Tag: God loves you

Are you walking in faith?


John, the disciple of Jesus, wrote the smallest book in the Bible and yet it is a most profound and humbling book because it convicts us who are not walking in His Truth and shows us where our faith should be placed.

2 John 1

Greeting from the Elder

(3 John 1:1-4)

1 The elder unto the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth; and not I only, but also all they that have known the truth; 2 For the truth’s sake, which dwelleth in us, and shall be with us forever. 3 Grace be with you, mercy, and peace, from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.

Walking in the Truth (John 8:31-41)

4 I rejoiced greatly that I found of thy children walking in truth, as we have received a commandment from the Father. 5 And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another. 6 And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it.

Beware of Deceivers

7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an Antichrist. 8 Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward. 9 Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. 10 If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: 11 For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.

Final Greetings

12 Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and ink: but I trust to come unto you, and speak face to face, that our joy may be full. 13 The children of thy elect sister greet thee. Amen.

GodsBlessingThe second or third smallest book of the Bible but very profound, in wisdom and truth from the only disciple which died of natural causes also known as old age.

God blessed John with a ministry which spanned the known world around him at the time. Since he was also one of the youngest disciples he was able to go and tell others about his Lord and Savior. He was also the shepherd of a number of churches before his death at the end of the first century.

John wrote and testified that Jesus was the Light of the World, not because of hearsay but because he had lived and walked with Jesus during His ministry. John was a dedicated disciple, fully committed to His Lord and Savior and He walked with Him while His time on Earth was fulfilled and He took the message of the gospel with him wherever he went later in life.

John’s exhortation to the lady and her house is the way that he greeted another worker for the faith and this letter was to encourage her until she should meet her risen Lord. Truly, it is the same with us. We are to stay true to our faith in Him until He comes or until we are called home to be with Him. What does this letter encourage us to do in light of where we are in the history of the world?

Mainly, to be steadfast in our walk with Jesus. Keeping to the faith and taking it and our testimony with us wherever we may go regardless of the time we may have left on this Earth. Because we don’t know how much time we have regardless of our age or health. It could be weeks, months or years until our date comes to meet Jesus or until He comes to call each of us home.

Your life and your testimony are important because your experience in this life is unique, just as your salvation is unique. Nobody else has had your experience or your successes and your failures, and God can use those to bring a specific message to someone, probably someone that only you can possibly reach. Your mission in this life is to serve God in whatever capacity that He asks you to serve in. It could be as a teacher at a high school or a Sunday school teacher. Maybe you are friends with a certain person that God wants to reach and only you can do that.

But…you won’t know for sure if you don’t step out in faith and use your testimony to bring Jesus’ message to at least one person. Then tomorrow see if you can find someone else to talk to about what Jesus has done for you. It doesn’t have to be a daily thing, but considering how much Jesus gave to save you and put you in this place…why not?

What is your experience?


Have you thought about your experience with Jesus? What about your salvation? The reason that I am asking this question is that each of us experiences each one in a different way. Some of us get emotional and nearly fall apart because of the grace that is given to us when we accept Him. Some of us fall down and worship Jesus and walk away from the experience a changed person and one which will do all that they can by telling others about Him.

The experience, especially if it is truly genuine, changes your heart spiritually and your life permanently! Salvation is not an experience which you can go through without the Holy Spirit and choose to turn it on or off when you want to go back where you were. True salvation begins when your heart is broken because of the Holy Spirit showing you through faith that your life is sinful and it needs to change. Sometimes this realization is brought about at a church service other times it is by a night or three or more in a jail cell. God will use whatever is necessary to get your attention and sometimes it is painful.

God loves us but like any Father or Mother, He sometimes has to use tough love to get a stubborn child to listen! Many times…we truly need this tough love and until God has your undivided attention, He will bang your head against whatever is necessary to make you listen. Why do I say this? Because, when God wants you to listen and He has a specific lesson or purpose for you, that only you can fulfill, He will not let go until you come around.

God knows the talents and gifts which He has given to you. You may not be aware of them until you have given your heart and life to Him, most of us aren’t. I never would’ve gotten in front of a group of people to speak for ten minutes or more if I had not been called by Him to be a preacher. I struggled against this calling for years until finally He got my attention enough and didn’t really give me a choice about it.

Some people think that God forces us to salvation, but that isn’t true. He will call to you and prod your heart, sometimes for years, but until you realize that you need Him in your life, it won’t make much difference. If you think that you have an arrangement with God and consider yourself good enough without accepting Him as your Lord and Savior, you may never hear His call on your life because you don’t think you need Him or the salvation that He is offering.

At that point, you are just like those Pharisees in Jesus’ day…too religiously minded to be any Earthly good to themselves or to anyone else! God only uses those who know that they need Him. Truly our Creator doesn’t need us in any way other than what He can see in your heart and your life. He can cause things to work out in His time so that your life or mine will line up with His will and purpose. He has already given you a talent or gift that He can use in His Kingdom but only if you answer the call on your life to change like the disciples did.

Peter denied the Lord three times on the night of His “mock trial” before going to Pilate. Paul was a Pharisee and was doing everything that the priests would give him permission to do in order to get rid of the “Jesus followers” or the Way. Both of these men were changed by the Lord’s actions of redemption and healing toward Peter and by Jesus’ confrontation of Paul on the Damascus road. Both of these men became true witnesses to the Gentile world as well as to the Jews after their redemption and conversion.

So…what about you? Are you willing to give your heart to Jesus as a follower and a disciple? If you have felt His call on your life, don’t put it off or ignore it. God loves you.

 

Be faithful in the little things


Do you pay attention to the little things in life? Some people do, many of us do not. Why could that be? It could be because little things are so commonplace, ordinary even. They aren’t eye-catching like a lime green BMW or Mustang, even though to me that color on a car, especially a sports car, is just nasty. Eye-catching colors are good sometimes, but what about the cars which can get about forty to fifty miles per gallon? I may be stingy but I like those cars. Granted, I would truly love to at least drive a Ferrari just once. I will never be able to afford one, but just driving one would be fun!

You hear about so-called “bucket lists” which list the things which people would like to do before they die, whether from natural causes or from some cancer or terminal illness. Why not work on lists of little things which can bring you more happiness and fulfillment in your life? What do I mean by “little things”? Well, enjoy your children and your grandchildren by taking them fishing or playing in a creek one day. Don’t time it, just enjoy it!

Show them how to make something out of sticks and leaves, if you can craft something like that. Enjoy life as much as possible. Don’t walk around in a pity party over things which can’t be fixed or changed…but if you can do something to change those things then do it! Take a trip for a day and see where it leads you. Don’t plan it or map it out, just wake up one morning and fix a lunch and some cold water in an insulated cooler, get some fuel for the trip, make sure to tell your family unless they are coming along. Then just go!

My title says “Be faithful in the little things”, so do the things which don’t take much. Like read your Bible each morning and before bed at night. Pray to the Lord and thank Him for the day that you have had. Ask Him to go with you and guide you toward the people and places that He needs for you to go. Most of us can’t be missionaries in other countries so seek out people closer to home and tell them about Jesus. Tell them what He has done for you and your family. Make sure that they know that He will do whatever is needed in their life too if they will ask Him to come into their hearts.

People think that being a Christian is hard and that we are required to do something almost every day to help God in our salvation. That is not true of course. God did not need our help to save us from our sins, Jesus did that on the cross all by Himself. It is a gift to each of us who have been called by God to become His child, all that we have to do is answer His call when we feel it in our hearts. Then, enjoy your life as a new creation in Jesus Christ because you are going to have an eternity to get to know all of your brothers and sisters who came before you.

Believe…


We are asked to do this as little children. Like we are going to do this as easily as a child as adults and it usually doesn’t work that way. Life tends to make us more cautious and cynical as we get older. This one fact of growing up causes us to discount the simple way of becoming a Christian as we get older.

Sometimes it is just easier to believe like a child. Don’t try to analyze and nitpick the decision to become a Christian, like the Nike commercial says “just do it!”. I do realize that there are so many people out there in the world today who are reluctant to give their life and their heart to Jesus. But…what is the alternative? I mean, Jesus is our Savior and the Creator! There is no other “god” who can compete because there are no other gods, period!

Our world has been deceived by Satan and his cohorts for thousands of years and they are getting a bit worried now that the time is getting short for them! Your life does have an expiration date while you are here on Earth and since we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow, the time for salvation is today! Please do not put this off. God knows who will come to Him and seek forgiveness and salvation so make it a point to be on His list of folks to listen to and bring to salvation!

The time is today, not tomorrow or next week. You or I could be involved in a car wreck tomorrow and when this life is over, your time to get saved is gone because “now is the accepted time“.

God provides for us each and every day but many people don’t pay attention. They just take it for granted that they have tomorrow and next week and next month too. Hopefully, they do and all the rest of us do too, but if you found yourself standing in front of God tomorrow…what could you say? What would you say about your life? Something like, “I did the best that I could” won’t help you. If you haven’t given your heart to Jesus and asked for His forgiveness of your sins then you are standing on your own righteousness and that is not enough.

Our own righteousness is never enough because if we could be righteous enough to gain entrance into Heaven…then Jesus died for nothing. God doesn’t do things for anything less than His glory and allowing Jesus to die for our sins if we could fulfill the Law perfectly would’ve been useless! God doesn’t do useless!

Consider this: God has known you since you were formed in the womb because He formed you. Whether you have lived your life on your own terms or maybe you have been taken to church as a child, His attention has never been far away from your life. What about your attention? Have you thought about seeking Him out, at least to see if this “Christianity thing” is real? If you haven’t then you are living on a very narrow ledge in this life.

 

 

What happened on the Sabbath?


None of the gospels elaborate on this so, other than the Jewish people celebrating the Sabbath of Passover and recounting the ordeal that their forefathers went through to leave Egypt, I don’t think much happened on that day.

The Roman soldiers were likely doing their patrols and those guarding the tomb were very bored and probably hungry…but they could not leave their post. The only place that you can find what may have been happening is in works of fiction today, and some of those are pretty riveting.

Remember that there are some parts of Scripture which say that He descended into Hades where the boundary between Paradise (Abraham’s bosom) is located. The scripture reference is in Ephesians and it is debated whether the Lord did this or if this was just part of Paul’s imagination. Whichever it is, one day we will know the Truth.

Jesus was at work fulfilling the prophecies about Himself during the time that He had between burial and the day of his resurrection. So, should we speculate about Jesus going into Abraham’s bosom and leading those from the Old Testament up to Heaven? I am not a story-teller, at least not of the caliber that it would take to make a coherent dialog about Jesus and His trip to the world where Moses and Abraham were.

Is it necessary for this kind of story to be told? No, but it was an entertaining read.

If you decide to read the book which is linked in the previous sentence, it is very entertaining. Brian Godawa does a great job of imagining the realm where the demons live here on Earth and how they were so giddy with joy when Jesus was on the cross. But, when He showed up in Paradise and then left it to resume His life on Earth and in Heaven it let all of them know exactly Who they were dealing with and they were scared.

That is not the only book which he wrote and I have read them all. They give you an imaginative look at the Scripture and some of the possibilities which may have occurred that weren’t written down. If they had been, the Bible or at least the Old Testament would’ve been a LOT bigger. Why do I bring this up now? Because of this holiday which the Christian churches will celebrate tomorrow is not about bunnies and chocolate and eggs and presents. It is about the empty tomb and the resurrection of Jesus.

Everything that Jesus did during His ministry was done so that we could have eternal life, the abundant life which God had purposed for humanity in the beginning. Jesus came to “fix” what had been broken by the fall from grace which happened in the Garden so long ago. The fall did break the relationship between God and mankind but it didn’t shatter it completely. But, it also caused many other parts of our universe to be broken, not just in the cosmos but here on Earth as well. As the writer says, “creation groans for everything to be set right again” (my paraphrase), but the point is that not only did Adam’s disobedience have an effect on man’s relationship to God but it also affected everything around him.

God cursed the ground and the animals of the world and everything lost some of its glory from God. It was no longer good from that point on and it will be remade at a later date. God loves you and all of His Creation, so please make sure of which side you are on before your life is over. The life that we live here is the only chance we get to “get right with God”. Once you are standing in front of God, your life will be the witness against you.

Why did He ride a donkey?


This is a question which I thought of while I was young and I have had others ask me too. Why did Jesus ride into Jerusalem on a donkey? To fulfill the prophecy in Zechariah 9: 9-10 for one reason and so that the people would know that He was bringing salvation to them, not war, and not as a conquering King. A king would normally ride into his city on a white horse, a charger symbolizing victory over the enemy or enemies. But, Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on the colt of a donkey, the foal of a beast of burden. What is the message here?

The message from our point of view is that He was letting the people know that He was NOT going to overthrow Rome, but that He was to be recognized as Israel’s Savior, their Messiah. Unfortunately, the people and the priests did not see Him as the Messiah, they only saw a prophet who could do some really great miracles, like healing a blind man or a leper or even bringing one who had been dead for four days back to life again! But..they did not see a Messiah.

The most telling part of this, at least to me, is that He rode on a colt which had not been broken to riding yet. Why is this significant? Because the colt knew that this is my Creator and I MUST do whatever He tells me or asks of me. He could’ve ridden into Jerusalem on an unbroken horse and it would’ve submitted itself to Him the same way. God is the Creator of all things, great and small, therefore He is in command of them all. Which is why the waves and the wind obeyed Him in the boat when the storm came upon them.

Jesus was and is just as much God as His Father, He is just a little different. The attributes of Jesus showed His love, compassion, care, and tenderness toward all of His disciples and those to whom He preached. So, what would you say about Jesus? Is He the King and the Lord of your life or do you just know about Him?

If He’s not your Lord, then what are you doing here? Did you come to church just because you are expected to? Did you come because that’s what you do on Sunday morning?

God loves you far more deeply than we can even understand, so why don’t you love Him in the best way possible? This is a relationship after all. Consider this for a moment. Our very lives depend upon His blessings and His grace and yet we seem to discount this all of the time. Your breath and mine come from Him and we are His in spite of our decision to follow Him or not. I don’t mean to say that nobody is going to hell if they die or if they don’t give their life to Jesus and ask for His forgiveness but what I do mean is that God loves all of us in His way and it is a deeper love than we can imagine.

The only human foreshadowing of God’s love for us is the love that we get from our mother and father. It is a love which is deep enough that no matter what we do or say, we are always loved by them. God’s love for each of us is deeper than that even before we come to Jesus and ask for Him to be the Lord of our lives. Does that love become deeper when we become a follower of Jesus and a believer? I think that it does because we are covered in the blood of Jesus which has cleansed us of our sinful stains, so in that sense, I do believe that God sees His Son more than He sees us from that point on.

What is the difference?


OnlyJesusIn the world today there are many, many religions and their differences can be confusing, even baffling to someone who doesn’t practice one or another. Some are looking for a stress-free environment or a way to live as stress-free as possible. Others are thankful for just living one day at a time, while some religions seem to worship everything around them.

Then, there is Christianity which worships one God which has three persons. That doesn’t mean that there are multiple gods in Christian worship, the three in One serve the same purpose in different ways.

God the Father is our Creator and the Creator of everything in the universe. God the Son was sent to Earth to reconcile mankind’s sinful ways so that we could come to the Father through the sacrifice of the Son, Jesus. God the Holy Spirit has a job which includes the other two, but He is Spiritual in form and function. Which makes His function kinda hard to describe. The Spirit or Holy Ghost as He has been called allows our minds to understand and learn the Truths of Scripture when we study and read it. He is also the One Who convicts your spirit of the need for salvation if you aren’t saved through Jesus already.

If you could be physically in the room with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, they would look alike but different. Similar to being in the room with triplets. They look the same but there are subtle differences which are seen and understood but which are also hard to detect. Am I making this distinction worse or understandable? If you saw the movie, The Shack, you get a little bit of the differences and similarities that I am talking about.

None of the other religions claim to actually get you into heaven, except Christianity. They call it paradise or nirvana or oneness. Jesus even called it Paradise once on the cross when He was talking to the thief who asked to be remembered when He came into His Kingdom. Heaven would and will be a true Paradise because there is no death, no disease, no need for any of our man-made things to feel better because in the Presence of God nothing can hurt or harm us!

We will be in the dwelling place of God Himself and since He is the manifestation of Love and Life, there will be nothing which can take those blessings from us ever again! The descriptions of Heaven which some have written about or painted are so much beyond our ability to put into words or even to paint them with the colors or the words that we have until it truly blows your imagination apart. The mind has not seen nor can the imagination fathom what Heaven looks or feels like because we have nothing to compare it to.

A life lived in honor of and following Jesus is one which is never boring or without results which will burn into eternity. God loves us and since He gave His Son to pay the penalty for our sins, then we should give our lives to Him as a living sacrifice so that others may know His blessings and His grace.

 

We need hope


But, where can we find that hope? Have you ever wondered about that? We can’t do it alone. Our collective hope should come from Jesus, but will this ever happen? Yes, it will but it will be after a time of great suffering in our world. Why do hope and redemption come to us after hardship or suffering? In many ways, it is because we need to learn a lesson and God knows how stubborn we are. So, our hope and our deliverance come at the cost of hardship and suffering.

We always pray for deliverance and hope, sometimes we don’t use those specific words but it is the presence of hope that most of us are searching for. There are times when hope seems to be very far away or even not attainable, but God is as near as our next prayer and that is what gives us hope. God does care about all of us and He is never any distance from you, yet we think He is at times.

Hope is also the offspring of love and since God is Love personified then just knowing that your prayer is heard and that He listens to it and knows your situation gives you hope. So, why do people generally ignore Him and look in all sorts of places and people for their hope? I believe that it is because of the time in which we live.

What is so different about this “time”? If you can look back about forty or fifty years, with your parents or grandparents, they can tell you about how the world was when they were young. I know, many of you are tired of hearing about “the good old days”, but in many instances compared to today, that was true! Crime statistics from 1960, 1970 and 1980 all show a very different world from what we see and hear today.

For instance, in 1960 there were less than 200 car thefts per 100,000 people in the whole of the United States.a5667a1c-d550-49b9-9c38-daf1c70db46c

This is just one statistic but you get the point. I am sure there are others out there which can be found on the Internet. My point is that even though theft of cars has gone down and is even approaching the numbers from 57 years ago, other metrics like murder, rape, crimes against humanity (religious wars), are rising. All of this is happening because we are nearing the time described in the book of Revelation.

Why am I bringing this up in a post which is about hope? Because our Hope is in Jesus and He is coming back very soon. This is why Satan and his demons and spirits are intensifying their work these days. Their time is growing short and they know it! I am not speaking of people being possessed, just that spirits and demons can influence people, especially those who have ignored giving their lives to Jesus.

I am not speaking of people who just “claim to be Christians” because there are far more of those than there are actual Christians. People claim to be Christians when they have been to a church service once or twice a year. They also claim this distinction when their parents went to church when they were young as if you can inherit it. Christianity is not something like a cold or the flu, you don’t get it by being in contact with a Bible or being present in a church service occasionally!

You are and become a Christian when you have felt the call of the Lord on your heart, which you will be able to detect. It isn’t emotional nor is it just a decision which you make to become a Christian. When the Holy Spirit touches your heart or your soul, that part of you which can’t be found on an MRI, you will know it. Occasionally it comes during a service or by watching a service on TV, God can use any venue to get your attention. But it is NOT just a decision on your part!

Some people will tell you that you can refuse to listen when this happens and you can ignore it for a while. But I don’t recommend it. Read the book of Jonah and you will see that when God wants to use someone for His purposes, you will be brought around in time. My own calling into the ministry was over thirty years ago, but I ignored it until about ten years ago and I couldn’t ignore it any longer. No, God doesn’t make your life hard or unhappy in order to turn your heart back to His call but He will cause you to feel that call in a more urgent way.

Your hope and mine lie in the arms of Jesus and when you feel His call on your life, don’t put it off. My reason for this is that you can’t be sure of the length of your life and if you don’t accept Him as your Savior and Lord when you feel His call, you may not get another chance to accept it. An out of control car or tire on the highway could take your life tonight and you will meet Him but in a very different circumstance than what you should. Meeting Him without knowing Him and being a Christian will be…well let’s just say it isn’t very good at all.

Could we all just get along?


This is a question which has been asked and asked again over the years and decades yet it never seems to be answered. We are all human beings, Gender doesn’t matter, nationality doesn’t matter, skin color doesn’t matter, even political ideology doesn’t really matter, at least they don’t until someone gets their feelings hurt or in some way offends someone else. Then one offense gets blown out of proportion entirely by the news media or social media and it makes the offense grow.

One word or phrase or even the look on your face can cause these same reactions between friends and family alike. Is it possible to even have worldwide peace and harmony when we are all so messed up and thin-skinned? On our own merits and ideas, no I do not believe that peace can be achieved in our lifetime or maybe even in many lifetimes.

The only possible way that this will ever happen will be when the world is brought under one ruler and He must be Jesus, the Son of God and our Lord. Any other initiative or attempt at peace on a worldwide scale will fail eventually simply because…well because we are human!

So, what do we do in the meantime? If we could get the world to follow Jesus and understand that He is the only Savior Who can bring our whole world into a peaceful state of being, I am afraid that nobody living today could possibly get everyone to get along. Even if we did somehow get the world to go along with this initiative, eventually it will fail. Following Jesus worldwide will only happen when He rules the world from Jerusalem during His reign of one thousand years.

Seek Him out and pray that you will be saved through Him so that you can enjoy fellowship with Him and other saints into eternity.

 

Sufficient grace


2 Corinthians 12:7-10

“And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh…”

We are plainly taught how mistaken we are when we set eminent saints upon a platform by themselves, as though they were some kind of superhuman beings or even angels.

Paul enjoyed more revelations than we do or at least more than we should let others know about,  but then he also had a thorn in the flesh. He was a good man, but he was only a man. And, as men sometimes do, he was subject to the lure of the sin of pride itself. Pride in your children is not a bad thing, nor is being proud of your heritage, but the things which Paul had seen in the Spirit and in his walk with the Lord, he might have elevated himself higher than he should if he were to think much about the revelations that were given to him.

In his prayers, Paul asked the Lord to remove this thorn from his flesh. He did this at least three times as recorded here, yet the Lord said, No. My grace is sufficient for you. So, you see sometimes our infirmities may be brought on by Satan but allowed to stay by God. Why? Because when your joints hurt and it is hard to get up and walk or maybe you can’t balance yourself very well, then you need to depend upon God and His grace toward you so that He will get the glory in your weakness by giving you the strength to endure this trial.

In verse 9, Paul says that he would rather boast in his weakness and infirmities that the power of Christ may be manifest in him.

Leaning on God or on Jesus daily is what God was always speaking of when He told the Jewish people time and time again that He was their portion or that He would sustain them. Even in the wilderness, they got tired of the manna yet they ate it because they needed something to eat. He provided water for all of the people and their animals in the desert, even where there was no river or spring to draw from. God has always provided, yet people tend to rely on themselves more than they do on Him. Even when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, God provided the substitute for him in the form of a goat.

We are meant to walk with Him every day. That doesn’t mean that you have to be reading your Bible all of the time or even be in prayer all of the time. But, to walk in the spirit of worship regardless of where you may find yourself or in what situation, this is what Jesus meant when He told the disciples to take up your cross and follow Me. Your cross is your spiritual worship of Him everywhere you are, not just in church or Bible study.

Even when we do walk with Him daily, don’t fall prey to the sin of pride like the Pharisee did while praying. He was proud in his prayer: The Pharisee was standing alone by himself and he was praying these things: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men: extortioners, oppressors, adulterers, and not like this Tax Collector.”  We must be careful not to allow pride to raise us to a place above others because we don’t deserve it, especially concerning our faith in Jesus.

Paul’s thorn was a blessing as well as a messenger of Satan because it drove him to his knees in prayer. Anytime that we are on our knees in prayer before God we can stand before anyone or anything! God honors our prayers and He hears them, whether He answers them right away or not is His prerogative because He is God!

Do we look to Him for our strength today and every day or do we just say so because it makes us look more like a Christian in the eyes of others? Remember, there are many people who claim to be a Christian but there are fewer people who actually worship God and live their lives in accordance with His Word. Even when they do this, they don’t brag about it, they just walk through their day and their lives the way that they always have since Christ entered their life. Sometimes you can spot them and other times you may not be able to pick them out. Striving to be more like Jesus is a life of living one foot in front of the other. Every second of each day is expectant of His return for us because it could be at any time.

Is it possible to live with the grace of God giving us our daily bread and following Him like He will be appearing just any day? Yes, it is! Because whether we are ready for it or not, He will appear and call us home one day. Then the world will mourn and rejoice in the same day! Rejoice because all of those “intolerant Christians are gone” and those who are mourning will be the ones who attended services and knew about His return one day but like the virgins who needed more oil…they weren’t ready when He did show up.