faith and the love of Jesus in your heart.

Is it possible to commit an unpardonable sin?

The point of no return is the same as an unpardonable sin, when you die there is no return and if you have refused the grace of God all of your life there is no pardon available! You don’t get a second chance after death because you have had many opportunities in this life. What can you do? What will you do with your eternity now?

For many people, that decision has already been made and there is no changing it. For others there is still hope. If you still breathe and walk this earth you can change and seek out your Creator, today. Tomorrow is still ahead and yesterday is already gone, consider this before you go to sleep tonight. Like the farmer in the story who said, “I have enough. I will build more barns and take life easy. Eat, drink and be merry and take life as it comes. And God said, you fool, tonight your soul is required of thee.” Granted, this is a paraphrase of the scripture (Luke 12:19,20), but you get the idea.

Your life and mine are not guaranteed. We don’t have a certificate which says “you will have 58.5 years before you die” when we are born. Even in the Bible it says that man has appointed three score and ten or seventy years, anything beyond this is due to God’s grace alone. Yet, even that isn’t guaranteed. Consider that you live X number of years, after this there is eternity in one place or another. Which one will you live in during that time?

Consider this the next time you are in a close call on the highway. Why do I emphasize this today, now? It is truly because our lives are just a puff of smoke compared to eternity and whether you believe it or not, that is where you will spend most of your actual life. Seventy years is not a long time compared to even one million years, it is just a dot on a very long line. Even one million years is only a dot on a line that never ends! That is why I am speaking this way today because your eternal life will be either in the presence of God in Heaven or it will be with the demons and Satan and everyone else who refused God’s gift of grace through Jesus Christ our Lord.

It is your choice. God doesn’t require it of you nor does He force you to serve Him, ever! You cannot force anyone to truly love you and if it is forced, it isn’t love at all. It is done out of fear and that kind of devotion is NOT what God seeks!! God is not Allah and Allah is not God! Radical thinking, huh? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not Allah, it is Yahweh Elohim! Seek Him out and learn of the One True God because beside Him there is no other!

Amen

What do we NEED?

Not much more to add to this. Take it to your heart and pray about it.

Grief, life and eternity!

Sooner or later we all have to go through one of the first two and everyone will be in an eternity of their own making one day. So, which one will you choose?

Life begins at conception but our life truly begins after we are each born into the world. Our parents have to take care of us for a few years of course, until we get smarter than them at puberty and then they are relegated to our description of “old people”. After each of us graduates from either high school or college, we forget about our parents for a while until we become parents. Then, all of the advice and the “old sayings” come back to us and ring true, so true in fact that we wonder how did our parents get so smart?

Amazing how life works like that isn’t it? Later as all of us age, regardless of whether we want to or not, we notice aches and pains that weren’t there a few years ago. Then, some of the other advice that we heard from “old people” comes to mind when we think about our joints and how it aches to sit for a long time and then get up feeling stiff. We find out we just can’t do stuff like we did when we were younger. That’s why grandma couldn’t run and play with us when we were kids. We thought we would be able to go on hunting trips and travel when we got older and then we find out why our parents didn’t go far from home.

When our parents or our in-laws get older than us and death comes calling on someone close to you, each of us finds out what grief feels like. So, how do we handle it? For some people who may not know Jesus as Lord, this time can be a really hard time. Many people assume that everyone goes to heaven and that is not Biblical. If your loved one has accepted Jesus as their Savior, then that is where they will be, but if they never did or if you’re not sure then you should pray that the rest of your family will give their life and their heart to Jesus.

I am not saying this to make people scared about a loved one that they aren’t sure of, but to open your eyes to the reality that everyone does NOT go to Heaven! Yes, you do stand before God but there are two outcomes which are always present there. One, when Jesus stands with you and says “This one belongs to me, their sins are covered by my blood”, the other is when you are alone and you are asked “What did you do with the light that you were given?”. You are shown all of the times that you heard a sermon or a teaching in Sunday school or at a crusade or on TV and you rejected the call of the Holy Spirit. Maybe you thought that you had plenty of time or maybe you would get around to it next week or next year.

At this point, your eternity is ahead of you. Regardless of the place you will spend it, if you are standing in the presence of God then your eternity has begun. The outcome of the two questions from the paragraph above will determine where your eternity will be. The main thing that you have to consider is that it is your choice and the choices that you have made in this life which determines your eternity. Nothing that you do in this life will have any lasting effect on where you spend eternity, unless you have chosen to give your life and heart to Jesus!

It won’t matter how good you were or how moral you were considered. It won’t matter how much money you gave to the poor or to any ministry or how much you gave of your time. Until your heart belongs to Jesus and you are living for Him in this life, nothing that is done here makes one bit of difference, especially concerning your eternity. Consider where you are in life and whether you have given your life to serving God and His Kingdom or not, then make it a point to seek Him out and learn of His goodness and His love for you. Because, until you can look at someone else and love them as Jesus did, particularly someone you don’t know, then you don’t have His Love in your life. As Paul said, “I Corinthians 13:3 “And though I bestowed all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned , and have not charity (love), it propheteth me nothing.”

How much….?

This is part of nearly everyone’s vocabulary in some form. How much does that cost? How much more will you take? How much more do we/I need to do? Some people don’t know this phrase much in their lives but they are wealthy enough to be able to avoid using it. So, how much do you use it? Have you heard it very much in your life? Questions that some want to be answered and some of them don’t care about the answer at all, to any of those questions.

One question that needs to be answered in your life and in the conscience of the whole world is: How much more will it take before ________?

You can fill that blank space with so many things like “the end of the world” or “people wake up” or even “Jesus comes back” and I am sure that there are others which would fit quite nicely. The Bible has many prophecies about this time in history and at the time that they were given, the images were so horrific the prophets who received them couldn’t describe fully what they were seeing. They had no reference for missiles or tanks or planes or helicopters, so their descriptions seem to be full of all sorts of beasts and fantastic things.

Life today is hard enough to make sense of without trying to figure out God’s Word and its meaning, which is why we were told to ask Him for wisdom so that we can understand the words and meanings of prophecies in the book of Revelation. When some of these visions were given to Daniel, he was told to seal the book until the end and many people have wondered why. It is because most of the things which God showed him couldn’t be understood until now. Other explanations such as the words in Zechariah about “the skin melting from their body and their eyes melting, before the body hits the ground” are vivid depictions of the results of a nuclear attack and its effect on a human body.

How much more graphic could the Bible be in its description of it? We wouldn’t want to know nor could we understand God’s reason for these things. The fallen angels or demons who fell from Heaven with Satan are confusing people all over the world with out of context scripture being taught as if it were true. Some of it is true, but when you teach some of the truth you aren’t teaching the whole Truth of scripture which is how other doctrines are brought into being. Then, new “religions” spring up with these so-called “new truths”. How much more are we going to be deceived by this tactic and these mixed up words?

Until you read God’s Word and commit it to memory and get it into your heart. That is how long the deception will continue. Many people today are moving out of “organized religion”, into churches that teach a lie for the truth because it makes them feel good or at least feel better about themselves. Condemnation is a bad word in these churches because that implies that the people are bad or that they do bad things. I have read the Bible many times, but I am not the type of person who memorizes chapter and verse. At times, I would like to quote it that way, but the Spirit brings scripture to your mind when you need it so that is the memorizing that I depend upon.

WE ARE ALL SINNERS! At some point in your life you have told a lie, you have taken something which wasn’t yours, you have wanted (coveted) something which someone else has, etc. The only One Who has lived without sin, sits at the right hand of God the Father. He is coming back to get His Bride, the Church, one day. How much more will God put up with from us and our rebellious world system? As much as He can until the last person who will accept Jesus as Savior has done so. Our everyday lives will be worse than we thought they would be, if we belong to Jesus. If you are part of the world and don’t want to hear about Jesus then your life may be in pretty good shape…for a while. Which is why many people don’t turn their lives over to Jesus. It is also why Jesus said that “it is harder for a rich man to enter Heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle”, because they feel that they don’t need God or Jesus or forgiveness for anything.

I pray that all of you reading this will pick up a Bible today or tomorrow if you can. Read as much as you can with an open mind and heart, especially the books of the New Testament. Seek God’s wisdom for your life here and for eternity because you do have an eternity ahead of you and it is up to you how and where it will be spent!

Live…Love…and Joy!

In times of trouble and strife,

Things which come into all of our lives,

Open your heart and your mind,

To be especially kind,

To those less fortunate or maybe who are just hurting.

These are the times when God’s Wisdom has to come in,

but it can’t enter into a closed mind and heart. You have to

be able to take it into yourself and allow it to change you,

so that others may see His Strength, His Love and His mercy

in you and me.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: