Tag: Jesus

Origins and beginnings


It seems that many in the scientific community and the world at large are more concerned with the beginnings of everything in the cosmos than they are about what is happening around us. Life, the kind of life that we all deserve, is dependent upon our position on Jesus, our Savior.

One day, we will know about all of God’s cosmos because to those who belong to Him, He will give the knowledge about His creation. But, until then we should be working toward being more useful for Him while there is time to do so. God loves all of us and yet many try to disprove His existence or just decide that they don’t believe in Him at all. This is a very dangerous position for someone to be in.

Why do I say this? Because, we are finite beings and our time in this life isn’t guaranteed! We live and breathe at the discretion and mercy of God. He knows when your time is up, but thankfully we don’t. That being said, my time may be up soon or I may have another twenty years to live in this body. Nobody knows when or how long they will live, so if you say that you don’t believe in God or Jesus then you are going to stand before them one day. Without the salvation provided by your belief in Jesus and your surrendering to Him, you will be condemned to exist in eternity apart from God’s presence.

I know, describing hell in that way doesn’t sound so bad but the presence of God is all that is keeping our world and all around it working the way it should. Satan and his demons chose to rebel against God and they will be cast away from Him into hell for eternity. Consider that hell was not created for us, it was created for Satan and his demons but if you reject God’s grace and forgiveness, then you are in the same condition as they are…lost.

The only person who can save you and make you into the person that you are supposed to be is Jesus. He paid the price for all of our sins, all we need to do is to turn to Him and ask Him into our hearts and ask Him to forgive us for our way of life. Ask Him to help us to live for Him and to tell others about Him. Why? Because it is the best and most valuable gift that you have available to you and you can give it away and it costs you nothing.

Choose Life…


Life as I choose to define it here is a life which is following the Author of Life which is Jesus the Christ. Many people write His name as if Christ is His last name, but it is a title meaning Savior or Messiah which is why I chose to write it this way here.

God loves you enough that He sent His Son to die for you on the cross, giving His life and His blood as the ransom in payment for all of the sins of the world. He didn’t die for just a few people, He died for all and His blood paid that price for you. All you have to do to inherit eternity is to believe that He did this for you and that you need Him, also realize that you are a sinner and that you should turn away from your sins whatever they might be.

I have heard people say that they won’t go to this church or that one because there are hypocrites in there and not real Christians. All churches have hypocrites in them because we all fail at some point either today or tomorrow or maybe last week and you saw it or heard it. Preachers do it too because the only person who was sinless was Jesus. Being a Christian doesn’t make you perfectly sinless, but your sins are forgiven by God’s grace through Jesus sacrifice!

He is the Creator and Author of Life itself because He was and is the Living Word of God and it was by His Word that all of creation came into being. It was because of His love for us that He couldn’t be the liberating and conquering King that the Jewish people wanted when He came the first time. When He comes again, He will be the King of Kings and He will conquer the world’s system and its leaders who have persecuted His people for so long.

Satan and all others will get their reward when their judgement is given and carried out.There will be no appeal and no bargaining. The same judgement will fall on you if you have chosen not to live a Christian life and ask Him into your heart. Even if you have been a faithful member of a church or maybe a deacon or pastor, but have not given your life and your heart to Jesus, then you will be judged as one who knew about Him but He didn’t know you.

Please, don’t make that mistake. Everything that is needed for you to be saved has been done, all you need to do is accept it and change your life to match His. Follow in His footsteps, learn from Him and soon His ways will become your ways.

Day in….day out


We all live for the day. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but the Day! What day would that be exactly? The day that our Lord returns of course!

I know, it was foretold in God’s Word over two thousand years ago and people have been expecting it for that long. It hasn’t come yet. When will it get here? When will He come? There are some to think that His arrival is imminent and that it could come at any time, any day now. That is what we have been taught for many years and through many generations, but you know…it could be wrong.

Oh no! I have gone and done it now! I have put something on a Christian site which goes against the teachings that have been taught and preached for over 150 years! Well, you see, that is the thing, it has only been in our pulpits and the teachings of churches for a little more than one hundred and fifty years!

Why did this teaching come into our beliefs and what makes it wrong? Because, until the early 19th century, the return of Jesus was NOT taught as imminent, but that we should be ready regardless of the day or hour. There are different and various opinions regarding the return of Jesus and the rapture of the Church and I will not go into them. My reason for writing is that we should be ready regardless of the time or day that may be. Whenever the times are set, it is set by God Himself, we can’t point to a day or an hour and we can’t give a proven timing for the saints of God to be taken up or brought home.

Jesus said that He was coming to receive us to Himself. He didn’t say when or what year or time this might happen and unless He said it, we should live as if it were tomorrow or today! Be vigilant like the priests on the walls of the city to warn of a coming army or to tell of the times which were of importance such as the Sabbath beginning at sundown. We are to be the ones crying out that He is coming and telling people how to be saved from the wrath that is to come!

Be the watchman who is doing his job and letting others know about their Savior and not one that is trying to be more like the world around them.

Dad…Father


Which are you?

So many seem to be willing to be fathers of children, but it seems that few today are interested in being Dads. You might think that they are the same, but they are not. Any man or boy who is past puberty can make a baby and become a father, but it takes a special person to be a Dad.

Dads care about their children and love them. They teach them what they can and they try to do what is best for them, while they can. A father or a “sperm donor” isn’t usually a real Dad at all. Some fathers are Dads, but not all Dads are the father of their children..at least not biologically. Many Dads love their children’s mother enough that they are willing to be a Dad to her children whether they are his biologically or not.

God is our Father in Heaven because He is the Creator of all and He loves us all equally. We should revere Him and listen to His Wisdom just as we do our Earthly fathers. Why? Because God is over us all and has the power to cut us off from His presence if we do not! Except, when God cuts us off from His presence it will be for eternity.

Seek Him out while there is yet time to do so. God loves all of us but He doesn’t like and cannot tolerate the sinful lives that some of us lead. The idol worship that many of us practice today is abhorrent to Him and the problem is that many of us don’t even realize that we have idols in our lives. We may not know it until we stand in front of Him at our judgement and then it will be too late.

Days, hours and minutes


I know, there are more divisions of time than just those but those three are the ones which we use every day. Why am I talking about ways to count down a day or a week or even a year? Because time is important to all of us at this point. When will we NOT need to worry or even think about hours and days or even years? In Heaven, in our eternity, that is when. Time is measured from the point of conception until our death because this body, this tabernacle that we live in only lasts a certain amount of time and God knows exactly how many years and seconds that each of us has.

We can’t imagine eternity because there is no time there, so when you cross over into it a minute could be a day or a few hours on Earth. So…what are we going to do with an eternity? I can’t say for sure but God has a plan and part of it will be during the one thousand years of Jesus’ reign after the Tribulation. That will be a time in which many advances in science and all sorts of things will likely happen. But, to those who have been given a glorified body even one thousand years won’t be a long time.

Our time is measured by the rotation of the Earth and its rotation around the Sun, it was set up to reflect perfect harmony and it is. Although, creation has been going down hill since Adam ate the fruit in Eden. When all is restored to perfection one day, we will know how the universe was supposed to be.Your fruit trees will produce fruit which tastes so much better than what we have now. The vegetables will be more flavorful. Even the air that we breathe will be cleaner and more invigorating.

Life won’t be the same anymore it will be more than we could imagine. This is even before most of us get into eternity. Time will be different, our lives will be different, the universe itself will be different but if you have given your heart and your life to Jesus…life will go on without end!

Time as we measure it now will be a thing of the past. Your life before eternity, before Heaven, before all of the wonders that we will share forever. Will it be hard to live this way? NO, because God will provide everything that you need! We won’t be thinking about bills or groceries because at this time, those are not necessary at all. The only people who won’t be enjoying eternity will be those who have doubted God’s grace and have not accepted Jesus as their Savior.

They will live in eternity but it will be one without God, without all of the nice parts of Heaven. No water, no food, no bearable temperatures but since you have an eternal body you won’t die either. It is YOUR choice which will send you to that place, not God. You will be there because you refused to give Jesus a place in your life and you wanted your “stuff” in this life. Think about it.

What can I say?


We don’t get along, but we try. Some days are better than others, so I pray about the rest of them. God, I need your strength today and everyday. I know you love me and care for me, but sometimes it feels distant or false. Why do fathers and sons have problems like these? I think it is because we are too much alike in so many ways that we grate on each other’s nerves, like rubbing two pieces of sandpaper together. God, please help us to get along better. Amen.

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I don’t like to air my own problems on this page, but I need some prayer warriors to lift me and my family up. I don’t want this to tear our family to shreds. God, please send your Spirit to heal this rift soon.

Almost home


Have you ever wished that you were home? I don’t mean your Earthly home exactly, although that is a wonderful place to be most of the time. I mean your Heavenly home, the one that Jesus went to prepare for each person who claims Him as their Lord and Savior!

The longer that each of us live here on Earth, if we are Christians, the closer we are to getting there. Your journey of this life begins the day that you were conceived and ends on the day you die. God knows both dates and He will bring you into His home, your eternal home right after your soul exits from your body.

Now, I know there are some who don’t believe this and they will disagree with me. That’s OK, because one day they will meet Him too. Whether they know Him as Savior or not, they will meet Him although they may not enjoy the meeting if they didn’t accept Him as their Savior.

Almost home

Through the brambles and the weeds, the long road winds. Twisting, turning, and ever climbing yet upward and forward it goes. Life it is that we live here, sweet and sour though it may be. Sweeter still when ever we find the end of the path and cross over to be…with our Creator and our Lord into Eternity.

pathtoCFSometimes it seems that we take our life for granted, where it starts and where it ends and all of the stuff that happens between those points are just part of it. But, do you ever consider the path that leads to Eternity? If you are a Christian or have any idea about an afterlife, then the thought has likely crossed your mind a few times. Seek our Jesus and a Bible teaching church or study group, learn about Him and His ways because He is the only way into Eternity and He does have a place for you there. He said so.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe in Me as well. 2 In My Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so,would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and welcome you into My presence, so that you also may be where I am.”  John 14:2,3

Faith of a child


Children are special not only to their parents but to God as well. Why is that? Because their faith is unwavering and true and hasn’t been corrupted by adult ideas and teachings from school and living life itself. They look at life around them in absolutes, black and white, there is no gray area when a child sees the world! Children don’t bring their own baggage into their beliefs because they haven’t lived long enough to have “baggage”.

A child can be told that a prayer can heal someone of a sickness or disease and if they are young enough, they will pray with more faith than the most aged saint can muster.Why is that? Because they believe with their whole hearts and minds, and they don’t doubt the Word of God.

So, why do we doubt God’s Word? He cannot lie and His Word is True, so what’s the problem? Mostly it is our own individual ideas about Who He is and what He will or can do in our mind. We limit Him and put limits upon Him with our own ideas about Who He is.  In fact we are creating a “god” which fits our definition and we aren’t truly believing His Word about Himself!

Children don’t have that hangup until they are taught how to do it by us. Whether it is something they hear in school or Bible school or at home, we are the ones responsible for killing that young, powerful faith in their Creator.

I would love to tell you how to get that kind of faith back, but it is hard for me to dredge up the kind of faith that a child can have with no worries at all. Growing up and learning about the world and going through our “education system” seems to put a blanket over that faith which eventually smothers it or at least dims the light of it so that it is almost useless until we are tested and made to exercise it.

Seek Him out in His Word and ask Him to show you how to exercise your faith so that it can be stronger and useful to you and to Him. God loves us and all that we have to do is seek Him out and learn to love Him in return.

Umber


The color of umber is brown. Not a dark brown but not exactly “paper sack tan” either. Truthfully it is like a lightly roasted coffee in color. Why am I bringing this up on this blog? Because there are discussions and arguments arising about the way that Jesus is portrayed in paintings and in our culture.

Some say that He should be portrayed as white, others say that He is black, actually He is neither one. Jesus was born Hebrew as a Jewish Israelite. If you have ever met someone from Israel you notice that they have skin tones which have an olive complexion. What does that mean? It means that their skin will tan easily in the sun.

Our Savior did a lot of walking throughout Judea in His lifetime, therefore He most likely was very dark-skinned where the sun struck Him. His face, arms, feet, and lower legs were likely very dark. The depiction of Him being white by artists who painted Him or otherwise portrayed Him is a nod to the culture of their day, racist though that may have been.

Our ancestors, the ones who began all of this in Eden, were very olive-skinned so that when their offspring came about a myriad of skin colors and complexions would be genetically possible. God knew then and He knows now exactly what He is doing genetically in this world. He is also giving us the ability to choose our spiritual pathway in our lives and He has been doing this from the start.

God doesn’t care if your skin color is dark or light, olive or even very darkly pigmented, He cares about your soul…your inner man. That is the part of you that lives on into eternity and your culture, your “skin tone” will likely be in eternity as well so we will all be able to see who we really are or were in our previous life on Earth. No one will lose their identity after death. Jesus spoke of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob being alive in eternity and our names and all that we have done in the service of God will follow us into eternity too.

Living here in this life is far different from what we will see or know in Heaven and for those who won’t give their hearts to Jesus, their eternity will be a true living hell. The descriptions of hell are varied but the regrets and the separation from God’s love and all that we have known in this life will be with us through eternity. The color of your skin, your culture, your lifestyle or how much money you had on Earth will mean NOTHING!

I was given a very tiny glimpse into heaven once and the gold streets are pure enough to shine like the Sun and the gold is like glass. Some of the buildings are made of a substance like opals only more pure and clear with walls a cubit or more thick. They reflect God’s glory with all of the colors imaginable but a description would not do them justice at all.

The descriptions found in the Bible are man’s attempt at describing things which our minds can’t comprehend fully, so I can’t either. Race doesn’t mean anything in the end. We are all God’s children and all of us are descended from Adam and Eve, since God cannot lie I don’t understand why we deny that we are all related.

Apples and Jesus


A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago .. They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night’s dinner. In their rush, with tickets and briefcases, one of these salesmen inadvertently kicked over a table which held a display of apples. Apples flew everywhere. Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly missed boarding…

ALL BUT ONE!!! He paused, took a deep breath, got in touch with his feelings and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned.

He told his buddies to go on without him, waved good-bye, told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain his taking a later flight. Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor.

He was glad he did. The 16-year-old girl was totally blind! She was softly crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her; no one stopping and no one to care for her plight.

The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them back on the table and helped organize her display. As he did this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket.

When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, “Here, please take this $40 for the damage we did. Are you okay?” She nodded through her tears. He continued on with, “I hope we didn’t spoil your day too badly.”

As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, “Mister….” He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes. She continued, “Are you Jesus?”

He stopped in mid-stride …. and he wondered. He gently went back and said, “No, I am nothing like Jesus – He is good, kind, caring, loving, and would never have bumped into your display in the first place.

“The girl gently nodded: “I only asked because I prayed for Jesus to help me gather the apples. He sent you to help me, so you are like Him – only He knows who will do His will. Thank you for hearing His call, Mister.”

Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his soul: “Are you Jesus?”

Do people mistake you for Jesus?

That’s our destiny, is it not? To be so much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and interact with a world that is blind to His love, life and grace.

If we claim to know Him, we should live, walk and act as He would. Knowing Him is more than simply quoting scripture and going to church. It’s actually living the Word as life unfolds day-to-day .

You are the apple of His eye even though you, too, have been bruised by a fall. He stopped what He was doing and picked up you and me on a hill called Calvary and paid in full for our damaged fruit.

Sometimes we just take things for granted, when we really need to be sharing what we know….

 

“Being happy doesn’t mean everything is perfect.
It means you’ve decided to see beyond the imperfections.”

The nicest place to be is in someone’s thoughts,
the safest place to be is in someone’s prayers,
and the very best place to be is ……..
in the hands of God

God Smiled on You Today .