Tag: Holy Spirit

Love the people, not the lifestyle


Regardless of what you call it, a sin is a sin in God’s eyes.

It can be a lifestyle or a life-choice or it could be a religion or a belief. It can even be a church or a temple or a synagogue but the truth is that regardless of the place that you worship or the religion, belief, or lifestyle that you practice…when God is NOT the object or the center of your life, then you are worshipping an idol. We can make anything into an idol, from our spouse to our car or even a job and it’s paycheck. We can also worship our grandchildren or children or someone else who is dead and gone. We can worship or rely on money or position in a company or life in general, but what about the Creator of Life itself and all of the things which we see, feel, hear, taste and touch on a daily basis?

It seems that we are more concerned with our senses and our surroundings than we are about the One who created it all. It is okay to look down your nose at someone it seems but to put down their religion or their belief is uncalled for, especially if you are talking about Christians.

Oh, I am sorry, I got that one backwards! You can’t put down anyone or their beliefs UNLESS they are Christians!

That is how the media and the world look at those of us who believe in Jesus these days. We are bigots, and we are intolerable, and we are totally against whatever it is that you like to do with your life?!? REALLY!?

Honestly, I don’t care what you do or who or what you may worship or even if you choose NOT to believe or worship anything or anyone! My writing…my witness here is simply because my Redeemer told me and the other disciples to “tell all of the world about the gospel”, that’s it!

Jesus died for us, all of us, so that our sins could be forgiven. God doesn’t like sins of any kind, whether it is the lie being told about taking a pen from work or being a homosexual or even being a mass murderer. To God, a sin is the same regardless of how you rank it on a scale.

Just as you wouldn’t let me come to live in your house, if you didn’t know me, God won’t let you into Heaven if He doesn’t know you! It doesn’t matter what you have or haven’t done in your life, God has always pursued a relationship with each of us. He did it with Adam and He is still seeking that relationship now with each of us, but it is your choice whether you will seek Him out and continue in that relationship.

I am not going to tell you that being a homosexual will keep you out of Heaven, but it is the sin of practicing homosexuality and the rejection of Jesus that will do that. Repent of the sin, ask Jesus to come into your life and change you into the person that God knows you can be! Rejection of God’s grace toward us is the unpardonable sin, there is no specific sin other than that which will keep you from being forgiven!

Turn your eyes and your life toward Jesus…spiritual eyes can see Him and the forgiveness that He offers. You can read and understand His Word too, if you will ask Him to reveal its meaning in your life, because it has a different meaning to each person. What one person gets from the Psalms may be totally different from what another person may get. This is true for each book in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Seek God and His Kingdom through His Word and ask Him to show you what you need to know and do from His Word. Then join Him every morning or evening by learning more of Him.

Understanding the Bible, is it possible?


The reason some of us don’t understand the Bible any more than we do is because we have not been living up to the light God has already given us! If you want to understand the part of the Bible you don’t understand, begin to obey the parts that you do understand and then you’ll understand what you didn’t understand. Understand?

I know, its kind of cryptic to put it that way, but it is only by reading a letter that we can understand what the author meant about the story. It is also the only way that we will ever know the end of the story or its beginning. Your lives and mine are products of our educational system, a system which was broken many years ago and has never been fixed. Broken because we chose to take out the wisdom which our forefathers knew were necessary for us and for our country.

God’s Word, the Bible, was the main educational book used at the beginning of our country. When people began printing the Bible in English so that the common man could read it and understand it, it took away the control from the “church” and gave it back to God and the people who were reading it. This was deemed heresy by the Catholic church and the church of England! Many believers were killed for their beliefs because the teaching found in the Bible were slightly different from the “church” at the time.

The Bible should be part of our educational system now, but it isn’t because of politics and because a small minority doesn’t want it there. They are afraid of the Truth that it contains because it exposes their own sins and the failures that school systems have heaped upon our children for decades. People who like the darkness don’t like it when a bright light is shined into that darkness, because it hurts and it exposes the lies and the inconsistent stories which have been used to make us and our children go along with the “status quo”.

God’s Word is His letter to us…His way of speaking to us and it has been that way for more than four thousand years. Jewish scholars have accurately copied the scrolls which have been passed down to them for generations and this is our “Old Testament”. The followers of Jesus have copied the letters, epistles, which the disciples wrote to the churches so that we would have the “New Testament”. When one part of the Bible validates the other, there is no doubt about where it came from or Who had a part in its writing. The Spirit of God inspired the writers from both “Testaments” so that the New would validate the Old and verify it as authentic and it does this perfectly.

How can you know for sure that it is the valid and truthful Word? First, the Holy Spirit inspired the writers to write down what they wrote. Second, the prophecies in the Old Testament are proven and validated in the New. Third, and this is the most important reason, because it is the Word of God! He doesn’t lie, He cannot lie! So the inspiration that was given to the prophets and disciples through the Holy Spirit has to be the Truth!

Many people today think that you can take parts of it as the truth, and others are just metaphors for something else and can mean whatever you interpret them to mean. The Word is Truth and the laws and the wisdom contained in it is the Truth, like it or not. You cannot pick and choose! Either you believe it as the Truth or you don’t, but that doesn’t change its Truth. The love of God for us and the Truth of His Word is shown throughout the Bible and in our everyday lives. Seek Him out, read His Word and learn of Him and His wisdom because it is life to you now and in eternity, if you ask Jesus into your life and your heart.

Life equals struggle but….


We all struggle in our daily lives at some point, but can we do anything about it? The people in marketing and finance say that we have to build up our portfolio and we will be financially secure. The so-called gurus on television or those who write self-help books point you toward believing in yourself and the goals that you set for yourself. Living your life daily is not hard to do, really, you just get up in the morning and go to work, right? Not everyone can do that though. Some are not able to make that drive or even to get out of bed, then what do you do? Complaining doesn’t help, getting angry at everyone and everything doesn’t help because anger just hurts you from the inside out. Resigning yourself to be the way that you are is like giving up and that is counter productive too.

There is something or rather Someone that can help more than money, power, drugs or anything else that man can dream up. It is turning your life and your heart over to Jesus. Following Him daily by reading and studying His Word. Listen to sermons, regardless of who may be preaching. Yes, times are changing and whether many people want to believe it or not, time is growing short. Yes, we have been waiting a long time…a little less than two thousand years, but the signs which point to the end of that waiting are coming faster every week.

It is a struggle sometimes to get through life on a daily basis and there is a strength that is available to you from your Savior, if you will seek Him out. Please don’t struggle through this life alone, seek out Jesus and He will give you the strength to get through your problems no matter what they are.

Daily living with Jesus


Do you get up wondering and worried about things which are planned for the day or do you rest in the presence of God? Do you realize that He is interested in your day and all of the happenings in it? It’s true, the Creator of the universe is interested in your life and in everything that happens to you.

I know, there are so many people who have said that “God, if He exists, is not interested in us nor does He care about us at all”.  WHY would you say this? God did not create mankind and the world which He gave to us for our life and our sustenance just to turn away and go to some part of creation and turn away from us! Of course, we don’t know that we are the only intelligent beings in the universe, but God told Moses how things were created and we should accept it as the Truth.

If there are others, we will find out when God is ready for us to find out. In the mean time, we should use each and every day as we were commanded to by Jesus Himself, “Go into all of the world, teaching and preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God”. Those may not be His exact words, but that was the commandment that He gave His disciples and since we, who are Christians, are His disciples in this time, then we take up our cross, our mandate to tell others about Jesus.

Your day, like many others in this day and age, begins like the rest of us…by waking up. This act alone deserves our gratitude and thanks to Him! Then, if we are able, we get our coffee or tea and eat something to break the fast from the night before. If we are able, we get ready to go to a job which we should be thankful for as well to have one, and we work at that job until it is time to get off work and come home. All of this happens without you or me having to do much more than put one foot in front of the other. We don’t have to worry about our heart beating or our breathing, it just happens. God designed us this way, just as He did every other animal on Earth that breathes air, the big difference is that He gave us part of His life, our eternal soul.

No other created being has this! God wanted someone who He could have fellowship with, daily, which is why He is interested in you and me and the life that each of us has. There is no difference between a rich man or a person with little more than the clothes on their back. In God’s eyes, we are all equal and we are all guilty of being sinners unless we have accepted Jesus as our Savior. No amount of giving to the poor or volunteering for charity will give you an edge over someone else, if you have not asked Jesus into your heart then you are just as lost as the murderer on death row that has killed someone!

In God’s eyes, because He is Holy, even a sin like telling a lie is just as bad as killing someone in cold blood! But…if you have given your life and your heart to Jesus, your page which has recorded all of your sins is cleansed just as white as purest snow. From that point on, you are His and you are forgiven. Oh, you will stumble and fall just like the rest of us do from time to time, but the Spirit which lives in you will bring it to your attention and when you ask for forgiveness, it is gone because of the work which Jesus did on the cross.

Walking in fellowship with God and having the Spirit living in your heart is just a small taste of the Kingdom of God. Daily learning from Him, by reading and studying His Word, meditating on it during your day, praying about the day that you are having and then thanking Him for your blessings of your health, your family, your job and the salvation which was provided by Jesus..this is just a part of the daily life that we are to have in Christ. It is a way of life that needs to be embraced, especially now in the time that we are living in. Time is growing short for Satan and for the age of grace. I don’t know how long we have, no one knows that except for God, but according to the signs which are happening around us, it is likely that we don’t have very long until the proof that the world has been seeking will be revealed about Who God is and that His Word is true.

Think about it and look up, because He will come quickly when that day dawns and then the time is up.

Treasure…pleasure…sin, which is it?


A few days ago, I wrote about giving your heart to Jesus. This post is about figuring out what to do with your life and with Him after you have felt the call of the Spirit in your heart and you have answered it. We have so much that gets in the way of living our lives for Jesus in our world today. From bills to school to relationships, married or not, our jobs, our phones, email, you name it then it can take up time in your day and before you know it, it is time to go back to bed and start over again tomorrow!

In our lives today, just as it has been going on for thousands of years, pleasure or happiness is something which we all strive for. We yearn for it. Many times as we are growing up we really don’t understand what it is that we are looking for, but we know that it is something. We look in many places until we find something that gives us happiness and joy. When you are very young it could be as simple as a toy or your favorite candy. As we get older our mind or something tells us that we need something more than that and we go searching again. We may find that sports or the opposite sex fills that need, that pleasure spot for us at that time…but yet it is a fleeting feeling. Soon we are looking for something else. At times we find something or someone who takes care of that need and as we grow a bit more and have a family, sometimes our family takes over that spot in our lives, for a time. If you have gotten past your twenties at this point and haven’t given your heart to Jesus or felt the Holy Spirit speaking to you, then you don’t know why but something just doesn’t feel right. Even though you may have a nice house and car, a healthy family and a good marriage…something is just not fitting perfectly. And you can’t put your finger on it and say, “That’s it!”

The things or people who you treasure, those that you love are the ones who get the most of your time. Sometimes, it happens to be your job or the kids, then sometimes it is other things. How can we get the priorities of each of these to straighten out and line up in our daily lives in the order that they should be? The first thing that we need to do is…pray. Since we belong to God, then prayer is the communication line that needs to stay open EVERY day and it should start at the beginning of the day, before anything else. God will help you to prioritize your life and your days, but you have to listen to Him and not your own desires. He knows what you need to do and when, and when you put His priorities first then your priorities will line up correctly too.

No, I am not saying that your days will be perfect and nothing will go wrong if you do this BUT they will be easier and smoother to handle because you are not handling the days problems alone.

Okay, lets pretend that we have done this and our first day is going pretty good. Then you get a call that one of your kids is sick or got hurt playing ball. What you do in the next few minutes will determine how the rest of your day goes. Does this situation throw a wrench into the workings of the day and everything just goes to pot from there? No, it shouldn’t. God has an answer for this and if you take the problem, whatever it is, to Him first before you grab the keys and rush out the door, then everything will work out the way that He knows that it will. PUT GOD INTO ALL OF YOUR PROBLEMS! Nothing is too big for Him, the One who hung the stars and the moon, all of your problems are small to God even though they aren’t small to you.

Can we do this? Some people will and some won’t but the point is that God is not a crutch and not a figment of people’s imagination. Satan is not a figment of someone’s imagination either and that will be proven soon. Our world and all of the people in it are very important to God. He has not abandoned us nor will He, He is present in every area of your life good and bad. God doesn’t cause the bad parts of it, but He will allow them so that you may realize that you need Him. Satan hates humanity and will do anything in his power to keep us from turning to God and if that doesn’t work then he will cause problems which show up all over the world. If you are a born-again Christian, Satan has to ask permission to do anything to you. If you are not, then he may help you to have a life that is more successful than you deserve just to keep you from needing God or he might cause an illness that you will blame God for just to keep you away from God.

So, it is your choice. Choose carefully and prayerfully before proceeding.

Have you come to Jesus in repentance?


You know, there are many people who attend church and some who don’t attend any church who know about Jesus but they haven’t repented of their sinful life or their sins in any way. Many of them think that by being in the church or on a church roll that God will dismiss the things that they have done and forgive them anyway. That is NOT what the Bible says or what any of the gospel writers taught at all! Believing in Jesus is the way to salvation but refusing to repent of your sinful ways is just a slap in His face which will not be tolerated nor forgiven!

Coming to Jesus with a broken heart knowing that what you have been doing is against His laws and commandments and asking for His forgiveness is the way to and the beginning of salvation. Once you have taken that first step by asking Him to forgive you, then you are ready for the Holy Spirit to come into your life and your heart and change you into the person that He needs you to be. As the Scripture says, “you are a new creation, behold all things have become new” and it is true!

Your old life and ways won’t have a hold on your heart anymore. You will want to be more like Jesus and to follow Him every day. Oh, this desire to be like Him and follow Him won’t happen immediately but it will happen when you study the Bible and pray with Him and to Him daily, bringing your problems and fears to Him. Because, Satan will try to derail your walk with Jesus by bringing your old life up and your friends will come around asking for you to go with them to places that you know you shouldn’t be going now. Temptations like these will happen sometimes on a daily basis at first, but once they realize that you belong to Jesus, your friends might just ask you about Him.

That is when some of them will leave and you might never see them again, but some of them will want to know more. Why are you so happy? What has changed about you? Things which bothered you one time, don’t anymore. What is going on in your life that is different? They will want to know and you can tell them. Show them the verses that you have been reading, tell them about the saving grace that God has granted to us all if we will just ask for it with a repentant heart and turn away from our old life.

Repentance is the only way to change your life along with coming to Jesus. Continuing to do the things that you did before, even after asking Him for His forgiveness, shows that you are not sorry that you did those things and that you never intended to stop doing them in the first place. In other words, you lied to Jesus and to God! That is a dangerous thing to do because not only can God just give you over to the thoughts of your mind, but He can also harden your heart so that you cannot lie to Him again. You will never feel the tug of the Holy Spirit on your heart regardless of how good the speaker might be.

Being let go by God is a sad thing because you will never have the chance to repent again…to come to Him and ask His forgiveness. I know, some of you will say that God is supposed to love us and He wants to save us. Yes, He does but we are given free will to be and do whatever we want to do. Many of us do this to the extreme and some of us push the limits of everything that we do. What do I mean by this? Well, for instance we push against God and His laws, just as we do against our parents when we were growing up. We rush right up to the limit of the sin, whatever it might be. Some of us pull back and repent. Some of us, keep right on going because we enjoy whatever it is that we are doing, even when we know it is wrong.

 

Why???


She is not old enough to know what religion is or who Jesus is yet. They are pointing guns at a child from a Christian family! I don’t know if there was any bloodshed or not, especially in her case I hope not. What good reason does anyone have for something like this? What kind of god could possibly ask his followers to kill women and children for being of another faith? I know that God asked the children of Israel to kill those in the land that they were promised and that many people may askaYoungChristian about this very thing. Yes, He did but the reason was to keep them from following a pagan religion and getting away from serving Him. What is the reason that the world is going through all of this upheaval? It has been prophesied by God, the only God that this is going to happen and is happening now.

In the book of Revelation it speaks of this time where people will be killing others because of their beliefs and we see this every day. But, why would you persecute a child that is so young that she doesn’t know the difference between Christian and Islam?

Our lives are short in comparison to the eternity that we all will face. I pray that when Jesus comes, hopefully soon, that everyone will see and know Who He truly is. It will be to the detriment for some who have never believed in Him and it will be the most wondrous and joyful reward for those who do.

In the world that we are living in, it is imperative that we who have Christ as our Savior tell others about Him. Not in such a way as to be pushy about it, just tell people the Truth and go from there. God will always pick up where our words leave off regardless of what you might say, but say everything in the love of Christ. Don’t be forceful, don’t act as if you are better than they are because it is that kind of attitude that has turned many people away from the church in the first place.

We are all sinners, the only difference between a truly born-again Christian and someone who doesn’t know Jesus is grace. That’s it! We are new creations, new creatures in Christ but by the reason of His grace and love, nothing more. We can’t add anything to the equation because no amount of “works” that we do can match the work of Jesus that has already been done.

Yes, we may be persecuted for our faith and our beliefs, but the Holy Spirit will give you the strength and the words needed at the time that you need them to get you through this time of testing. Many people say that we, the Church, are not going to go through any of the dark times, the Tribulation. They could be right, but if they are not then we must be prepared! Search the scriptures, pray, look to Jesus for His love and His righteousness and ask Him for strength before these times do get here, before it is too late.

God loves you and has a plan for your life, however long or short it may be. So, get to work for Him! The pay may not be much but the reward and the benefits are and will be FANTASTIC!

 

 

What should we say…


Christians tend to get tongue-tied when they are telling others about Jesus and it does happen to pastors as well. When Paul and Silas when to the Berean Jews, they accepted the gospel with gladness:

10That very night the believers sent Paul and Silas to Berea. When they arrived there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. 11And the people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened eagerly to Paul’s message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth. 12As a result, many Jews believed, as did many of the prominent Greek women and men. (Acts 17: 10-12)

The way that they accepted and searched the Scriptures is exactly the way that we should be every day with the Word of God. The more frequently you read and study the Bible, more of it will get into your mind and you won’t have to memorize it. It will just be there waiting to be used. It will also give you a greater understanding of God and His ways to “search the scriptures” because in doing so, you will be learning about God more and more.

Should we be more forceful or pushy with our faith, trying to convert anyone that we can? Absolutely not! Yes, we need to be able to tell others and defend the reason for our faith in what we believe and Who we believe in, but being zealous for our faith to the extreme is not necessary. Jesus wasn’t that way and we don’t need to be either. All that we need to do is tell others about why we believe in Jesus and why, the Holy Spirit will take that seed and make it grow.

God’s Word doesn’t come back to Him void of the purpose for which it was sent out. It always accomplishes that which He wills for it to do. Can we be better witnesses? Yes, with the help of Jesus and the Spirit of Truth. Why can’t we do it on our own strength? Because doing it on your own is not the way that it is done! If that were the case, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to come and die on the cross. In our own strength, we could keep the Law and work our way toward salvation, but we can’t!

We are too weak to be able to resist the temptations of daily living without the Holy Spirit in our lives and Jesus’ righteousness is the Only righteousness that is able to cover our sins. God loves us enough to know all of these things about us, yet He still sent His Son to die for us so that we will be able to come into His presence.

I am not saying that people can’t be morally good and do some worthy and good things even without knowing Jesus because they can. It is because of the Law that God wrote into our being that we know right from wrong and also we learned it from our parents and grandparents. So, yes, even people who believe in other gods or no god at all can do good things…morally right things even. The problem comes when you think that your “good works” are good enough to cover your sins and get you into Heaven, because they are not.

God is perfectly Holy and since He is, do you think that you can just walk up to His house and let yourself in? Do you think that you could do this at any residence of someone that you don’t even know? Of course you couldn’t and you wouldn’t let anyone into your house either if you did not know them. That is only a tiny part of why God can’t and won’t allow you to “work” your way into Heaven. He has given it to you as a gift and it is available to everyone in the same way, all that you need to do is accept it and believe it. That is it.

Religious mentality


There are so many different religions in the world today and just as many if not more denominations of Christian belief too. Why are we so split up into different doctrines and belief systems? Mainly, because of Satan himself. I know, there are many, many people who don’t believe in him and those who say that he doesn’t exist at all. He enjoys taunting them and playing with their minds, especially when they don’t think that it is a real entity which is doing these things.

So, what do we do or can we do about all of this confusion? Being religious can be done with anything, it doesn’t have to be a belief or a denomination or even an accepted religion. You can be religious about your life, your job or even your hobby. This is exactly what Satan wants. He wants most of the world to be religious about their particular religion, whatever it may be, and to be so zealous that you persecute anyone who doesn’t believe as you do. Which causes more trouble in the world, more wars, more killing, more hatred between people and cultures. This is the kind of ruler that Earth has at this time, one who is bent on destroying as much of God’s creation as possible while he still has time.

Jesus spoke against the religious mentality of His day too. The High priest and the Pharisees held the people to the laws of Moses, all six hundred or so of them, but they devised loopholes for themselves so that they didn’t have to keep the letter of them. By teaching the people to essentially “do as we say, not as we do”, they were leading the people away from God and not to Him.

Jesus taught the people to know Him and learn to know their God, personally. Being religious doesn’t get you anywhere without Him in your life. Look to Jesus alone for your salvation because He is the only way to get salvation, period. There is no other name or person that can get you saved from an eternity in hell except Jesus and until the world sees this, although it may be too late, there will be no real peace on Earth.

God, Who is He?


To answer that question would take far more than this blog or this blogger can write, especially in a days time. God is the Creator, the Redeemer, the King of all that is, and He is our Father, our Protector, our Healer, our Friend. God is all of these and our Teacher because since He is present in the three persons of the Trinity He can be all of these at the same time.

We learn through His Holy Word, the Bible, which was written at the prompting of the Holy Spirit. We are saved and sanctified by Him as well through the cleansing power of the Spirit which creates in us a new heart and purpose for our lives when we accept Jesus as our Savior. When we have taken on His Holiness, then we are able to come before God at any time for any reason, no matter how small or insignificant we may think it is.

Consider the names of God and all that they imply about Him and His holiness. All that He is and all that He has done for the universe and for our lives is done and has been done because He loves us. Each of us, not just collectively as a race on Earth, but each individual that has been born and those that will be born. The time is growing short though, so I would consider giving my life and heart to Him if I were in your place. He gives each of us the time and the opportunity to come to know Him, all that we have to do is believe in the grace that has been given, and in Jesus’ sacrifice for us.

That is it, that is all that is necessary for us to know Him because He already knows you.