Tag: Eternity

Almost home


Have you ever wished that you were home? I don’t mean your Earthly home exactly, although that is a wonderful place to be most of the time. I mean your Heavenly home, the one that Jesus went to prepare for each person who claims Him as their Lord and Savior!

The longer that each of us live here on Earth, if we are Christians, the closer we are to getting there. Your journey of this life begins the day that you were conceived and ends on the day you die. God knows both dates and He will bring you into His home, your eternal home right after your soul exits from your body.

Now, I know there are some who don’t believe this and they will disagree with me. That’s OK, because one day they will meet Him too. Whether they know Him as Savior or not, they will meet Him although they may not enjoy the meeting if they didn’t accept Him as their Savior.

Almost home

Through the brambles and the weeds, the long road winds. Twisting, turning, and ever climbing yet upward and forward it goes. Life it is that we live here, sweet and sour though it may be. Sweeter still when ever we find the end of the path and cross over to be…with our Creator and our Lord into Eternity.

pathtoCFSometimes it seems that we take our life for granted, where it starts and where it ends and all of the stuff that happens between those points are just part of it. But, do you ever consider the path that leads to Eternity? If you are a Christian or have any idea about an afterlife, then the thought has likely crossed your mind a few times. Seek our Jesus and a Bible teaching church or study group, learn about Him and His ways because He is the only way into Eternity and He does have a place for you there. He said so.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe in Me as well. 2 In My Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so,would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and welcome you into My presence, so that you also may be where I am.”  John 14:2,3

Life…


GodisInterestedinYouDo you know the Author of Life? The Creator of Life? The Way to Life everlasting?

The Person Who is all of those and more is Jesus the Messiah. He came so that we might have Life, so that we could have forgiveness of our sins and enter into eternity with Him. There is no other name under heaven by which we CAN be saved.

Today, we see all sorts of bad things or atrocities in our world. Things which most of us have never seen or heard about. Most of them so horrific that we can’t imagine anyone living in the places where they are. But, it is happening. In some areas in America but mostly overseas in the Middle East and Africa.

Life is not respected or revered in any culture anymore, whether it is the life of a child in the womb or your life and mine on the street. It seems that nobody cares about each person’s life, except their own. They, each of us it seems, only care about what is in it for me. Selfishness is rampant, and this is dangerous. Why? Because when things get really bad, everyone will be only looking out for themselves and no one else but them and possibly their immediate family.

God loves all of us and He hasn’t forgotten anyone, but there are so many who have forgotten Him…just turned away from Him and His wisdom. Whether they actually ever knew Him or not, that is between them and God and no one else knows about their salvation or lack of it besides Him. Nobody is condemned to Hell unless they reject His offer of grace and forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

It is a sad fact that many people do just that and never really think about it much, until they really need Him, and by that time their lives may be nearly over or they die before then. With death, you forfeit your chance at redemption because your chances for that are while you live here and now. Unless you make that decision while you live, there is no second chance once you are standing in front of Him. Your life is your chance, don’t throw it away or ignore the offer.

In spite of the questions in the picture about God’s interest in you, He really is. He cares enough for us that He knows how many hairs are on your head and mine. If He cares enough to even know that detail, then the rest of your days and your life is included in His knowledge of you as well.

What do you truly need?


Life is given to us when we are born, but our person and our soul arrives before that event which is why God said, ““Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart;“Jeremiah 1:5

All of our needs are met by God with our life, our breath, our living on this Earth. True, there are people who are hungry and without shelter in the world and in our country, but that is a society problem. One that could be taken care of without a government program, if we would resolve to take care of our own instead of everyone else.

Life and our needs are the things which we are blessed with by God. With each breath and each blink of our eyes we see the horror of life which happens around us and we also see the beauty in a sunset or the smile of a child. So, how do you respond to all of the stimuli that you have thrown in your life, in your face by social media, by news or other programs? Do we, collectively, respond positively with an attitude which can lend a hand to others?

Many times we don’t in today’s society. We protest that there is not enough being done. We march around and parade in the streets and bring wrongs to the attention of the media, but…we could be doing something about these things. Not being dependent upon the government to take care of us, but actually helping each other. Teaching our children, showing them how much we really DO care about their education rather than depending on some stranger to tell them what the “education system” says they need to learn.

What does our country need? People who will roll their sleeves up and get to work to fix the things that need fixing! The government doesn’t know how to fix its own problems, how can they fix yours and mine?

Your life and mine belong to God. Whether you have given your heart to Him or not, He is still the Creator and whether you believe this or not doesn’t cause that fact to be false! We will face Him either when we die or at the judgement seat, but your belief in Him or your lack of belief in His existence doesn’t have an effect on His existence.

He provides for us, whether we acknowledge His presence in that process or not. Our needs are met, but our eternal need is for salvation and that only comes through Jesus and belief in Him. Seek Him out, learn of His Truth in the Bible and ask Him into your heart. How long each of us has in this life is just a puff of smoke compared to eternity, which will be your life after this one. Make sure it is one that you will enjoy rather than be in punishment during that time. It is only a small decision, one that a child can make yet many refuse to believe that it is that simple.

Don’t put it off.

Time waits for no one


eternityEvery year you hear someone on television saying that their resolution for the year is to spend more time with their family. It is usually a different person saying this every year but the sentiment and the reality are the same…we feel as if we don’t have enough time. As you get older, the days and weeks seem to go by faster and just mush into one another until, if you are like me, you can barely tell one day from the next.

There are days that I have had to pay attention to the television set or the computer screen just to keep the days separated, so I will know what day it is. I know that those of you who are going to school or work don’t really have this problem because your days revolve around your schedule. But, it is true that time doesn’t wait for anyone. Consider that on New Year’s Day at midnight when the year and the date changed, that specific time period will never happen again.

A few years ago before we got out of the first decade of the 21st century, you could have months where the day, month and year were all the same number. Those won’t recur until another century has passed, and even when they do technology will have changed, our culture and society will not be the same. Nothing repeats itself exactly because once a minute is gone, the things which happened in that minute are in the past.

The best part about our life today is that we, as Christians, serve a God Who can see those seconds and minutes and hours and years even when they have past. Time is not the same for God because He lives outside of time. Just as we will when we are in Heaven. Eternity begins the second that you take your last breath here. One year will be nothing when you are there. Ten thousand years will seem like a day or two, maybe.

Consider where your time will be spent and how much time that you think you have now. Think about your family and friends, where will they be in eternity? Have you considered it for yourself? Don’t put this decision off because you think you have plenty of time, that is a lie from Satan himself and he gets plenty of people to believe it. Those who died the next day thought they had more time. The only time that you have is right now. Make sure that you are absolutely sure and positive about your eternal home. One of them you will enjoy, the other you will not.

The end is the Beginning


In some ways, it is difficult to make sense of those words. How can the beginning be at the end? It is a conundrum and a puzzle for sure, but to a person who is a Christian it is a simple and glorious thing! At the end of a long life, your eternal life begins! It isn’t an end, other than being the end of physical, Earthly life. The beginning for Christian believers starts when they give their lives to Jesus and ask His forgiveness of their sins.

You are reborn into a life of learning, love, sacrifice, and service. Learning from God’s Word as you explore the love of God for His people and for the world, learning Who He is and His meaning for your life. The love of God is all around you and once you realize it, you can feel it and see it in our world, in natural processes, in life itself. Sacrifice is when you live according to the life and teachings of Jesus, by giving away your faith, telling others about Him. To be true to the calling and life of a Christian you don’t really have to sacrifice anything, you just have to live your life according to Jesus’ teachings and to do that you have to read His Words and learn from them. Service happens when you are doing those things mentioned above, it is not “works” in order to be saved or to earn your way into Heaven.

Works don’t give you any extra “points”, only the saving power of Jesus and your faith and belief in Him will give you your Salvation which allows you into God’s Presence. Seek Him, trust in Him and believe in Him through the Bible, or by attending a Bible teaching church will show Him to you so that you can know Him if you will not harden your mind and heart to the love that He offers.

The Beginning at the end is what you get to experience if you are a Christian. If you choose to follow your own path, or another way of living not found in the Bible or any other religion then your eternity will be very different. Whether you believe in God or Jesus or the Bible has no bearing on the reality that you will find yourself in at the end of your life here. Your eternity will be waiting for you when you breathe your last breath here, so make sure of your destination before that happens.

Acceptance or Rejection


Which would you choose? In life, we would rather be accepted as friends or classmates. Rejection is something that most of us try really hard to avoid if possible. So, how do you feel about an offer of eternal life? We all get this one you know, it just depends on your acceptance or rejection criteria regarding where you spend eternity!

Humanity was created with an eternal soul, so it doesn’t matter how good or bad or indifferent you may be, we all have eternity stretching out in front of us. We don’t go into an abyss and we don’t just go “poof” after death, like a bowl of bad chili.

Yes, there is a heaven and a hell and whether you believe in one or the other doesn’t matter, they are both real. God doesn’t send you to one destination or the other based upon His whims either. It is your decisions in this life which determine your destination in the next one. Actually, it is just one decision in this life and that is whether you will accept Jesus as your Savior and live your life following Him or if you will reject Him.

That’s it!

Your eternal life and the destination in which you live it, depends upon that ONE decision, before you die. After you are dead, you can’t change your mind. Eternity starts when you breathe your last breath in this life. So, the question is when are you going to die? You don’t know for sure do you?

That is so true. None of us knows our expiration date, if you wish to call it that, so you are gambling with a future that you really can’t pin down with any certainty aren’t you? This is your decision and yours alone, no one can make it for you. My messages are just here for information, whether you follow any of these suggestions about salvation or not is your decision, nobody can make it for you.

Acceptance of the gift of salvation is an individual decision, just as taking any gift is…it is up to you. The value of your salvation is far beyond any amount of money on Earth, though you can’t spend it here. Which is one of the drawbacks of many people looking at its value today or even if it has any value for them at all.

Truly, God loves each one of us. Whether you believe in Him or not, He knows and cares for you. The truth of Scripture cannot be known or understood by reason or science, only by faith. If you don’t or won’t seek Him out by faith, then your eternity will be decided whenever He calls you into it. Rejection of God’s gift is a choice, just not a very good one.

How do I get to Heaven?


This is a question which many people seem to want the answer to, and today it seems that most think that they can get there on their own. Which is strange because I only know of One way and that is through the grace given to us through Jesus Christ by God Himself. The Bible clearly states that there is no other way except through Him, yet many religions on Earth tell many people a much different story.

Many of them say that there is no Heaven, or that you can do many good deeds for people in your lifetime and you will be granted a place there, so say that you will come back here until you get everything just right and then you will be allowed in. All of them are wrong.

You can, of course, believe what you wish to believe about life after death in this world but when that day comes then the Truth will be known. What will you be able to say when you stand before God and Jesus on that day? If you have accepted Jesus as your Savior, you will bow before Him and thank Him for your salvation. If you have rejected Him during your life here, then you will be shown the things that you have done in your life, things which you would’ve been granted forgiveness for, then you will be shown the times that you had heard a message or felt a call from Him and you ignored it.

It is your actions, your decision in this life which will determine whether you go to Heaven or not, the choice is yours to make and it must be made while you yet live. It is not God’s choice to send you to hell if you choose not to accept Jesus as your Savior, it is yours. God doesn’t want people to be sent there, but if they reject the grace offered through the atonement that was bought with Jesus’ death, then He has no choice. Nothing that we are capable of doing during our life, if we are without Jesus, is good enough to get us into Heaven.

Only through accepting Jesus as your Savior and asking Him to come into your life and change you, to make you what He knows that you can be, is it even possible for you to be forgiven and get into Heaven. You can yell and scream about all of the evolutionary theories and atheistic nonsense that you want, but rejection of the grace offered by God is the only unforgivable sin. It is your choice, which will you choose?

Reasoning


We make excuses for every decision that we make. Why? There are many who look to themselves for power and the way to have wealth and prosperity. Even if you are able to make lots of money and have all of the toys that “rich folks” have, what are you going to do with it when something happens to your child’s health or your spouse’s health? Having a Jag in the garage with twenty-six inch wheels won’t help you when you are diagnosed with cancer. Having a huge home won’t help when the economy crashes and the electric grid fails because of no bills being paid. Having a walk in refrigerator with enough food to feed a small village won’t do you much good when the electricity is cut off.

Justifying your excesses in life or your excuse for not going to church is the most silly and stupid way to take a trip to hell that there is. Even Satan himself knows Who God is and the atheists and Muslims don’t believe that he exists either, but one day they will meet him and the demons who followed him.

Stuff and nonsense will not be of any good at all to your eternity. The only One that can possibly change you and your life is Jesus Christ! Learn of Him through the Bible and a Bible teaching church, not some place where they tell you that you can pray anything in His name and He will give it to you! God is not a genie, He is the Creator of all that is and He is jealous of our love and devotion. He wants us to come to know Him and to choose to love Him, but it is your choice and nobody else’s decision. God doesn’t even force the angels in Heaven to worship Him, it is their choice.

It was their choice when one-third of them chose to follow Lucifer in rebellion against God, which got them all thrown down to Earth. We have been deceived by their lies since Eve decided to try some fruit from a tree which God had told Adam NOT to eat of. She justified her actions by blaming it on the snake and we have been doing the “blame game” in one way or another ever since. Justification is something which we have in our fallen state that we use to get out of punishment or to make us feel better about the lie that we told. It is just another way that our pride is able to deceive us into thinking that we know better than God how to run our lives so we can feel better about what we do, even when we know it is wrong.

All sorts of behavior has been justified in the name of Jesus and Muhammad and other religions for hundreds of years. It make the religions of the world and religion in general look bad because of what has been done, being justified by beliefs that others did not share. Which then makes those religions look terrible and hypocritical in the news and to the world in general. This is one of the reasons which has caused so many to walk away from and choose not to follow or believe in any religion.

Choosing to walk away doesn’t help and won’t fix anything. By doing this you are agreeing with Satan that God has no place in your life and that you have no place or reason to follow Him. It is your right and privilege to believe this way if you wish, but how will you feel when Jesus does come back one day? When you see Him and know that what you had heard about during your life was true, but you chose not to believe it, then it will be too late. Your decision for your life and for your eternity has been made.

Please, give Jesus a chance to prove His promises in this life so that you will have an eternity after this life is done. True, we all have an eternity to step into after this life is over but the difference is the life that your eternity will bring because of the choices we each make now. Your life and the decisions made in it are tiny compared with eternal life which you have before you when this one is over so choose wisely.

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!!