Tag: Heaven

How do I get to Heaven?


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

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

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

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

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

Living life for the hereafter


It seems that many people don’t really believe that there is a hereafter to live for, but according to the Bible there is. God’s Word is the Truth, therefore it can’t be wrong so that means that there is a life after this one. We are supposed to be living this life as a rehearsal of sorts for the next life. How we live this life will affect the next one in terms of where (location) and the comfort of our living through eternity as well. Living your life as if there is no tomorrow is a good thing, of sorts, because you aren’t expecting tomorrow to come. Some might say this is bad because then you just do whatever you wish and don’t worry about the consequences.

Yet, there are consequences in the next life. You will not be coming back here as something or someone else, but you will be yourself in the next life. Your eternal life will be a reflection, in a way, of how you have lived in this life. If you have given your heart to Jesus, no matter what age you may have done so, then you will be with Him in Paradise as He told the thief on the cross.

If you did not and you lived even the best life possible for a man or woman to do without Jesus, you are still convicted of a sinful life. A life without the forgiveness of sins by the blood of Jesus, which will still send you to hell. I know, this is one of those topics which you don’t hear mentioned much on radio ministries or television either, but it should be! Why? Because, our God is an Awesome God, but He is Holy and therefore can’t abide sin, no matter how small that sin may be. I have to tell you of the consequences of rejecting Jesus as your Savior because it is my responsibility to do so.

Just as not telling you about a poisonous snake in your path might get you killed, not telling you about the consequences of a life without Christ will also result in your eternal death, as the Bible calls it “the second death”. The problem is that you won’t die in the same sense as you do here, the death will be the separation from God and everything that is or could be good in eternity.

Your life is eternal, the life we live here and now is not. Consider that your life today, no matter how long it may be, actually would be no more than the size of the period at the end of this sentence when compared to eternity.

After that period (.), will be a very long, long, long time to live and serve God in His Kingdom on the New Earth. We have no idea what we will do or where we may go in all of that time, but it will be glorious, of that I am sure! Don’t you want to be part of that rather than being in fire and heat and darkness with the demons and Satan himself? I would and I will. Won’t you consider joining me? Seek out God in His Word, pray to Him about what you read and when you feel His call, answer it. You won’t be disappointed…ever!

Living Joyfully!


For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power. (‭Colossians‬ ‭2‬:‭9-10‬ NKJV)

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (‭James‬ ‭1‬:‭2-4‬ NIV)

These two scriptures encourage us to live with joy in the knowledge that Christ has forgiven our sins and if we have accepted Him as our Savior, then we are truly complete in Him! But, what do you do on the days that things aren’t going so well? Those times when you get a bad report from your doctor or a pink slip from work, what about those days? Are we still supposed to be joyful in those situations?

Not exactly joyful in the way many people think of it, but in the knowledge that Jesus is in our hearts and that we have His strength to get through them. God is in control of all things on the Earth, He knows what is happening and when and for His children He has prepared a way to make it through the storms of life, those times when things are not going very well. Yes, God allows trials in our lives and trouble too, but He provides the strength and the way through those times if we will lean on Him, trust Him, seek Him in all things.

Smooth sailing in life is good, but it doesn’t prepare you for the times when things get rough. If you ask for patience, you will surely find this out, which is something that I advise you not to do. Because it will take patience to get through the trials that come with learning patience, which is the reason that you never ask God for it unless you are truly prepared for the consequences. You may forget that you even asked Him for it by the time the trials come, but if you seek Him about their reason then He will let you know. I made that mistake once, and I won’t do it again.

Joyfully living in Jesus is knowing that He loves you and cares for every part of your life. He even cares where you may have lost your keys or the ten dollars that you can’t find or any number of “little” things that we wouldn’t normally pray about, but He wants to help you in all of the life that you live. If you will let Him. As Christians or someone who may be looking for that something that they feel is missing in their life but haven’t found it yet, your life and every part of it is important to God. He loves you enough that He sent His Son to die on a cross for your sins. Jesus chose to die in our place so that we could have eternal life, He wasn’t forced into this decision but He willingly accepted God’s will in this so that we would be the beneficiaries of His Grace.

Knowing this, how could you not want to praise Him joyfully and thank Him for this blessing of eternity and forgiveness? It is a debt that we can’t repay and we don’t deserve it, but God freely gave it to us through the sacrifice of Jesus so that we would be able to come into His presence in the holiness of Jesus. Our own “righteousness” is as rags, found in the garbage that have been there for a LONG time. God is Holy and we cannot stand in His presence without the covering of the blood of Jesus in our hearts which gives us the righteousness of the Son.

We, as Christians, serve a living Savior that is in Heaven at God’s right hand. He is interceding for us when Satan accuses us of wrong, or points out where we have stumbled along the way. Jesus’ blood covers everyone’s sins, but you don’t get to enjoy the benefits of it until you are called by the Spirit and you answer that call by asking Him into your heart. God knows exactly who will answer and who will not, but the offer is still open to all who will make that decision to follow Jesus daily.

God’s creation is beautiful!


Have you ever noticed a butterfly or a hummingbird? How wonderfully made they are and the beauty in their creation and God made them that way. Just as He made each of us beautiful in our own right and also as He intended for us to be. Adding to our bodies or taking away from them, doesn’t really change us because the person that each of us really is happens to be the one that God sees. The one that our soul or spirit is inside our hearts, not the one that is on the surface for the world to see.

Also, when we decide to become a Christian by asking Jesus to come into our hearts, the change is miraculous and on-going…until we reach our perfect home and place in Him which is in Heaven.

You know, there are times that we all see and feel things differently from day-to-day, but creation is still the same. It is all around us and we are part of it but most people tend to ignore it and take it for granted. Why? Because the sun comes up and goes down and the moon rises at night and sets in the morning. Everything that is going on around us has been going on for hundreds, if not thousands of years in one form or another. Granted, the newest technology might not have been there, but even in the days of pharaoh they had messengers to take messages across the kingdom, even if it wasn’t instant like it is today.

Your life today, regardless of whether you believe in Jesus or not, is in God’s hands. If you have felt His calling on your life or your heart and have not answered Him, why not? Just because some teacher or philosopher tells you that “God doesn’t exist, He is just a way for primitive man to make sense of his world”, don’t believe that! If you wish to, I can’t stop you. But, the point is this: Jesus came  and died for your sins, whether you wanted it or not! The only way to get to Heaven is to ask Jesus to come into your life and your heart and cleanse you and make you whole.

Some people might ask me, “What do you mean, “make me whole”? Well, you know that little feeling that you have had like something was missing and you couldn’t quite figure out what it was? It is Jesus. That empty feeling inside that you have had…some of you for a long time, is the place where He is supposed to be. Ask Him to complete your transformation into His image and bring His grace and goodness into your life. Because if you don’t, that empty feeling won’t go away and it might feel even bigger at times. If you reject His call on your life long enough, He will just let you go on with your life. Jesus doesn’t push or force you to do anything, He wants and needs for you to come willingly to Him and ask Him to come in with you.

God has loved you from the beginning of time because He has known each of us from the beginning. He knows what we had for lunch two years ago last Friday and He knows when you will die. There is nothing hidden from Him, no matter how dark the place where you “hide” might be. He loves you and is waiting for you to decide to come with Him on the rest of your journey. The trail that He travels on is not very wide, but He is able to take care of you all along the way, all that He asks is that you follow Him. Don’t step off the path, just follow Him. Please consider your life not just as you are now but in the eternal life that you can have with Him in Heaven.

Time….


Time is measured by us in seconds and minutes and hours, then days, weeks, months and years. If you wish to measure longer periods of time then it can stretch into much more than that. What is my point for writing this today? Well, as you may have noticed, time is slipping away at an ever increasing speed. Some of the younger folks may not see it that way, but the older that you get it seems to speed up monthly. Why is that? If you have children it is easy to see it happen because you see your children grow up and they do it so fast it seems. The older they get, the faster the years seem to go by, at least for you. They don’t see it that way, at least not yet.

Time ticks by us without us really feeling it go. It just floats away like a cloud of smoke and you can’t get it back. The time that it takes for me to write this is time that I will never have again. It has been about six hours or so since I woke up this morning, but that time is gone. I can’t re-live it and I can’t go back and reclaim it.

God can see it as though as it began just a moment ago. He can see yesterday as it was and He can see tomorrow before we ever get to it. He can even go all the way back to the beginning of Creation and go through all of that again if He wishes to. Why? Because He is God!! He lives outside of time, so He can see the end and the beginning any time that He wishes to.

Why am I pointing all of this out? You might think that you wish to do what God does and go back and change things in your past so that things will be different in your future. Sounds great doesn’t it? The problem with that is that depending upon the size of the change, your life will be so dramatically different that you might not recognize it. One other problem with it is that you might not like the “future” that you end up with. Then what do you do? Small changes have big consequences, big changes have BIG consequences, so you might change the person that you marry or the subjects that you study in school and the grades that you got.

These are the temporal consequences that we could not and should not be able to change. God gives us our life as it is because He knows the end result and He knows that it will work out for you and for Him and His kingdom. It is a subject that is fun to imagine about. The money that you could’ve made if you had done things this way or the difference that marrying the “right” person might have made in your life. These are things that we can imagine but that God knows would be best left alone and thankfully we don’t have the capability to do this. We see it portrayed in science fiction films and shows many times, but it would be so easy to really cause real problems if it were possible, so thankfully it is not.

Your life and your purpose are in God’s hands and the effect that your life has is dependent upon who is in charge of your life. Is it God in your heart and in the driver’s seat or is it you? Considering that you don’t know everything and I don’t either, I would rather have God in the driver’s seat because everything will work out according to His plan, which is always the plan that counts. The only thing that is necessary for each of us to do is to believe in Jesus’ atonement for you and me and the sins that we have committed, no matter how bad they might’ve been.

When we accept Jesus as our Savior, then we need to decide to put Him in control of our lives and the leave the outcome in His hands. When we do that, His Kingdom will be glorified and we will have eternal life with Him. It is a winning combination!

Think about it, pray about it and seek Him because when you do, the best will come to you in eternity.

Time…is…ticking…away…from…us


We have a certain amount of time to live, but only God knows how much each of us has. What are you doing with your time?

Do you spend it worried about your bills? Working to make more money so you can pay more of them off or are you trying to buy more “stuff”?

We need to be concentrating on things which have an impact in our life and in the lives of others. Not just as workers or business owners or …. well you get the picture, but as people who genuinely care for one another. In today’s world that is something that is sorely missing. I don’t want to bring up any news headlines, but people are not taught to respect each other nor are they taught, it seems, to respect life itself. Too many news stories are on the web and television about life being taken for no apparent reason. Yes, this has happened in the past, but not to the extent that it is happening today.

You and I only have today. We are not guaranteed tomorrow or next week, let alone next month or next year! We may live to be seventy-five or eighty-five if we are fortunate, but then there are those who may not make it to the end of this sentence or even to sundown today. The point of this is that time is precious and it begins ticking away the moment that we are born. Your heart beats many thousands of times during the day, pumping blood to all of your vital areas. But, it will only beat so long and God knows exactly how many beats that each of us has left.

Yes, God knows how long you will live and how you will die. He knows when too, so what are you going to do with the rest of the time that you have? What will you do about the eternity that you will step into when this life is over? Regardless of what you may have heard, there is a life after this one and it doesn’t end, how you will spend it is dependent upon your decision in this life, here and now. Will you give your life to Jesus and ask Him to forgive you for your sins, regardless of the sin? Will you ignore what that empty area in your life that you feel needs something in it but you don’t know what it is? That is the part of you that God created which desires Him to fill it with Himself!

Only the Spirit of God fits in that part of you, and if it feels empty now, just try to put something else in there…it will feel worse. It will feel as if it gets bigger and bigger until you decide to fill it with Him. The emptiness in your life will not go away until Jesus fills it with Himself, so to consider something else is foolish.

It has taken me about forty minutes to get this far and that is forty minutes that none of us will get back. Seek Him while you can. He will empower you to do things for His Kingdom that is true, but the rewards in heaven are such that we can’t imagine while we are alive now.

What will your eternity be like?


We do it all of the time and yet living and life itself has consequences that come from the things that we do every day. Is it possible that each of us might impact someone’s life in a way that is harmful? Can we make a change in our life so that the impact on others is good for them and for us?

The answer to that last question is actually “no, we can’t”, but God can! Do you truly know where your soul will go when you die? Are you sure of that destination, whatever it is? Many people think that when they die, that is it and there is no more living to do. In a way they are right about that because in the body that you have now, life will end at some point. But, we have all been created with an immortal soul and it will live on in eternity. The question is…where?

You can choose not to believe this if you wish and I am only trying to bring you to the realization that there is an eternity in which we will all live. The matter at hand is which eternity would you rather have…one which is loving and care free with work that you will enjoy for an eternity being with friends and family and with Jesus and all of the saints from the Bible?

Or would you rather be partying with Satan and his demons and all of the murderers and rapists and other scumbags in hell, where you will not enjoy eternity but will be tormented and in agony? Eternity in hell is not going to be a party, it will be filled with pain and misery not for just a while but for eternity.

Hell was not made or created for us at all, it was created to punish Satan and the angels which rebelled against God. But, if you have decided that you know better than God how to run your life and how to be a “good person”, because you don’t need Jesus in your life…then you are on the side of Satan as well. There is no middle ground, no possible way that your “good works” will save your soul. Jesus did the work that was necessary for your salvation on the cross! All that you have to do in order to receive it is to believe in His atoning death for your sins and ask for His spirit to come into your heart. When that happens, you will be changed into a new person!

You will no longer be the person that you were, but you will be in Christ and you will have Him dwelling in your heart. You will never be alone or away from God and He will always be beside you, near you whenever you call on Him for help or just simply to talk things out. How you choose to live your life is up to you but God has given us an easy way to come to Him and enjoy His strength and guidance in your everyday life…by simply asking Him to and believing that He will do what He says in the Bible. Since God does not lie, He will do what He promises.

Give Him a chance to show you what life can be like and what success in life with Him can be like because once you experience the success that God gives you, then you won’t go back to living without Him. If you have truly asked Him into your life, He will never leave you. You might walk away from Him for a time, but He is always there waiting for you to return.

Think about it….what if the Bible is true and everything that I have said is true? What will your eternity be like without Him?

Have you ever hit rock bottom?


Who do you turn to when you are down? What happened to bring you to this place? Is it your fault or someone else’s fault that you are down and out or depressed?

These are legitimate questions about depression and feeling as if you are in a deep well with nowhere to go but up. So, how would you answer them? Many are the answers that go with the last two of the questions and they are as different as we are from each other. The first question, however, is the one that I will concentrate on here because the One that you turn to is the most important decision that you may make in your life.

That includes the decision which you make concerning your spouse or the house that you choose to buy. How can the person that you choose to turn to in an emotional crisis have more to do with your life than your spouse or your home? Because He is your Savior and if the One that you turn to is not Jesus, then you need to examine your life and your heart because if He is not your Savior then you truly do need Him.

In our world today, there are many cares and worries that take up our time and our brain power each and every day and into the night. We are constantly bombarded with advertisements and ads on the Internet as well as from the radio and on television. I don’t know the exact number of advertisements that we see or hear each day, but I am sure it must be in the hundreds.

All of that information, welcome or not, is not good for you and the stress that it causes is even worse. Then, when you get past the stress, there are the bills and the other troubles of daily living. I don’t have to go into the details here but we are all exposed to far more information than we were designed to handle on a day to day basis. It was predicted in the book of Revelation that knowledge would increase at this point in time but the overload is staggering and the more age your mind has on it just makes it worse.

The problems that we have in this life, the ones that affect us individually as well as culturally, are the same ones that have been prophesied and yet many people do not believe this. We will see, in a very short while, that God is always right and that His prophecies are true. Believe in Him and His Son, Jesus. Believe in the saving grace that has been given to each of us without cost.

We don’t have to pay anything for this, Jesus paid the price for us, all that we have to do is accept it and believe. Because, your life doesn’t end here, we all have a soul which will live on with an immortal body. We will live somewhere, whether it is in Paradise with God or in torment with Satan, and we will be there for eternity. Billions of years from now, what decision will you be glad that you made here and now? The only decision which will matter at that time will be whether you decide to give your heart and life to Jesus and believe that He did all that was required for you to be saved….or to decide that you don’t need Him, which will condemn you to hell. Which will it be?

Patience and time


What do we need to do each day that requires all of our time? Very little actually. Nothing in your life should take up that much time during your day. So, what should we do about our time and cultivating patience?

practicethepause Prayer does wonders for your life, your doubt, your anger and hurt feelings, and your life. Prayer relieves stress and anxiety and the time that you take to pause during the day can yield time to think in a world that is so full of information.

Can you do this during your day? Of course you can, taking a few minutes to speak with God about what you need is no more intrusive than Tweeting or posting on Facebook and the results of your prayers are much more rewarding. Pausing occasionally can yield an awful lot of time, even when those pauses are only for a minute or two at a time. A pause during your day, during your drive to work or back home is more than enough for you to speak to God. The time that you have is given to you by God, the job that you have was given to you by God, your family that you love is a gift from God so when you do pray, thank Him for everything that you have.

The timing of God is perfect because He knows when you were born, who you would marry and He knew when and how many children that He would give you, and He also knows when  your last breath will be drawn. Your life is in His hand and where you will spend eternity is decided so all that you have to do is to make up your mind to follow Him and believe that He did come and die for you and your sins just as He died for my and your sins.

The only thing that you have to do is to believe that the work that Jesus did was enough. There is nothing that you can add to His death and resurrection that will help get you a better spot in eternity. The only thing that we have to do to receive our salvation is to believe Jesus’ sacrifice was enough and that He did it because He loves you. Believing “in” Jesus or God is not what is required because Satan believes “in” them because he knows Who they are, but he doesn’t have the ability to humble himself to them in submission to serve them. We can and should because it is necessary if you want to have a joyful eternity.

Your life doesn’t stop when you stop breathing as some people suppose. Your next breath will be taken in Heaven but before that you will stand for your life to be judged by God. If you have accepted Jesus as your Savior, then your life and your judgement is covered by the blood of Jesus and His righteousness. If you did not accept Him, then your eternity will not be enjoyable. The choice is yours now, so choose how you want to spend it.

What is your salvation worth?


Have you accepted Jesus as your Savior? Life has a way of bringing us to a point where we need Jesus, and I mean to a place where we feel that we can’t make it without Him. Many people think that they can use some other way to cope with depression or loss and many do.

They place their life and their future in things that mankind has made, why? We depend upon chemicals, legal or illegal, to make life more bearable. I know that there are people who do not look to chemical fixes to their problems, but the news seems to glorify people who do! Man-made fixes for problems may work for a time, especially if the problem is made by man, but even then the real fix, the one that will lastingly fix the problem will ultimately come from God.

Regarding your salvation, many people seem to think that they can somehow have an impact on whether they get to Heaven or not. How can anyone think this way? We are not supernatural beings, we cannot have an influence over anything which might happen after our physical body dies! For many in the world today, when their life is over their religion teaches that they will come back as something or someone else or not and that is the extent of their “afterlife”. Some believe that when you die, that’s it. There is nothing, you will feel nothing nor see anything once this life is over. Death is the ultimate end to everything.

With that kind of world view, what would drive me or you to be or to do anything good in this life? What would you do if there wasn’t a hope of something better and more substantial after this life? To me, it would be a wasted, useless life if there was not hope for an “after” life. I mean, what’s the point? What really would be the point other than having stuff in this life and enjoying what you have access to now?

The point is that God created this world and everyone in it. He had a part in every person’s life from the beginning, but He also gave us a choice of whether to learn about His love and whether we will follow Him or not. We also have the ability to be adopted as sons through our belief and acceptance of Jesus as our Savior. Once we do that, our eternal life begins. That doesn’t mean that we will never die, but that we will live on after this body dies.

Doesn’t that sound preferable to being put in the ground or cremated and there being nothing after this life? The Truth is that Satan knows that there is an afterlife and if you don’t accept Jesus as your Savior, your next destination will be in hell with him and the demons with him. Hell was not made for us at all, it was created for those Angels that rebelled with Satan. But…when you reject God’s love for you and His grace through Jesus, you end up on the same side as the demons are.

Your life is worth far more to God than you can know or realize without Him in your life and until you do, your life will feel empty and without…something. That something is not drugs or anything man-made, but it is Jesus! He is what your soul is looking for! That is what the empty part of you is searching for and until you allow Jesus to come in, it will always feel empty. Until you fill your “God-shaped hole” with the One that is supposed to be there, it will always feel empty, so fill it with Jesus.