Tag: Salvation

Simple Christianity


Faith don’t need to be fancy. Holiness don’t need to be haughtiness. Ministry don’t need to be a misery. Wisdom don’t need to be wily. Christianity don’t need to be complicated…it just needs to be shared with those who need to know about it and the Savior that we, as Christians, follow.

Holiness sounds haughty but it refers to being “set apart” and as Christians we have to be in the world but, according to Scripture, we don’t have to agree with it and it’s ways. Being a follower of Jesus can be simply doing what He told His disciples to do, even when it conflicts with our life sometimes.

God loves us, all of us and for some that seems to be totally against their idea of God. But consider that He had a part in forming you in the womb and He knows your personality and your strengths better than you do. If you look around you in the world and at the heavens at night, God is bigger than all of your problems and He can handle all of them…if you will let Him. Even the little things like feeding the birds and the fish, He is involved in their lives as well. “Not even a sparrow falls to the ground without the Father’s notice.”

Temporary are our lives


We are living a life that is so fleeting that it is described as a puff of smoke, why do we think we have plenty of time to accept Jesus Christ as our Savior? If you have asked Jesus into your heart but you are still living the life of a sinner, one that doesn’t look like a Christian life, then you are fooling yourself by saying “I am a Christian”.

When Jesus is truly asked into someone’s life and heart and it is sincere…there is a change that comes over your heart. Yes, you will slip up and say things that you shouldn’t but you will be convicted by the Holy Spirit, that what you said or did is wrong. You feel the wrongness of it because you do belong to Him. If you never feel that conviction, then you don’t belong to Him and you are not saved.

Saying a prayer and having someone tell you that you are a Christian doesn’t save you. If your behavior doesn’t change, then you haven’t received Jesus as your Savior. There is always a change in your life and your heart when Jesus comes in to be your Savior. Your life changes because the Holy Spirit comes into your life and into your heart and you are saved by believing in Him and the sacrifice that He gave His Life for all of us and it is a gift from God through faith in Him by our acceptance of Jesus as our Savior.

Outsider?


Do you feel like you are an outsider at times? All of us were at one time but God chooses people, even outsiders or those who feel that they are unworthy, in the way that He wishes. God chooses each of us when He deems that we are ready and useful. Sometimes, His call on our lives is the very thing that will change us and make us ready to follow Him. Sometimes His call on our lives does change us in radical ways. We become His followers and His Spirit changes us so much that “we are a new creation” from that point on.

We are changed in our heart and in our soul because of the Holy Spirit’s work after we have accepted Him as our Savior. From that point on we are “made new” in Him. Our witness for Him will be changed and so will our lives be changed when we learn and read the Bible and learn how we can serve Him from this point on. Many people think that our lives in Christ will just stay that way but we should sanctify our lives by studying His Word and learning more about Him and about our place in His ministry

The Bible is our guide to knowing how to serve God and be useful to Him. We must read it and study it every day, not just on Sunday at church. Being a Christian, a follower of Jesus, is not an easy task like many people think it is. Belief in Jesus is easy but following Him every day of our lives from that point on is not easy because much of the world and many people we are around during the week don’t make it easy. Even our “old self” is still at odds with the new person that we are living as Christ-followers, so we struggle to keep the old sins from overpowering our new way of life.

God loves each of us, whether we believe in Him or have asked Jesus to save us. Life has a way of confusing our outlook toward becoming more like Jesus, because we feel that we are truly at odds with our new nature when the Holy Spirit has changed us to be a new person in Christ. That is why we need to read God’s Word after we become Christians. We have the Holy Spirit that will help us understand His ways while we read it and the understanding will come later. Salvation comes the moment we accept Jesus as our Savior, we have the Holy Spirit in our heart from that moment on molding us into the person God intends for us to be but the understanding doesn’t come immediately. It is only after we have read His Word and prayed over it, sometimes for years, that the “light” will come on and we begin to understand the why and the reason for our salvation and the struggles that come with it.

So it is our job to learn more about Him and to do that we need to study His Word daily. Even a chapter every day will get you through the Bible and help you to understand more about who you and I are in Christ. Many pastors and churches don’t tell us that we have to study to grow in our Christian walk. The body of Christ, the church, should be involved in teaching new Christians to be more involved in reading the Bible and learning about God and our place in the church, the Body of Christ.

Seek to know Jesus as your Savior if you aren’t sure of your salvation. He died for you and we should put our old self to death and live for Him until the day that He comes for His Bride.

God will help you in all things


He is with us


Creation or Creator?


The Creator is bigger than your problems and small enough to fit in your heart. He has stretched out the heavens with His hands and according to the James Webb telescope, the universe is approximately 93 billion light-years across. WOW! That is BIG! God is bigger!

When God calls each of us to be His children, the Holy Spirit creates a new creation in us so that we will become more like Jesus. Your salvation is a process and it begins with your repentance and acceptance of Jesus into your heart. Then you have to study the Bible and learn more about this Savior Who wants to live in your heart and change your life. Some of us actually read the Bible and learn more about Him, some of us just go to church for a little while and learn as little as possible.

If you are in a relationship, marriage or covenant, don’t you want to know your partner or your Savior as well as you can? The best way to learn about Jesus is to read the Bible and study it. Going to church for an hour or less every week is not enough to learn about Him. Your salvation doesn’t depend on your attending church but your faith will grow along with your knowledge of Him that you gain.

When you feel His call in your life, don’t turn away from Him.

I will sing praises to the Lord


As for me and my house…


Be blessed…


Christians are blessed by God IF they follow His teachings but if you follow “someone or something” else then you will be cursed. Sounds harsh doesn’t it? God’s curse can come in many forms, such as a sickness or even the loss of a job. God doesn’t seek ways to curse you but when you are working against Him by living your life for someone or something else then His curse will fall on you in some way.

Many people in the world don’t think they are turning away from God. Many don’t believe in Him in the first place because they live in a culture that chooses a different “Savior” to worship. The problem with this is that there aren’t other deity’s. Satan has been hard at work over the centuries to cause others to worship him or some of the fallen angels that were kicked out of Heaven millennia ago.

God loves humanity regardless of where you live or the culture that you live in and He calls many people to be His children. Sometimes those who are called choose not to answer their calling, but if you are predestined to be His then it may take a while but you will give your life to Him. God knows who will answer and who will not so it doesn’t surprise Him when you choose to be your own helper rather than seek His help.

We are coming to the end of the “Church age” soon so you need to seek Jesus and give your life to Him because when the church is taken up, the seven years of Tribulation will begin and it will be even harder to give your life to Jesus at that point. Don’t wait, if you want to stay out of hell, give your life and your heart to Jesus today because tomorrow may be too late.

Why do you go to church?


If you have given your heart and your life to Jesus, you should be going to church to learn more about your Savior and your part in His Kingdom. Does a preacher tell you these things? No, but studying the Bible does and you usually do that from listening to a preacher’s sermon from a scripture in the Bible that God has placed in his heart to preach from. If you are trying to learn your place in God’s Kingdom, that is the place to start. Whether you hear it from a “TV preacher” or from a local church doesn’t matter but you can ask questions when you are at a local church.

The Bible says that we should not “forsake the gathering of the saints” and if you are a born-again Christian then you are a saint of God’s Kingdom. Many people seem to think that they can worship from a boat while fishing or from a tree-stand while hunting and in some small way you can appreciate God’s Creation while doing these things but it is not true worship.

Worship is a state of mind and heart that you cannot achieve while hunting or fishing. You can be in a prayerful state of mind while driving down the highway because I do this every time I’m on the road but that isn’t the same as worshiping the Lord while learning from His Word. As His adopted children, we are supposed to learn as much as possible about Him as we can and the only way to do this is by studying the Bible and most of us need a Bible-study leader to help us to do this. It isn’t a skill that we are given when we become believers. Growing in your life as a Christian, deepening the relationship with your Savior can only be done by studying the Bible.

Get into it a chapter at a time. Pray about what you have read and if you have questions, find a pastor or a friend who knows Jesus and ask them to help you understand. The Bible is a book that can teach you and me so much about God and about Jesus and what our responsibility is in our walk with Jesus every day. Even if you have read the Bible all the way through, read it again because the Holy Spirit will teach you even more about what you have already read. Each verse will show you something that you didn’t see or understand before and you will grow in your walk as you learn more from Him each day.