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!

I don't know what I would do without Him

This may be one of those "I told you so" posts but it is true! I don't know what I would do or be without God and His Son in my life! I do remember what life was like when I had not accepted Him and it wasn't pretty or anywhere near normal. I was trying meditation, incense, Eastern religions, alcohol, drugs, etc. If it made me feel better,even the slightest bit, I gave it a shot.

Then when I did accept Him into my life, it was a long time before my life and my witness for Him became real. My spirit had changed, but my life and what others saw had not really changed that much. I would hear a little voice inside telling me that something that I was doing was wrong, but many times I pretended not to hear. I "knew" I was saved so I figured I had my "fire" insurance and I didn't need to do anything else.

Man, was I WAY off base! It took the gift of my son's birth and his questions as a toddler to wake me up to the fact that he was watching everything that I did and said. I was responsible for him and his view of a good father and I wasn't even close to being "good". I should've been much closer to God and much more dedicated to serving Him at this point but I was still a babe in Christ. After more than a decade of being saved, I was still at the same point that I was the week after I accepted Him.

God knew it was time for me to change, actually past time. So the opportunity came and I took it. There is no getting away from God because the harder you run from Him, you will run into Him just that much faster. When God decides that it is time for you to serve Him, you will, one way or another. He will use situations or people or whatever He needs to use to get you to see things His way.

Now that I have come to know Him and what He wants me to do with my life, I have learned a lot. Just reading and studying His word from the Bible has taught me about His patience and kindness. And about His love for all of us and why we are still here. There are too many days behind to worry about the days to come. The future is a mystery and today is a gift, that is why it is called the present. The past is gone, as long as we learned from it what we were supposed to learn it served its purpose.

All we have to do is serve our purpose now. Daily, you have to get up and go to school or work or somewhere. Take God with you. He is there anyway so you might as well acknowledge Him. Ask Him to help you with your problems, even the small ones. He cares enough to do that even if He is the creator of the universe! He deserves your devotion and your love just as your parents do for He formed you in the womb. He knows you better than anyone, get to know Him and you will never be alone again.

We should all be Thankful!

Thankful to our Creator who sustains us with his power for without it, everything which was created would fly apart. Regardless of the scientific explanation to the contrary, God is the one who is keeping everything going.

I read something the other day that quoted doctors as saying that they did not know what the reason was for people living longer who regularly attend church services. It is simply because they are serving their Creator and He is sustaining them, nothing more than that. But it is folly to those who don't belong to Christ because they can't understand it.

Our lives are to be living sacrifices to Him every day, not just when we need Him. Truly, we need Him every day and He desires our service and praise. He doesn't need us the way we need our spouses, but He desires to know the desires of our hearts like a mother or father desires to know and hear from their children.

The love of God doesn't depend on our service to Him nor does it depend on us at all. He loves us regardless. He desires our service to Him when we give our hearts to Him and to Jesus. We are not required to do this, but when your heart and spirit are changed by Jesus you will want to serve Him in some way. Being a deacon, a pastor, singing in a choir, teaching a class at church, cooking for the church, doing the best you can do at your regular job whatever that may be, these are all ways of serving Him daily. He doesn't require us to be missionaries to other people, just to those around us.

All people are important to Him because He created us all. He formed us all in our mother's womb from the bits of DNA of our mother and father. He knows exactly how you will look, how you will talk, what kind of temperament you will have, what choices you will make and why. The colour of your hair and how many there are on your head and the colour of your eyes are all things that He put there to make you who you are. He knows each of us more intimately than anyone else can. That is the God I serve gladly every day and I hope someday you will too.

Our service is to our fellow man but it is also to the creator of the universe, God Himself.

We have a responsibility to let people know about Christ and His sacrifice for us! He gave up far more than anyone on earth has ever given up. If you could imagine being in the presence of God Almighty and how glorious service to Him is, you might have a tiny idea of what Christ left to come and give Himself as a sacrifice for those whom He suffered and died for. Our human minds cannot comprehend the majesty and beauty of Heaven nor the love of the Father which He left to come to our rescue.

That is why the book of Revelation is so hard to understand, because Jesus took John up to Heaven and showed him what must come to pass. The descriptions which John gave were the best he could do to describe what he saw and heard. The human mind just can't comprehend nor understand Heaven in its glory. God is now giving man the insight to see and understand the prophecies contained in His word because time is growing short. Jesus is coming soon. Regardless of what the world or television media or other “news” agencies may tell us, the Creator's patience is coming to an end.

This world has had two thousand years to come to Him and realize who He is and what our purpose is and it has largely ignored Him and His word. Mankind has made up gods or made gods out of animals or possessions or jobs or things such as cars, toys, computers, etc. Our imagination has run rampant over the past millennium or two to include things like ET, or dogs, cats, cattle, “wise men”, or men who could coerce people into following their ideals and make them think that they were “prophets”. None of these “gods” can do anything for you nor will they. There is even a “pseudo-religion” that says that we are gods in human form and that we were put here by some E T's who lived trillions of years ago. My Bible doesn't say anything of the sort!

If you add up the lives lived by Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan (Cainan), Mahalal, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, or Noah, the world before the flood was not here much more than two thousand years or so. Not TRILLIONS! God was around at that time, but nothing else was. Granted, I may have gotten their names out of order from the Genesis account but the fact is that our world, our universe has not been here for billions and billions of years. God can create a star fully formed as our sun is just by saying so.

The Creator...God who made all things knew that man would disobey Him and His commandments. That is why the Old Testament is the preparation for the Messiah's birth. The entire Bible tells of His coming and of His fulfilling of prophecies about Him. The Old Testament foretold His coming and how man should receive Him and the New Testament tells of His life and death and resurrection to give all of us hope and the ability to come to our Father as sons and daughters, regardless of our nationality or race.

These are truths found only in the Holy Scriptures, God's Word, the Bible. No other book could have been written by so many different men and women, in three different languages and all point to the same person, Jesus Christ!! Scholars may try to discredit it but there is no possible way anyone could explain how this book was written except to be the inspired word of the living God! Please read it today! Pray that God will show you that you need Him and His Son, Jesus, through the words of the Bible. It is the breath of life to all who find it and all who believe! I pray that God will richly bless you through the reading and hearing of His word and that all of you will come to know Christ.

Today is a wonderful day!

Every day we wake from sleep should be considered a glorious and wonderful day to serve our Lord! He is the rock on which I stand and the one I count on in times of stress or good times too. Our creator knew us all before we were ever born because He determines who will be born and what their life will ultimately be. In service to Him or not, truly one way or another everyone serves God in some form or fashion. Even Hitler and Pharaoh in the Holy Scriptures served Him and His purposes regardless of the cruelty they both perpetrated on the Jewish nation.

Truly, even Satan himself serves God's purposes whether he likes it or not. I am sure he wouldn't admit that he serves God since he wants to supplant God, but he does! Every ruler, president, dictator or prime minister serves God in some way because He is responsible for them being where they are. God dethroned Nebuchadnezzar when he became too proud of his place in the world and He can do the same today to whomever He chooses.

Our world, not just the United States, needs to wake up to the fact that God is angry at humanity for rejecting His Son. He allows all of us, by His grace, to go about our lives hoping that we will see the error of our ways and repent. How arrogant we are to thumb our noses at Him and say, "You don't exist!", "I can do it myself!". I know, that sounds like a toddler or someone who just doesn't care. Truly, if we could actually see God and feel His wrath without it destroying us, I am sure that the whole world would get on their knees and turn to Him by the millions. I am also sure that there would be some who would just ignore Him, regardless.

Our time is not long in this world. I know that many people have said that over the centuries but the events in our world are proving prophecy to be right, especially those near the end in the book of Revelation. The time is now! Don't wait until the church, the body of believers in Christ, disappears from the earth! Because when that happens, the problems you are seeing now will pale in comparison to the ones that will come after. The series, Left Behind, was written as a fictional story but it was based on the book of Revelation and the prophecies contained in it. The horrors and other atrocities mentioned in the series could be far worse in reality, so make sure you aren't left behind.

Our Service to Him....

Should be out of love for someone who created us just the way we should be. Your life is not just yours but it belongs to God, whether you have given your life to Jesus or not. Everything on the earth no matter what it is, including everyone who is or is not a follower of Christ, belongs to God because He created everything and everyone. There are no animals, no bacteria, no insects, or fish or birds or anything on the earth that He did not want to be here.

I have never quite understood how some non-believers could come to the conclusion that man can make himself into a god. There is no possible way, because even the angels can't do that. They are heavenly beings created by God and they are very powerful, but they are still His servants.

Our lives are intended to be extensions of His will, even though we are not forced into this. We are to give ourselves freely because that is what Christ did. He subjected Himself to His Father's will, not His own. He went to the cross to die for us, all of us, so that when we believe in Him and His sacrifice for us we will have eternal life with Him. It is that simple!!

Simplicity makes some people scared because they think if it is too simple it must not be worth much. YOU ARE WRONG!! Our salvation is worth the price of God's son and His death and resurrection. I don't know of anything that could be named that would be worth even the price of my own son's death and being human we can't comprehend God's ways or His thoughts about His son's death. Of course, He knew that He was going to be resurrected and ascend to Heaven. But that is beside the point.

Would you sacrifice something so precious for beings that reject you and your ways! Even when you have given them every chance over and over and over, that is exactly what YAHWEH, Jehovah, God did for all of us. We should get down on our knees every day and thank Him that He allowed us to even get up from our bed. These facts are hard to accept, yet they are in the Bible which is the written word of God and He does NOT lie.

Please forgive me if this post is too forceful but time is running short and if you expect to be allowed into heaven, you have to get your heart and soul right with God. Once the door is shut by God, no one else can open it.

A prayer for us, all

Our Father in Heaven, who created all that is and was and is to come. I know that you can see through time as we see through a window, regardless of the direction you look. You knew well what people would do with your servants and prophets and your Son. Forgive us, Lord, for our lack of commitment and will to do Your will and not our own. To believe in Your Son and that He gave Himself for our sins and the sins of the entire world is all that you ask and that is too simple for many to accept, yet it is all that you require.

We are but puffs of smoke and our lives are nothing more than the tick of a clock compared to eternity. Even the "time line" that scientists say there has been on earth shows that the time of mankind is only a few thousand years compared to the length of four billion years which they believe our planet has existed. You could destroy and create the entire universe in less than a week and it would still appear as it does now if you chose for it to.

The amount of time that you allotted to man to live is but a puff of wind compared to eternity. In your word you said that "The days of our life are three score years and ten, or if we have strength, four score" (Psalms 90) Seventy years or, if You allow us, maybe eighty, but after that we are living on grace and nothing more. For it is by your grace and mercy that we live at all. We deserve death, but we are given life through your Son, Jesus, and through the grace which you extended to us through His sacrifice on the cross. Father, I know you will not forget your promises to us, your adopted children, or those made to your chosen people, Israel.

My prayer is simply....Come, Lord Jesus! Stir the spirits of those whom you will call to be yours so that they will come to you before the trumpet sounds for the gathering at the banquet for the marriage of the Lamb. In Jesus' name I believe and hope and I know that all these will come to pass in your time, not ours.

Thank you, Lord for the blessings which you bestow upon us daily and for the grace and mercy extended to us through your son. In Jesus' Holy name I thank you for all who will read and believe in Him and for all the blessings we receive every day we are alive. Amen.

Olympic sized faith!

I have been reading the autobiography of Dr. Billy Graham and his testimony of the power of God is truly Olympic in proportion! I have had God answer my prayers many times too, but never in proportion to what Dr. Graham had to happen when he was conducting a crusade in Los Angeles. God truly is awesome!!

He has to be, He is the Creator of the Universe and everything in it! There is nothing too small or too big for Him to take care of or to create whenever He chooses to do so.

Is the Bible outdated? I don't think so!

Nearly every important document in our nation's history has some reference to the Bible. Our ancestors came to this country for religious freedom, to serve and worship as they chose to do. The Bible is not a "human inspired history or made up tale", it is the inspired Word of the Living God. The Creator of the universe and of every human being since the beginning of time.

I do realize that the stories recorded in the Bible are hard to accept since the educational system in this country has been pushing the Bible out of the classroom for the past eighty years or so. In some areas of the country, even trying to teach "intelligent design" may get you fired if you are a teacher.

The Bible is the one guide which all mankind can turn to for guidance and truth, and it has stood as such for over two thousand years. The advice given in most, if not all, of the self help books on bookshelves today is echoed in the Bible. The words are different, but the message is the same. Psalms and Proverbs are two of the most influential books in the Bible, with advice about almost any topic contained in both.

Our children and their parents and teachers need the wisdom found in this "outdated" book, and need it desperately. If our society is to survive much longer as a society, our government officials would do well to go back to the practice of opening sessions of Congress with prayer and reading from the Bible.

The Bible is the only religious book which shows that our God loves us and cares for us, all of us. It should be one of the first books required to be read and studied in school from elementary through college. It doesn't have to be the major point of study, but all other studies should branch from its principles. I know this is not going to be a popular view of education, but it would serve our world much better, and we could serve Him better as well, if it were the center of education rather than being pushed out as "antique" and outdated.

The stories in the Bible reflect the human condition and our struggle with ourselves and the struggles we all face on a daily basis. The nation and people of Israel went through these struggles while on their way to the land which God had promised them. The fought Him almost every step of the way. God would get angry at them like a father does with his children, they would repent. Then "not many days hence", they would be off on another rebellious antic doing something they were told not to do. Exactly the way we behave today, as children and as adults.

What has always puzzled me is that they SAW the miracles that God performed with their own eyes. How could they possibly have been so disobedient? Because they were human and until we realize just how much we depend on God's grace and mercy just to get through every day, or even to wake up every morning, we will always be just as disobedient.

His love for us is like that of a parent for a child, unconditional. Without regard for our faults, our foibles, or our sinful nature. If God had not loved us, all of us, He would not have sent His son, the perfect Lamb of God, to cleanse the world of its sins. "He became sin who knew no sin."