Tag: Religion

Have you come to Jesus in repentance?


You know, there are many people who attend church and some who don’t attend any church who know about Jesus but they haven’t repented of their sinful life or their sins in any way. Many of them think that by being in the church or on a church roll that God will dismiss the things that they have done and forgive them anyway. That is NOT what the Bible says or what any of the gospel writers taught at all! Believing in Jesus is the way to salvation but refusing to repent of your sinful ways is just a slap in His face which will not be tolerated nor forgiven!

Coming to Jesus with a broken heart knowing that what you have been doing is against His laws and commandments and asking for His forgiveness is the way to and the beginning of salvation. Once you have taken that first step by asking Him to forgive you, then you are ready for the Holy Spirit to come into your life and your heart and change you into the person that He needs you to be. As the Scripture says, “you are a new creation, behold all things have become new” and it is true!

Your old life and ways won’t have a hold on your heart anymore. You will want to be more like Jesus and to follow Him every day. Oh, this desire to be like Him and follow Him won’t happen immediately but it will happen when you study the Bible and pray with Him and to Him daily, bringing your problems and fears to Him. Because, Satan will try to derail your walk with Jesus by bringing your old life up and your friends will come around asking for you to go with them to places that you know you shouldn’t be going now. Temptations like these will happen sometimes on a daily basis at first, but once they realize that you belong to Jesus, your friends might just ask you about Him.

That is when some of them will leave and you might never see them again, but some of them will want to know more. Why are you so happy? What has changed about you? Things which bothered you one time, don’t anymore. What is going on in your life that is different? They will want to know and you can tell them. Show them the verses that you have been reading, tell them about the saving grace that God has granted to us all if we will just ask for it with a repentant heart and turn away from our old life.

Repentance is the only way to change your life along with coming to Jesus. Continuing to do the things that you did before, even after asking Him for His forgiveness, shows that you are not sorry that you did those things and that you never intended to stop doing them in the first place. In other words, you lied to Jesus and to God! That is a dangerous thing to do because not only can God just give you over to the thoughts of your mind, but He can also harden your heart so that you cannot lie to Him again. You will never feel the tug of the Holy Spirit on your heart regardless of how good the speaker might be.

Being let go by God is a sad thing because you will never have the chance to repent again…to come to Him and ask His forgiveness. I know, some of you will say that God is supposed to love us and He wants to save us. Yes, He does but we are given free will to be and do whatever we want to do. Many of us do this to the extreme and some of us push the limits of everything that we do. What do I mean by this? Well, for instance we push against God and His laws, just as we do against our parents when we were growing up. We rush right up to the limit of the sin, whatever it might be. Some of us pull back and repent. Some of us, keep right on going because we enjoy whatever it is that we are doing, even when we know it is wrong.

 

Religious mentality


There are so many different religions in the world today and just as many if not more denominations of Christian belief too. Why are we so split up into different doctrines and belief systems? Mainly, because of Satan himself. I know, there are many, many people who don’t believe in him and those who say that he doesn’t exist at all. He enjoys taunting them and playing with their minds, especially when they don’t think that it is a real entity which is doing these things.

So, what do we do or can we do about all of this confusion? Being religious can be done with anything, it doesn’t have to be a belief or a denomination or even an accepted religion. You can be religious about your life, your job or even your hobby. This is exactly what Satan wants. He wants most of the world to be religious about their particular religion, whatever it may be, and to be so zealous that you persecute anyone who doesn’t believe as you do. Which causes more trouble in the world, more wars, more killing, more hatred between people and cultures. This is the kind of ruler that Earth has at this time, one who is bent on destroying as much of God’s creation as possible while he still has time.

Jesus spoke against the religious mentality of His day too. The High priest and the Pharisees held the people to the laws of Moses, all six hundred or so of them, but they devised loopholes for themselves so that they didn’t have to keep the letter of them. By teaching the people to essentially “do as we say, not as we do”, they were leading the people away from God and not to Him.

Jesus taught the people to know Him and learn to know their God, personally. Being religious doesn’t get you anywhere without Him in your life. Look to Jesus alone for your salvation because He is the only way to get salvation, period. There is no other name or person that can get you saved from an eternity in hell except Jesus and until the world sees this, although it may be too late, there will be no real peace on Earth.

God’s will


Anything that is happening in this world, good or bad, can and will be used in the will of God. Like it or not, you are too. Why there are so many people who are going against this, I don’t know. Yes, there is much in the world which is seen as bad by many people and it is hard to understand why such things are happening. It doesn’t make sense to us because the things which are happening seem to be heinous and evil, God permits those things to happen but it is not His will that they do. Whether you believe it or not, the heart of man is full of evil and wickedness and it is because of our collective sinful nature. This is the reason that things, bad things, happen in the world today.

I have been asked by some “Then why doesn’t God stop it? If He is God, couldn’t He force us to behave?”

Yes, He could, but forced obedience doesn’t engender feelings of love and compassion does it? If you were forced to do something, like go to church for instance, would you be worshipping God while you were there? Not likely, you would be angry and resentful toward the person who made you come. You wouldn’t be thankful or grateful for the sermon or for the person about whom the preacher was speaking. Being forced into something, whether it is a worship service or a marriage like some women or girls are forced into in some countries today, doesn’t engender love for the arrangement regardless what it might be.

God does love each of us and it is His wish, His will that all of us would come to Him, to know Him willingly. But, it is our decision to do so. He doesn’t force us. Therefore Allah doesn’t exist. Allah and God are NOT the same person. The Koran is not God’s word, it is something which was given to a man by a demon from Satan disguised as an angel from God. The concepts from God’s True Word about love, dignity, purpose, and life are not reflected in it anywhere. Oh, yes, there are some good points and some of it is about peaceful living. But, the surah which talks of lying to the infidel and attacking him, killing him if he will not convert to Islam. Waiting for a chance to kill a Jew or a Christian when the time is right…these are concepts born of a hatred for God’s people.

Compare those concepts with Jesus’ teaching about love your neighbor as yourself, do good to those who persecute you, give to the enemy which takes your cloak your tunic also, these are not the same as the “teachings” of Allah.

Now, I am not attacking anyone’s beliefs with this. If you wish to worship Allah, that is your right and ability to do that, those who worship Zen, or any other Eastern religion are welcome to their religions too. Yes, I said that Allah doesn’t exist but if you worship him, then feel free to do so. Worship is not up to me or you or any other person, at least in the sense that someone is in control of your worship. Religion and religious worship are individual decisions, just as following Jesus as your Savior is an individual decision too.

Think about it, pray about it, seek God and He will come to your heart and your life and change it for the better.

Thinkin’ about stuff…


300px-Pooh_and_Piglet,_Thinking

I really like Pooh Bear. His philosophy of life is profound and simple. Eat, enjoy life with your friends, think about…stuff. Like, how clouds look and how they get around, why is the Sun so bright, could I fly to the moon? All important questions, especially when you don’t want to think about the REAL world and its problems. Life is a question from the time that we can talk and make sentences until the day that we, in the words of Commander Data “go offline”. How can we really enjoy life when there are so many questions? Do we have to answer them all? I am only adding to the number of questions by asking all of these.

The point is that we are beings who think. Our minds work all of the time, except while we are asleep and some say that we actually solve many of our problems while we are asleep we just don’t realize it at the time. Unconscious thoughts, words, meanings and emotions cloud our thinking and crowd out the really weird stuff, but only while we sleep. When we are awake, we have news and Facebook and Instagram and conversations over our phones and computers as well as with other human beings. Not to mention the things which we really have to do, like go to work, drive the car, watch for the other people on the highway around us, then do our job (whatever that might be) and then drive home and either fix something to eat for our family or get it as take-out from a restaurant.

Your life and mine are constantly in motion. Our minds rarely have a chance to catch up with everything that we are doing, and yet I haven’t even mentioned giving time to God or Bible study and meditation, prayer, etc. It is possible to do all of these things but when you write them down…they look so overwhelming! God gave us the ability to do this but we take it for granted, because from the time we first start going to school, more things are added to our daily menu of things to do every day! It seems that we are never really caught up or that we ever will catch up. Why?

More questions. Think…think…think..what can we do that doesn’t require so much energy, so much brainpower? I don’t have the answer to that, unless you might want to play some games on a console or on the computer, that is a mostly brain-less activity in my opinion. So, without being brain-less, how about getting into God’s Word? The wisdom contained in it doesn’t require us to really think, just believe in Him and His wisdom, as well as in His Son Who made it possible for us to come to God at any time that we need Him, regardless of the circumstance.

Once Jesus took care of the atonement or payment for our sins, all that we have to do is to believe in Him and what He did and ask Him to forgive us and to help us be more like Him in our daily lives. So that we can bring His message to others and, if the Holy Spirit draws them, maybe they will want to give their lives to Him as well. Christians don’t go on jihad (except for the ones that were deceived by their church in the Middle ages), Christianity cannot be forced on anyone and neither can any other religion!

Please consider your eternal soul and really think…think this through before deciding to follow Jesus or not. The decision can be the most valuable in your lifetime, because then your true, eternal life won’t end at all! 

New age, what does it really mean?


Many people think that “new age” is a reference to our placement in time, like the twenty-first century, but the name has been in use for many more years than in just the past decade. For a complete list of what and when this began see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Age.

For many people in the world, the new age movement began to be popular in the 1960’s, which is why it is associated with all of the crazy stuff that went on during that time. Even many gurus latched onto it with their beliefs and teachings about meditation and an all-inclusive religion. One that doesn’t claim superiority  or even claim that it is right or the only way, like mono-theistic religions do.

New age tries to develop a harmony between science and religion so that you can sort of, have your evolution and creation at the same time. What a concept!?

Really?

All of the religions in the world that are apart from the three mono-theistic religions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, have some component of work that has to be performed by man in order for him to reach a level of being above his place in the universe. An attainment that can only be reached by doing things in a correct way or prescribed manner during a person’s lifetime. Where does this work-based belief get you? Tired, frustrated, anxious, scared, wondering if you did enough or did it right, is that how you want to reach the end of your life? Full of worry and scared that what you have done or haven’t done in this life may not have been good enough?

I know the arguments of people who claim to be atheists or agnostics, I have read some of their books. The crux of the matter is this: what do you believe? If you don’t believe in anything after death, then you don’t have anything to fear, do you? You’re just dead and that’s it, so what’s the difference? OK, but what if you are wrong?

If your belief is Scientology, will the Thetan‘s carry you to a place and change you into a god? Will Allah take you into his bosom and give you eternal life? There are many other religions in the world which claim to bring you into a state of oneness with the universe, but will you know it or does your essence just merge with the cosmos forever and you fade away like a puff of smoke?

I don’t know what happens after we die, but I do know what is promised in God’s Word. Jesus said that we would have eternal life if we only believed in His sacrifice and that it paid the penalty for our sins. Is that such a crazy idea? Its not any worse or crazier than some others I don’t believe.

The New Age thinkers don’t know any more about what happens after death than any of the rest of us and they won’t until they die. The problem is that we can’t come back and tell anyone Who we ran into or what we found out on the day that we crossed over life’s threshold into eternity. It really is a mystery that cannot be solved by anyone who is still alive. I know that there are some who have had near death experiences and came back to tell what they have seen, and some of them I believe are credible and as truthful as they can be.

The truth is that we can’t really know until we die and it seems that many people just don’t care what happens after their body dies. Many people think that all of our existence stops when our body dies but according to Jesus, our soul continues on and we will have a glorified body to go with it. So, if this life is just the beginning, don’t you want the eternal part of your life to be more than you ever hoped or dreamed about?

Yes, I do believe that Jesus is the only way to Heaven because He said so. That is all that I need because of my faith in Him. It is true that there are many other religions out there but do they claim to be the pathway to heaven? Most of them don’t actually, they claim other types of existence such as reincarnation or they don’t claim any eternal existence at all. I think I would rather believe the One Who says, “Today, you will be with Me in paradise!”

New-age thinking


We are beginning a new month and it is one that is fraught with ties to a pagan past. Witches, goblins, ghouls, ghosts, vampires, the list could go on and on but you get the meaning. This month is a time for seeking ties to the past, our pagan past but is it? True enough, the so-called ancient religions existed before Christianity, but did their gods really exist or were they just figments of people’s imaginations?

Some might say that it could have been in their imagination or partly due to some herbal tea that they used to get more in touch with the spirit world. Whatever the case may be, it is also possible that Satan and his demons also had a part in most if not all of them. They could stir up deception and lies among the people and get them to believe anything they wanted them to believe as long as they could keep them away from a belief in God, which was their goal.

Pagan religions and new age thinking, whether they are referring to religions or non-belief in any god, are mostly the same. They are trying to put a man-made twist on something which doesn’t need it. Many of those who claim no belief in a god of any kind and also don’t claim any religious affiliation are just trying to justify themselves. They don’t want to be responsible to anyone but themselves, regardless of their actions.

Many of these people have a moral center because they were taught right from wrong at an early age but they don’t know why it is right or wrong. It just feels that way so its OK with them. Pagans, Wicca followers, atheists,  and druids as well as other eastern religions claim to revere nature and the natural beauty around them. Their belief is, like evolutionists, that everything just is and always has been and in times long past it may have been in a different form. It and we have evolved into what is seen today but I contend that if we, as evolution says, evolved from apes, then why are there still apes around?

Religion and the followers of any religion can be religious about their beliefs and the rituals associated with that belief but what do they believe in? The purpose of this site is to point you toward the One who created all of the beauty that is around us every day. None of this came about by evolution or by accident and whether you believe it or not is not going to change it. I know that many people might disagree with me about this but ask yourself this: What if I am right?

Just as not believing in the Sun or the moon or gravity won’t make them go away, non-belief in God or Jesus doesn’t get rid of them either. Denying that gravity exists before you jump from a building or an airplane won’t make the landing any softer, it is still going to kill you. Then when you are standing in front of God, Who many say doesn’t exist, it will be a huge wake up call for you, but by then it is too late.

What will you do? The life that you have here and now is the only chance that you get to make that choice about what you believe and Who you believe in, so what will you decide? Will you choose to go through life seemingly unaware of God or will you truly take notice of the order and beauty around you and realize that this could not have come about by accidental means?

Mathematics and physics and all “hard”science agree on the outcomes of their formulas and theorems and the fact that those outcomes don’t change. But, neither does God. He created those laws and the universe around them, they are His creation too. Just because He is not visible to us now does not take away from Who He is. The wind is not visible but its effect is felt and seen every day. The light from the sun is visible because the sun is visible as well as the heat that comes from it.

Christian beliefs are not some tale made up to frighten people or to give people a crutch to hold to in times of trouble. Our faith is not just based on rules which bind us to a belief, but it is in One Who is coming again. Jesus is the Son of God and will return soon and just as the sun rises it is a sure thing. We do not know a specific day or hour, but He will come again.

The time is growing short and yet I cannot tell you that it will happen in five or ten or even twenty years. I don’t need to know the time, my time may be next week and yours may be tomorrow. We are not guaranteed a number of days, but when you wake in the morning you will have at least part of another day to live. If it turns out that you have the whole day, then you have. But, what about tomorrow? Are you sure about tomorrow and the outcome of your meeting with God? Have you scheduled a meeting with Him? Will you?

Think about it.

What do you believe?


On any given day there are many news stories about people who believe many different things about religion. Some may not believe in any sort of god, man-made or otherwise. Some believe in only a man-made religion which is so focused on its “prophet” that they will kill you if you say anything bad about it at all. Some people believe in a religion which focuses on re-incarnation or coming back after death until you get it right. Boy, would that get old!

I don’t have the time nor the room to speak about all of the hundreds of religions in our world, but there is one that many people don’t like and some that do and it is Christianity. Some people hate it and the people who practice it just because and for no other reason than it has Jesus as its Messiah. Some hate it because He is a Jew and was raised that way so they won’t have anything to do with “that religion”.

Aren’t we supposed to be living in the twenty-first century? All of these racist ideas and bigoted ideas are supposed to be behind us aren’t they? I know that some of the references that I used in the first paragraph sound racist too, but that is not how they were meant. I am just pointing out that many, if not most, of the religions in our world are or were created by men. Some would even argue that Christianity was too but at least it does have a book which points to its Savior from beginning to end even if it started with Moses‘ books.

Jesus is even in the news today because they are reporting that they have supposedly found a piece of the cross that He was crucified on. Great news if it is but how are they going to prove it? Blood, tissue and DNA doesn’t survive that long (even if it did come from the Son of God)!

We are coming into a time in world history that, whether you believe it or not, is part of prophecy and is foretold to be the worst time in the history of the world. I don’t know when this time will come about but according to what has already happened, it won’t likely be long in coming. It is prophesied to be a time that according to:

Matthew 24:21-22: 21. For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. 22. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.

The Truth of God‘s Word speaks it as plainly as it can be said so will you examine your belief, your life against it and decide? We can and have come up with so many religions in the past two thousand years and many just in the past two hundred and yet only one holds the hope of eternity. I know it sounds narrow-minded, but if you had two paths that looked like you would survive a cataclysm and yet only one were solid enough to travel on, which would you choose? Especially if the safe one were narrow but solid and the other was wide but slippery, which would you choose?

 

Are you accountable for you?


There are so many opinions on accountability in the news and social media today until I was wondering if we as a nation and as individuals are accountable for our actions? Does anyone really take responsibility for the things that they say or do, whether on line or in person? I would say that many people don’t or wouldn’t take responsibility for their words or actions if someone brought it to their attention. Many people would get upset and voice that “You are judging me!” or “It’s none of your business so leave me alone!”; isn’t it possible that we are all like that in one way or another?

Will we take responsibility for our own lives? Sometimes we will, if we get caught or if what we have said or done has caused enough heartache and anguish that we feel the weight of responsibility on us. But, what if we don’t? What if it doesn’t bother us? If you call yourself a Christian and think that you belong to Jesus, then you might want to check again! Because, if you have said something or have done something that you wouldn’t do while Jesus was standing next to you, then you may need to fall to your knees and ask Him to come into your life for the first time! See, thinking that you are a Christian, believing that you are a Christian doesn’t make you a Christian!

You may have grown up in the church, regardless of the denomination, by going with your parents whenever they went but going to church, reading your scriptures, singing hymns, getting baptized in one form or another doesn’t make you a Christian!

The only thing that can change your life is Jesus and belief in His atonement for your sins! Asking Him into your heart will begin that transformation, but to complete it you need to walk with Him by learning about Him through God‘s Word. You need to get to know Him by learning about Him and Who He is, just as people who are fans of certain athletes get to “know” their favorites! Now, I am not saying that you should be a fan of Jesus, what I am saying is that you need to be a follower of Jesus! He is the only way to Heaven and all of these other so-called “paths” to heaven are just trails which will eventually lead you to hell! They all combine into a road which is wide and crowded because there are so many people who have been fooled into thinking that their little “religion” is the only way, and yet they will find that their “way” is the wrong one! But by the time that they do, it may be too late to change their mind or their life!

Christianity is called a “religion of blood” and it is called a “religion of intolerance”, but what about those religions which are so rigid that any doubt or straying from the faith might get you killed? Sounds sort of intolerant to me, but that is not Christianity. People don’t like the fact that our religion has as its hero, a man who gave His life for everyone and He did it by being crucified on a cross. That is the blood and the symbol that most people reject, along with Jesus.

We have a responsibility to those that oppose us, to tell them about Him and to let them see His love through our actions and our words. If they can’t see Him by seeing us saying or doing something that would be impossible for us to do otherwise, then we may need to check our own life out. Can you be gracious to someone who hates you? Do you respond in kind when someone cuts you off on the interstate? If you have a bumper-sticker identifying you as a Christian, then you had better think about it before you get on the highway…better yet, pray and seek His council every time you get behind the wheel! People watch those of us who claim to have something that they want, whether they recognize it or not.

It is our responsibility to let them know about the only One who can help and heal their lives and their illnesses because He told us to. What we have freely received, through Jesus, we must freely give away to those who are in need of it! Can we call ourselves followers of Him and not do that? I think not! Your life, if you have given your heart to Jesus, was changed because someone gave away what they had received from Him. The least that you can do is to give Him or the news of His love to someone else, regardless of who they may be or what they seem to be! Before you do, turn your scrutiny upon yourself and make sure that your life belongs to Jesus. If it already does belong to Him, that’s great! If you are not sure, fix it!! You can’t fix it, but He can!!

 

What do you do when you can’t do anymore?


Do you give up? I have heard that many people do just that and its a shame. What about looking for something that you can do? When we get to a place where we don’t think we can do or say anymore about something, what do we do then? The thing that I do is..turn to God and ask Him to show me what to do! In today’s society, there are many people who don’t do that simply because they don’t believe in God, but what else is there to believe in? Man-made religions and beliefs did not create the universe. Religion doesn’t have a risen Savior that is present to be called upon.

The thing that makes Christianity different from religions that are all over the world is that our Savior died in order to bring us into a relationship with Him! Many other religions require you to “do something” in order to be worthy of a relationship with their “god”, while the God of the Hebrews is the only God! And He doesn’t require you to work your way into heaven because you can’t! We cannot do anything on our own that makes us good enough to be allowed into heaven. The only requirement that we have is to believe that Jesus died for us and took the punishment meant for us, accept it and then do the best we can, with Him as our guide, to go out and spread the news to others!

Whether the world accepts Him or not is not our problem, all that we have to do is tell them about Him! He will speak to their hearts and minds so that they will be convicted of their sins and turn to Him or they won’t, but they cannot be forced into it. The talents that God gives to each of us, whether we are Christians or not, were given to bring Him glory. Though, most of the time we use those talents for our glory and our personal gain, especially if it is a talent like singing or acting. The bottom line is that we are selfish.

We, all of us, think that we are the most important person in our world and to some extent that is true. But, being that self-centered does nothing to give us a positive image of ourselves unless we are being praised or we happen to be good enough that we get praise for our performances.

And yet, if we are not good enough we begin to believe that we aren’t good enough for anything or anyone. We get into a real pity party and get depressed and turn to many other ways to make us feel better, even if only for a little while. People turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, reality television, money, etc.; the list could go on and on forever. Even our jobs and our house or how much money we make or the kind of car that we drive can turn into or be used as a status symbol, which many people use them just that way.

But, what does that accomplish? Does your job help you in any way spiritually? Can your car solve problems at home, or can money fix your relationship with your children or with your spouse? We tend toward idolizing people and things in our society and we don’t realize that we have actually turned them into idols. These “things” cannot do anything for us. They cannot help, but they do get in the way of our perception and keep us blinded to the One who can help.

Jesus, by the love that the Father had for us, was sent to be the sacrifice that would take the punishment for us all, and He did! He paid the price of everyone’s sins so that we wouldn’t have to pay the price for our rebellion. All that we have to do is to believe in Him and His sacrifice and that we are His when we do. We cannot help Him to save us, because there is nothing that we can do that would be good enough. The only thing that sends you to hell is believing the lie that Satan puts in front of you, the one that says “I can do it on my own, I don’t need you!” The other lie that many people believe is that there is no hell or punishment for those who reject Jesus or even that there is no Satan who causes us to believe more in our own self than we do in the One who created us!

The grace of God is extended to each of us every day when we are able to get up and greet another day, yet many people don’t acknowledge it as such. They take each day for granted because they believe that they are guaranteed their time on earth, but we are not! We have the time that God gives us and that may end tonight, we may never see another sun rise on earth. But, when your eyes close in death you will rise to an eternal life afterward. Your enjoyment of that eternity hinges on your decision to accept Jesus as your Savior and ask forgiveness through Him or not. Your immortal body will be able to withstand the terrors and the punishment in hell and you will feel it forever or you will be rewarded with a life in heaven that is free from pain and suffering. The choice is yours to make, but it must be made before you die!

 

Our world is (mostly) lost


There are many who, I imagine, would agree with that statement and many who would disagree as well. But, from a salvation point of view, it is true. Many people, billions of them in fact, are lost. They are looking for something, yet they don’t know what it is, and they are looking in the wrong places. The look to things or people or religions that offer no real hope. Nothing proven to be a future hope, just feelings of belonging to something that is temporary. Life itself, the one that we all live on this planet, is temporary. It may seem to be an arduous task to live it, however you may do so and wherever you may live and yet the time that we have is but an instant.

Eternity lies before us, all of us, regardless of the place we may go to after our physical death. We should choose whether we will serve our own lusts and desires in this life or will we give our life to Christ and do the work that He has for us to do. Many people think that living for and through Him is boring and not fun and that couldn’t be more wrong. Once the Creator has taken up residence in your heart, He is with you regardless of what you are doing or where you may be. He sees and knows the things that you do before you belong to Him and it grieves His heart to see you going through so much heartache without Him.

To be useful to Christ doesn’t take going on a mission trip or being a pastor. Just doing little things for people who haven’t know Him, but they know that you do, will have a BIG impact. Even if you don’t do those things every day, just once a week will get them to thinking. When we act like Jesus toward others, that is when they see Jesus in us, and many times they will want what they see.

I learned this morning that a wonderful man of God went to his reward and went to his eternal home yesterday. He was over one hundred years old but I know that he won’t look it when I see him in eternity. I didn’t know him personally in this life, but I will in the next one. His name is George Beverly Shea and I don’t consider him to be dead at all. Just as Jesus spoke of Moses and others as being alive and not dead, I consider all those who have gone to their reward as being alive forevermore.

Regardless of what you may have learned in college, this life doesn’t end when your eyes close in death. That is only the death of the physical body. Eternity is for all of us, the place where you spend that eternity is up to you!

What will you do with the time that you have? The decision must be made while you are here because there are no “do-overs”, we don’t get to come back and fix things and do better next time. The dress rehearsal is the life that you are living and you only get one.