Tag: Salvation

Nothing is free


There is a lot of truth in that statement because nothing really is free, if that is all that you have. But, have you considered that our lives and all of the blessings which God bestows on us every day are NOT free? It is true that we don’t have to pay for our breath or to open our eyes, nor do we have to pay anything for our salvation, but those things are not free entirely.

Our salvation was paid for by the blood of Jesus. God gives us without cost (free) all of our other blessings simply because He loves us. We owe God our lives and everything that we have now and for the parents that we grew up with as well. God loves us because He is the Creator and because it is His pleasure to do so, not because of anything that we have done or will do in the future.

God was in the past and He is in the future now as well as today, so He knows the problems that you have but He is preparing a way for those things which will come upon us tomorrow, next week or even next year because He is already there. Why doesn’t God work it out so that we don’t have to go through those times? Because it makes us a better person. You didn’t take all of the obstacles away for your child when they were growing up and neither does He. But, He enables you to get through them if you will lean on Him and trust Him.

Life is not free if you look at the cost of living, but God is the owner of it all. He gives us the opportunity to live, not just this life, but in eternity. Eternity is worth more than all of the wealth in ALL of the world! Even though I said that Life, especially eternal life, is not free…it is for us. What do I mean by that? I mean simply that there is no amount of work or money that we can use to purchase eternity! It was paid for by Jesus when He was crucified.

This was done by our Creator because He knew from the foundation of the world that it would be necessary for our salvation and for our entry into eternity. We couldn’t do it on our own, we can’t keep even the ten commandments, Jesus paid for our passage and our forgiveness with His blood and His Life. When He arose from the grave a few days later, He reminded His disciples that He was preparing a place for them and would come back for them. This promise extends to the WHOLE Church which began being built on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem.

We as a world, not just in America, NEED to turn to God and repent of our sins. Not just individual sins but corporate sins which we have allowed to happen over the centuries! Repent and turn back to God so that He can and will heal our world, before the world goes too far into the darkness of anarchy which is exactly where we are heading.

Whom do you believe?


Many religions in our world today purpose to worship men. Men who are dead and have turned to dust or dried up husks in the grave. Why would you worship these who are nothing more than portions of creation itself? Living and breathing in our world is a wonderful grace that God gives to us, hard though it may be at times. Dead men don’t give any such grace or knowledge to us while we live or dream, only God our Creator will do this. We will not see Him, but our spirits will recognize our Creator and God when we hear and feel His calling.

So, whom do you believe in and determine to follow? There are many so-called “prophets”, even to hundreds of years before Christ. Some were in Eastern nations such as India and China, some came a few hundred years after Christ in the Middle Eastern nations. The difference between them and our Lord Jesus is that they lie in graves or have turned to dust while Jesus stands at the right hand of God, alive and well.

Some portions of the Middle Eastern religion say that Jesus is a servant of Allah, which is not true. God the Creator is not Allah, He is God. It is easy to place a name upon One whom you have not seen and give Him a name which you want Him to have and yet is a name which is not His Name. God doesn’t share His glory with any other god because He is God and there is none other!

The Bible speaks of God in three persons. The Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God, the Angel of the Lord or the pre-incarnate Christ and Jesus and of course God the Father. The One that we, as Christians, worship is a Triune Godhead. Being God doesn’t diminish His Spirit nor does it take away from the Son, Jesus the Christ. Trying to make the Son of God into a servant of Allah is blasphemy and is completely wrong.

God sent His Son into the world in order to redeem the world and all of those in it from the consequences of their sins. The only requirement is that they each believe in Him and that He did this for them, repenting of your sins and my sins and following His example in our lives. Following Him every day so that others may see the joy and the example that He set for us to follow and to do. We are not to do it selfishly or in response to the dictates of man, but selflessly and by the order of Jesus. Be a reflection of Him in all that you do every day, in your words and deeds so that you will glorify Him until He comes to take us to our eternal Home.

Will it matter that I lived?


I am not asking this question just for me but for  every person who reads this. It is a question which begs to be answered. Will it really matter that I lived? I don’t know the answer to that question. Have I done or said anything that is profound enough or thought-provoking enough that it will be noticed when I am no longer posting? Some may say that they will notice, but there are many more who don’t know that I am here even now!

My family will notice, of course, but will the words and the wisdom (if you can call it that) be noticed enough that the words that I write will be missed? Honestly I can tell you that I really don’t care and that is the truth. If you have noticed and read some of the things that I have posted, great! I pray that some of what I have said here has made a difference in your life.

NO! I am not dying nor have I been diagnosed with some fatal illness. I read something recently which asked this question and I became curious, so I thought why not put it out there and see if someone might notice or care to comment on this question. Just as an experiment if you will.

Before I go and finish this missive I want to make sure that you know this: God LOVES you with a love that is above your emotional feelings for your children or your spouse. This is why He sent His Son to pay the penalty for our sins. The only requirement for your salvation is that you believe in Jesus and His sacrifice for you. Ask Him to change your heart and your life into the one that He knows that you can be. Join a church that teaches from the REAL Bible, not a paraphrase or watered-down version of it! Learn as much as you can learn about Who God really is because He is not the Man upstairs nor is He a genie that grants your wishes! He is the Creator of all the stars, the galaxies, our planet, the Sun and every atom that exists in the entire universe AND He cares about you!Inspiration

There was a celebration today!


A friend of mine died this past Saturday and we celebrated his life today, February 22. He was a devoted Christian and went on mission trips to tell others about Jesus. He also was very opinionated and set in his ways, but we loved him. He was also selfless and would do anything for you if he could. The best part though was that he died exactly the way he wanted to, reading a book and then he went to sleep.

When he woke up, he was in the Presence of God with his family and friends who had gone before him.

Life has a way of throwing you a curve like that sometimes. My wife and I just went to see him in the hospital last week and he seemed to be doing really well, although I knew he was ready to be with Jesus.

I envy him in a way…because he doesn’t have to wear glasses anymore or take pills for his diabetes and for his arthritis. None of the health problems that he had here went with him. He has a new body and it is better in every way than the one he had here. God renews us when we die so that the body that we leave here and all of its problems and corruption stays here.

We don’t really understand death but it is part of life. Yes, doctors see death as a cessation of the body’s systems. Biologically, death fits that description of all body functions shutting down. The problem with our country and the world that we live in is that there are “cancers” growing in all areas of society which are targeting the Life giving Word and trying to silence it in one way or another.Many of these groups of “cells” are in an extreme minority of less than one percent of the population, though some may be as high as three percent.

But, the effect on society that they have is deadly to the well-being of the whole. Like a poison from a certain viper which can kill you with just a drop of its poison or just the touch of a poison-arrow frog’s skin. The point that I am trying to make is that, even in the time that Paul was going on his journeys telling people of the Christ’s saving grace, there were groups which opposed him in every town that he went to. The started riots and stirred up the people so that he was nearly killed more than once.

In our time, the news tells us of many threats to Christians from groups overseas, but there are threats here at home too. Legal threats coming in the form of laws to put buffers on what can be taught in our churches or to our children. The spirit of anti-christian groups and behavior is growing and it is gaining strength. We should be praying and seeking Jesus in church and in the Bible so that we can stand and give a testimony for the defense of our faith. The King is coming back and this time it will be as a judge and a Lion of Judah!

Preoccupied with what exactly?


It seems that in our daily lives, regardless of our religious faith or lack thereof, we are preoccupied with all sorts of things. Some of it is relevant to our lives, some of it is not but most of it seems to be of very little value in the scheme of our lives and those around us. We, and I say this openly, worry more about our twitter feeds and our Facebook friends than we do the homeless man who sleeps under a piece of cardboard to stay warm. We chase after our phones far more than we seem to chase after our spouses or our children. We worry more about our status on social media pages that we “belong to” more than we worry about our relationship with Jesus Christ! Technology has become an addiction for many people. From games and game systems to phones and tablets which many of us didn’t even have fifteen years ago because they weren’t available or were too expensive at the time.

Now, they are so cheap that Amazon is selling a five pack of Kindle Fire tablets for 250 dollars! Everyone in your family can have one so that nobody will pay any attention to each other when we all have our heads buried in our tablets! Most will be used for games, although as the saying went thirty years ago for Playboy “I just read the articles (books).” The problem with all of this preoccupation with games and electronic books and distractions is that we aren’t paying any attention to EACH OTHER!! And we aren’t paying any attention to God or His message because in many churches, they are using tablets and apps to spread the message as well! It is good that the message is getting out to more people this way, but many will just ignore the alerts from the church app just like they do any other alert.

We need to be talking TO each other more, not AT each other which is what happens when technology gets in the way. What can be done about this? Unfortunately, not much. The generation which came along around the turn of the 21st century called the “digital”generation has never lived without technology of some kind and they have always had access to the Internet. If something like an Electromagnetic pulse bomb or a nuclear explosion were to happen and cut off our technology for weeks or months or more, many people would go through such a withdrawal that it would be like a nation of drug addicts all going cold-turkey at once!

I know this sounds like a rant against technology, and I am using technology to write this but I do have a point to make. That point is this: we need to get our collective selves BACK into God’s Word, the Bible! A digital version will be better than no Bible at all, but a written one would be better because it wouldn’t need to be charged up to read and it wouldn’t be affected by a nuclear electromagnetic pulse which might send us back at least one hundred years technologically speaking. Our world and every person in it needs to get to know God, not Allah or any other pretender! The God of the Bible and specifically His Son, Jesus, because without Him you are doomed to an eternity of being out of the presence of God which will be hell.

God loves each person who reads this and He does care about every little thing in your life, but He doesn’t like the lifestyles that some of us live every day. If you have not given your heart and life to Him, then ask Him to help you with the decision…He will. Remember John 3:16,17: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

End or beginning?


Humanity tends to look at life as that time which we have here on Earth and that it mostly ends when your life ends. Some believe in reincarnation, some believe that when you die that’s it and there is nothing more…but for a Christian this is just a rehearsal for our eternal life, the life that we will have with Jesus. The one that never ends and that we will be with Him and our Christian brothers and sisters forever. Does life end with your last breath? This physical life on Earth does, but if your heart belongs to Jesus then your spirit goes on to everlasting life in God’s home, Heaven.

I can’t tell you anything about that wonderful place beyond death, except the things which I have read or the descriptions found in the Bible. Even those descriptions pale because human sight and comprehension just aren’t enough to tell others about that which lies beyond this life. It would be like trying to describe a color, any color, to a blind person who has never seen or experienced seeing a color such as a purple sunset or a clear blue sky. Words just don’t describe and can’t describe that which your eye sees! Like the boy who was in the movie “Heaven is for real!”, when he tried to describe someone or something that he saw it was just more…more real, more colors, more than he could describe with words.

Heaven is more than our imaginations can imagine accurately at least because there are colors and textures and gold which is so pure that it is clear like glass. We don’t have a reference for anything like that in our minds. Eternity is more than we can believe or imagine, but we will be there IF we belong to Jesus! For the first weeks or months we will likely be discovering far more than we could’ve thought or imagined that our life in eternity might be like. After we realize that we have been there longer than we thought, time won’t mean anything anymore!

Seek Him out, learn about Him, give your life to Him and ask Him to come into yours because this time on Earth is just a training period for the real thing!image

Why do we push God away?


This is a question which I have wondered about for many years. I know that many who don’t want Him in their life do this. The problem is that many Christians seem to do it as well. Oh, they come to church and go through all of the motions of being a Christian but they usually leave God and their Bible even sitting on the pew when they go home. We wouldn’t even do that to our cell phone, why do we do it with God? He is far more important and able to help us in everyday life than a piece of plastic and circuits and glass ever can.

The world, our country and many people in it have been pushing God away for a very long time. That is no way to keep a relationship alive, especially with your Creator! You wouldn’t expect your wife and family to put up with that kind of treatment, so why should God? Because He loves you far beyond any measure of human love or compassion, that is why. He is patient and loving in ways that we just can’t understand because His ways are not our ways, they are incomprehensible to us.

We just can’t understand Him or His Word, so many of us just quit trying. If we would put as much effort into reading and understanding the Bible as we do working on our taxes or following the Super Bowl, our country and our world would be a very different place. Our lives would be much better as well because we would be following Jesus, and His path is always the best.

Seek Him in order to know Him, why? Because He loves you more than you can imagine!

Life…


GodisInterestedinYouDo you know the Author of Life? The Creator of Life? The Way to Life everlasting?

The Person Who is all of those and more is Jesus the Messiah. He came so that we might have Life, so that we could have forgiveness of our sins and enter into eternity with Him. There is no other name under heaven by which we CAN be saved.

Today, we see all sorts of bad things or atrocities in our world. Things which most of us have never seen or heard about. Most of them so horrific that we can’t imagine anyone living in the places where they are. But, it is happening. In some areas in America but mostly overseas in the Middle East and Africa.

Life is not respected or revered in any culture anymore, whether it is the life of a child in the womb or your life and mine on the street. It seems that nobody cares about each person’s life, except their own. They, each of us it seems, only care about what is in it for me. Selfishness is rampant, and this is dangerous. Why? Because when things get really bad, everyone will be only looking out for themselves and no one else but them and possibly their immediate family.

God loves all of us and He hasn’t forgotten anyone, but there are so many who have forgotten Him…just turned away from Him and His wisdom. Whether they actually ever knew Him or not, that is between them and God and no one else knows about their salvation or lack of it besides Him. Nobody is condemned to Hell unless they reject His offer of grace and forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

It is a sad fact that many people do just that and never really think about it much, until they really need Him, and by that time their lives may be nearly over or they die before then. With death, you forfeit your chance at redemption because your chances for that are while you live here and now. Unless you make that decision while you live, there is no second chance once you are standing in front of Him. Your life is your chance, don’t throw it away or ignore the offer.

In spite of the questions in the picture about God’s interest in you, He really is. He cares enough for us that He knows how many hairs are on your head and mine. If He cares enough to even know that detail, then the rest of your days and your life is included in His knowledge of you as well.

Prayer and faith


Praisethelord Yes, both are necessary for a Christian and for our world too. Why do I say this? Because there are so many people who don’t want to admit this or hear it. Prayer and praise go together with faith and all of it is needed today. Because life and living today is hard enough without having faith in a future with Jesus. Prayer and faith go hand in hand, but it seems that many people don’t believe in having faith in a God which they can’t see. You can’t touch or see any of the “gods” which are worshiped in the world today, many of them are actually dead and in their graves yet people still think that they are “gods”. If they were then they wouldn’t be dead!

Satan is a fallen archangel, a guardian seraphim and one that once lived on the “mount of God” but pride brought him down because he thought that he could be like God and take God’s place. No one can do that but he convinced enough of the angels to follow him until there were a third of the angels thrown down from Heaven. We don’t know how many this was, but considering how much our world is in such a mess today it was a LOT!

Today it seems that nobody wants to acknowledge God as the Creator, but He is and He is NOT dead! Seek Him out while there is still time to do so. Read John 3:16,17; Romans 8 too, because they tell you what and Who you should know and why.

You are special!


11226182_931043076949751_7809076474956911366_n God loves you and He created this world and each of us in it to be a blessing to Him and to each other. Do I believe this? Yes, I do. Why do I believe this? Because He says so in every book of the Bible. The entire Bible is God’s letter of love to us and an instruction book so that we know how to live in this life and prepare for the next life!

Some people, even professing Christians, don’t believe that the Bible is a document of infallible words and promises. I do believe it and I will tell you why. Because simply if there is an error or a man-made lie in any part of it, that invalidates all of it. Jesus said that “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Matthew 24:35 If the words written by the disciples will not pass away then it is inspired by the Spirit of God and that inspiration proves that God cannot lie! If He did, then He isn’t God! Also, if the New Testament is valid and it validates the Old Testament because when Jesus came that was the only Scripture available. God’s Word is true, Jesus was the Living Word, so there is no part of Scripture from the first line in Genesis to the last line of Revelation which isn’t true, period.

we obey

He loved us, so He obeyed the Father and went to the cross to pay for humanity’s sins. It is just that simple! The Creator became a human so that He could live a sinless life to pay for our sins. Is that enough to make you think that maybe I should be grateful and ask His forgiveness for those things which I have done? Consider that God, the Son and the Holy Spirit all were present and with each other before they created the universe and it was brought into being by the Word of God until they decided to make mankind in their image. Then, God formed man from the mud or clay and breathed the breath of Life into him and he became a living person, with a soul and the Spirit of God in himself!

Each of us has this same privilege and honor because we were known by God before we were born! He knew each person on Earth before they became a person and He knew their personality and how their life would be. We are created in His image uniquely because no other person on Earth is exactly like you or me. Even twins or triplets are different, although they may look similar to each other. Give Jesus a chance to show you how your life is supposed to be and what you can do with His strength and with Him working in your life. It is far more than you could accomplish alone I can promise you that!