Tag: Jesus

Have you ever hit rock bottom?


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Salvation, what is it?


“Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” 1 John 5:1

What is salvation? I will tell you that it is not a creed. You might say, “Well, I believe in the plan of salvation.” You can believe the plan of salvation and go straight to hell. You’re not saved by the plan of salvation, you’re saved by the man of salvation, the person Who purchased your salvation with His blood.

Salvation is not a creed. It’s not a code. You say, “Well, I believe if you live right you’ll go to heaven.” If you could be saved by living right, then Calvary was a blunder and a colossal mistake! It’s not a cause or your church. You say, “I’m a member of a good, fundamental, Bible believing church.” It’s not any of these things. It’s Christ Jesus, the Holy One of God, our Savior and Redeemer, our Creator and Shepherd, our Protector and our Lord and King! Belief in Him, and giving your heart and life, including your money, your family, your job and your home to Him is the only way to Heaven.

I don’t mean , like the rich young ruler, that you have to sell everything to be saved, but you do have to at least acknowledge that your blessings came from Him and that you thank Him for them. Jesus did not mean that he would be saved because he sold all that he had, but that he had to turn his heart toward the Savior and turn his back on the things of this world. But, he couldn’t let go of his “stuff”, so he walked away sadly because the things of this world had such a hold on him that even when the Messiah asked him to give them up, he couldn’t.

Salvation is not believing in something, it is receiving Someone. The true gospel is one that centers in Jesus Christ. If you won’t put Christ at the center of your life and put everything and everyone in your life and family under Him, then what good are you to Jesus? We have been bought with the precious blood of Christ, our salvation was purchased by Him through suffering on the cross and giving His life as a ransom for all!

What have you given up for Jesus today? Did you decide not to eat that candy bar or maybe put down those cigarettes because your body, is the Temple of the Holy Spirit if you have accepted Jesus, and should be treated as a Holy Temple. It shouldn’t smell like the joint down the road, nor should it have garbage in it because that is what you want to eat! Change your ways, your eating habits so that it will be good for your body, your health so that you can be more useful to Jesus!
God loves us, and He created us to be the Temple not made with hands for the

Spirit to dwell in. What right do you have to mess up the living area of the Spirit of God? Would you smoke and leave garbage inside your church along with magazines and other things which you wouldn’t want anyone to know about, especially Jesus? He already knows what you are doing anyway, so why not admit it and allow Him to change you! Then, treat your body the same way. If Jesus is the Lord of your life and you worship Him with your body, mind, soul and your strength then show it…act like it!

The love of God is expressed through Jesus and the Holy Spirit and it is the true manifestation of God and we, as Christians, need to learn to notice it and accept it. Allow God to come into your heart and your life in a way that you have never experienced before. Many Christians have not even allowed Him to come deeply into their lives, every part of their lives, and that is what He wants of us. Because if He isn’t part of your life at home, at school, at work and at church then you may believe in Jesus but you may not have asked Him to come to live in your heart!

There are many people who can do a great job of acting like a Christian all the way to the pulpit even, but acting like one and being one is totally different. We can go through the motions and say all of the right things, but when it comes down to what or rather Who is in your heart, it is still you and not Jesus. Many people have died in this condition thinking that they were saved, when they had just been playing the role of “looking like a Christian”! Examine your own heart, ask God to examine it and convict you of anything that you may not be doing or of the fact that you have left Him out. Because, when your life is over there are no second chances to make it right.

Think about it.

Are you ready?


There will be some trying times to come in our future, are you ready? What about the things which are going to happen during that time, can you handle them too?

Yes, it is true that I speak of the times which are prophesied in the book of Revelation because since it came from God, then it will happen. “When?”, is the big question concerning the timing of all of these events, but they will come. So much that happens each and every day in the news in our country and around the world really is part of the prophecies which are contained in this book.

Yet, some of the more interesting or distressing news seems to be passed up by the news media, in favor of “fluff”. “Who is dating who?” “She did what?” It sounds like we are getting our so called serious news from a teen magazine or the National Enquirer instead of a real news organization with reporters working for them. And yet, the world around us is seemingly boiling and bubbling and about to blow! So where are the reporters and the headlines that should be pointing out these things? For the most part, they are ignoring the real news while reporting junk.

Like the so-called “reality” shows which command our attention each night and the cooking shows and competitions which demand our attention and our time, the news of the day is fluffed up to entertain and that is all. Many churches, mega-sized or not, even give sermons which are entertaining and informative but they are not bringing the good news and the conviction of people’s souls to a point where they realize that they truly need Jesus and the salvation that He provided through His sacrifice on the cross!

Some don’t even emphasize the sinful nature that we are born with. They don’t bring to mind the commandments set down by God such as : Don’t have any gods before me; Don’t covet anything of your neighbor’s; Don’t tell a lie; Don’t steal; Don’t commit adultery; Don’t commit murder!

These are the laws of God which most of our laws are based upon, but they are so watered down in our society and in our churches until nobody takes them seriously anymore. The problem with that is that God does take them seriously! They still matter and the distinctions that Jesus made about some of them, such as the distinction between lusting after a woman and adultery or hating someone being the same as murder are just as valid today! Even the smallest transgression of these, if you haven’t given your heart to Jesus, is enough to keep you out of Heaven.

The problem is that many people are not being told this, in church or elsewhere. For the most part, people are being told that these laws don’t matter anymore. That there are no consequences to pay for any of these transgressions, just ask God to forgive you and move on.

You are welcome to try that if you think it will work, but if you meet God tomorrow and you haven’t given your heart to Jesus and asked Him to forgive you for waiting so long, then I fear that you will find that is a pitiful excuse to give to the final Judge that you will see. It is true, I am trying to scare you into a belief in Jesus.

I am trying to impress upon you that there is a fine line between being a believer and an atheist, there is no gray area. You either believe in Jesus and ask Him into your life or you don’t, at which point you are in the same place as any demon condemned to hell. It is your choice, just make sure that you make a choice before your life ends because there is no “do-over” or re-spawn like in a video game.

The choices end when you take your last breath, regardless of your age when that happens.

Time, do you have enough?


It seems that when we wake up in the morning, the day just seems to be on meth (or so I’m told). When your feet hit the floor, the minutes just seem to fly by you without stopping. There never seems to be enough time to finish all of the tasks and errands for one day before another starts! I have also noticed that once the number of your birthdays gets past that all-important “21” marker, it seems that someone puts grease on the “line” and time and dates just slip by faster and faster from that point on.

Is it possible for us to take a step back and look at things without getting run over in the process? Actually, no you can’t. When you are born, your life has a certain number of days and years allotted to it by God and just like a pot when it is tipped to a certain point, that time just spills over and pours out faster and faster. As the numbers get larger, your time seems to go faster, at times, than at others.

When you were small, waiting for your birthday to come around took a whole year, but it seemed to take two or three. The same thing happened at Christmas, the time between did not change but it seemed to get longer and longer, until you got older and realized that Santa wasn’t real, he was just the “spirit” of Christmas.

So, do we have enough time? As Christians, yes we have eternity awaiting so we have time. We may not have enough time to tell all of our friends about Jesus though. Many friends don’t want to hear or they have already heard and really don’t want to hear it again. Some think that a decision that they made many years ago, even though it didn’t make a real change in their lives, is enough. The only person that knows for sure is God. But, I still want to tell them and I don’t know if I have enough time!

God will make the time, in His time. He will bring them about to Him, in His time and in His way. The only thing that I can do is present the good news of Jesus here and then hand it over to God and let Him take it from there.

God loves each one of us enough that He sent Jesus to die on the cross as a substitute for us, all of us. That sacrifice of His Son’s blood opened the way for each of us to come to the Father through the covering of His righteousness and ask forgiveness for our sins and our decisions, good or bad. Once we have come to the place where we know that we need Jesus, the rest is simple…ask Him to come into our heart and forgive us for waiting so long so that we can be made whole through Him. That’s it! We can’t add one drop to it at all and what we do add to it, can only be done through Jesus and by Him and His glory.

Give Jesus a chance in your everyday life from your rising up in the morning to going to sleep at night. Your day won’t slow down any, but you will be able to get more done and it will be done for Him and through Him as well which will make it much more worthwhile too.

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.

Time enough to grieve


When the holidays are over we tend to be saddened by the passing of the feelings of togetherness and love that we experience during the holiday. The gifts, the joy that getting a present brings, the look on children’s faces as they open their gifts, these are all precious and will never be repeated exactly the same way again. For those who may have lost a loved one during this time of year, it is especially hard because the joy of the season is tamped down by the grief and sadness.

Unfortunately, those feelings don’t really go away with time like everyone says, they become a little less bothersome but that is all. The good news is that God knows exactly how you feel and is there with you to carry you through it, no matter how deep the sadness goes or how long it lasts. He never leaves you and He won’t forsake the friendship that you have.

If you don’t know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then the sadness will be terrible and deep and you may feel that you can’t bear it. For some, this is a reason to “get off the wagon” and get back into a bottle or go back to their habit of taking drugs to ease the pain. This is a really bad idea! Jesus can strengthen you and help you through this, if you will let Him!

He told us in His Word that we would never be alone, if we have accepted Him into our lives. He loves us much more than we can ever imagine or believe and if we will just trust in Him, we can gain the strength that we need to make it through the days and weeks ahead. The death of a marriage or a family member is a hard lesson in life and it is one that many of us have gone through, especially me, but Jesus is the Wonderful Counselor, the Everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace and He will be with you through this if you will ask Him into your heart and life.

Grief is a natural part of life and death and there are many stages to it, but the most devastating is the depression and anger. We feel anger because we weren’t ready for our loved one to leave or for the marriage to end or whatever it may have been. We are depressed because of the loss of our loved one by whatever means that has taken them away and we know that we may never see them again. Cheer up, if you have Christ in your life and they did too then it is only a temporary separation. They are in a more wonderful place than you can imagine and they are with Jesus!

Their salvation could lead you in that direction if you will allow it to. Grief and loss for a Christian are not permanent but temporary because Jesus conquered death and the grave! You will see them again if you decide to give your heart to Jesus and ask Him to come into your life. Once you have done this, your life and that of those around you will never be the same because of the change in you that they can see.

What is on your mind?


In the times that we live in today, many of us have so much on our minds until we can’t isolate exactly what is on our mind at any one time. Isn’t that strange? I have days like that even though I don’t work at a regular job anymore. How about you? Do you have days that have many things running into each other trying to get them done? You probably feel like you will run into yourself one day trying to finish everything, don’t you?

It is a day like that that this is dedicated to. For one thing, we all need to s–l–o–w d-o-w-n. Not only in our working lives, but at home as well. We tend to have so much for our family to do until we seem to forget that we are really, first and foremost, a family! If your workday ends on Friday, but you hardly have any time to spend with each other over the weekend, then it doesn’t really qualify as a “week-end” does it?

Even Jesus spent time with His friends and His disciples when all of the healings were finished and the bread was broken. He didn’t just walk away and not tell people that He didn’t have time for them. He created time so He could have as much as He needed. The problem was that He took the time to take the time with them, regardless of the amount of time that He had. Now, we can’t create time and He didn’t either while He was on Earth, but the point is that we need to control our time.

I know that time management is a course that is taught in college and it is usually found to be useless once you finish it, but your most important relationship here is your family and they should come first, behind God, but our jobs and obligations usually get in the way. But they don’t get in the way unless we allow it to happen, do they? I know, there are some obligations which come with our jobs, whatever they may be, that can’t be put on hold or put off until after the game or other family get together, but we should at least try to put family and Jesus first in our everyday lives.

Ask God to help because believe me, He can and will do it! Many of the reasons for people not seeing God at work in their lives is because they didn’t ask for His help in the first place! Then, after we do ask for His help we don’t or can’t wait for God to act! I have said it before and I am going to say it again because I have heard this advice from other Christians and other pastors as well: don’t ever ask God for patience! You will learn it, not get it, but you won’t enjoy the wait at all!

That being said, don’t hesitate to ask God for help in any area of your life. He is always there and always ready to help in His way and His time. Jesus is always there, waiting for people to call on Him to come into their lives and change them for the better, because when you become a Christian you are not the same as you were, you are forgiven and whole in Christ. You are not better than the person beside you, but you are forgiven which makes a difference! You are not sinless, yet you are forgiven through His blood and His sacrifice for you and everyone that you know! God sent Jesus to do this so that we could all come to Him through the atonement found only in Jesus. Come to Him and let Him show you how to order your life on a daily basis toward Him and His Word, to learn from Him one book at a time so that you can take it with you wherever you go.

Think about it during the next few weeks and give your life to Jesus. It is the most important and life changing decision that you will ever make!

Live, love and persue happiness


The life that we have been given and the love that has been shown to us through Jesus’ sacrifice for all of us, is a gift of immense proportions. Unfortunately, many people miss this gift and don’t realize just what they have been given until some trial comes along and shows them what they have and what they could’ve had. Also, we tend to miss it because we don’t want to believe any of this because of Who He is! Many people don’t want to know Jesus because Christianity and Jesus Himself said that He was and is the Son of God.

God is love and this is part of the message that Jesus brought to the world and to His disciples. But, we should be trying to live like Jesus did and love the way that He did and if we did that then happiness would follow. We also should be letting Jesus live through us so that others will see Him and not us, so that they will see the love of Jesus in our words and our deeds. That is the gift that we need to be giving to others during our time here.

It is true that during this time of year, we are looking for gifts from our family and friends, our boss, our wife or husband, our parents, but you have already been given the most valuable gift that could be given…that of the Christ, your Messiah, Jesus. He made the sacrifice that could not be done by anyone or anything other than the perfect Son of God. Why do people reject Him and His gift? Because they don’t believe in Him or in Who He is, plain and simple.

Most just think that He is a prophet or he was and he was crucified and died,  and that is it! Many don’t think that the story of His resurrection is true or that He is the Son of God, but He is! Jesus is the only Man of God that is almost always spoken of in the present tense, not in the past tense. “Why is that?” you might say; because He sits at the right hand of God right now! He is not dead, but alive and waiting for you to ask Him into your life. He will not force you to accept Him, neither will He ask you to kill someone who doesn’t accept Him. That is not His way.

He was born to a virgin, by the will and actions of God through the Holy Spirit to become the Son of Man Who is the Son of God. No contradiction exists in this and He is the only One that could fulfill all of the prophecies concerning Himself from the Old Testament, which He did at His birth, through His life and with His death on the cross and His resurrection! He fulfilled them all, no mere man, prophet or not, could accomplish that!

Give Jesus a chance in your life and in your heart. You won’t regret it and others will see Him through your actions as well and may turn their life over to Him because of the changes they see in you. Wouldn’t that be wonderful! To know that even one person came to Christ because of something that you said or did, although you may not even find it out until you get to Heaven, won’t that be a great blessing?

Think about it!

 

The Gift


Many people have tried and failed today,

Many have just turned and walked away.

Some could not care in the least, they

Are at home enjoying a feast!

Some only want what is yours and not their own,

It may be because their heart is a stone, but

When the day dawns and the Prince appears, then they will know

Why they see Him through tears.

They’ll know and they’ll cry because they know the reason,

Their tears are caused because they forgot Him during

This season.

They forgot or maybe didn’t want to remember,

The Babe who was likely born in September. Who

Came to be the deliverer of all, even though He came

When He was quite small.

His life didn’t last long but it was for many a reason,

Each one of us owes Him for our own reasons.

You see Christ came For you and for me, to give His life on an old

Rugged tree.

The reason is simple though understand it we cannot, because

He loves us all more than we ever could,

which is why He died on that old piece of wood.

But, He rose again and settled the debt on that day…a debt that none of us can ever repay.

True lies, really?


How can we believe the things that are being taught today? Unproven theories are accepted as truth, lies are taught as if they are from God. What are we supposed to believe anymore? Can we believe anything or anyone today or from the past? I don’t know about believing just anyone, but the One that you can count on and believe in is Jesus the Christ!

Many people seem to think that He lied about Who He was and nearly everything that He said, but He did not. All of the miracles were seen by more than one person, sometimes more than fifty or one hundred so they were verified according to Jewish law. His disciples saw Him taken up into the clouds and angels told them that He would return in like manner, so that proved His claim as being the Son of God and the Messiah. I know that many of these take faith in God and in His Word to truly believe, but many of the things in the Torah are also historical fact and our Old Testament contains much of the Torah if not all of it. Jesus quoted many things from it during His ministry.

The theories being taught today as facts are still just theories because they can’t be duplicated or verified by transition forms from say a fish to a reptile or an actual fossil of a “missing link” between man and ape. Most of the fossils that have been found were small pieces of a jaw or a leg or part of a vertebrae, the genetic makeup of the animal that it belonged to can’t be identified, so it is not proven to be one or the other. Genetic markers don’t survive fossilization just as cell structures and blood don’t. Yes, there are rumors of blood vessels being found in the leg of a dinosaur, with blood in it no less, but it was never widely reported. Many even disregarded it as a quirk or an accident, nothing more.

But, what if the account of creation is true like the rest of the Word of God? If there really was a world-wide flood and the world is only about ten thousand or so years old then blood could survive in a leg bone. Dinosaurs and man existed at the same time on this earth. Would believing in the Word of the Creator be such a bad thing? I think I would rather believe in Him and His Word than in much of the history and science that is taught in our schools today as fact! I would rather stand before Him and say that I did believe in Him and His Son rather than having the audacity to say that He doesn’t exist! I really don’t think even the most devout atheist will be able to stand before God and tell Him that they don’t believe in Him!

Consider that before you jump to a conclusion about Him that’s based purely on your own thoughts and beliefs or lack of belief. Just as saying that gravity is not real doesn’t take it away, not believing in God doesn’t remove Him from His throne either.