Tag: God loves you not your sin

Church?


Today we look at buildings, great and small and call them our church or “the church”. What is the Church? Truthfully it is the people who worship God. It doesn’t matter if it is in a tent or a cathedral, it is the people who make up the church. Just as it was after Jesus went to be with the Father, it was the people who believed in Him and worshiped Him that made up the Church. It was NOT a building at all! Some did worship in a building, like other believer’s homes, but it didn’t really matter about the place of worship as much as it mattered about the hearts of those who came to worship!

You can come to church, to a building, for many years and play the part of a Christian from the time you are a child in Sunday school on up into your 90’s. That doesn’t make you a Christian, only belief in Jesus and a daily walk with Him can do that. Belief comes first, then the desire to worship Him and then the desire to learn more about Him and baptism is mixed in there as well but my point here is that you can live in a cardboard box and still worship Jesus! The building made of bricks and mortar and wood and sometimes steel beams is just a structure…it is the people who attend services and worship God in that building that make up the Church!

God is doing many miracles even today that many don’t recognize or may not know about because the media doesn’t report on things which happen without the influence of science. Unless it was something which was so BIG that they had to report on it, miracles go unnoticed by the majority of people and news organizations…but they still happen.

If you are not a believer in Jesus or God and you have everything that you need, you probably think that you will never need God even if He exists. But what about when you go to the doctor and he finds a mass or a spot on your lungs or your liver and it turns out that it is cancer, stage 4, and there is little he can do. What then?

You could just lie down and die or you could search the whole world for some treatment which may help. The best cure for this cancer is in the person and the power of Jesus! Cry out to Him, seek His Presence and learn more of Him. Why? Because He loves you! Praying that He will take the cancer away is not the answer, asking Him to come into your life and your heart and make you a new person is!

Could He cure you of the cancer? Yes, He can. I don’t know if He will and I am not going to tell you that He will, but your life will be so much more with Him in your heart even if He doesn’t. Why do I say this? Because your friends will see the change that He has brought into your life and they will likely want what you have. He will give you peace, even when your life is getting worse OR He may heal you and take the cancer out of your body. Then you can tell people what an awesome God He is!

They will ask you why do you believe now when you didn’t before? Because the Creator came and took my sins away and destroyed the cancer and I am alive to tell it, that’s why!! God loves each of us but we have a rebellious spirit inside of us from the day we are born. Until we realize that He is the answer to all of life’s questions and our problems too, we won’t seek Him out. We will keep doing what we did yesterday or last week or last year, but when our heart and soul tells us that we need Jesus we will seek Him out.

Give your life and your heart to Jesus because He gave His life for you! One day soon everyone will see Him and then many will either ask Him to save them or they will hate Him with an unreasonable hatred. Your life is terribly short compared to eternity, make sure of yours before you enter into it.

Romans 8:23: And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. The link for this passage has many of the Scriptures which will show you that you do need Jesus, if you will seek HIm for your salvation. I pray that you and all who read this will do so before your day comes.

Dull and lifeless


I have often wondered if that is how much of the world sees people in the church or even the church itself? We as Christians claim that we have something that others may want, the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. The problem arises when those who are outside the church look at our lives or even the church itself and see a very dull and lifeless (read boring) experience!

Why would they want that? Even though it is true that most people, when they come to a place in life that they can’t handle themselves, seek out a Higher Power. Sometimes this brings them to God and sometimes they will encounter Satan or one of his followers who are disguising themselves as angels. At this point in their life many just latch onto whichever one will help them at the time and right now! Which causes many to go down a road or path, which is takes them in the wrong direction. They may not find out about this until it is too late to turn back and therein lies the problem.

In many ways, people are fooled not because Satan is such a good liar but because the church and its representation of God and salvation doesn’t look much different or appealing. This is something which must change! Because we are supposed to be taking God’s message of salvation to the WHOLE world! If our message and the gospel of Jesus doesn’t seem to be appealing to others, we should seek out the answer to this question: “Why do people seem to be put off or turned away from the church and God?”

It is not an easy answer to find actually. Yet, according to the Bible which is the inspired Word of God, evil is vanquished in the end. Death, sin, evil, lawlessness and all of the negative emotions and behaviors in this world will all go away, in God’s time and at the end of this world. The problem today is this: Most or at least many people don’t believe it. The Bible is just an old book with no bearing on life today. It is out-dated and old, quaint would be a good term for it, but it has no meaning for us in the 21st century.

I have a different opinion about that. The differences between all people in this world stem from just a few things which get completely blown out of proportion. First is our notion of “race”, we are all part of the human race! The only differences are our skin tone and our cultures, whether in a city environment or taken as a nationwide culture, these are really the most troublesome parts of being human. Second is our choice of religion and that gets pretty weird when you look at all of the different religions in the world, even though there are three main religions, there are thousands of creeds, beliefs, doctrines etc.

These two differences along with the other smaller or larger (depending upon your viewpoint) pieces and parts which are scattered all over the world, are the very reasons for all of the wars and riots and shootings that occur on a regular basis, day in and day out. The only unifying force will be the coming of Jesus to set up His Kingdom on Earth and there will be many more deaths around the world before that day gets here.

Differences should be celebrated in our world, not part of the problem. Your skin may be more brown than mine and I embrace that because God made you different in that way. Your culture or rather, the ways that you learned from your parents and grandparents, while growing up are different, I accept that as well. It is not something which should be looked down on, nor is it something to place on a pedestal and tell others that yours is best! We are all human, regardless of skin color or our cultural beliefs in God or some other deity. These differences should be embraced in a collective way, not a national or cultural way.

God created us all to be different because we can have a different place and a different part in His Kingdom. You can accomplish things which I cannot and I may be able to do some things which you cannot. It is the same with each of our bodies, the kidneys work to cleanse the blood of sugar and salts, to make this simple. Your liver cleanses the blood of other impurities, but a body which has neither of these organs cannot survive. God is our Creator and must be worshiped as such. He is also our Redeemer, if we will accept Him into that role in our lives. All of the other “gods” or non-religions have no real power and cannot grant you one day or the hair on your head. Seek out God in His Word and you will find that He is all that is really necessary for your life.