Tag: Human

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.

Our dear friends


Many times in our lives, we come to know some dear friends. Those that you can talk to without worry of being criticized regardless of the topic of conversation. The ones that you can call upon for anything or nothing just because you want or need to talk. Though dear friends like these are few in number usually, their value is far above any amount of money or anything that this world seems to deem worthy. Though some of these friends are humans and I do value them above many other humans, I am referring this time to our pets. Those pets that actually show emotion and feeling toward us not the ones who could care less whether you are there or not as long as they get fed.

Specifically I am talking about dogs (but cats are okay too). I have nothing against cats really, I just never have owned one which lived in the house. I live in a rural community so cats come and go as they please all the time. There is never a day when you don’t see one or two, but they really don’t belong to any one family. Whoever will feed them, they will hang with you for a while and come back to visit occasionally, but staying put in one spot doesn’t seem to be their forte’.

I have owned a few dogs in my life and they were all house dogs like chihuahuas or pekingese and right now I have a dachshund. All of these were wonderful companions and one still is and hopefully will be with our family for a few more years yet. God created dogs to be our companions and over the years, we have bred different breeds or characteristics into and out of them to create dogs which we enjoy having around.

House dogs or toy dogs as their group is known by kennel clubs, are a joy to have especially once they are house-broken. They greet you with enthusiasm in the morning and they wait for you patiently to return home, yet they greet you like a long lost friend when you arrive.

In my opinion, they are like little angels from God Himself because of the friendship that they offer and the comfort that they give as well. They don’t ask much of us except to love them and care for them, like we would a child in our home. The love that they give to us reflects the care and love that we give to them just as we are supposed to reflect the love of God which was given to each of us to the world around us.

God loves us and He loves His creation, which includes our pets. He cares for all of the creatures which He created which is shown in God’s Word. In Matthew Jesus tells His disciples this:

Matthew 10
29 …and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.

God cares for all of creation. Us, the birds and animals that we are given charge of to care for, every living creature on this world God put here for a purpose. Each animal fulfills that purpose without question with the exception of man. The animals do it by instinct, we have a choice and many of us choose not to even get to know our Creator let alone learn what His will is for our lives.

It is usually our choices or our pride that drives us away from friends and from God too. It could also be our own problems and our selfishness which drives our friends away but your pet doesn’t care about that. They will stick by your side, just as God does, through the good and the bad so don’t give up on them or on Him. They are representatives of Him too and just as much a part of creation as we are.

What shall we do then?


Should we believe the testimony of man as many seem to do in the world today or should we cling to our salvation through Jesus?

There are many today that are leading people in the wrong direction, some of them supposedly doing this from their pulpit in the church. What will become of them and their followers? If they will pray and humble their hearts toward the God that is spoken of in the bible, then they can and will be saved from their transgressions. Yet, many people today place their faith in the messenger rather than the message. This was a fine thing to do when Jesus was the messenger before He ascended back into Heaven, but today the messengers are just as flawed and sinful and the one bringing the message (yes, I am including myself in this ).

We are all flawed, sinful human beings and none of us who stand on this earth are any better than anyone else, but there are some who think that they are and they are the ones who are leading others astray. They are subtle, like the one that they are serving and not the One that they think they are serving. Many deceivers are present in this world today, but they have learned well. The message that they bring is wrapped in words that are beguiling, some of them from centuries past, some of them from recent times but their meaning is that we can do it ourselves and we don’t need God’s help.

We cannot do it without Him! Can you command a storm or rain on parched ground? Can you tell the sun to come up an hour later today? We are the created and not the Creator, only He can do those things if it pleases Him to do so! It would bring glory to Him and would make us see that He is in control and not us, but there are many today who would scoff at signs like these.

Our God, the only God, is in control even when things seem to be going wrong. We only have to place our faith and our trust in Him because He will bring about good things from what we see as bad. Our times and our time-table don’t line up with His unless we are surrendered to Him and know Him by His Word. When we walk with Him daily, then our wants and our desires will be the same as His, although we will still be attacked by Satan and his demons in very subtle ways.

Some of those will be our own feelings like depression or feelings of not being in control, which we are not, or even emotions which overwhelm us to the point of hopelessness. All of these come from the one being who is trying to derail your faith and your belief in God and His Son. This has always been the goal ever since Eve decided to follow her own desires rather than listening to Adam and God.

Before anyone gets upset or thinks that I am blaming Eve for our problems, I want to make it clear that she had encountered a master of lies, Satan himself. Adam couldn’t have withstood him either and he didn’t so it wasn’t the woman’s fault! They both knew what God had commanded, yet they chose to follow their own desires. God knew that this was coming before they did so it wasn’t a surprise but it still hurt His feelings just the same.

If we really knew Him and the awesome power that is being held back because of His love for us and the grace that has been given to us through Jesus, we would be humbled beyond measure. Considering His power to create or destroy with a word, how could you tell Him that you don’t believe in Him? What pitiful arrogance we have to confront the Creator of everything and then tell Him that we don’t think that He is real so we won’t believe in Him!!

These words and deeds are being done all over the world today. In different ways and different words but the message toward God is the same. We should be on our knees begging Him to forgive us and to take us as His sons, pitiful though we are, and make us as His servants just so we can have a place at His table if nothing else!

The time is coming when mankind will bow to Him. When that time is, no one knows but it is coming and soon. The prophecies of His Word are clear enough for all to understand and we are in what is called the “birth pangs” prior to that time. We will know when that time has come, but for many it will be too late. Read God’s Word, study it carefully, pray over it so that you will understand what you read and then get your heart ready for Him, ask Him into your life because He is the only cure for what is ailing our world and each of our lives.

Can you live without Jesus?


Unfortunately, the answer is yes, anyone can live here on earth without Jesus in their lives or in their heart, but can it truly be living? Can you really be alive without Him? I once thought so and I thought that I was enjoying myself at the time, but I was only fooling my self.

We were not meant to live without a relationship with Jesus or God Himself! Originally, mankind was created to have a daily encounter with God in all aspects of his life here on earth. We are supposed to have that close relationship with Him every day, many times during the day. I know, there are many people who will say that only preachers and others who serve in places of worship and as worship leaders are supposed to have that kind of relationship with Jesus.

But, that is not how it was in the beginning. In Eden, God told Adam that he was to have dominion over all of the animals and the birds and He also spoke with him every evening. Isn’t it strange that the Creator would want to walk and talk with His creation? God didn’t think so at the time.

Until he sinned, Adam was pure and righteous and could come before God about anything and ask anything of Him. The earth yielded its bounty to him willingly with no effort on Adam’s part before he made his mistake and thought that he knew better than God. When he chose to go against the command that God had given him, he stepped out of his comfortable life and into the one that he and generations to come would have to endure.

God knew that this would happen and He had made provisions for it, so it wasn’t a surprise to Him but it made mankind’s life much harder. Which was supposed to cause us to seek Him, to want Him to be in our lives. Of course, Satan had his plans for mankind as well and it didn’t include getting to know God.

I could recount the whole creation/pre-flood saga but the point is that since Satan was cast to earth after his rebellion he is provisionally the ruler of this world. This is the reason for the bad things which happen everywhere, although God is in control of how far Satan can go with his plans and won’t allow him to really cause as much trouble as he would like to.

In reality, religion itself is the creation of Satan. He devised all of the gods which people have been worshiping for thousands of years. He or some of his fallen angels very likely appeared to man at some point in their angelic forms or their demonic forms and that is where many of the pagan gods and myths came from.

He has always been able to stir up our emotions because he knows where to tweak our unconscious minds and hit our most vulnerable parts, the parts of us that we may not even know about having. Even after we come to Christ, Satan still hits us in those areas and will cause us to stumble and fall if we don’t lean on and depend on Jesus every day for our strength.

Our life is in Jesus and the life that we have here is better when we are His. Our troubles don’t go away when we become Christians, but they are far easier for us to deal with when we have His strength in us to help us with those troubles.