Tag: God

God is great!


God loves each of us. It is His will for you to be great at whatever you are doing, regardless of what you do or who you are. Isn’t that a great way to look at life! Why am I in such a great mood? Because, Thanksgiving was yesterday, but God is absolutely in control and is the most gracious God and He is in control of all, not just my life or yours if you are a Christian, but He is in control of every nation and all of the world!

Yes, there are some terrible things happening in the world, but those are not caused by God but by Satan, who is trying to take God’s glory and any person that he can away from God! Whether it is through war, or death or disease, Satan will do it just to poke his finger in God’s eye so to speak.

The difference with God is that God doesn’t give up on us, because He knows where you are and He knows where you are going!

He will be there in the darkness and the hurt and the painful days. He will be with you when you are on top of the world, and nothing seems to be going wrong. God is there, wherever you are no matter what the situation.

God loves you and will be with you regardless! How do I know? Because, when I was sick a couple of years ago, He was with me. In the night with fever and the dark dreams that were keeping me from seeing Him, He was there. He was beside me when a tornado went over my house while I had fever and couldn’t get up if I had to.

He was with every person that I have prayed with during my time of being a pastor, as I still am. He has been with my nephew after a really bad accident on a four-wheeler, and He is still healing him. Life is precious to God, no matter what the life is. He notices a sparrow when it dies, He knows when a baby is aborted and when one is born. Regardless of the life, He cares for them all. If you will give your life to Him, then you will care for them too. He loved each of us whether we were born yet, or whether we had accepted Jesus yet or not. He cares about all of the life, the creation that He created for us to be stewards of and to give glory to Him.

Psalm 148
Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord from the heavens!
Praise him from the skies!
Praise him, all his angels!
Praise him, all the armies of heaven!
Praise him, sun and moon!
Praise him, all you twinkling stars!
Praise him, skies above!
Praise him, vapors high above the clouds!
Let every created thing give praise to the Lord, for he issued his command, and they came into being. He set them in place forever and ever. His decree will never be revoked.
Praise the Lord from the earth, you creatures of the ocean depths, fire and hail, snow and clouds,a wind and weather that obey him, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all livestock, small scurrying animals and birds, kings of the earth and all people, rulers and judges of the earth, young men and young women, old men and children. Let them all praise the name of the Lord. For his name is very great; his glory towers over the earth and heaven!
He has made his people strong, honoring his faithful ones—the people of Israel who are close to him.
Praise the Lord!

Amen! Come Lord Jesus!

What else do we need?


Since tomorrow is the biggest shopping day of the year, or one of them at least, what is it that we need? Any suggestions?

Peace.

Hope.

Caring for one another.

No bills would be good.

No more diseases or death.

More love and compassion.

Are these impossible to have in the world that we live in? No, not impossible, just improbable. Why is that? Because we are flawed, human beings. How many years have we enjoyed peace in the past few thousand years? Just that factoid will give you chills and here is the answer that I found: There has been NO time in the last 500 years where there has not been armed conflict somewhere in the world.  

Very likely, if you are talking about peace all over the world, there has never been a day in which there were no conflicts somewhere in the world from the beginning of mankind.

All of those positive things that I listed above, are good to think about, and pray about, but until Jesus comes again our world will not enjoy those much. Yes, we can give hope to others, we can care for those less fortunate, bills are an individual problem and another problem altogether, disease and death are under God’s control so only He can eliminate them, love and compassion have to do with our lives spiritually and that has everything to do with whether we are totally committed to life with Jesus in our hearts. Because, without Him we can’t be loving and compassionate like He is.

Can we be more like Jesus? Yes, as I said above, if we are committed to Jesus and seeking His Wisdom in our everyday life. If you don’t do that, then you are living and trying things on your own strength and wisdom. That is a combination which doesn’t work very well at all. This has been tried for thousands of years, and yet it doesn’t work. Oh, yes Satan will “help” you in ways behind the scenes to make your life seem to be on track and everything will be fine. The money that you are making, the home and the family that you have, everything looks and feels real cozy but how do you feel inside? Most people who are following this road, this path in their life feel as if something is missing, that is why there are so many people, successful people who are addicted to so many things like sex or drugs or even spending money. They feel like they need to buy the one thing that will make them happy, they need one more sports car, one more mansion, one more ???

The problem with this is that money cannot buy happiness. It helps in ways like being able to pay your bills or to not have many bills, you will have many so-called “friends” if you have a lot of money, but they won’t last any longer than the money will. Having money will help with your health too because you can afford to go to the doctor or to the gym and make sure that you are as healthy as you can be, but when your time is up on this Earth money can do nothing for you except pay for your funeral. You cannot buy any more time, because when it is your time to go, to die, then you will find what you have been looking for. You will find God waiting for you when you open your eyes in eternity. “Well, that is a good thing, right?”, not necessarily, if you have never asked Jesus into your life and into your heart and truly given your life to Him then you will meet God as your Judge, your final Judge. He will show you every opportunity that you have had to accept Jesus as Savior, and you didn’t do it. You will see all of the words and their effect on the people around you while you were alive. God is the Creator of all things. He doesn’t need your money, all that He has ever wanted from each of us is fellowship. A relationship with Jesus enables us to have this every day and it doesn’t prevent you from making money, but your relationship with Him will determine what you do with the money that He allows you to have.

Many of the things which I listed in the list above, in fact every one of them, won’t come to fruition until Jesus is ruler of your life and the King over this world. He will be coming back soon, so I advise you to contemplate your life in relation to Jesus and if you don’t know Him yet, then read His Word, the Bible and ask Him to show you what you need to know and understand in it. Ask Him to come into your life and forgive you of the sins that you have done and to give you the strength to serve Him in whatever capacity that you can. I promise, you won’t regret knowing Him, because He is really all that we need now and into eternity.

How many times?


There are riots in the streets over a decision by some legal entity in our society, yet those riots will not change the outcome. The killing of people and burning of businesses and cars only makes the so-called “racial” issue more loaded, more explosive. During a time when the only real racist people are those who lived through it in the sixties and seventies!

Most of the young people in college now and those who may be a little beyond college age, don’t really recognize race as a problem or even a factor in their friendships or relationships. Why should our country keep on digging up the bones of a dead issue? Let it stay buried and move on, please! How do you think that God would act in this instance?

Not with violence or hatred, those are human emotions. Jesus got angry in the Temple, but that is because they had turned the outer court of the Temple into a marketplace and that was not what it was intended to be. Anger, hatred toward your fellow-man, is considered as murder in God’s eyes because the feelings which come out when you act and feel this way toward someone are very violent and just by thinking of the act in your mind you have committed it in your heart, whether you did so physically or not.

Our country and its people need to get back into church, soon, because we NEED God in our hearts and in this nation desperately! We have been pushing Him out of our lives for long enough and it is time that we got on our knees and begged for His forgiveness! Ask Him to come into your heart and cleanse your life and bring you back into a relationship with Him!

We can’t keep this kind of tension in our country because soon it could escalate into a real conflict between races and cultures, essentially another civil war of unrest and hatred and I don’t think that our nation could survive that at all. It would rip this nation apart and America would no longer be a nation, although I can’t imagine what is would become and I really don’t want to.

Please, get into a Bible teaching church, read and study God’s Word and ask Him to show you what He wants from your life and mine. We can’t wait for another “great awakening”, we have to wake up NOW! Before it is too late!

All things work together…


Does this verse or beginning of the verse speak to your life or your spirit? Yes, to me it does, because everything works together for the good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose. Kinda limiting isn’t it? “For those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose”, not for everyone, not for those who are not Christians, but for those who are Christians! Things will work out for your good, maybe not immediately but eventually, because God’s timing is different from yours or mine.

We want things to work out right now! Nobody wants to work for something or anything today, they want it given to them regardless of the cost! The problem with this is that people don’t value things which are free! It doesn’t matter if the item cost one thousand dollars or more, if they got it for free then they don’t place any value on it at all! The cheaper something is, then the less value is given to it so people will not value it or take care of it like they will if they truly had to work for it and earn it.

I think that is the very reason that many people don’t place value on their salvation through Jesus. They don’t value it because it has already been paid for and all that they need to do to claim it is to believe it and ask for it and it is theirs! There is no need to do anything to earn it because our works, even done in Jesus’ name, will not earn us a place into Heaven! Our place, our salvation has been paid for through His sacrifice and nothing that we can do can come close to the price that was paid for it!

All that you have to do is claim it by asking Him into your life and your heart, ask for forgiveness of your sins and you will be a different person from that point on. Then, the works that you can do for Jesus will be worth something! Because, they will be done in the power of the Holy Spirit and not through man’s strength and will. God loves us all, but He doesn’t love the lives that we lead until we dedicate our life’s accomplishments to Him.

Time is running short because the “birth pains” are beginning, the ones which Jesus spoke about that would happen before the troubled times, the Tribulation of the world. You can see it in the financial markets, in the news every day, it is building up and one day, soon I believe, it will blow the world’s eyes open so that people can see what is happening. Yet, for some it will be too late. Give your life to Jesus, read and pray over the Bible so that you can be part of His Kingdom because if you aren’t then you are part of Satan’s world and that won’t be a pretty picture or a good future at all.

God’s plans…


We tend to make plans from the time we are able to play with other children, we make plans. Plans for forts, and rescues and wars and all sorts of stuff. When we get older, we still make plans, although we are making bigger plans at this point like what we will major in when we go to college or if we decide to go into the military then which branch and what specialty to follow. God’s plans are never wrong or come at the wrong time, He is never calling an emergency session of the Trinity and nothing catches Him by surprise. He knows what He has planned and that it will do exactly what He has purposed for it to accomplish, whether in your life while you are young or later in your life, His plans will always be done on time.

Just as His signs in the heavens happen at the time that He appoints for them to. The eclipses that we have seen of the “blood moons”, the solar eclipse that will happen next year along with the other signs that happen every day that people disregard or don’t recognize as signs from Him. Like the one that happened during the filming of a mini-series that will be released on Easter next spring. It seems that God is giving His approval to it. Of course there are many who will say that it is just a coincidence, but take a look at it and draw your own conclusion. As a verse in the Bible says: “I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke.” Joel 2:30cross1

There are very few times that a cross is formed in the sky, especially with no jets crossing paths to aid it along. God is the creator, and He can form anything wherever He wishes to, whenever He wants it to appear. Your life, your plans are part of His plan and if you will align your heart and your life with His, then you will see the difference that you can make in other people’s lives.

Give your heart to God and the rest of your life will fall into place just as it should. I never thought that I would be doing what I do, but He brought my life around to a point where I could be used in His Kingdom and for His Kingdom. My small church is small now, but it is possible that someone from my church may have an impact in the world one day. I don’t know God’s plans, but He does and He knows exactly how this will work out to His glory!

No matter what happens….


God is always by your side and He knows where you are, in whatever situation that you might find yourself. He is our Creator and protector and our Rock, all that we have to do is allow Him into our lives, daily, and He can show us what we have in Him and who we are in His eyes.

GodknowswhereyouareGod loves each one of us, no matter what we may have done or how bad we think we are, because He knows the person that you can be in Him. Christ died so that you can have life, abundant and full, in the joy of knowing that you are His when you decide to make Jesus your Savior. I know, that is not theologically correct, God has to call you first and you will know when that call is placed on your heart. You can’t just decide on your own that you are going to become a Christian, any more than you can change your old car into a new one by deciding to do so.

God knows you, better than you know yourself, and He will draw you to Himself so that you can be a saint in His Kingdom and His family. You don’t have to do anything to attain this position, because Jesus has already done all of the work, you just have to believe that He did it for you. In the days that seem like they will never end and the nights which seem to be so lonesome, God is there. He never leaves your side and will never leave your side, regardless of the circumstances in your life. Ask Him to share your life with you and to be your Savior and He will be!

We were created for fellowship with God, but you can’t have fellowship with Him without a relationship. God never leaves any of us, He is always closer than anyone and He can help you in all situations, but He will not force Himself on you or into your life, you have to ask Him to come into your life…into your heart and change you into the person that He already knows that you can be. Be that person for Him and for your life with Him, because without Him we are nothing, with Him we are and have everything!

Honor, Dignity, and Commitment


The character of our nation’s heroes, its Veterans, is uncompromising commitment to their job, their duty, and to their country. We honor their commitment with dignity on this Veteran’s Day, but what about our commitment? Do each of us have a commitment that we are duty bound to honor and carry through? We all should honor our elders, our parents and grandparents but especially our Veterans, whether they are veterans of a branch of the military or of the police service or fire and ambulance services, we should honor them. Why should we honor people who aren’t putting their lives on the line for our freedom? Because they actually do put their lives on the line, every day. When a police person (man or woman), puts that uniform on, it means that they are taking their lives and putting them on the line, not just for a pay-check (which isn’t much actually) but they are putting themselves in harm’s way for us, each of us, every day. Yes, Veterans do the same thing in the line of fire on a battlefield wherever they are sent to defend our freedoms and the freedom of the people that they are sent to protect. The same is true for ambulance personnel or fire service personnel, they put their lives in the line of traffic, or in the heat of a burning house or apartment building whenever they are on their jobs. So, they are all veterans of their respective service, regardless of the field that it may be in.

The same can be said about Jesus and His disciples. They put their lives on the line for their beliefs and for the cause of Christianity, to further the Kingdom of God around the world. We are to do the same, if we are committed to the cause of Christ, to take the knowledge of Jesus to all nations and people. We are also in a battle against Satan and his forces of spiritual beings, demons, principalities and powers which we cannot see, but they are in the world fighting against us and God. They are trying to keep people away from Jesus and the knowledge of Him and His grace toward us. Our fight is with those enemies which we can’t see, but they are there regardless and they will try any form of deception to win their cause, any lie, any death that they can cause to bring our voice down to silence. This is the enemy that we fight as Christians, the ones that can take our loved ones from us and ruin our witness to others if we allow it to happen, if we give in to their forces.

But, we can’t and we mustn’t give in or give up. The time is growing short and the battle lines are being drawn. We have to stand in our faith, we have to learn from Jesus what it takes to be still and know that God is with us and that He is far more powerful than the enemy that we face here on Earth. The victory is already ours through Christ, all that we have to do is claim it in faith by His power and His name. Stand in honor and dignity and commit yourself to Jesus’ cause and ask Him to give you the strength to commit to His cause and to stick with it until the end. God loves you and will give you the victory in all things if you will only believe in Jesus and the sacrifice that He made for you.

Semper Fi!  Praise the Lord! Come Lord Jesus!! Amen.

New hope for the future


The election has fostered hope in our government and in the future of America, but it is likely that it is a false hope. Oh, yes, the promises that were made in order to get the votes are high and grand, but are they real and doable…hardly. In the climate that our lawmakers find themselves in during this administration, few if any of the promises that were made will make it to a committee, let alone a vote. Then there is the chance of a veto as well, so the newly elected will not likely to make any real progress at all.

I don’t want to seem to be down on our President. I am glad that I have lived in a time that we could elect an African-American president because it is something that I didn’t think I would ever see. What has been done to our economy is tragic, but I fear that it really isn’t the President’s fault at all. It is the fault of our country and the people who have been pushing God and Christianity out of our culture and our schools and especially out of any government sponsored event or office.

Our nation was founded by God-fearing men and women and it is time that we accepted it as fact and got back to the God of our forefathers in truth and in our schools. In all honesty, if you don’t want your child or children to learn of God and what He has blessed us with, school your children at home and let the majority of children learn of our Creator and the blessings that we have enjoyed because of His grace toward us. He didn’t condone the slave trade that occurred three or four hundred years ago when it started in Africa and in Ireland, but it happened and brought many people to Christ anyway.

Right now, I am schooling my child at home because I want him to learn about God and His grace toward us and in the history of our country. I have to do this because of cost and because it isn’t allowed in public schools today like it was in my parent’s lifetime and their parent’s schools too. Our country was better off when God was part of the curriculum and not considered part of the “problem”. The problem is that many people, Christians, have not stood up to the minority who scream the loudest saying that our religion is harming their kids. How can learning of God and His love for you and your children harm them? Would you rather learn of Satan and his “rewards”? How about Buddhism and it’s rewards?

The only way to be blessed with an eternity that is meaningful is to follow Jesus and learn from the Bible, God’s Word and Wisdom. No other “religion” can gain you access into Heaven, only through the gates of hell and Satan would be tickled to death if he could get you to follow him there if only because he deprived you of a place in Heaven!

In the beginning paragraphs, I said that our problem in this country and its economic woes did not start with our President and it didn’t. Many of our policies concerning the secularization of America began before he was ever born and we began reaping the consequences of those actions long before he became President.

A revival is needed in our country and in every person’s life and if not revival, then salvation through Jesus. This is the only way of actually saving our country and no elected official can do it, only Jesus can have this effect on each person who will ask Him into their life and their heart. Yes, I do read my Bible and I have read the places where slavery was approved of, where genocide was approved of, but in both instances God was approving it because of the outcome of His people, not because He hated the ones that were supposed to be killed or enslaved. Pray for our country and its leaders, those who actually know how to lead at least, and for the mercy of God to come to our country and not His judgement upon it!

This is the day


A verse in the Bible begins this way, “This is the day…”, but it is not the only verse that has those words as its beginning. One verse says: “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118: 24

Another says: “This is the day of your salvation”, (2 Corinthians 6:2) , maybe not in those exact words but the idea is there nonetheless. The Bible is full of verses which have “this day” or “today” contained within them and the meaning of them in relation to your salvation is that you shouldn’t put it off at all, not even one more day! God loves each of us, which is why He came to Earth in the person of His Son so that He could pay the price for our sins, not just yours or mine but for the entire world! Your sins have been paid for, you just have to accept it, believe it, and allow Him to change you into the person that He wants you to be.

There is nothing that you can do to add to the work that He performed on the cross for you, it has been done and it is finished. All that you have to do is accept it in faith and ask Him to forgive you for your sins, then seek Him out in His Word so that you can come to know Him better and more completely. It is not required of you to do this, but in gratitude you want to because of the grace and the love that has been shown toward you and the whole world. I did.

Oh, when I was younger I didn’t understand the Bible and I didn’t take the time to ask Him to help me understand it. But, later on I realized that I needed that wisdom, His wisdom for life, for living, for being a better husband and father, for being a better representative of His grace and mercy toward us, toward me.

I lived in a broken home for a long time and I blamed my life on God. I blamed Him for my parent’s divorce, and for the fact that I grew up without a father at home. I was a rebellious teenager all during my teens. I drank alcohol, I smoked pot, I ran around with a bad crowd. It would’ve been worse had I lived in a larger city, instead of the small town where I was. But, the worst of it was that I thought I had accepted Christ at the age of 13. I had gone forward and I did all of the things that you are supposed to do, like come before the church and get baptized. I went to Sunday school and church all during my school years from the seventh grade on, but when Friday night came around and I had my drivers license I went to town to get drunk. I didn’t go to watch the game, I didn’t care about the game.

I had some wrecks in my Mom’s car before I graduated, because of my drinking. But, I still thought I was saved. It wasn’t until twenty years went by that I realized that I had been playing a game doing all the outward things which looked like I was a Christian, but inside I hadn’t changed at all. Essentially, I had put on a coat that said “Christian” on it, and when I go ready to do something that I knew didn’t fit in that coat, I took it off and did what I wanted to do. It wasn’t until I became a father that I realized that I needed to change my life so that I could, at least, be a real role model for my child. That is when I became a Christian. I had been going through the motions for a long time, and it still took some study and some real, honest prayer between me and God before I truly felt Him touch my heart and my life and make me realize that I truly needed Him. That, I couldn’t be a Christian without Him and without giving up my “life” so that I could put His on.

Birthday wishes and kind words


Birthday wishes are like snowflakes, they are beautiful as they come and they make you appreciate the life that you have. We appreciate them when we see them or hear them fall on your ears. Wishing someone a happy birthday is a wonderful way to appreciate this person’s friendship. Appreciation of someone’s friendship is a wonderful way of showing kindness toward people who are or have been part of your life. Whether they are in your life now or not, even if you only see them infrequently, kindness and appreciation are qualities which you get from being Christ-like.

Yes, you can be kind and appreciative even if you are not a Christian but you will be even more so if you are one. Your character or the character of Jesus will come through into your daily living, your being, and it will show through everything that you do. There won’t be much of this distrustful, mean-spirited, person left in you. Now, I am not saying that everyone who is not a Christian is this way, I have met a few Christians who act this way in their life and their business practices. I suppose thinking that if they are kind and caring toward their competition that they will be run over in their business and be taken advantage of by people, so they think that they have to be “tough-minded and hard”.

Do you think that Jesus was this way while He was a carpenter before He began His ministry? I doubt it. I think that He was just as easy-going and kind toward those who didn’t want to pay Him for His work as He was to those who paid Him a little extra for the work that was done. Being a kind person, whether in business or in your everyday life, is easy but as Jesus said “be shrewd as vipers” when working or talking around people who might take advantage of you. In today’s world people will try to take advantage of you when you are kind to them or seem to be naive, so conduct yourself in the way that Jesus would.

Seek His wisdom, found in Proverbs mostly, to conducting your life and your business and then do it everyday. Some people may not see the love and compassion of Jesus until they see it or hear it in something that you do or say. Just a kind word, a “thank you” for something that is expected but say it anyway, open the door for someone who is carrying a package, just being helpful can go a long way toward bringing someone to the knowledge of Jesus.