Tag: Jesus died for you

What makes your life different?


In every book in the Bible, the one thing which makes each person important is…obedience. This very same ingredient is necessary for today’s world because God wants us to be obedient. Consider what would’ve happened if Moses had said “No!” to God at the burning bush? What would’ve happened in Israel if the prophets refused to do what God wanted? Jonah tried that, and it still worked out the way God wanted.

God will bring His will to pass and if you decide that you don’t want to help Him, then you can look for some things to come into your life which won’t work until you decide to work for God’s purpose instead of your own! Being obedient to the calling which God has placed in your life is necessary because it is what God expects from us. Remember, Jonah, as I said in the paragraph above, didn’t want to go to Ninevah like God wanted him to. He tried to go against God’s will too.

The problem with going against God’s call and will for your life is that God’s will doesn’t stop. His will is always finished the way that He intended it, like it or not. If you won’t do His will, then God will find someone who will or He will convince you to finish the call that was placed on you! Obedience has always been one of the qualities which God has required of His servants and the ones He has called as prophets or priests or even Kings.

Belief in Him and His purposes is also part of that requirement along with obedience and this is part of the reason that many people don’t serve Him today. Many of them attend church and they may read some verses in the Bible, some may even study the Bible a bit but that is as far as they want to go with their faith and their walk with Jesus.

Why?

Because of their own limiting beliefs and their lack of obedience to His calling on their lives, they will not have a fulfilling walk or relationship with Jesus. In contrast with actually obeying God’s call on your life, when you think you know what He wants you to do and you go ahead with that, God will just stand back and let you work on your own until you find that you can’t do what you think He wants! You need to be attentive enough to hear Him and follow His instructions.

Proverbs 3 says this: 5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. 6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. 7 Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil. 8 It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones.

Oh, my gosh it’s from King James! How will I ever understand that!

I like the King James Bible because of its simplicity. The truth of God’s Word is present in all translations. If the Bible is translated faithfully from the Greek and Hebrew then His message is there for all to read and understand. Have faith in Him and follow Him, allow Him to lead you in your daily walk and believe in Jesus’ redemptive work on the cross and all of this will lead to a walk with Jesus that will carry you into eternity and hopefully will bring others along with you.

Light and Dark


Most of the time when you hear someone talk about the light and the dark, today people think of Star Wars and the Force. Well, in the spiritual world here on Earth, there are forces of Light and Dark too. In the movies, you hear of a “balance in the Force”, but there is no balance in the spiritual world and if you have followed the Star Wars history you know that balance is not easy!

There is no gray area in either reality! In the Star Wars universe, the good side usually helps people and the Jedi represent that side of the Force. As they tell people “Jedi use the Force for good and defense, never for attack”. Life on Earth is a little like this. It is good or bad, evil or love, there is very little gray areas in our world as well. So, why do I bring this up?

Cosmic-consciousness-alien-human-encounterBecause this last movie in the Star Wars group of films has the same message in it. “The Jedi must end” is one of the lines in the trailer that Luke says to Rey. But…why must they end? Because the Force is not all good? Of course, it isn’t, since the Sith have used the Dark side for their purposes selfishly ever since the Force was discovered. But even the Sith usually find that they are drawn to the Light at some point. Of course, not all of them are because they have embraced evil so tightly until they won’t allow the light in.

In our world, evil is represented by Satan and his demons and the evil things which they cause many in our world to do. Humanity isn’t forced to do these things, but if your heart hasn’t embraced belief in Jesus and allowed the Holy Spirit to change you, then you are open to suggestion and persuasion of another type of force. Our nature has always had this type of conflict because it was corrupted at the beginning, so until we learn that God has a plan for our lives we are like a blank slate.

Our lives can be influenced and manipulated in many different ways if we aren’t taught to follow God and His ways. Unlike some people who believe that humanity would naturally move toward the “good side”, most of humanity has proven that idea wrong many times over the centuries. Being taught about God and Jesus in church and at home is essential but it doesn’t guarantee that a person will choose to give their lives to Jesus.

Just as in the books and movies about the Force, you can be drawn or coaxed toward one side or the other and the same is true for the decision which we all should make to follow Jesus. If we feel drawn to Jesus and to a life of walking in His footsteps, then it is likely that we will do so. Maybe not immediately, but eventually we will give our heart to Him. Some people hear the message of grace and forgiveness and even feel drawn to Him, but they like their life and their friends more and they decide not to follow Him.

Remember…it is your decision which side you follow. God doesn’t force you to follow Jesus because forced obedience isn’t the same as loving and willing obedience. Satan can tempt you with money and power but if you don’t do as he wants you to do then those are taken from you. Yes, light and dark, good and evil are completely separate sides and there is no gray area at all. Because in the real world, mixing the two produces confusion and heartache just as the dark side or the evil side does.

Before the end of your life, and that could be any time since we don’t know when that is coming, make sure…absolutely sure which one you are going to live and work within this life.

Simple salvation


Have you ever been to an evangelical service anywhere and heard that it was simple to become a child of God? In many churches, you will never hear such a thing, but that is exactly what Jesus came to bring to everyone! The Jewish leaders of His day had over six hundred laws which they encouraged the people to keep (even though they couldn’t or wouldn’t keep them).

They asked Jesus what was the greatest commandment and He told them this: “Love the Lord with all of your mind, soul, body and strength and the second is like it; love your neighbor as yourself.” The law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. Much simpler don’t you think?

Salvation comes only through faith and belief in Jesus and the atonement which He bought for us with His blood and His resurrection from the tomb. Faith comes from hearing the Word preached and your soul responding to it, then belief comes when the Holy Spirit touches your heart and breaks it, showing you where you have failed to be like Jesus in your life. Why does it happen this way?

Because until it is broken just a little, there is no opening in your heart for the Holy Spirit to gain entrance. Being broken doesn’t mean that you are beyond repair because with God all things are possible! I mean, He made the first man from the mud and breathed the breath of Life into him. God called up the cattle and other animals from the ground and caused the waters to teem with all kinds of living creatures, certainly, He can take a small crack in your heart and mend it to make you into a new creature in Christ!

Learning about Jesus and His love for you is not the end of your life but the beginning! How can I say this? Because this pitiful seventy or eighty years of life is nothing compared to eternity! Which is where you will spend the rest of Life with Him and with all of those who have given their lives and their hearts to Him! Don’t throw eternity away because of a small thing or some amount of money here on Earth! The streets of Heaven are paved with gold and the doors leading into the Temple in Heaven are made out of 12 ft. tall pearls! What can wealth here give you that you can’t have in eternity? Absolutely nothing!

Make sure of your salvation simply because, after your last breath in this life, you won’t have a chance to change your mind or destination in eternity.

Being a mouthpiece


Since I am a preacher, that is what I am seen as by most people…a mouthpiece for God’s Word. I read a few verses or maybe a chapter during the service on Sunday morning and then expound on what I have read and what the wisdom that God has given me tells me about this scripture. Moses was a mouthpiece and all of the prophets in the Bible were too. Jesus is a direct mouthpiece because He is the Living Word of God and His disciples were mouthpieces and teachers just as we are today.

Bridge2SalvationWhat is my point in this article today? Simply that God is awesome, Jesus is sitting at the right of His Father and the universe is under their control! Being the person who tells others about God and His Son, and thankfully I am not the only one doing this, is an awesome responsibility! But, I enjoy it!

God loves us and the story that is told in the Bible, from the beginning to the end, is the story of His love and compassion toward us all. While it is true that it starts out being a story about Creation and the Israelite nation, the wisdom contained within its pages is for all of us! Jesus came to tell that story more personally so that we could understand that God’s love doesn’t just mean something to one particular people, but it is expressed toward all of humanity through His death and resurrection!

God’s love and compassion for us are also expressed in His patience toward us because we are very stubborn in our sinful lives and we don’t want to follow His ways until we are ready. The problem with that is that we don’t have a clue about our the brevity of our lives! We are not guaranteed tomorrow or even tonight, so as the saying goes “today is the day of salvation”! Tomorrow isn’t here until it is and you may not have much time in the day or the week ahead to give your life to Jesus and repent of your sins.

None of us can know if we are going into the new year in a couple of weeks because it isn’t a certainty. A wreck or a heart attack or a stroke could take your life at any time between now and then and if you haven’t made the decision to follow Jesus and believe in His atonement for your sins, then you will cross from this life into judgment and hell.

God loves each of us and this is shown in His Word, so don’t wait until you find yourself in front of God and being judged for a life lived without Jesus or even believing in Him. Yes, each of us will be judged in one way or another. If you are a Christian and have Jesus as your Savior then you will be judged by what you did for God’s Kingdom.

If you are not a Christian, then every word and deed that you have ever done in your life will be brought before you to convict you of your sins and to prove that you deserve to be punished in hell. Not for the sins, but for refusing to give your heart to Jesus! That is the sin which condemns you to hell. Make sure of your salvation while you can in this life because when this one is over you can’t rewind and fix it.

Have you learned much this year?


Life is hard at times. Learning about your Creator and your faith is one of the most rewarding experiences that you can have. So, exactly how do you learn about Him? Well, that is a very good question and it is what this article is all about.

Truly, God loves each of us! Not just those who claim to be Christians but every person on the Earth! Of course, that doesn’t always translate into those persons giving Him their heart and their love in return. The main part of learning about God and Jesus and their love for you is inside of a book…the Bible! God inspired writers to write down His laws and His requirements for His people, the Jewish nation of Israel.

Some might argue that those laws and requirements don’t pertain to us today because they were written over two millennia ago, some as much as three millennia in the past. How could wisdom and laws from that far back in time and written to a different people have anything to do with today?

It is because God is our Creator and His wisdom is timeless as are His laws and precepts. Yes, they were written by people far away and years in the past but God lives outside of time and He gives wisdom and love to all who will come to Him and ask. God loves all of us, which is why Jesus came to live a life unblemished by sin and then be sacrificed as the Spotless Lamb of God for our sins!

We are His Creation and when the world was still unformed and not made yet, He knew that humanity would need a Savior. Jesus came to be that Savior for all of us if we will believe in Him and the atonement that He purchased with His blood and His death on the cross and then He vanquished over death when He came out of the tomb three days later.

job-type-of-ChristWhen we are tested and tried during our lives by illness or setbacks in a job or finances, it is to make us better and closer to God. Just as Job was tested hard when all of his children and his wealth was taken by the attacks of Satan. Then his health was taken away and he still didn’t lose his faith. He questioned God’s reasons for his losses but he never lost his faith in God’s mercy and greatness! When the testing was over, God blessed him with the gift of children and twice his wealth and he lived to a ripe old age.

Here is the account of God’s grace toward Job:

God Restores Job’s Fortunes

10 The LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he prayed for his friends, and the LORD increased all that Job had twofold. 11 Then all his brothers and all his sisters and all who had known him before came to him, and they ate bread with him in his house, and they consoled him and comforted him for all the adversities that the LORD had brought on him. And each one gave him one piece of money, and each a ring of gold. 12 The LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; he had 14,000 sheep and 6,000 camels and 1,000 yoke of oxen and 1,000 female donkeys. 13 He had seven sons and three daughters. 14 He named the first Jemimah, and the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. 15 In all the land no women were found so fair as Job’s daughters and their father gave them inheritance among their brothers. 16 After this, Job lived 140 years and saw his sons and his grandsons, four generations. 17 And Job died, an old man and full of days.

Is your faith no better than Satan’s?


heaven-or-hell-eternal-destinyKinda sounds a bit weird, doesn’t it? Does Satan have faith at all? Well, yes and no. He believes that Jesus is the Son of God, but not through faith. The demons which Jesus told to come out of the man in the tombs called Him the Holy One of God, so they knew Who He was. What is interesting is that many people in the church know Who Jesus is and they believe intellectually that He is the Son of God, but that is not a saving faith in Jesus. Consider someone who has read the Bible from cover to cover, but they did not read it with an attitude of faith or belief and they didn’t believe in the God Who inspired the writing of it. How do you think that they would see the information that they took into their brains?

Mostly the information which they may have learned will be just knowledge, head knowledge not saving or believing knowledge. Satan knows the Scriptures because he was around when it was written but knowledge and faith are two different sides of a coin and they never meet! If you didn’t feel a compulsion to repent or a call of the Holy Spirit, it wouldn’t matter if you memorized all of the gospels! The knowledge in them would be just words from a rabbi or teacher and nothing more.

Faith and belief are part of being a Christian but if you can’t joyfully proclaim that He is your Savior and be truly happy about that news, then you may not be any closer to Jesus than Satan is. Our Creator and our Savior is Jesus the Christ and being glad that He is your Savior is part of the proof that the Holy Spirit gives you! If your knowledge of Him only goes to the point of being in church and hearing the sermons, then you truly need to get to know Him better!

God loves each of us and doesn’t want us to be punished in hell because we didn’t give our hearts to Him. The message of salvation and the love that God expressed through Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross is the most excellent way of showing that love to all of us. Life is more than just living here day by day because your life doesn’t end when you die! Jesus spoke of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob because they are alive in eternity and we will be too…if we believe in Him and accept Him as our Savior. We can enjoy meeting and get to know the people that we have only read about in the Bible in eternity!

Those in the world who only know Jesus as a prophet or a teacher and don’t want to know Him as their Savior will not enjoy eternity. They will be in hell with Satan and the demons because of rejecting the Savior in this life. There is no party and no kingdom to rule with Satan, so eternity will be punishment and absolutely no fun at all.

Problematic faith


In our society today it seems that we have problems with faith. Occasionally it is the lack of faith but most often it is that people of faith seem to be the problem. It doesn’t matter how many florists or bakeries there are in a particular town or city, those who want to cause trouble usually find the one run by someone who is a Christian. As Jesus said, “The world hated Me so it will hate you“; it is the Truth which the world hates and since our Lord is the Truth and His Word is also, then it makes sense in a way.

Our faith in Jesus is not really in question but the absolute Truth of God’s Word is the part which the world and those who don’t want to believe in Him or live by it is the real problem. Can we do anything to fix this? No, not really. The only way that this could be better would be IF the world would convert to Christianity. We are trying to tell the world about Jesus and that He is the Messiah for all of humanity, but much of the world doesn’t want to hear it.

Thankfully, we don’t push our faith on people. We tell you about it, we will pray for you, I can tell you the pathway to salvation through belief in Jesus, but if you decide against it then that is your decision. God doesn’t push Himself nor belief in His Son on the world. He didn’t do it even before Jesus was born but He did try to get the Israelites to follow His commandments and be His representatives to the world, but they didn’t do that even then.

Being faithful in following God has always been a tricky proposition. There was always the temptation to worship the gods of those around them or if they married someone who worshipped an idol. We have the same problem today, except our “idols” are much different. We worship money or family or our jobs, even though we don’t bow down or pray to them. We just place more emphasis on those things in our life than we should.

Anytime that you place anything ahead of or in place of your faith and belief in God, you are creating an idol or a “god” which takes His place. This is a big problem in our world today. Because many people look at their jobs or their bank accounts as their “savior” in many things. That is why Jesus said that “it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven“.

Why is that true? Well, wealthy people don’t have to worry about bills or having enough money or food. Why would they need God? Granted, there are some who know where their wealth came from and they honor Him for it and with tithes which show that He is the source and not their business or their bank account. But…those are few. Give God the glory for your ability to get wealth and for your salvation through Jesus!

 

Jesus loves you!


The entire world seems to be on edge because of that phrase and I have no understanding of the reason. It is true that He wasn’t from Bethlehem, but He was born there. His Earthly parents were descendants of David, but it seems that bit of information was overlooked by many. He came to do the work of God on this Earth in order to pay the debt which the whole of humanity has owed since the garden of Eden!

So many wise men have lived in the past. Some in the distant past and some fairly recently, but they are only teachings of a human mind…wise though they may be, to most of us normal people. God’s wisdom, which is in the Torah and the Writings as well as canonized in the Bible, is foolish to the world around us because much of it goes against what the world wants to hear!

Everyone, it seems, wants to live in their own reality with their own truth and no consequences at all if it offends others. We shouldn’t live in a world like that! I mean, how can your truth not be offensive if it involves a behavior that I find offensive? If everyone lived their lives this way there would be total chaos in the world and nothing would ever get done! Riots and shootings would become the normal way of life and anyone who couldn’t live that way would just have to live in a bunker underground! What a dreadful life that would be.

God didn’t create this world and all of us in it so that we could live in a singular space of our choosing which means we could do as we wished and to hell with everyone else! That is the same world which was destroyed when God brought the flood when Noah lived. Everyone was living and being what they wanted, the way they wanted and if you didn’t like it then they would likely kill you for the fun of it. What a rotten world that would be!

If you haven’t given your life to Jesus, what are you waiting for? None of us are guaranteed to be here tomorrow and dying without Jesus as your Savior is a true death sentence because your soul will experience death in hell because you are apart from the Author of Life! Giving your heart to Jesus and asking for forgiveness of the sinful life that you have led prior to knowing Him begins your eternal life anew. Don’t turn away from God’s gift.

….it’s too late for me.


These are the worst words that a pastor can hear when someone requests prayer for a family member but they end the request with this. It is never too late to come to believe in Jesus, even on your last day here you can decide to follow Him! There is no sin that He will turn away because His accomplishment on the cross and during His life took care of the punishment for all of us. If we will just accept Him and believe in Him we can be saved, even if it is with your last breath!

God provided the atonement through Jesus’ death on the cross for all of mankind, all that we have to do to receive it is to believe in it and ask Him to come into your life and save you from an eternity in hell. Mercy is provided for us through God’s love for us through Jesus our Savior. You can’t purchase it and you can’t add to it by doing more in this life through works of any kind. Grace is our unmerited favor and blessing through Jesus Christ, to which we cannot add anything to or be deserving of more than we are.

Our Savior, Jesus Christ, came for this purpose only…to atone for the sins of the world and all of humanity. It is a free gift and all we have to do is accept it and believe it, confessing our sins and we are each saved. It is just that simple! God knew before the world was created that mankind would go their way and not follow Him as He intended but He also had a plan in place to redeem us from our mistakes.

It is never too late to accept Jesus as your Savior, regardless of the sins that you have committed or how evil you may think of yourself. Those are lies from the Accuser and we don’t need to believe them! Choose to follow Jesus, read the Bible and believe in Him and God’s inerrant Word, then walk with Him on a daily basis toward eternity. Your life here is only a puff of smoke compared to eternal life with Jesus. So, walk in it like you have it already if you have truly given your life and heart to Him!

Why am I bringing up eternity and salvation in Jesus at a time when our world seems to be more wicked and lost? Because of those very things! Our world is that way because we have chosen to follow our own goals and our own paths instead of seeking out the One Who can save us! There is nothing which we can do that can add one second to our lives and nothing that we bring to the altar is truly acceptable to God except the blood of Jesus!

He was our Spotless Lamb and our Prince of Peace and He has paid the price for every sin, whether you think of them as big sins or small ones, they are all sins in the eyes of God! How can you be saved? Here are a few scriptures which will point you in that direction.

Bridge2Salvation

Do you see?


At times, we do see the problems around us or at home or at church, but at other times, where we seem to be blind to the happenings and the life which is there…right in front of us. Why can’t we see? Sometimes it is because we are being selfish, other times it is because we choose not to see. But if you are a Christian, why would you choose not to see what is wrong with the world around you?

Elisha prayed so that his servant would see that they were not in as much danger as he thought. In 2 Kings chapter six where this took place, Elisha had preached in Israel what God had told him to, but the king of Syria, Ben-Hadad, warred with Israel. Just prior to this encampment, Elisha had prayed for Naaman who was a leader in Syria’s army who had leprosy. God healed him and when he departed, Elisha’s servant had gone out to receive some of the payment which he had brought to Elisha.

Greed can blind you to many things and that is what happened here. Gehazi was coveting the silver and the garments which Naaman had brought as gifts for his healing. The Lord struck him with leprosy just as the Syrian had when he came for his greed. In many ways, we are like this servant. We desire something in this life which doesn’t have any spiritual benefit to us or for those around us such as wealth or lands or just more stuff. You can hear and see that stuff has become a real problem in America today because of all the self-storage units that are being built every month.

Getting back to our story, even though Gehazi was stricken with leprosy for his greed, it seems that he served his master for many years. No doubt because Elisha prayed for his healing after he learned his lesson about greed. It isn’t mentioned in the Bible, but considering that leprosy was a death sentence on anyone who had it, I believe that he was likely healed later.

The topic is “Do you see?”, so what do we see in this world? Poverty, hunger, wars, famines, loss of life in many ways, actually the list could go on and on from here. My point is this: why do we not see? In America, we have been spoken of in history as a Christian nation because that is how our country came to be. People in England fled their country because of religious persecution so they could worship in freedom and in the way that they chose.

So, why don’t we see the things around us which we could do something about? Do we choose not to see the things which we could help with because of our greed and selfishness? Are we so blind to the suffering around us because we don’t want to see it or just because we walk in this world with spiritual blinders on? In the link above to a part of 2 Kings where Elisha’s servant is anxious about the army surrounding Jerusalem, he cannot see what Elisha can. So, Elisha prays for him to be able to see into the spiritual world and he finds that God’s army was far more formidable than those who surrounded the city.

In our lives today, we can’t see what is happening in our world spiritually. Some would say this is a good thing because we would be scared out of our wits if we could see the spiritual warfare and the beings which are here and all around us on a daily basis. Honestly, I believe that it would open many people’s eyes to the fact of their own frailty and the reason that they need Jesus. But, God has chosen not to allow our sight to be opened in that way for a reason.

Pray that God will show you His will in your life through His Word because the days are drawing closer to that time which is prophesied at the end of the age. We don’t know the day or the hour until that time comes, but God doesn’t lie and the time is swiftly approaching, so don’t hesitate. Call on Jesus for your salvation and seek Him out for your deliverance because He is the only way to be saved from the punishment which comes after you leave this world.