For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. 1 Timothy 2:5-6 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/1ti.2.5-6.KJV
Jesus Christ paid the price for all of our sins. Seek Him for your salvation today.
The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing. Zephaniah 3:17 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/zep.3.17.KJV
And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord , choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord . Joshua 24:15 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/jos.24.15.KJV
And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord , choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord . Joshua 24:15 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/jos.24.15.KJV
Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: James 1:13 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/jas.1.13.KJV
In the time of life that we are living in, regardless of your age or the color of your skin, Satan is the tempter. He always has been. God can get you through this with His strength and His Spirit living in your heart. Lean into God because the closer you are to Him, the closer He is to you.
Don’t say that you can’t make it because with God on your team YOU can’t lose!!
In the Bible, the words which point you toward faith in Jesus don’t tell you the whole story. Jesus, Yeshua, was and is God in the flesh. God came down to Earth to be among those that He created. Not to make us feel unworthy, although we are, but to show His love for us because we don’t deserve it at all. Humanity failed Him in every way and we are still failing Him. Oh, those of us who truly are His followers are at least moving in the right direction but the majority of people in the world tend toward apathy or even hatred toward God and especially Jesus.
We are human and we aren’t capable of pleasing God without having faith in Him. But, we aren’t born with that faith. When God calls us to know Him, He is the giver of the faith necessary to know Him. We can’t just decide to believe in Him one day, all of us are chosen by Him to be His. But it is still our decision to accept that invitation and many still refuse because they don’t want to give up their sins…their life without Him being a part of it.
So, why is this important? Because, whether you believe it or not, there is an eternity on the other side of your last breath here and it is your choice which determines where you spend that eternity. The Pope can’t save you nor will any other religious figure from any other religion. Only Jesus came to pay the price for your soul and for your sins and since He stands at the right of the Father in Heaven and is not in a grave somewhere, you have the chance to live into eternity with Him. But only if you choose to follow Him and ask Him to forgive your sins and give you the strength to walk with Him until your last day on this Earth.
Why is being a Christian and believing in Jesus as your Savior so important? Because of the eternity which is there if you don’t believe in Him for your salvation. If there is a heaven there is also a hell and it is spoken of in God’s Word many times as an eternal punishment. Not for just a little while or instantaneous vaporization! Hell was created by God to punish Satan and his demons who have hounded mankind for thousands of years. They have driven some people mad and they are the ones who caused all of these aberrant religions which dealt in child sacrifice and other abominations. They will do anything to point people toward any “ideal religion” which doesn’t believe in or follow God the Father.
I pray that anyone who reads this will seek Jesus out as their Savior. In His Word, in a Bible-teaching church or Bible study. Any way that you can learn more about Jesus and His love for you and the fact of His Love for you that was so powerful that He chose to go to the cross and die for your salvation. One day soon the church will be taken from the Earth and there will be seven years of hell on Earth because of those who chose not to believe in Jesus for their salvation. I pray that you will not be here during this time but will be with the church in Heaven.
Have you found the path which carries you to Life itself? Some of us tend to get lost while trying to find it when it is right in front of us. Life with a capital “L” is the life which you will have in Jesus and the pathway carries us through this life until we get to the next one. So…what is the pathway? Following Jesus and not listening to Satan’s lies about your life and your ministry being useless and worthless!
Jesus gives our life, here and now, a meaning and a purpose. We are to live each day, each moment striving to be more like Jesus than trying to be like the world around us. Is this hard to do? Sometimes it is. Usually when we feel down and depressed life seems hopeless and you feel useless, like I did yesterday. But Jesus said that “we can live a life more abundantly“! By following His example of living for the Kingdom of God, even though you can’t see it yet.
God loves you and has provided a way for each of us to have a life of meaning and purpose through Jesus our Savior. He is the pathway to life everlasting and He is preparing a place for us to dwell with Him forever. Some people might want to know, “Why would I want to live in heaven forever?” Do you really and truly believe that you will have nowhere to go when you die?
God’s Word says that we all face His judgment when we die so what have you done in this life to give you an eternity in Heaven? None of us, not even one person on this Earth, can be perfectly sinless because we are sinners and we are that way from birth. Jesus came so that we can have a life with Him into eternity but apart from being saved through faith in Him not one of us will get there.
Your life here is like a puff of smoke compared to eternity so why waste it chasing after stuff which rusts and fades away or is given to someone else when you die? Money doesn’t last and neither does gold or any other type of wealth but it seems that in the world today these things are what defines us. Why not define your life by the example of Jesus and His teachings? Live your life as His disciple and tell others about Him and what living for Him means!
Why? Because God values your soul more than all of the wealth in the world! Each individual person that He calls to become an adopted child of God is worth more to Him than all of the wealth that exists in this world! Why is that? Because each of us has a specific purpose ordained by God and that purpose is to reach one other person that only we can reach.
If we tell thousands of people and they turn their lives over to Jesus that is wonderful, but there is one person that each of us can reach that nobody else can. That is the person which God has placed you here to touch and show the love of Jesus to them so that they can come to know Him. There are many people who need to know Jesus as their Savior but until their spiritual eyes are opened and they know that they need Him, they will never seek Him. Live your life in view of eternity because this one is going away but your life in Christ is eternal.
In My Father’s House are Many Rooms
1Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe in Me as well. 2In 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? 3And 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. 4You know the way to the place where I am going.”b
The Way, the Truth, and the Life
5“Lord,” said Thomas, “we do not know where You are going, so how can we know the way?”
6Jesus answered, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. 7If you had known Me, you would know My Father as well. From now on you do know Him and have seen Him.”
8Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”
9Jesus replied, “Philip, I have been with you all this time, and still you do not know Me? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words I say to you, I do not speak on My own. Instead, it is the Father dwelling in Me, performing His works. 11Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me—or at least believe on account of the works themselves.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son
(Luke 15:11-32)
Then He said, “A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me now the share of the property that I will inherit.” And he divided to his substance between his two sons. And not many days after, having gathered all together, the younger son went away into a far country, and there wasted his property, living dissolutely. “Now when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that country, and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he longed to fill himself from the carob pods which the swine were eating; and no one gave to him.
“But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many hired servants of my father have more than enough bread, and I am perishing here with hunger. I will arise and go to my father and will say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee. I am no longer worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants.”
“And he arose and came to his father. Now while he was yet far distant, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him repeatedly. “Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no longer worthy to be called thy son.” But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring forth quickly a robe, the best one, and put it on him; and put a ring upon his hand, and sandals on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill It, and let us eat and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again, was lost and is found.” And they began to be merry.
“Now his elder son was in the field; and as he was coming and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And calling one of the servants to him, he inquired what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Thy brother has come, and thy father hath killed the fatted calf because he hath received him back safe and sound.”
“Then he was angry, and would not go in. Now his father came out and entreated him. But he answered and said to his father, ‘Behold, so many years have I served thee, and I never transgressed thy commandment; and to me, thou didst never give a kid, that I might make merry with my friends. But when this thy son, who hath squandered thy substance with harlots, came, thou didst kill for him the fatted calf.”
“Then the father said to him, ‘Son, thou art ever with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we ought to make merry and rejoice; because this thy brother was dead, and is alive again, and was lost, and is found.”
All of us have been here at one point or another in our lives but many times we don’t want to admit it. We want to live the way we want to with nobody to be accountable to but we will be accountable to God one day. He will hold you accountable for your actions and your words especially if you are living without Jesus in your heart. Even with Him in your life and you attempting to live according to His Word, you will be accountable for what you do with your grace and the knowledge which you have. What did you do with it? Did you tell others so that they can be saved? Has your life been a beacon for them to compare their life with yours and does it cause them to want what you have?
We are accountable to God whether we believe it or not or even if we want to live without Him in this life! Eternity is ahead of you regardless of whether you are saved or not. Punishment is there if you have not given your heart to Jesus and it will be eternal punishment. If you belong to Jesus and you are living your life one day at a time with Him then you will be responsible for what you did with your salvation. Life does not end when your life here is over, there is an eternity ahead of you. So, which eternity would you like to live eternity in?
You surely don’t want to live in hell because the punishment never ends and it never lets up at any point. Living in heaven is the eternity which we should all be striving toward because there will be no more pain or suffering and we will always have a place to live and Life everlasting.
The world and the media cloud our ideas and our view of the world around us with their own version, their own spin on what is happening and what has happened in the past. So how are we to discern the truth of what is and what will be if we don’t read the Bible? It is God’s inspired Word to mankind and since He cannot lie, it is the whole truth. Regardless of the watered down messages that some teach or try to “interpret” in a way which has nothing to do with its message at all.
God’s predictions for our world’s future, such as the saying of Jesus that “the kingdom of God will come before this generation is done”, did not mean that those living at the time would see His second coming. It did refer to the Jewish people who would still be the state of Israel at the time of His second coming. I am sure that many in that day hoped that Jesus would destroy Rome and its hold of persecution and oppression over the Jewish people but that wasn’t His job at that time.
Jesus came to end the oppression of Satan over the whole world so that people could gain their freedom from the world and its sins and the consequences in their lives. That was His message and His mission the first time. When He comes the second time, it will be as Conquerer and King and He will do it because not one comma or period will pass away before all are fulfilled.
Our world, not just America, is beginning a new year and all of us need to be seeking Jesus as our True Savior. He is the only Way to Heaven and our debts for our sins have been paid, all we have to do is believe in Him and follow Him daily, seeking to be more like Him until that day when He calls us all home. I pray that more people will learn of Him and seek Him as their Savior this year because He is coming soon.
It seems that there are more commercials on television about making you look young again or at least younger than you are. Why do we have such a fascination with youth? When we are young, we can’t wait to get older and when we are older we want to be young again…does that make any sense to you?
We are born needing help with everything, then we grow to a point where we think we are doing everything for everyone else, then when we get old we are back to the point of others helping us with everything all over again. It seems to be an endless circle. But honestly, I don’t want to be young again! Yes, there were many things which I could do when I was younger that I can’t do now but are those things really useful today?
Some of them may be but most of my younger days and nights were spent doing things which I would consider counter-productive today. Many of those which I thought I enjoyed way back when were sinful and dangerous. Like drinking and then driving home or smoking two and three packs of cigarettes every day. Those behaviors are thirty years or more in my past now, but some people seem to want to go back to that point.
Being young is a good thing but why can’t we look ahead of us instead of behind in our life here? Many of us see a life ahead with pain and the maladies which come with old age but I am talking about eternity…immortality with Jesus in Heaven! That life will not have the ailments and frail body which all of us have now. We will be in a body which will never die with no contacts or eyeglasses needed to see the world around us! We won’t need a cane or a wheelchair to get around in or with.
The life that believers will have in Heaven will be one of worship and praise and working in God’s Kingdom forever! There will be no night or heat or suffering or pain and anything which we associate with getting old or being old!
I know, it sounds too good to be true! But, just think about this a minute. Anyone can be saved through the name of Jesus and by His Spirit just by believing in Him and what He did for you and me. You don’t have to be a deacon or a church member for decades, just answer the call of the One Who calls you to be saved. That is all that is needed. God prepared the way for you through Jesus and all that you need to do is believe in Him and accept the atonement provided through His shed blood.
You can get baptized and become a member of a church when you accept Jesus as your Savior but the church membership isn’t a requirement for salvation. The baptism isn’t a requirement either but it is a public statement showing that you are raised to walk into a new life with Jesus. God loves you, don’t forget that bit of information. Seek Him earnestly and you will find Him.
The Living Message of Christ 