By faith alone...

If you have ever read the Old Testament at all, you have noticed that many of the patriarchs stories begin with that statement, "By faith...". Did you ever wonder why? Because nothing that is done for God in this life will work unless it is done by faith. Even people who didn't know Jesus, like the servants at the wedding at Cana, had a smidgen of faith. His mother told them to do whatever He tells you.

They had run out of wine at the wedding feast, so Jesus told them to fill six water jars with water, then draw some and give it to the master of the feast. When they did, he exclaimed that the groom had saved the best wine for later rather than giving it out at the beginning. The servants didn't know Who He was, but on Mary's word they did what Jesus asked and they knew that what they put in the jars was water but what came out was wine.

By faith, we can do many things if we will believe. Faith in God and in His Son can heal relationships, disease, heartaches, and all sorts of other maladies particularly those caused by sinful behavior. By faith and without doubt, you can do anything through Jesus and the Holy Spirit!

By faith the mouths of lions were shut, by faith Samson conquered the Philistines, by faith David vanquished Goliath, by faith Peter stepped out of the boat and walked toward Jesus on the surface of the water. All of these were accomplished by faith. It is true that faith can be short-circuited by doubt and by obstacles in life, but if you will keep your faith focused on Jesus and His Spirit, then there is nothing which can't be done for God's Kingdom!

Ministries can expand, the effect of those ministries can impact even more people, when you have faith in the power of God to accomplish His purposes through your life or your ministry. I am not giving you a way of getting wealth by this fashion because that is not what serving God is about! Yes, there are some out there who use their ministries to do just that, but they will have to answer for this and many other things one day.

All that I ask is that those of you who read this post, search the Scriptures for faith, do your homework for God and your ministry for His Kingdom because in the end, when this life is over you will be standing before Him. Do you want to bow before Him as a humble servant and a minister or will you stand arrogant and proud of what your ministry accomplished! IT WASN'T YOUR MINISTRY!! If you truly are a child of God and have surrendered your life to Him, then anything that your ministry did or accomplished belonged to God and it always did!

In Christ

Many people seem to wonder at the claim of Christians of being "in Christ". What exactly does it mean? I am not sure that I have the time or the typing ability to write that treatise which would explain it simply but also fully, but I will do my best.

The claim or the idea of being "In Christ" means no more or less than when someone tells their significant other that they are in love with them, and yet it actually does have far more deeply religious meanings than just being "in love" with someone. Jesus was and is the Son of God, His earthly father who helped teach and raise Him as a carpenter on Earth was Joseph, a descendant of David who was an earlier King of Israel. Jesus' mother Mary was also a descendant of David, so he was also considered a Son of David by lineage.

The label of Christ which means Messiah was not part of Jesus' name, but was given to Him in the writings of the New Testament and by His followers who believed that He was the Son of God and therefore the Messiah that they were expecting according to prophecy. Some writers today claim that He didn't exist because historians of the period didn't mention Him, which is absurd because they didn't mention many people who lived in the period and yet we have skeletal proof that they existed, famous or not.

There won't be any mention of me in the history books of the future, but I am writing this piece and unless all of my writings are purged at some future time, I did exist long enough to write something. The Christ or Messiah was prophesied to come from the time of Adam and Eve when God said that the "seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent". Since God is Jesus' Father, He is the seed of the woman because God used the egg from Mary and created Jesus with His humanity, but not the nature of a human father.

Your life and mine have a purpose to fulfill. Mine is to be a pastor and a type of missionary for Christ to the best of my ability. Since I cannot travel the world, I have to keep these blogs of mine going. I apologize for not getting to this one more often, even though it was the first that I started. I have four other blogs over at Wordpress.com that I write for and all of them, to some extent, are blogs about world happenings and their place in prophecy and of course they point to Jesus as our Savior and Lord.

Getting back to being in Christ, we are as Christians in Christ and He lives in us through the Holy Spirit giving us hope and strength and the words to say when needed in defense of our beliefs. He is living in all of those who have given their lives to Him, but He doesn't force His life on you or in you. Many of you know that being forced to do something, especially belief or love is really impossible, you can't be forced to "love" someone or be forced to believe in something that you don't truly believe!

That would be like forcing a square peg into a round hole, if you pound upon it long enough it might go in but you will likely break the board or the peg before that happens. Which is what is happening in the Middle East right now. Isis is trying to force people to bow or believe in Islam and if they don't they kill them. Belief cannot be forced, no matter how much you threaten or point a gun or knife or sword at me, I will not give up or deny my Savior! I would rather die, because by doing so I will be standing in His Presence in Heaven and no longer bound by disease and disability as I am now! So, in truth, if you kill me you are doing me a favor and if it is God's will that I die this way, then I will gladly give my life for Jesus and for my belief in Him! After all, He died so that we might have life eternal and I give my life to Him every morning when I get up to do His work while I am able.

In Christ is what we are as Christians and it is not something which many people can understand unless they are a Christian. You come to a saving knowledge of Him through faith, it is not forced into you nor can it be taken from you, although I gladly give it away through my preaching at my church and through these blogs. Consider Christ Jesus as your Messiah, seek Him through the reading of God's Word and pray for understanding so that you will be counted among those who will stand with Him on that day when all will bow to Him.

Speak the Truth but only in love!

Why do we tend to make up stuff to say in front of people? We want to make people think that we are more than we are. We want to be more important in the eyes of other people than we are supposed to be! Why do I think this? Because it is true! We, as Christians, are supposed to be examples to everyone that we meet and if we are not committed to being Christians then we might as well not be.

God loves you and all that you can do because He knows what you are capable of, especially when we are doing His will or at least trying to be in His will. We are able to be prophets and disciples for Jesus and bring His Truth to everyone who needs to hear it. No, we won't be giving the news ahead of time unless we are glorifying God with a prophecy from Him. God's prophecies are all in the Bible and unless you are repeating them, then you are telling something which is not from Him!

The Truth is from God because He is the Truth. We are here because of His Truth and grace. God loves you more than you or I can understand and the only way that you can learn of it is by reading and studying God's Word, the Bible. Yes, there are wars in the Bible, yes there is incest in the beginning of the book, there are people who kill their children and other people's children while worshipping other gods. The reason for this is because the people went into the land that God promised to them, but they didn't kill all of the people that had been living there. Why was this important? Because God knew that if they did not, His people would stray into another religion and worship other "gods".

We make up our own gods today and people do it all the time. We can't get by without our phones, our jobs, our families, our churches or the prestige that we have from our wealth and we turn those things into our "gods" today! The truth is that we look at all of these things as parts of our lives that we can't make it for a day or more without them and we need to put God in that place! He needs to be the One that we can't get up without in the morning or go to work without or drive home without! He needs to be more important than our cell phones? People walk around with those things stuck to their faces everywhere and yet they supposedly they don't have time for God!

Did you know?

DID YOU KNOW? As you walk up the steps to the Building which houses the U.S Supreme Court You can see near the top of the building a row Of the world's law givers and each one is Facing one in the middle who is facing forward With a full frontal view ... It is Moses and he Is holding the Ten Commandments!

Our country and its laws are based upon those Commandments which our government is trying to push completely out of our society today. God loves you and wants you to be His because He is God. Live your life for Him and through Him today and forever because He gives you every day to live for Him.

God's love for you....

He loves you in such a DEEP and intimate way until you cannot fathom exactly how much He truly does love you! Satan and the world at large try to tell you that God doesn't care about you or anything that goes on in or on this Earth, but He honestly does. I mean, honestly, do you think that He would've allowed His Son to die for you or me or the rest of humanity if He didn't love us?

You may not believe in God or in His Son, but God does love you. Why? Because God IS LOVE! He can't help but love His creation and you and I are a part of that! Yes, there are many people in this world who don't believe and may never believe in Him or His Son and truly that is too bad. There is nothing that I can do or say that will change their minds and unless they feel or hear the call to their heart from Him and answer it, they will never know Him. The problem is that they will blame Him for it when it is their decision to believe or not!

Can anything be done to prove to anyone that God exists? No, not really. People in our world are deceived by their eyes and by science and by Satan, although many don't think that he exists either. I have met many who don't want to change their minds, even if you could prove God's existence. But...one day they will meet Him. Because we will all stand before Him and give account for our lives and the deeds done by us..each word, each syllable uttered that was hurtful or may have caused a child to disbelieve in God. Every action that we did in life, if it was not covered by the blood of Jesus, will be accounted for.

When you are not a child of God what are you exactly? You are a human being just like everyone else, regardless of the color of your skin or the culture that you grew up in. God knows this because He knows you! He knows exactly where you...each of us is at any time, no matter how dark the place may be or if you feel that God is not in this place, He is. God loves you no matter where you might be, all that you need to do is allow Him into your life.

He will not push or poke His way into your life, you may feel a tug at your heart when you hear a sermon but unless you answer that call it will be unanswered until the next time. If you close your mind and your heart to God though and decide for yourself that it isn't worth giving your life to Him, He may stop calling and just allow you to be the way that you want to be. Grace is available to all but unless you make the decision to let Jesus into your life it won't happen.

Jesus came and died on a cross and rose again so that we all could have eternal life but we have to believe in Him and in the fact that it is His blood that purifies your sinful life before God. You can't do it, Muhammad can't do it, Buddha can't do it...there is no other person or priest who can pray for you and absolve you of your sins. Jesus is the only way...the only Shepherd that can bring you into eternity.
Believe it or not, it won't matter whether you are a good person and have given your life to doing good things or maybe you have given thousands of dollars to charity to feed the poor and the sick and disabled. These are all wonderful things to do, but unless you are a Christian and have the love of Jesus in your life and you did them for His glory and not your own...they don't mean anything.

People will think well of you for doing this but it will have no lasting significance, no eternal reward for you because it was done for your recognition and not for God's glory! He will enhance your life and your eternity with His love and His grace and He will help you to be more of what you are supposed to be in Him and through Him. Think about it and seek Him, while there is time to do so.

God loves you, each of you, and He has from the beginning. We are not specks of dust to Him, living on a speck of dust in the universe, we are His children..His Creation. Don't live your life as if there is no tomorrow and then die and find out that there is an eternity to come? Please consider that He loves you and read His Word, pray that He will help you to understand your place in His world...His creation.

What do you think God feels…….

When we decide not to trust in Him or people kill each other for reasons that no one understands, but God. When babies are aborted for selfish reasons like convenience. They are a gift from God regardless of how we feel about them. He cannot and will not stop us from doing these things even when He doesn’t like them. Our life and the lives we have been given on earth are gifts from Him. What we choose to do with them is our choice. No matter what the choice is, good or bad.

That is why when people ask me, “Where was God when all those children were tortured or killed in those countries”, the only answer is that He was there in the midst of it. His anger won’t blaze against us for these atrocities until the time when He comes back to judge humanity for our sinful deeds. What about the children that are beaten and abused, physically, sexually or verbally in this country? He doesn’t turn a blind ear or eye to them either. Their parents or guardians will answer for their crimes as well.

In the countries where Christians are tortured and persecuted for their beliefs, God feels all of the things that they are going through because He is there in the midst of it all with them. So, how does He feel when this is happening? I am sure that it hurts Him, so let me ask this: "Shouldn't you be afraid of the Creator a bit, since He made this world and everything in it?" Would you walk up to a strong man's house and abuse his children in front of him? If you knew that he could rip your arms out of their sockets, would that make you a bit fearful of him? So, if you are afraid of a man, how much more should you think about God and fear Him too?

God loves each one of us and wants to get to know us, but in order to do that we have to ask Him to come into our lives and our heart. We have to take the step toward Him, because He will not force Himself on us. It is our choice! So, make it a good one and one that you can live through eternity with!

Life is .....

Life is...? What? Hard? Easy? Difficult? Mostly, life is all of these. Occasionally, all of them at the same time! The wind blows, the trees sway. The river and streams run and tumble and play, But the rocks are still, yet the are shaped By wind and water too. Life is like that as well. The things that we experience shape our lives and how we perceive life. Can we do anything about the life that we live? Sometimes, but most of the time we just have to live it. Give that some thought, then I will get back to you.