Tag: Salvation

For God so loved…


The beginning of the passage from John 3:16 is a beautiful and gracious statement, “For God so loved the world”. Because He did and He does love all of us regardless of the country that we live in or what religion that we cling to in our daily lives. Whether you are a religious person or not, there is something that you use in your life to guide you and direct your life. It may be your own personal feelings or abilities or it could be a religion that you aspire to be a true follower of. But…God still loves you even if you are not a Christian and haven’t accepted Jesus as your Savior.

That is the very reason that Jesus came to live as one of us, blamelessly and sinless in His life so that He could die on the cross and make atonement for all of us. This was His purpose while He walked and preached to those who would listen and really hear His message. He loved us first so that we could come to Him humbly and broken, knowing that our sin and our version of “righteousness” would not avail us any honor or acceptance in God’s sight.

Look at a pure white canvas or sheet of paper. It is as pure as we can make it, yet allow just one spot of dirt or ink, even one as small as a period like this (.) and it isn’t pure anymore. True, we can and do overlook a spot like this everyday but when we are exposed to the Holiness of God, we won’t be able to cover our sins because only the blood of Jesus can do that.

The next part of that verse is “that He gave His only begotten Son”. This is something that we cannot understand! Could you give your only son as a sacrifice so that one other person could live? I don’t think anyone could do that, even for a close friend! God gave His Son so that ALL of us would have a possible way of forgiveness for ALL of our sins, big and small, if we would put our faith in Jesus and in His atonement for us!

Believe! The next part of this verse, “that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”; belief in Him and His sacrifice is the requirement for eternity, is that too much to ask?

The eternity that I am speaking of here is an eternity in Heaven, with God and His angels and His Son! Many people seem to think that if you die without God or Jesus in your life, then you are just dead, period. Not so! Jesus spoke of hell and there is a place of torment for those who have rejected the grace and mercy which is offered to all! The reason that I mentioned this is that you are the person responsible for your eternity due to your own decisions in this life. God does not sentence you to hell or an eternity of torment, your decisions are responsible for that.

Who do you reach for in times of trouble?


It is a question which many people wonder about, at times, but some never get around to answering the question. Do you reach for your friends or family in times of need? Do you look to a religious fGodsHandfriend or a preacher that you know? If you aren’t a Christian, these answers may sound like good ideas, but can these people really help you?

I know that some people may be able to help you in your time of need. They can help in ways that friends do, but what if your problem is in an area that they can’t help you with? Whether it is financial or physical, people can only support you with sympathy or with prayer and of course just being with you is also a big help in many situations. The difference between friends and God is that God can and will strengthen your spirit and your body in ways that friends can’t.

God’s presence in your life and your heart says that you are at least trying to follow Jesus regardless of your circumstances. If you don’t think God can help or maybe you don’t believe that He is God or that He exists, then you can place your total faith in medicine and all of the advances that it has to offer. Which is fine and I don’t blame you for your beliefs, everyone has their own personal beliefs about what is the truth in this world.

But…what if God does exist? Not believing in Him doesn’t get rid of Him, just as not believing in gravity or the sun rising doesn’t change those two facts of our world that we live in. Truly, whether you believe in Him or not God does love you! His hand is in control of governments and people. He places kings and leaders in position to accomplish His purposes, whatever they may be.

Allow Him into your life and give yourself a boost in spirit and in Life!

 

So little time….


Why do I say this you may ask? Simply because when you compare our lives with eternity, which is ahead for all of us, your life and mine seem so tiny in comparison. I have seen scientists compare our life-span to the age of the Earth, which is supposed to be ~4.3 billion years or so, and your life and mine shows up as a speck of dust. Eternity doesn’t have an end, so our life would be microscopic compared to it. Yet, we go through our lives preparing to live a long life into retirement and many of us never think much about what comes after our life here.

What would we do if we could get a real glimpse of our eternity? The eternity that each of us will have to face eventually could be very different from the one we think we will have. Some of us will be graced with an eternity in Heaven with many of our loved ones and friends. Some of us, who have been stubborn in this life and unwilling to believe in God or Jesus and certainly not willing to give our heart to Jesus and to following Him through our lives. We want to live our lives on our own terms with no rules except our own! The independent spirit of humanity takes someone to hell every second of every day, even if they feel that they have lived a good life! Many of them would say that “I haven’t killed anyone or robbed anyone!”, really? Have you held a grudge of hatred toward anyone, ever? Have you ever taken a pen or a notebook from work? According to Jesus, the hate that we harbor in our hearts toward someone is the same as murder and as far as God is concerned, stealing and robbing are the same whether it is a pen or a pad or a bank.

Yes, we are all sinners at some point in our lives. The sins may not be BIG sins to us, but in God’s eyes and in His judgement a sin is a sin, size doesn’t matter! In front of Him a “little white lie” is just as big as a lie told to a lawyer or a teacher or your spouse. Many people today don’t even consider a lie to be a sin, but it is. We hear them every day, we see the results of them in the courts and in politics and it doesn’t seem to bother anyone. But…God knows who said what to whom about the things of this world and there will be a payday someday for all of these SINS!

In many ways, people seem to look at our life here and think that they have all of the time in the world to decide to come to God and get their life straight. How do you know? When someone has a wreck in a car, did they know about it ahead of time? Not likely. What about when a stroke or heart attack takes someone’s life? Did they know that was coming on that particular day? No, not at all. I have heard of some people who have come into the kitchen for breakfast and fell over dead right there. We are not given a set date and time for these events. When you have heard a message in a church or from an evangelist on television, did you feel a tug on your heart or a voice telling you that you should give your life to Jesus? If you ignore those Spiritual callings to you, then you are walking on a very thin patch of ice above a very real torment in hell!

You can mock me or ignore me or my message, but when you kneel before God and He asks you why didn’t you answer the call of the Holy Spirit when He called, what excuse could you give? None really, because of the miracles that we see every day, the wondrous natural beauty that is around us and inside of us because our Father created us and everything to let us see Him so that we don’t have an excuse for not believing in Him. Don’t put it off.

Love does and doesn’t


There isn’t much more to say about this subject that God’s Word doesn’t already say! Have a wonderful day!wpid-wp-1443214045844

Can I know Jesus?


It seems that some people do wonder about this question. Is there a real honest answer? Yes, there is! You can know Jesus and have Him as your personal Savior. The first question is: Are you seeking Him today? If you are, then the rest is easy.

The sinner’s prayer goes like this: God, I know that you are real and that I have messed up in my life. I have heard that you can help me to be more like your Son, Jesus. I am sorry for the sinful life that I have lived, the things that I have said or done and I ask you for Your forgiveness. I open my heart to You and I want You to cleanse me and make me more like Jesus. I need Him to be my Savior, Lord. I thank you for your grace and mercy and for my new Life in Jesus. Amen.

Belief in Jesus and His saving grace that was finished on the cross is the first step, then a simple prayer like this one. It doesn’t have to be word for word like this. This prayer is just an example, and it doesn’t have to be this long either. Knowing Jesus is not hard to do, learning about Him is a daily walk with Him by reading the Bible and prayer. He loved each of us enough to come to Earth and live like us, but His nature was from God not from man so He lived a sinless life. We can’t live a sinless life, but by submitting our life and our heart to Him we can become more like Him.

 

Opinion, everybody has one


It has been said that the realists and moralists are on opposite sides of a fence. Are they really? Education in high school and college tells us that Darwinism and Creationism can’t exist together. Why not? Modernists demand freedom from a moral code for individuals but they turn around and demand a moral code for society at large.

You can’t have it both ways. Either you have moral codes for individuals based upon an actual moral code or you don’t. Taking morality out of education and then expecting the product of that education system to abide by a moral code in society is just dumb. Everyone will have their own idea of morality but mine won’t be like yours, neither will line up with the other because there is nothing to compare them to! We as a society seem to be against any type of moral code or moral truth, and yet we expect our children to know how to act in school and society. If they aren’t learning it at home and we can’t or won’t teach any type of morality to them in school, where will their morality come from?

Human beings in the past and in today’s world are not the moral giants that Darwinism wants us to believe. If a child is not brought up from an early age to know right from wrong and have something to turn to as a standard or an example of how to act and be in the world at large, how do you think they will know? They won’t. Their perception of behavior will be whether it is right for me, not if it is right as compared to…what?

The only standard that they will have will be what they have been taught from an early age. Whether that is “kill or be killed” or “do unto others and you would have them do unto you”, today it is dependent upon the parents to teach their children about morals and what is right or wrong. If they don’t or if they weren’t taught themselves, what standard do we need to look at then? Each of us can live our lives one way or another, even without the Word of God as a guide. This is true because many people in the world do just that.

So how can I or anyone else say that taking the Bible out of schools or taking prayer out was the wrong thing to do? Look at the statistics of the children and their performance after these events took place. Grades in school began to go down, teenage pregnancies began going up, problems in school and out began getting worse almost every year. When you don’t have a standard or an edge or a line to follow, how can you possibly keep a line straight? Whether you are drawing a line on paper or trying to point a person in the direction that they should be going, there needs to be a standard which doesn’t change.

God created us with a need to know Him and to know about Him, and when we can’t find Him to fill that need, then we search for something or someone who makes us feel like it is being filled. Whether it is drugs or alcohol or money or things…stuff like everyone else has, we will chase after it until we can fill that empty place or at least feel that it is full for a while. God loves you enough that His Son came down here, became a human being and died on a cross, shedding His blood so that ALL of our sins would be forgiven! We don’t have to do anything other than ask for His forgiveness and determine that we will follow Him daily in our lives from that point on. None of our works or our money will avail us any extra points, because to God without the love of Christ in our lives, they mean nothing!

We are blessed by God!


Do you know this?

“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19

“Worship the Lord your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you,…”  Exodus 23:25

God saysWe have many promises in the Word of God, and yet many people seem to ignore them or reject them. The reason usually is that they don’t believe God’s Word or they don’t want to believe in Him period. We are blessed by God because He loves us and cares for us, if He did not our world would be much worse than it is today! Truly, our world is in bad shape as it is but if God had abandoned us entirely it would be in much worse shape spiritually and morally than it is now.

We are made in the image of God and we should act like it. I don’t mean to think of ourselves as gods, because we aren’t and we can’t be, but we should act like His children. Yes, many of us are rebellious children and have been since the beginning, but shouldn’t we try to come near to Him? To get to know Him as He knows us and loves us? God does meet our needs, not our wants, and He will heal us if it is in His will to do so. Why doesn’t He heal all diseases and hurts? He is God and He does what He wants for our good and His glory!

If healing a person will bring the entire family to a saving knowledge of Him, then He will do it. If changing a person’s life from one of following Islam to being a Christian will enable more to come to Him, He will do that too. Even if that person has never read the Bible or heard a sermon! God changed Saul from a Pharisee who was intent on wiping out these followers of the way into Paul the apostle who wrote most of the New Testament from his jail cell in Rome!

God can do anything that He wishes or is pleased to do with each of us, if we will let Him and then follow His leading. He will not drag you into a pulpit to preach, but He will give you the desire to be a teacher and a preacher. He asks us to follow Him but He doesn’t force us, because when you are forced to do something then your heart isn’t in it. That is what God wants…your heart, just as when you fell in love with your spouse. You couldn’t force someone to love you and God doesn’t do that because love can’t be forced!

We are also blessed by Him in our lives because we have His Word as a guide or even a moral compass. The Word of God is absolute Truth so therefore we should learn from it and use the wisdom contained in it to pattern our lives and our societies after. We look at Christian values and morals today as antiquated and out of date, but morality and character can only be learned from One that is absolutely true! God’s Word is that standard that we should be learning from and teaching to our children and grandchildren!

Looking at morality and truth as “quaint” and “old-fashioned” is just a nice way of saying that it is outdated and it isn’t. There are truths in the natural world which cannot be undone, such as the law of gravity. If you drop a glass it will fall and possibly break! If you drop a pen it will hit the ground just as well as the glass did. The laws of God need to be taught to our kids because our society today and for many years has been eroding, not because our education is lacking but because we don’t have a moral standard that is taught to our children.

American society and many of the other countries societies are unraveling at an alarming rate because of the lack of standards that people have to compare to. God’s standards haven’t changed, we have! We have walked away from Him and now it seems that we are running as fast as possible toward a culture that will be more like the days of Noah, and it may already be there!

Religion and the practice of it cannot save you from an eternity in hell. Christianity and living daily for Jesus, giving your heart and life to God as a daily, living sacrifice can do more for society and for you than anything that you can do with your own idea of morality or what is right for you. Because today, moral relativism is taught in colleges so that people are graduating with the idea that “what is right and true for me may not be right or true for you”. With those kind of ideas in their heads, how can any law that is on the books be followed?

How much….?


This is part of nearly everyone’s vocabulary in some form. How much does that cost? How much more will you take? How much more do we/I need to do? Some people don’t know this phrase much in their lives but they are wealthy enough to be able to avoid using it. So, how much do you use it? Have you heard it very much in your life? Questions that some want to be answered and some of them don’t care about the answer at all, to any of those questions.

One question that needs to be answered in your life and in the conscience of the whole world is: How much more will it take before ________?

You can fill that blank space with so many things like “the end of the world” or “people wake up” or even “Jesus comes back” and I am sure that there are others which would fit quite nicely. The Bible has many prophecies about this time in history and at the time that they were given, the images were so horrific the prophets who received them couldn’t describe fully what they were seeing. They had no reference for missiles or tanks or planes or helicopters, so their descriptions seem to be full of all sorts of beasts and fantastic things.

Life today is hard enough to make sense of without trying to figure out God’s Word and its meaning, which is why we were told to ask Him for wisdom so that we can understand the words and meanings of prophecies in the book of Revelation. When some of these visions were given to Daniel, he was told to seal the book until the end and many people have wondered why. It is because most of the things which God showed him couldn’t be understood until now. Other explanations such as the words in Zechariah about “the skin melting from their body and their eyes melting, before the body hits the ground” are vivid depictions of the results of a nuclear attack and its effect on a human body.

How much more graphic could the Bible be in its description of it? We wouldn’t want to know nor could we understand God’s reason for these things. The fallen angels or demons who fell from Heaven with Satan are confusing people all over the world with out of context scripture being taught as if it were true. Some of it is true, but when you teach some of the truth you aren’t teaching the whole Truth of scripture which is how other doctrines are brought into being. Then, new “religions” spring up with these so-called “new truths”. How much more are we going to be deceived by this tactic and these mixed up words?

Until you read God’s Word and commit it to memory and get it into your heart. That is how long the deception will continue. Many people today are moving out of “organized religion”, into churches that teach a lie for the truth because it makes them feel good or at least feel better about themselves. Condemnation is a bad word in these churches because that implies that the people are bad or that they do bad things. I have read the Bible many times, but I am not the type of person who memorizes chapter and verse. At times, I would like to quote it that way, but the Spirit brings scripture to your mind when you need it so that is the memorizing that I depend upon.

WE ARE ALL SINNERS! At some point in your life you have told a lie, you have taken something which wasn’t yours, you have wanted (coveted) something which someone else has, etc. The only One Who has lived without sin, sits at the right hand of God the Father. He is coming back to get His Bride, the Church, one day. How much more will God put up with from us and our rebellious world system? As much as He can until the last person who will accept Jesus as Savior has done so. Our everyday lives will be worse than we thought they would be, if we belong to Jesus. If you are part of the world and don’t want to hear about Jesus then your life may be in pretty good shape…for a while. Which is why many people don’t turn their lives over to Jesus. It is also why Jesus said that “it is harder for a rich man to enter Heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle”, because they feel that they don’t need God or Jesus or forgiveness for anything.

I pray that all of you reading this will pick up a Bible today or tomorrow if you can. Read as much as you can with an open mind and heart, especially the books of the New Testament. Seek God’s wisdom for your life here and for eternity because you do have an eternity ahead of you and it is up to you how and where it will be spent!

 

Be watching….


Be attentive and watching because you know not when the Master comes. (paraphrase of Matthew 24:32)

Many things are happening right now and we must not be deceived by those in power or those perceived to have power by others or the media. Keep your eyes on the sky and in the Word of God. Daniel 9 shows many things are coming which will show us the times that we are living in.

There are also many who don’t want to hear anything about religion in general regardless of the eternal effects that learning about Jesus will have on their life. Even if it is true that religion should stay out of the public arena, which I don’t agree with, God does have a hand in this world and on each of its citizens. Like it or not, you will appear before Him one day even if you don’t believe in Him! It seems that many people in the news are taking the view that if they don’t believe in God or the religion which shows them Who He is then He doesn’t exist! How ridiculous is that?

That is like someone saying that they don’t believe the sun is a star or that it won’t rise this morning, if God chose for us not to have the sun to rise today it wouldn’t but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Life is hard enough to get through without Jesus in your life, but it is so much better when He is because you can lean on Him when you need it the most. God does love each of us and whether you believe in Him or not doesn’t change that. Today, it seems that so many people are searching for something, Someone to believe in above themselves mainly because we can’t do or be the person that we need to be without something…Someone to help us! Some look for and chase after money or prestige or even drugs to be that “something” that helps them to get through the day and for some it may work for a while, but it isn’t permanent and it doesn’t fill that space that we all have.

Jesus came so that He could  identify with us and our problems and fears and He came to be the One sacrifice which would take care of the debt that we owe because of our sins, no matter what they might be. We look at sins as small or large like lying to someone is usually considered small and killing a person is a pretty big one, God looks at sin as sin. So, we all need Him. Every church is full of hypocrites because, even if we are saved and practice our Christianity every day we are still sinners saved by His grace and mercy. If we weren’t convicted by the Spirit to change our lives in the first place then we may have gone down the aisle on our own because we felt emotional, not because we wanted or needed to get saved. If that is the case, then it may not be genuine but only God knows your heart and He is the one who will judge you when you stand before Him one day.

Life…again!


You know, there are many people in the world that think that we just cease to exist in any form after we die. Not true at all! God can’t lie and He speaks about life after you die. Jesus said that God is the God of the living, not the dead. Your life, your spirit keeps on living long after your death. Think about this, when Jesus was transfigured on the mount in front of His disciples, He met with Moses and Elijah and spoke with them! Both had been dead for hundreds of years and yet the disciples could recognize them! They were talking with Jesus!

God gives each of us a body, a soul and a spirit. The body dies at some point in our lives, but the spirit lives on and if you are a Christian so does your renewed soul! The essence of who you are lives on into eternity, especially if you are a Christian because you have Life everlasting through Jesus! If you are not a Christian…then your spirit goes to a place of torment for eternity. Your choices take you there, not God. God’s love is still shown toward you in that it is your decisions which have condemned you, not Him.

He loves the person, the spirit that is you regardless…but He doesn’t love or even like the sinful choices that we sometimes make. Which, if you die in your sinful condition having chosen NOT to give your heart to Jesus, then those sins actually convict you and send you to a place outside of God’s realm, into hell. It has many names right now. Outer darkness, Hades, hell, but the part that is most painful is the torment that you are in because of your choices!

We have been given and shown God’s grace by the life that we have here, the blessings that most of us enjoy and because we have been given the choice of following Jesus while we are here or we can choose not to follow Him and live life by our rules. Something that many don’t take into account is that you are responsible for what you have heard and learned while you are living. What does that mean? It means that if you went to church or Sunday school or Bible school growing up, from that point on you are responsible for all of the messages about salvation that you have heard. Even if you live to be 100 years old and you begin going to church when you are fifty, if you have never asked Jesus into your heart and life and you die at 100 then you will be sent into outer darkness away from God’s presence.

Sounds terrible doesn’t it? If you have spent fifty years being a faithful church attending “Christian” why would you be sent to hell? Because, you never gave your heart to Jesus. Going through the motions doesn’t mean anything. It is like going to work and sitting at your desk looking at Facebook all day, looking like you are doing something and then coming home. What did you accomplish? Nothing. You went through the motions of “working”, but you never accomplished anything unless you were confronted and forced to type up something. Jesus said “many will say to me ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we do great things in your name? And I will say, depart from me because I never knew you”.

Sad words to hear from the One Who could’ve saved you from the torment to come.