Tag: Jesus Christ

What would you think if I told you…


that I know what the secret to life is? You would think that I was completely out of my mind, and you would be right! I don’t know the secret but I do know the Person who does! Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Holy Spirit that we have as Christians living in us! Usually I start off a missive with a story or some other bit of information before getting into the “meat” of the message, but time is growing short and you need to hear this.

That’s what the Holy Spirit does for you. The Holy Spirit gave you the secret not only to life here, but to eternal life! He convicted you of your sin. He drew you to Christ (John 6:44). Don’t get the idea that anybody, you or I, can simply come of his own will and his own volition to Jesus Christ. No one could come. No one would come, except by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has given you the secret of life. And He has drawn you there Himself! That’s some best friend, wouldn’t you say? If you don’t want to know Him as your best friend, that is OK, but it is the biggest mistake of your life.

The mistake of living your life on your own, by your own rules will cost you your eternity. It is true that living without Jesus can be fun and there is no Spirit to convict you of any act or sin that you may commit, but our lives are short in comparison to eternity. I know that many don’t really believe that the Bible is the Word of God and some don’t even believe that it is true! My contribution to the world is small, but the One that is the focus of the entire Bible has changed the lives of millions of people around the world. His name is Jesus, the Son of God.

He is my Savior and I am bringing these words to you because I have to. It is my duty to tell others about my wonderful Savior so that you might want to know Him too. He has changed my life from one of sorrow and heartache, depression and fear to a life lived with the promise of eternal life with Him! I was a shy, introverted person most of my life. I was also angry because of my parent’s divorce when I was very young and I took that anger out on many people, but mostly on myself. I thought that I was the cause of their break-up and for a while I thought that if I wasn’t around they might get back together.

Foolish teen-age thinking is what all of that was and if God had not had something in mind for me and had been keeping me from really bad decisions, then I would not be writing this. I did a lot of stupid things like most do while in their teen years like drink alcohol and smoke pot. Granted, those are tame by today’s drug scene, but the drinking alone could have been deadly both to me and to others. My angels had a lot to do to keep me alive and well enough to get to a point where God could use me.

That is part of the reason that many people don’t like “church” I think. It is the serving part that seems to bother people the most, but consider this: Jesus gave up Heaven, immortality,  and eternal life to come as our Savior in human form with all of its limitations and pains so that we might be reconciled to God through Him! And, He did it before we were born!

God saw down through the ages of time and noticed each of us that would believe and come to know Him, and loved us enough to send His Son to die a human, agonizing death on a Roman cross so that we might be able to have a chance at eternity! How can you decide not to serve One Who loves you so completely? Ask Jesus to come into your life, and confess your sins to Him. Ask His forgiveness so that you can be made into a new creation in Christ. You will never regret it and you will have an eternity to enjoy it with all of your brothers and sisters who accepted Him too.

What would you do?


Silly question, huh? You don’t even know what I am referring to. How would you answer this in certain situations of your life? Stumped? In many of life’s situation’s, whether they are the life changing kind or not, we need to ask someone this question before we make up our own minds. Because we can get caught up in the moment and make the wrong decision hastily and then regret it later.

Many times in the past, I have made decisions without going over it with a family member or a friend first and I paid for it later. Of course you don’t see that coming, and there is no way to know until after the damage has been done. The point that I am making is that we are people, we all make mistakes and the best way to live a life of purpose and meaning is to make a point that sticks in someone else’s mind. That is what I am trying to do with this.

Today, life is hard, and it isn’t going to get easier. God’s Word spoke of this time and it is still speaking to us if we will listen. Just as when you ask someone’s advice on a decision that you know that you need to make, the Someone that you should ask is always available.

In the prophetic books, especially in the book of Revelation, John tells of a time when knowledge increases and people are running around everywhere. Many of them are looking for something or someone to give their lives a true meaning and purpose, many of those also don’t know that they are looking for that. They just feel that something needs fixing, or that they need something but many of them don’t really know what that something is.

We have all been created with a place in our soul, in our heart, that yearns for God. We may call it “desire”,  or “a hunger for more”, or some other name, but the One that the desire is really drawing us to may not be apparent to us, at least not at first. We strive through our daily lives looking for an elusive fix for something, and for many years at times we don’t know what it is that we are trying to fix. God offers this fix for many areas of life and yet many don’t decide to come to Him, giving excuses of all kinds that don’t mean anything in this life or in eternity.

In spite of what many have been told and taught, we each have an eternity to live. Not here on the earth, but with God in the Heaven which He will bring you to if you are a child of His. If you have not made that decision real and permanent in your heart and changed your life, then you truly need Christ in a most desperate way. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the One who died to pay for all of mankind’s sins and rose from the dead so that we can have eternity with Him if we will take hold of the gracious gift that we have been given.

Excuses and the thinking that “I have plenty of time to do that later”, are from the ruler of this world, Satan himself. You can choose to believe or not, it is your choice after all, but…what if what I am saying is true? God can save you through Jesus and the belief in Him that He came to save you because that was His purpose for coming! Putting off the decision of your eternal life is not something which you should do, even for a few minutes because your life is not guaranteed.

Accidents happen all of the time. On the street, on the sidewalk, at home, even when you are at work or at church, your life could be coming to a close and you don’t know that it is coming. But when it comes, regardless of your age or the time in your life that it does, your life ending here is the beginning of your eternity wherever that eternity might be. Please, make the decision to seek someone about this most important decision of your life, your eternal life. I would like to meet you one day and know that this site made a difference to someone.

Can racism be fixed?


It is a topic on many people’s mind for some reason, especially in America, but why is it so important? What is bad about racism? Why do we still have it, even after more than forty years of “the dream”!? What can we do about getting rid of racism?

For starters, we could just program our children to not notice the color of people’s skin. It is done in schools all of the time, the “programming” of our kids. But what about the adults, the ones that have lived through the sixties and seventies ad nauseam, where will it end? Those of us who saw the riots in Los Angeles, the shootings in Chicago, etc. cannot just forget. Then there are the family stories of lynchings and the slavery that was endured by great-great grandparents. Yes, all of this must be taken into account but what can be done about the racism of today?

Can we fix it? It cannot be apologized away. There isn’t enough gold or silver or any amount of groveling which will pay the price to a people who were taken from their home land, sold into slavery by their own people or who were conquered and then sold. Nothing that can be said or done in reparation for over four hundred years of slavery and bigotry and hatred!

I am a Caucasian male, born in the same year as our President. Yes, I have seen the terror in people’s eyes, the fear and anger during the late sixties when I was just starting school at about the same time that Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered and a few months later Bobby Kennedy was shot while campaigning! The thing is that none of my family, as far back as I can trace, has ever owned a slave. Yet, “crackers”, white people like me, are blamed for every slight, every injustice that has ever happened in the past one hundred years or more.

Why? Because of racism. Not our racism, but the racism that exists in our culture. I don’t blame African-Americans for this, it is not their fault. It is not my fault that racism exists in the South or in America as a whole. I believe that Satan himself has used racism to great effect in America and has used it to stir up so much hatred and enmity between people who don’t know each other, they just know that skin color and culture are different between us. God created mankind, He did not create certain races of people to do certain things and others to do other things in this world. God created one race that had many different shades of skin color because of the climate that they settled in, not because one is better or worse than any other!

God is the only person Who can bring about the end of racism and bigotry and when Jesus comes back and rules the world as King, it will happen! This is not an “if” or a “possible” outcome, it will happen because Jesus said so! At the end of the Tribulation, when the one-thousand year reign of Christ begins, there will be no more bigotry and racism and those who try to keep it going will answer to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords! God removed His people from slavery after four hundred and thirty years, He did not endorse it. Those who were in slavery in Israel were to be released on the seventh anniversary of their slavery, it was not to be a life-long servitude unless the slave loved the family enough to become a bond-servant and it was the slave’s choice not the masters.

We cannot do away with racism by our own choices. Humanity doesn’t have the moral and ethical capacity to get rid of it or any other bigoted ways of treating people, not on our own strength at least. The love of God through Jesus can open our eyes and our hearts so that we no longer act on our cultural and familial learned behavior toward others, but if it has been taught from an early age it is still there. Only the change wrought by Jesus in your life and mine can cause it to be any different, so the choice is clear…choose Christ as your Savior and follow Him. Serve Him as your Master and Lord because He is the only Master to whom service is due!

Where is God?


“Can you show me ONE place where you know for sure that God is?”, this was a question asked of a small boy years ago, and supposedly the man asking it told the boy that he should think about it during the day and when he came back, the man told him that he would give him a dime. At the time when this was supposed to have happened, a dime was a good deal of money. Because fifty years ago, a dime would buy a lot more than it does today.

Later, that day the boy was walking by the place where he had met the man earlier and the man was still there. The boy stopped and told him that he had been thinking about that question and it occurred to him to ask a question of him: “You wanted to know of a place where God is present, mister, I would give you a dollar if you can show me a place where God is NOT!?”

This verbal exchange was and is being sent through the e-mail channels because the first time I saw it was a few years ago and it got my attention. It got me to wondering about God’s presence in our world and in our lives. Do we acknowledge Him every day? Do we seek Him every day?

Those of us who are or claim to be Christians are supposed to, but do you? Some people, many of them church-going Christians, claim to be following Jesus but do you really seek Him as He said for us to do? What does it mean to “seek Him”?

Seeking Jesus and the will of God is a practice and a discipline that we should attempt every day. The act and the process of it is not as hard or complicated as it seems. The will of God and seeking His wisdom can be accomplished by the same way…by actually reading and studying the Bible.

I know that many people say that understanding the Bible is not an easy thing to do, but if you pray for God to reveal His wisdom to you as you read it, and He will. God’s Word is a living document because it was sent from God through His prophets to give a specific message to Israel, but the message contained in it as it is revealed by the Spirit, is different for each of us. Which is why it is revealed and interpreted to each of us by the Holy Spirit in different ways for each one of us. What one person gets out of the 23rd Psalm will not be the same as what you may get, but the message will be what you need at the time.

The most wonderful part of this is that you will gain new insight each time you read it, regardless of whether you read the entire Bible or just one book from the sixty-six contained in it. As long as you read it while asking Him to reveal His wisdom for you as you read through it, then it will not remain a mystery. The wisdom contained within it comes to each of us by the will of God and the context of each passage needs to be taken with the rest of the chapter that it is contained within so that each passage won’t be taken out of context.

Taking a passage by itself, without the context of the chapter it is contained within, is dangerous. Satan did this by misquoting scripture and quoting it out of context, as have other people in history. Scripture can be twisted to mean almost anything if you do this and that is not what the Scripture was written for. Give it some thought and see if you can find where God lives at all times.

God is closer to you than your sister or your spouse or even your parents and yet many people think that He is somewhere out in space in a place called Heaven where we can’t even talk to Him. This is not the truth because His place is as near as your heart. He is as near to you as your skin is. God is with you in whatever circumstance that you may be in, good or bad. He doesn’t leave you and has never left you at all. If you feel that He has, the only person that has moved is you!

There is no punishment


It doesn’t matter what you do or how you live there is no punishment…at least that is what some spiritual leaders are telling their followers.

Whether you believe in a moral code or in God or Satan, the part about there being “no punishment” is a complete lie! If you want to believe that, go ahead and be my guest, but just as you can’t get away with breaking the law regardless of which country you live in there will be a day when you have to pay up in one way or another.

There are scientific methods which are used in the laboratory, research or medical, that can show all of the ways which a cell can be attacked by a virus or a bacterial organism and even these have laws and consequences. For instance, if the pH is off by a few hundredths of a percent, then some medicines won’t work. On the other hand, if the pH of a cell is off (toward the alkaline state) even a little, then cancer cells cannot grow, bacteria cannot reproduce, etc.

It is not something that the medical community wants you to know, because you can eat certain foods which will keep cancer cells from growing. This is not a “crack science” column, it is just a chemical fact that acid or alkaline environments won’t allow bacteria, viruses and cancer cells to continue to grow. Any variation from normal pH of 7.0 above or below will stop the run-away growth of bacteria or viruses or even cancer cells. This is a chemical law, and if you don’t believe it when you are sick ask them to check your body’s pH and you will see why.

The laws that we live by have, at their core, God’s law as a guide and model. Whether you like it or not doesn’t really matter, the moral law, the one that most people base their ideas of right and wrong on came from God. Many people call them “natural laws”, but since He established them it stands to reason that He brought these laws into being in the first place.

Then, there are people in our world today that don’t want anything to do with religion or God or any moral absolute and the rules and laws that go along with those beliefs. If you feel this way, then I am happy for you. I am glad to know that there is a perfect person that needs absolutely no help in any area of their life. If you can tell the rest of us how to do this, feel free to open up a blog or a store or something because I am sure that the whole world would buy what you have to sell.

The fact is that there are no perfect people! Nobody has the ability to do things perfectly all of the time or live their lives without any problems at all, no matter what your “claim” is! It doesn’t matter what religion you follow or even if you follow one at all, there is no person on Earth today that is or can claim to be perfect!

The only One that lived a sinless life, I did not say a perfect life, was Jesus. In appearance and the station of life that He lived in, Jesus would not have been considered perfect. He was and is the Son of God and as such He could do things which no other person could, but He came to the people of Israel first as a carpenter’s apprentice and then as a teacher. He was of the lineage of David and is the prophesied Messiah, yet at the time of His coming they did not receive Him. They will when He comes again. All who are drawn by God to become children through regeneration of their spirit in Christ will receive Him and see Him when He come in glory.

Are you worthy of Him?


What makes me worthy? I have been a drunkard, maybe not an alcoholic, but I drank nearly every Friday night and some days even while I was at school. I tried drugs in my youth for more than a few times and I did inhale, it wasn’t fun at first, but after a while I enjoyed the feeling.

I enjoyed the high feeling that they gave me but I did not enjoy the depression that came afterward. I have used prescription pain medication to make me “feel good”, though thankfully I didn’t become addicted to it. I have looked at pornography and fantasized about things that I wouldn’t admit to today, but I do admit that I did it.

You may be wondering why I am telling you, my friends, about this, why would I show my failures and my warts to those that I am supposed to be bringing the gospel to? The reason that I am doing this is simple…it is to show that no matter how low you have been, how much you have done, how sinful you may think that you are, God loves you anyway!

God can use you and your story, warts and all, as a way to bring someone to Christ and if your story or mine can bring at least one person into a relationship with Christ, then it is worth it to tell your story. Because it also shows the grace that God extends to each of us, regardless of how we were before we came to know Christ.

Of course, it is not a story that I would like to go into the gory details over but
suffice it to say that nobody wants to know those details. Regardless of that, my question for you is: “What do you think you have you done in your life that is keeping you from asking Jesus into your life?” God knows the depravity of
humanity, He knows what evil or good we are capable of and yet, He loves us
anyway. Is it any wonder that Christ can use each of us?

Can you understand that God can use each of us with our problems, our past
failures, our humanity showing in places that we don’t want it to? Is it possible
that with our failures, small or great though they may be, Jesus can still use us
for His purposes? He used Peter even though Peter failed Him on the very night that He was arrested and taken to be tried! Jesus used Saul, who became the apostle Paul, even after he had murdered Steven and likely others before Jesus confronted him on the road to Damascus.

God loves each of us enough that He sent His Son to die for our sins, to pay the
penalty for our sins. That may not sound like much, but if you consider that
Christ took the sins of all of humanity, not just the ones living when He was
here but those that came before and those of us born since He went to His
throne in Heaven! He also died for those that have not yet been born.

So, are you worthy? Do you think that you deserve to receive God’s grace and
His love? If you have accepted Jesus as your savior and into your heart, then you do; but, if you have heard the message in church for many years, if you have read your Bible and even taught Sunday school but are unsure of your relationship to Him then you need to get on your knees and pray. Ask Him to show you what you need, ask Him to forgive you and to come into your heart and to give you the peace which comes with His presence.

Here are some scriptures which enforce the idea of whether we are in need of
being worthy or not:
1 Corinthians 6:11:  And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are
sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

Romans 5:8:  But God commended his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Philippians 4:8- Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things [are] honest, whatsoever things [are] just, whatsoever things [are] pure,
whatsoever things [are] lovely, whatsoever things [are] of good report; if [there
be] any virtue, and if [there be] any praise, think on these things.

Matthew 10:37- He that loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of
me: and he that loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

1 Timothy 6:3-5- If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome
words, [even] the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is
according to godliness;

Galatians 2:20- I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

We have been given the most gracious and wonderful gift…the gift of salvation
through Jesus Christ! All that we have to do is believe in Him and ask Him into our hearts, repenting of our sinful ways and turning from our prior life to follow Him in obedience and humility until He returns. Some may say that is fine for you, preacher, you are supposed to follow Him but I can only ask Him into my heart. I can’t be expected to follow Him daily!

Why not? His disciples did and countless others have over the past two thousand years. Many have given their lives because they would not renounce Jesus, they would not reject Him and follow the rest of the “church” of the day.

A belief that can cause so many to give their lives in order to spread the news to others is one that cannot be stopped. Even some of the Pharisees said that if it was of men, it would die with them, but if it was of God then there would be no stopping the message. Our Lord’s message has been through many terrible times during the past two thousand years. People have been burned at the stake, forced to freeze to death, seen their families killed in many gruesome ways and yet the message and their belief never faltered.

Our God is an awesome, powerful Creator who can take jars of clay like us, break us and then mold us into exactly what He wishes for us to become. Then He will give us the words…the message that others need to hear, no matter where they may be, so that someone will find out about Jesus and come to a saving knowledge of Him. It is not an easy message, it is not one that is to be taken lightly but it is a message that can save your immortal soul from hell.

If you have never given your life to Jesus and earnestly followed Him, praying all the while to be given a chance to tell someone, even just one person, about what Jesus has released you from, then I urge you to do that now! Jesus stands at the door of your heart, waiting to be asked to come in. He will not push His way in nor will be force anything upon you, but He will change you if you ask Him to and that change will glow and be visible to all around you because it will no longer be just you, but Christ living in you that they will see.

Pray like your life depends on it!


If you leave out the power of God that comes with fervent prayer that will not take no for an answer, none of your Bible study or church or choir practice or the church building will do you any good at all. By praying to God like your life depends on the outcome and you won’t take “No” for answer, your life can be immeasurably impacted by what He can and will do in your life!

Especially if you aren’t sure of your position in Christ, fervent prayer is what you need to do. Your life actually does depend on your prayer and how you approach God with it, your present life may not depend on it but your eternal life can be radically changed by what you pray for and how you pray!

For instance, consider how you would pray if your child were deathly ill or even your wife or husband were in such serious condition that nothing that modern medicine has will help. How would you pray then? If you haven’t given your heart and life to God and asked His forgiveness for your ignoring His grace toward you through Jesus Christ, then that is exactly how you should pray for yourself!

You can decide that you don’t want to believe that God would condemn you to hell for that, but it will have the same effect as not believing in gravity, it won’t go away because of your non-belief. Your life, especially your eternal life is in God’s hands but your fate in eternity is in yours. Believe or don’t, eternity is still ahead of you and the result and the consequences of your belief or lack of belief will be totally in your hands.

God loves you and never intended for you or any of us to be sent to hell. It was created specifically for Satan and those who have chosen to follow him by not believing in the saving power of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. This doesn’t mean that you have ever worshiped Satan, but by not giving your heart to Jesus you have put yourself in the same place, the same camp as Satan. Whether you believe that or not won’t change anything either. Your belief or disbelief won’t change anything unless your faith and belief is placed in Jesus. When you have done that, then your life really begins to matter because every word that you say, every action that you do can have a greater impact on those around you once Jesus is in your heart!

The grace and mercy that was imparted to each one of us on Calvary two thousand years ago is something that we can’t understand without Jesus. The love that the Father has for us is also something which we can’t comprehend, even with Jesus but we can get a taste of that love through Jesus’ presence in our lives.

So, what do we do with His presence in our lives once we have it? Jesus told us to “Go and tell the world the gospel, the good news of salvation that is available to all”. Granted, he didn’t say it in those exact phrases but that is what He meant for us to do with our salvation and the wonder of the grace that has been imparted to each of us. If you accept His grace and the salvation that it gives to you, then you are fortunate indeed, because the Creator of everything knew you from the beginning. He knows your name and everything that you do, whether you have given your life to Him or not, so why not make this relationship a two-way relationship? None of us can hide from God, Jonah found that out and many others have as well, especially me! God called me over twenty years ago and I heard Him, I just didn’t want to do what I felt He was calling me to do. So, I ignored Him for a while, like about eighteen years or so.

Then, when I heard Him again it was like He was saying “Can you hear Me now?”, “Are you ready now?” This time, I answered “Yes!” and I have been doing what He wanted me to do, to the best of my ability, ever since. I am not saying that my prayer life is better than yours or that I am more “righteous”, what I am saying about a calling from God is that we have to obey it, we need to obey it. Obedience is the one message that is echoed throughout the entirety of God’s Word, from the beginning to the end it is the one action that gets action in your life and the life of others because that is what God wants from us.

Just like parents when your child obeys you and it makes you happy and proud that they did what you asked of them, God feels the same way! Obedience to a calling from God will move you in directions that you never anticipated, maybe you don’t want to go in that direction, but if you obey the calling of God, it will work for your life and for His purpose.

The Lord is my Strength!


In Psalm 28:7 David writes: “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped; therefore my heart greatly rejoices; and with my song I will praise him.” This verse was George Beverly Shea‘s “life verse” and it should be ours too!

The Lord does give us strength and He keeps us daily in His sight and in His grace. How else could we possibly be the people that God intends for us to be without Him? We cannot do it on our own, we must have the Lord with us every day, throughout the day. Our Lord and our God is the One Who is able to sustain us through all of our trials of life, regardless of what they may be.

In your walk through life, have you considered God? Have you trusted in Him and His grace? He is the only One that can save you from an eternity of torment which was not meant for you in the first place! God loves you and gave His only Son for your life and mine and the only way to come to the Father is through knowing and coming to know the Son, Jesus Christ!

The Father, our Creator, knew each of us before the foundation of the world and He wants us to know Him. Yet, we are just as stubborn and hard-headed as He said the children of Israel were in the wilderness. We turn our eyes toward things which don’t matter especially when we haven’t turned to Him. While we are still dead in our sins, we turn to money, power, greed, fame, or even to things which we own like cars or homes to bring us happiness. Sometimes people still do this even when they believe that they belong to Christ, but if your heart is not full of Him it will turn to stuff which doesn’t matter.

It is time for us to put our lives on the right path and follow the One that came to give us an example to strive for. We may not be able to attain it while we are yet on earth, but the striving for it will make an impression on those who are looking at us and living around us. Your life has meaning and it has so much more meaning when Christ is a part of it because when you are following Him, people can tell whether you say so or not. Your life and your imitation of Christ which reflects Him, shines through the darkest of days and everyone can see it, especially those that need to see Him.

I am trying to emulate Paul the apostle so that I strive to finish the race. I am stretching toward the prize and that prize is eternal life with Jesus. I pray that I will see many of you there too. Please give Jesus a chance in your life.

 

Do you need Jesus?


In our ever increasingly technological world there are so many devices and links and messages which demand our attention. How can we be attentive to each other as people? I have seen pictures of people who are supposedly having a dinner together and yet all of them are on their “smart phones” and not even talking to each other or even looking at each other! They may be “texting” each other but that is not a conversation! Are we, as people, becoming so insensitive to each other that if it doesn’t happen on the screen in front of us, we have no use for it and don’t even acknowledge it?

Many in the world don’t have cell service abundant enough to be this way. How would your day be if you couldn’t get messages or e-mail or cell service? Mine would be much quieter and yours would too. I know that I am using a medium which I am writing against, sort of, but it seems to be the only way to get a message to the world these days!

Peace With God is a website which points to the only real relationship that matters in this world and will give you the hope of a life in the next. The technology that we are exposed to and dependent upon today will not save you. Man-made religions and ones which have animals or the earth or even other men as the focus of their worship will not help you. Many people believe that Jesus was just a man. If He was then where is His skeleton in the grave that He was buried in?

He fulfilled so many prophecies with His birth and His ministry and His death and resurrection, with many eye-witness accounts of what He did after His resurrection, until there is no doubt about Who He is. Your life can and will be so much more meaningful, to you especially but also to Jesus! Especially when you have given your heart to Him. Jesus is the only way to salvation and an eternal life in heaven. We all have an eternity waiting for us, the decisions that we make here during this lifetime determine where we will spend eternity!

Romans 8:28-30 : 

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified;those he justified, he also glorified.

These verses point us toward Christ and the reason we are here now because it was through Christ that we received grace from God in order to justify us and allow us to be witnesses to the world for Him. If we are to enjoy an eternity with Christ, then we need to make the decision for Him now, during our lifetime! When death claims each of us and that can happen at any time, there is no second chance!

If you have not made that choice, please consider making it today. Eternity awaits and without Christ it will not be an enjoyable one, but it will never end. With Christ you will be with friends, family and many others who made the choice for life and you will be with them for eternity, but we will have so much more than that. I cannot name the things that we may enjoy because I don’t know the details yet. I just know that pain, suffering, agony, regret will not be part of the eternity that I wait for.

The world is in turmoil and trouble because of the lack of faith in God. We have pushed God out of every corner of our lives and we are paying the penalty for it. And it will only get worse from this point on! I don’t know when the world will wake up to this fact, but when it does it will likely be too late to change the course that we have put ourselves on. The prophecies contained in the Revelation of Jesus Christ tell that when the time for testing begins there has never been a time like it before and unless it is shortened, no life will survive. Read it yourself, it is not a fantasy but it is prophecy and according to God’s Word it will come to pass!

Are you OK?


How many times have I heard this on a day to day basis? I have no idea, some days I don’t hear it at all and some days it seems that someone is asking me this at least once every fifteen minutes. I must not look like I am doing very well when people keep asking me this, huh?

Is it possible that my own life or my anxieties show through the thin veil that covers my persona? Is that what the rest of the world sees, instead of what is in my heart and my life? I suppose the worries and anxieties that I have could have that effect on the way that I look or act, so the people see me as whatever that makes me. Normal.

Yes, I am OK. I am normal just like most everyone else, except I have an advantage that many people don’t. I have a risen and living Savior, Jesus Christ! He came to our world as a baby, helpless and unable to walk or talk. The amazing thing about Him is that even as a baby, He was and is God. We have to let Him grow up and get out of the cradle though, otherwise He will not help us to grow in our faith and learn more about Him.

I know, many people today don’t really want to hear about Jesus. Well that is too bad. If you don’t want to read about Him, then find another blog to read. I have been given  a wonderful gift from Him and that is to be able to write as well as the fact that He saved me from my sinful ways. He loves each of us far more than we deserve to be and He forgives us for all the things that we have said and done when we ask Him to come into our lives.

To answer the first question: Unless you have Jesus as your Savior, no you are not OK! None of us, regardless of our denomination or race or culture can truthfully say that we are OK. The rest of the world says that we are. Our friends may say that we are, but spiritually we are not. Because we cannot be OK on our own merit or with our own concept of religion.

Many people would tell me that “I don’t have my own religion!”, but today many people actually do. They may not realize it but it really is possible. Your doctrine or your church may have specific “steps” or rituals that have been used in the church for years and these can become blocks that get in the way of your relationship with Jesus. Even your job or the amount of money that you make can get in the way of your relationship with Him.

“Why do I have to have a relationship with Jesus?” is a question that many people want answered. The answer or the reason for this is because your salvation was purchased with Jesus’ blood and His death and resurrection. In more modern terms, if you were about to go to prison for a life sentence and would never be able to get out and before you served your sentence someone came forward and said that they would take your place, how would you feel? If you owed about a trillion dollars and were unable to pay and were going to lose everything and go to prison and someone came and paid the entire amount for you, wouldn’t you want to know this person? I would!

God loves each of us so much that He sent His Son to die for our sins just so each of us can be OK in His sight! The spotless Son and Lamb of God came to be the sacrifice that would take away the sins of the entire world.