Tag: trials

Is there a way out?


I have heard people on Facebook and in church or in other public places ask this question and it makes me wonder, why do you need a way out of life? Life is given for us to live and work in it and through it. Not only for God’s purpose but for our own enjoyment.

I know that many people don’t really enjoy their life or the work that comes with it. Sometimes it is hard on your body and your spirit to have to make it through just one more day. Friend, it is not easy to live with pain and illness whether you are working or  not! My arthritis is painful, whether I am in the bed, in a chair (like I am typing this out), or anywhere else. I have constant dizziness from inner ear trouble, so I have to be careful how I walk, but that doesn’t keep me from going or doing things when I can.

I am not being a complainer here, I am just telling those of you who will read this a little something about me. I would love to get up without pain or to put my clothes on without almost falling to the floor, but it is what I have to live with every hour of every day. God gives me the strength to get through it all and not complain, even when it hurts. Most people don’t even see what could be wrong with me, but I know it’s there and I know that He is with me too.

We don’t need a way out of life, we need to embrace the Author of Life! Our Creator and our Savior is that and so much more! He can be a healer and a comforter to you as well as your Savior, just as He was to so many when He came. God loves us and He is not the cause of your pain, Satan does that. But, because of some teachers and preachers who say that we are in trials because God is working some of our kinks out, we tend to blame God for our ills.

He allows us to go through trials and things which will make us stronger and more effective as Christians, to be more like Jesus, but He is not the cause of those trials. He allows Satan to be that cause, and Satan thinks that he is hurting us, like he did with Job. But, God allowed that trial to prove that Job was a better man and one with more faith than Satan thought. It is the same with us. As long as we keep our faith trained on Jesus like the scope on a gun, then we will come out victorious and stronger because of that trial.

God Loves You!


Is it that hard to understand that He would do such a thing? He created the universe, including this little ball of dust that we live on. I know, it is only that small when you compare it to the size of the REST of the universe, but stick with me on this. God made all of this so that you can see how great He is and how much He really loves you and me and everyone else on this planet! Now, many of you might say that God is just showing off, that is what humans would do in His place. He ain’t human!

But, He is God! He can do whatever He wishes to do in your life and mine. It doesn’t matter how bad it looks to you or even how bad it feels, let Him know in prayer. He already knows, but He wants to hear from you! He is like a parent that knows there is a problem but until the child comes to them with it they are not going to interfere. We don’t go around fixing things in our own children’s lives when we see something happening that we know isn’t going to end well. They would never learn anything like that, so why do we expect God to swoop in here and fix every problem that we have?

I’ll admit, it would be nice but we would be a world full of lazy people if He fixed every problem that we had the second that it showed up! Nobody would do anything, we would just wait for God to fix it. But, what if He stopped fixing it one day, then what would we do? We wouldn’t know how to do anything because we had always depended on Him for everything. Depending on God is good, don’t get me wrong, but if He fixed all of our problems we wouldn’t know anything at all. There wouldn’t be cars or planes or cell phones or electricity or any of the thousands of things that we use all of the time because He had been fixing for us all of the moments that we went WAHH!!

God does love us but He allows us to go through life learning about life instead of doing it for us, healing our hurts and aches. We wouldn’t even have aspirin if He fixed everything!

Even in eternity, we aren’t go to have everything our way, we are going to be working with and for Him, not sitting around looking at stuff! God cares for us and wants to spend time with us, but sitting around in Heaven looking at each other will last about ten minutes! Get up and get going! Do something for God, ask Him what you can do and let Him show you and don’t be afraid of it

Life, as it could be….


You have heard of life, the one you and I are living here on Earth. It is nasty sometimes, its dangerous sometimes, it’s just hard to deal with most of the time, and then some days, it turns out pretty good. Those days are few but that is what makes them special! If you had a great day, every day, life would be boring, fun but boring. How has life been treating you recently? It depends on your location and your circumstances mostly. If you work for Google, you have a hectic day but you get paid well for it so it’s not so bad from what I have read. If you work for the government…I am sorry. Yes, there are many different jobs and salaries which go from one extreme to the other, some jobs are hourly which is the pits mostly. Some are pretty decent in their pay and benefits, but those are few and depend on education and experience and location, location, location.

Life…is not really fair for most of us. If there were some way that I could help in this matter, I would. I am not kidding, but right at this time I am not in a position to help many more than my immediate family. People ask, “Where is God in all of this?”, He is here with us and with you, like it or not. Why doesn’t He do something to help us? He does, every day! You got up this morning, like I did. You had something for food and drink, maybe went to a job, come home to have something else to eat and then get ready for another day of the same thing tomorrow, all because God chose not to “punch your card” so to speak.

Much of what we call life, good or bad, is a gift from God and we should accept it as such. If it involves a degenerative disease like arthritis, like I have, then just enjoy the days when it doesn’t hurt really bad. If you have other problems which are chronic or severe, then God is still there with you giving you strength and the ability to get through it. Why am I so upbeat on life right now? Because today has been a decent day. I pray that I have more of these and maybe you will too. There is no reason for looking for a dark cloud coming tomorrow because it isn’t here yet!

God can clear it up before it does get here and that is the important part, give tomorrow to Him. Then do it again tomorrow, and the next day. Let Him take care of the stuff that is coming and you enjoy what He lets you have! Keep your eyes on Him for the rest of the day, and He will take care of your tomorrows, Okay?

What is it which gives you strength?


Is it your food or drink? Is it your will to do what needs to be done for today, no matter what it is? Our strength comes from our bodies to work and to do what is needed every day and our body gets that strength from our food. The quality of that food and the amount that you need to do your work is what gives you the calories to keep going to finish your work for each day. All of this is known by each of us as we live through our lives every day in the world, but how can you get the strength to do things for God? True, sometimes your food is all that is needed, but most of the time that is not all that you need.

We are spiritual beings because the spirit that we have that is in us, our soul that is immortal, needs to have contact with God the Creator. That contact comes through reading God’s Word and by prayer. Prayer is a direct line to God and His Spirit! Not only are you in contact with Him with your words and your spirit but He is in contact with you, giving you the strength to pray for the things which you need to be able to do. It may be that you are in need of His strength for a problem in your life, whether it is grief or a loss or some physical ailment in your life or a family member’s life but prayer is the line…a lifeline that is a direct transmission line from God to you!Ican'tmakeit He knows exactly what you need and how much, all that He is waiting for is for you to ask Him to do this.

God doesn’t intrude on your life without you asking Him into your heart and your life. Nothing about the walk..the life of a Christian is forced on us by God. We participate in it with Him as our Strength and our Comforter and many times we find that when those days sort of pile up on us, He is exactly what and Who we need to make it through them. Being a non-Christian is somewhat easy because you don’t look to a “higher power” for inspiration or strength, you are your own strength and inspiration.

So, what do you do when the strength and inspiration that you have available to you isn’t enough? You have come to the end of your rope, a deadline is only a few hours or days away and you have nothing to bring, the chemotherapy isn’t working and you are in hospice waiting to die…your own strength is mostly gone at this point, so now what or who can you look to or call on for help? Do you just give up and die? What could possibly help in this instance? It’s not a what but a Who. God can help you in every situation and it doesn’t matter whether it is big or small because the Creator of the universe can handle it all! He may not fly in and heal you from a serious illness, but He will give you the faith and the strength to make it through with dignity and when you are taken to Heaven…the pain is gone, your worries are no more, you have an eternal home which is yours FOREVER!

I know that to our small minds dying is not a fix to a situation, but if you have given your life to God and asked for Him to forgive you, then your witness to others during your pain and suffering will be your witness and your sermon. It may not impact their life now and it may be years from now before it takes root in their lives but that seed…that spark that they saw in your life, even if you were suffering, can make a big impact.

God can use the most unusual people to get His point across. Homeless people and those in countries where Christianity isn’t tolerated at all have a very big impact on people because of their faith and their life that they live for Him while they have the time. Christians, since the time of Christ, have given their lives because of their faith in Jesus. This is not a blind faith or a cult, belief in Jesus is belief in the Truth and the Life that is available to you from God! People don’t die a martyr’s death for something which they don’t believe is real, but there have been thousands of people who have been burned at the stake, frozen in winter by exposure, torn to shreds by lions, or mercifully shot in the head because of their faith in Jesus and His atonement for them, even if it was against the “state church” like it was in the middle ages.

God loves you because He has a purpose for your life, no matter when you truly come to know Him. Even if it is at the end of your life, your decision to come to know Jesus will have an impact on someone else’s life and they will make a difference in another person’s life. Like a neatly stacked line of dominoes which expands into the shape of a tree, one person may affect two, they may impact four, they may impact sixteen, those sixteen may impact sixty-four until God has used up your impact but it is never really used up. Because the effect of one person can make a difference in millions of lives, especially today and with God and His Spirit powering the effect that your prayer or your reading of the Bible may have on others, you may be astonished at how many people you find in Heaven who will say that something that you said or wrote or shared online made a difference in their life.

Think about that. I do and I pray that all of you who read this might pass it on to someone else who needs it too.

A living Message


Jesus was and is considered the Living Word of God, so our message about Him and salvation through Him should be different for each person. Truly, it is different for all those who seek Him because nobody gets the same message from the Bible. We all get a different meaning and purpose from the words which we read in it and since there are many on the web who are writing about Jesus, all of our messages are different too…at least in some respects.

First and foremost, God loves all of us whether we think so or not. It grieves the Spirit of God when a person dies who has not found Jesus to be their Savior and Lord. Some may not see it this way, but it is true and it says so in the Bible. One of the first instances of this is found here:  Judges 10:16 “And they put away the strange gods from among them, and served the Lord: and His soul was grieved for the misery of Israel.”

God loves us far deeper and more intimately than we can understand, so it shouldn’t be unusual for Him to grieve when we go astray or refuse to become an adopted child of His through Jesus. We don’t have to do it and we aren’t forced to do it but your life and mine are so terribly short compared to eternity and yet it is only during our lifetime that we can make this choice of asking Jesus into our lives. God loves each of us even to the point of the parable which Jesus used about the sheep that went astray out of a flock of one hundred. We have all gone astray at some point and some of us haven’t become the sheep that God wants us to be, meaning that He wants us all to come to know Him and His love for us.

We can’t do that walking around in the world looking for something or someone who we feel the need for but don’t know who or what it is that we are searching for. God sees us all wandering around but He won’t intrude on or in our lives until we ask Him to come in and help us with our lives. Just as love for another person can’t be forced or “made to happen”, your love for God can’t be a forced love it has to be one that you initiate. Once you make the step of asking Him into your life, to forgive you of the sins that you feel can’t be forgiven, then He will work in your heart and your mind to help you to conform…help you to become more like Jesus. This is our ultimate goal, to become more like Jesus. Like it or not, that really is your purpose in life because life is the training ground for so much more.

What are we training for? I don’t really know and I probably won’t find out until I get to Heaven. The point is that we are to strive toward the goal of being as much like Jesus as we can, with the Holy Spirit’s help, while we are here. Don’t judge people or look down on them because they have less than you do or more than you do because stuff is not what’s important in this life, people are. We are called to be mirror images of Jesus and for a while our reflection of Him will be a bit blurred but it takes a bit of polishing to work out those rough spots. Getting through the polishing phase is the toughest part that you will find yourself in during this life, because you will feel like God has left you to fend for yourself when He is actually using those trying times to get your faith and dependence upon Him to work together.

As long as we keep our eyes, spiritually on Jesus, then we won’t falter when the going gets a bit rough. We may have to endure some hard times with our children at home or with a disease or a family member but as long as we keep God in the center of our lives and depend upon His strength to get through today and the next day then we will come through just fine. This is what I am having to deal with today. A teenage son that, unfortunately, is just like me at his age and I have forgotten what he is going through. I have to give this struggle to God and let Him work it out because all that I can do on my own is make it worse. Lord, give me the wisdom to keep my mouth shut until he is ready to really talk to me about what he feels.

See, I may have some good advice but I have to take it too.