The Unseen Hand

Many people struggle to see God at work in their daily routines or during difficult times. This post could encourage readers to look for divine appointments, small mercies, or moments of grace that reveal God’s active involvement in their lives.

In John 8:4 the story about the woman caught in adultery is a good one to look at. Granted, all of us cannot relate to this story but it happened because of the Pharisees wanting to see what Jesus would do in this instance, since the Torah demands that she should be stoned. They forgot about the rest of the law that says the man should be stoned as well.

God is present in our daily lives even when we don’t acknowledge His Presence every day. He is there giving us peace at the times that we need it and guidance when we can’t see the way forward. Even if you don’t believe in Jesus or God, He is still there watching over you. God will not interfere in your life because He gave us the ability to choose but He is still with you. God loves us because He is the Creator and He formed each of us in the womb so He knows you better than anyone.

Our lives would be much worse if He wasn’t around every day, but because of His love for us He watches over us all of the time. So…to get back to the story about the woman, the Pharisees were testing Him to see what He would do. I really wish that the Bible recorded what He wrote in the dirt, but that is what Jesus did. He stooped over and began writing on the ground. Some commentators have postulated that Jesus wrote the sins of the Pharisees in the dirt but whatever it was I think they might have noticed it when Jesus said, “The one of you who has no sin, can cast the first stone”. Of course they all dropped their stones and left because Jesus was the only person who could’ve cast the first stone.

Then, He does something that nobody expected. Jesus asked her, “Where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you? She said, “No one, Lord.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more”.

Jesus doesn’t condemn us, He paid the price to redeem us from the penalty of our sins. All we have to do is believe in Him for our salvation.

Life ahead

Have you ever thought about where you will be after you die? Some of us do but there are many who don’t think about it or they don’t believe there is a “life after death” to look forward to or dread, whichever the case may be. God provided a way for us to have salvation from the penalty of sin, which is separation from Him. The only way for us to be in His Presence is to believe in Jesus for our salvation. No work can get you into Heaven and money has no place in Heaven. God loves each of us at such a depth that we cannot know His love until we are there.

The one other emotion that we feel here but rarely acknowledge is…JOY! I have read about people who have died and gone to Heaven for a little while then they were sent back with a bigger purpose for Him. They describe the feeling in Heaven as joyous and “like being surrounded by joy”. They even describe the trees and grass of Heaven having a part in the celebration of God. Your life in Heaven will be joyous and filled with praise and worship for God and His glory and His provision of eternity for the church, the Bride of Christ.

This doesn’t refer to a church/worship service like we know here but the type of worship of all of Creation. The birds know that God will feed them. The fish of the sea know that God feeds them and they rejoice in that knowledge. God loves you and He has prepared a place for each of us. I pray that more people will come to know Jesus as their Savior because the time is drawing near that the end of the age will come to an end soon. Be ready.

What is your foundation?

Do you believe in Jesus Christ? It is a concrete question and one that is hard to answer for some people. Many people believe that He existed and that the stories in the Bible are true to some extent but that is as far as many will go with their “belief”. The Bible is a book of stories. It is, in fact, a love letter to the world from God. It tells how He brought about the Jewish people to be a people and a nation. It doesn’t cover up the good or the bad that happened in the distant past, but it does give us hope for the future through Jesus Christ.

For those who believe in Jesus for their salvation, the hope that we look forward to is His coming back for the Church, His Bride, to be with Him forever. Will it happen as some books have portrayed, or will it happen as the Bible says it will? We don’t know the day or the hour and that is a good thing but it could happen at any time. It might be keyed to the last person to be saved and their decision to follow Jesus. Only God the Father knows when it will happen and it could be in a few minutes or a few days or weeks or even a few years from now. Your foundation will determine whether you will be in the group that is taken up or left on Earth to live through the Tribulation that is coming afterwards.

Your foundation is the belief-system that you live by. Whether you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior or not will determine your position and your place after the rapture of the Church. I am not writing this to shame anyone, just to let you know that the Earth will be a very different place when this does happen. The Bible calls the Holy Spirit the “restrainer” and when the Church is taken up, He will be taken from the Earth as well. You might ask, “Why does this matter to me? I don’t believe in God or Jesus.” If you don’t believe then the world may not look much different to you when the church is gone, but it will get much worse in the days and weeks afterward.

The Book of Revelation tells about many things that will happen during the next seven years after the church is taken up. With the Holy Spirit gone, since He lived in the hearts of all of the believers, demonic forces and other evils will have free reign to do as they please. If you think the world is bad today, it will be much worse during the next seven years. Read the book of Revelation and seek out a pastor to help you understand what is coming because the news won’t tell you and it is likely that Bibles will be banned during this time, so find out about it today before it is too late. God has always cared about you and every person on Earth and He doesn’t want any to be sent to hell in the future but if you choose not to believe in Jesus as your Savior, then you will be in hell with Satan and his demons.

Living your life

Eat with joy, drink with gladness,
Walk in love, work with cheer,
Fear God — this is all.

The quote above is a small rendition of the book of Ecclesiastes in just a few lines. “Eat with joy” means to be thankful to God for your food and your ability to get food, “drink with gladness” does not mean drinking to get drunk, be thankful for the barley and wheat and some of the real sugars that are in our drinks. “Walk in love”, live your life…daily showing and reflecting the love of Jesus, “work with cheer” in many ways is not an easy idea for many people because they are working at a job they have to work at and not a job that they enjoy. Cheerfully work because you have the ability to work to pay your bills and thank God for the job you have then pray that He will find you another one that you truly enjoy! “Fear God”, this doesn’t mean be deathly afraid of Him like He’s going to throw a bolt of lightening at you if you mess up. It means give Him the reverent fear that you give to your Creator because He knows you better than you know yourself. He knows every thought and word that you have spoken, good or bad, about Him or anyone else, so consider that fact for a minute.

God sent His Son, Jesus, to Earth to be the Perfect sacrifice for ALL of humanity’s sins and to show the world that God does understand the human condition and everything that is involved in living here as a human being. Not one of us is guaranteed tomorrow, so seek to know Jesus today because you might have a wreck going to work or on the way home. Don’t play around with your eternity because it is so much more time than the life we have here, make sure that your eternal home will be with Jesus on that day that you leave this life and enter in to eternity with God.

Don’t wait! The time is near!

Jesus promised. The apostle wrote of His return to take His Bride to the Father’s house. Yes! We have been waiting for two thousand years, but God is trying to get as many people as possible to come to Jesus. When that call comes it will be in an instant and the church, the real believers will be taken to Heaven. There is no time to become ready, if you know of Jesus and go to church then you know the Truth. Don’t wait! He is working through dreams in the Middle East and bringing as many as possible to the saving grace of Jesus.

In America we can freely go to church or have a Bible at home to read and learn about salvation, but in the Middle East particularly in Muslim controlled areas, you can’t have a Bible nor can you convert to Christianity without some severe consequences. So…Jesus is coming to many in dreams and talking to them and explaining Who He is and where they need to go to find out more about the way to know Him and be saved. Jesus is going to each person that He knows will come to Him and He sends them to another person who can explain the salvation that they need, in other words He sends them to a Christian.

God loves us and the time is short. Don’t wait because not one of us is promised tomorrow, but the taking up of the church will be in an instant and we don’t know when this will happen. Nothing has to happen prophetically prior to His coming for His Bride. Life will be more than we can imagine when we arrive in Heaven. The best thing that I’m looking forward to is no more pain or cell phones and I won’t need glasses to read! My body will be free of any and all diseases and I will be more alive then than I am now! Please make sure that you will be included in the group that is taken up!

Inner Peace…

In today’s chaotic world, many people are searching for inner peace. We need to explore how the teachings of Jesus offer a unique and lasting form of peace, contrasting it with the temporary worldly comforts that many people seek today. I will begin with the Scripture that points us to Jesus: Berean Standard Bible

Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled; do not be afraid.

Why do people have trouble with this teaching from John 14:27? Many people get confused about what Jesus is speaking about in the first place. What “peace” is He talking about? Why do I need it? The peace that Jesus is speaking about is the peace we gain through giving our life and our heart to Jesus and believing in Him for our Salvation. This peace is what you feel when the weight is lifted from your shoulders. Why do you feel this? Because the weight of your sins is gone. The guilt and the pain that the weight of those sins caused in your life is lifted and you feel an energy like you never have before!

You are at peace with God because before you gave your life and your heart to Jesus, you were in a struggle with God over your life and what would become of your choices. Choosing Life in Jesus changes your heart and your life in ways that your own efforts can’t. No matter how good or bad you believe you are or have been, forgiveness can only be found in Jesus Christ and believing in Him for your salvation. Your “road” leads to a place of regret and misery for an eternity. Giving your heart to Jesus will lead you to Heaven and a life full of His love and fulfillment for an eternity that you can’t imagine.

Where is God when I need Him?

How much do you need in this life? God gives us everything that we need every day but most of us take that for granted and we still wonder, “Where is God when I need Him?”. As someone who has grown up in America and has so-called “privileges” because I live here, I can tell you that those privileges are few. Some think that because I am “white” I have everything but I don’t. Life and friends can be cruel at times even when the “friends” don’t intend to be. Life is what we make of it or so I am told and in many ways that is true, but when you see many people who are wealthier than you are, don’t assume that their life is a happy one all of the time. Nobody can be happy every minute of every day regardless of the amount of money they have access to.

Joy, on the other hand, can be had by someone who lives in a cardboard shack. Why? Isn’t happiness and joy the same thing? Not by a long shot. Joy is not fleeting. It is a feeling that you can have just because you were able to get up this morning and walk to the kitchen. Many people in the world don’t have that blessing. Happiness comes and goes and depends upon your situation at the time. Joy can go on forever.

Where am I going with this? In many parts of the world poverty is so crushing that even having rags on your body may be all of the clothes that you have, and yet some of those who live in this situation are joyful because they are believers in Jesus. In America, we can’t imagine being impoverished to that point, yet there are some in our country who do live that way.

God watches over all of us whether we are rich or poor, but many still don’t acknowledge Him as their Savior because when they felt the need for Him to intervene in some way for them, He did not. We can’t know why He didn’t heal or fix a problem or disease but He does. He may use a doctor or a prayer to heal but the answer is always up to Him. As Christians, we have access to Him all of the time but many of us allow the world to dictate when we seek Him. We try all kinds of treatments and other ways of healing us before we, as a last resort, turn to Him.

Being joyful in the face of a medical problem that feels overwhelming is not something many of us even consider, but one of Jesus’ disciples said that we should “count it all as Joy”, the good and the bad days. If you have given your life to Jesus and are walking through the world feeling sad or even angry because of a prayer that hasn’t been answered, ask Him to show you why it hasn’t been. God uses the good days and the bad days to give us strength and increase our faith. We may not like the way He does it but we will see the outcome one day and realize that it was for our good and His glory that it happened that way. Seek Him today and know that He loves each of us warts and all.

He is enough.

Believe in Jesus

Salvation comes to each of us by belief in Jesus. Many people question this today and many others don’t believe in Him at all. Some don’t even believe He existed but God’s Word doesn’t lie, He came to give His life for all of mankind and He did. Then, three days later, He walked out of the grave and taught for forty days before He ascended to Heaven.

The children recognized Jesus in many ways more deeply and completely than His disciples did. We should come to Him as the children did, with complete child-like faith. Our problem is our adult knowledge and acquired disbelief that many of us have after our time in jobs and life in general. We doubt many things, even Jesus, to the point of needing some kind of “proof”. God’s Word is the proof because He cannot lie but we must believe!

Believing that He existed isn’t enough. There are many historical proofs outside of the Bible that prove He existed and was crucified. Your belief for salvation must come by your heart not just knowledge but spiritually believing that He died for your sins to cleanse you of those sins, no matter how small they may be or even how big they are. He came to bring many people into God’s Kingdom through this kind of belief and when the Holy Spirit convicts you that you NEED Him as your Savior, don’t ignore this conviction. Many people have done so and put it off for years until they died without Him and began serving eternity in punishment because they didn’t believe in Jesus while they could.

Our life here is extremely short compared to one million years and that is just the beginning of eternity. Jesus came to give us Life in eternity with Him, the Creator of all. Eternity is not going to be boring as some think. We will have many things to do for Him and living in His Presence will be far more than I can describe here. More beautiful than the most beautiful place on Earth. Most of the prophets and disciples of Jesus who were given a glimpse of Heaven couldn’t describe it other than saying “it is more than we can imagine”.

Rain forests and mountains on Earth are beautiful but those same places in the presence of God, Who gives life to everything, they would be more green, more alive than they look here. I’ve read some descriptions from people who had near-death experiences that everything in Heaven is more complete in every way. Even after seeing it, they couldn’t give a better description than that. Just like the prophets and apostles who saw a little bit of it, their description from our perspective could not do it justice. Just as a picture of say the Grand Canyon is beautiful but being there and seeing it with your own eyes…can’t compare to a photo.

Seek Him while He can be found in your life today. When the church is taken up, you truly want to be counted in that number. The next seven years after the church is gone will become “hell on Earth” for real and not a movie.

He gave us so much…

God gave us this planet to live on, with all kinds of food and the families that all of us enjoy. From the very beginning until now, God needs nothing from us but He chose to give us His grace. If you are wondering what else He gives us I’ll try to list a few here:

He makes sure your heart beats every time and He does this for EVERYONE.

He makes sure you can breathe during the night and the day.

He has given each of us the abilities that we have to do our work, for Him and for our family.

But…most of all, He has given us the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. No other religion offers salvation and forgiveness just by believing in the Person and the Hope of Life that is Jesus Christ. Sometimes we try to help Him “save” us by doing lots of projects and work at the church of our choice but remember this: God made the ENTIRE universe a long time before you or I was born, so He doesn’t need our help. He wants us to be His children and part of His family and that is why He chose us before “the foundation of the world”.

Your name and my name were written in His book of saints before the light was spoken into existence. God has always had each believer in His mind long before we were born.

Today, we are living at a time that is rapidly approaching the end of the church age, the age of Grace. I pray that you will seek to know Him as your Savior soon, because there is coming a time when the Holy Spirit will be taken from the Earth and it will be very hard to give your heart and life to Jesus, much harder than it is today. Seek to know Him and to give your heart to Him today. He loves you and He is waiting for you to open the door.

God’s love was proven

On the cross, His love for us was proven and the Bible verse that goes along with it is John 3:16

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son; that whosoever will believe in Him would have eternal life”. So, I will cut it down a bit and go through each part.

God so loved the world: Why would He do this? Why would God give His Son for the world’s sins? Because He loves all of us. We, each of us, were created and formed by God. He gave each of us a personality that no one else has. He gave each of us our talents and our gifts and there is only one of each person on this planet, even if you are a twin. Each of you may look like your brother or sister, but you have talents, personalities and abilities that are different from each other. God made you and me that way.

He gave His Son as a Perfect Lamb to pay for ALL of our sins. Only Jesus could live a sinless life and die to pay for mankind’s sins. Then He rose from that grave to give us eternal life, if we believe in Him. Like the thief on the cross, it only takes your belief in Jesus to bring salvation into your life. There is nothing that you can do to “help” God save you. His grace and mercy are gifts that we get when we believe in Jesus for our salvation. Your spiritual gift is one that you will have to find on your own, but God always gives each of us at least one.

God loves you and He has prepared a place for you in His Kingdom, if you will accept Jesus as your Savior, follow Him and live your life trying to be more like Him. Eternity is a long, long time, so make sure of your eternal destination while there is time. Our world is not going to drown from rising seas or be suffocated by pollution. Read the Bible, especially Romans and the book of Revelation. Your life more abundantly is waiting in Heaven, not here on Earth. Seek Him, find Him and learn from His Word. He loves you more deeply than you can imagine.