Merry Christmas to you all and God Bless You!
Thank you so much to those who continue to give me encouragement. It is appreciated a lot.
Unto us a Child was given. That Child was and is our Lord! Reflect on Him gratefully today and praise Him as Lord of your life and all.
Almost all kids grow up hearing about Santa Claus and believing he’s real. I was one of those.
So why does someone on a serious note stop believing?
They look at the facts, right?
Things just don’t add up. You start asking questions like “Hey wait a minute, I don’t have a chimney?”
However someone while you’re young and naïve is always there to try and explain it away for you. Oh he just goes through the door if you don’t or something like that. Thank goodness that person was there to continue the lie.
Then you think to yourself, “How does he get around the whole world in one night? I mean that’s a lot of houses.” Once again someone tries to rescue you from trying to foil the caper.
Flying reindeer? How do all the presents get in the slay? How come I just saw Santa and is looked different down at that other store?
Finally too many stinking questions. Fine! He’s not real, but doesn’t believing in him make the world a better place? In all honesty my wife and I chose not to persuade our children that the untruths were truths all in the name of what was best for them.
Back to the point.
This is how it is in America anymore except people don’t ask questions about anything. They don’t ask questions about why other people believe the way they do. They don’t even ask questions on why they believe the way they do.
This is where Truth comes into play.
Evolution? You can look at it closely and it won’t take you long to figure out who has blind faith. Not to mention it’s not hard to do the math that nothing from nothing times nothing doesn’t equal everything. It doesn’t take very long to see how complex a simple a watch is and know that without a creator it isn’t made. We as humans are much more complex than that by a million times and without the Creator we don’t exist.
Questions! We don’t ask questions anymore.
Same goes for believers. Why do you believe in what you believe? To say that I just believe and go by faith or that burning in your bosom is acceptable for a few months. However, you best start knowing why you believe what you believe soon, or someone is going to come along and give you a different type of Santa Claus.
Seek the Lord! Ask questions! We are very fortunate enough in this day and age that most sincere questions can be answered by men of God who also sought the Truth.
You stopped believing in Santa because the truth was evident and it wasn’t that hard to figure out.
Other things take more investigation and all you need have to do is seek the Truth and He will guide you to it.
On the other hand, if you choose to believe in whatever you want to, God won’t intervene. That is until it’s the day of truth, which is the day of judgment.
Titus 2:1-8- 1 You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine. 2 Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance.
3 Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. 4 Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.
6 Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled. 7 In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness 8 and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.
Life isn’t about running off and doing your own thing. It’s about obedience to God, self control, doing what’s right.
Satan wants you out of control and to do whatever you want. Because if you’re doing that, you’re not obeying God.
In a movie do you look up the guy who sacrifices his life to save others, or do you admire the one who murders everyone for their own gain?
It’s not just a movie script, this describes the difference between Christ and Satan.
By living for God and Christ instead of yourself, your actions speak louder than words. Choose to be self controlled examples.
We are rapidly approaching Christmas day. Many gifts will exchange hands.
I want to stop and reflect on your spouse and children.
They’re Gifts from our Lord.
How are you treating your gifts? Are you grateful for them? Do you take care of them the way the Lord
wants you to take care of them?
You’ve been given a great gift and a great responsibility. You have been entrusted with lives. Entrusted from our Lord with them. How are you handling it?
Are you helping them seek their loving Creator? Are you helping them serve their God?
I can tell you that just in looking at my wife and children I know how much God loves me.
They’re gifts, loving gifts, and the number one thing you can do for our Lord is put Him at the head of the household. Don’t take anything for granted. We will be held accountable as the head and hearts of our families and what we did for Him.
Ephesians 5: 22-28-22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
There is 50% divorce rate in this country and no wife or husband living both by these scriptures are
getting divorced. There is no ME in these scriptures. Why can a wife submit to her husband with confidence? Because he is giving himself up just as Jesus gave Himself for the Church. That means selfish me goes out the door.
Ephesians 6:1-4- 1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” 4 Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the
training and instruction of the Lord.
What’s a family that’s hitting on all cylinders (at least for fallen humans)? The one that bases the Word of God as its guide.
Thank the Lord this season for your gifts and never take your duties lightly or loved ones for granted.
Romans 2:5-11- 5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6 God “will give to each person according to what he has done.” 7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9 There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10 but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11 For God does not show favoritism.
Why these verses?
God is constantly trying to warn us to turn away from our sin. As believers we have to keep praying for one another.
What is an unrepentant heart? A heart that doesn’t turn away from evil.
I grew up believing in Jesus but never read the Bible. What warnings was I getting? Well at least they were better than today, but still since I wasn’t in the Word and I could just turn off a few people.
Today the church is full of not offending. Don’t preach against sin, it’s unpopular and they might not come back. Just believe and it doesn’t matter what you do or have you live. (I must say my pastor is not like that and it is one of many reasons why we attend.)
Yet you read and study the Bible and that’s not what it says at all. It constantly tells us to repent. We’re inherently evil and fallen, making bad decisions.
Lip service is a problem.
You can tell someone you’re a great bowler. However when they watch you, you throw a few in the gutter and your score is 103 game after game, people soon discover you’re not a great bowler.
It works like that in life. If you have no love for others, it shows. When you’re foul mouthed, drinking like a
sieve, and beating the family, it shows. When you’re not following the Word of God it shows.
I have learned not to judge. What is judging? Judging is stating that someone is going to hell.
Judging is not pointing out a problem to someone who is a believer in love because you care. Nor is it judging if all you’re letting someone know is if the Word of God speaks against it. People getting defensive and saying don’t judge me is a defense mechanism used by Satan so others feel guilty and don’t say anything. However, if we are living in sin and need a Word, does God want silence? No, He wants us to lovingly, caringly, pray and try to help His wondering child and our brothers and sisters.
Grace is not a get out of jail free card. Sinning against God knowingly is not a game.
If as a friend you slap me in the face and I say, please don’t do it again and you do anyway, over and over and over again, what are you indicating?
That’s what we do to God especially when we know it’s wrong. Show Him you care and die to yourself and habitual sin. Those habitual (almost every day) one’s are hard. You will only succeed when you decide He’s more important than you are.
3 John 1:11 – 11 Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God.
Anyone who does good is from God.
Why is this?
Because no one is good accept God.
Luke 18:19 – 19 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.
The only reason we can do good in this fallen state we’re in is to tap into the good of God.
When we imitate evil, we are helping the camp of the enemy. Do we really want to do that? I don’t think any of us really want to help out the enemy. But if we turn our backs on God, we are doomed to do so, because without Him we are not good. The question is how not good?
Matthew 6:23 – 23 But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
Scripture after scripture after scripture, warn us to obey God and die to the world and our old sinful nature.
Don’t ignore the warnings and quit listening to the voices that suggest whatever it is your doing isn’t really all that bad. Get into the Word and you’ll discover that our Lord isn’t keen on evil at all.
Are you excited for the return of Jesus for the Church?
If you came home to meet your family after being away for a long period of time and they didn’t want to see you, how would you feel?
Matthew 22:1-14 – 1 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.
4 “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’
5 “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.
13 “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”
Now this parable was speaking of the Jews of the day. However, when I read it, it still applies for the so called Lord’s people that are too busy for Him.
Be honest. If you’re not wanting Jesus to appear because things are too good for you on this earth,
would you call that loving the world?
I don’t know how you can call it anything but that.
There is a crown for those that love His appearing. That means that people that died 1900 years ago that loved His appearing will get that crown. Those who don’t will not.
2 Timothy 4:8 – 8 Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his
appearing.
If you’re not excited about seeing Jesus, how well is your relationship with Him going?
Put yourself in the shoes of Jesus when it comes to bringing home His own during the rapture. How do
you feel about those who didn’t really like the idea of you coming back?
John 8:32- 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
What’s the importance of the Truth?
It’s the difference between Heaven and Hell and eternity with the Lord or without. The total importance of your whole existence is on the line. That’s the importance of the Truth.
So what is Truth?
John 14:6- 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Do we seek Truth or do we seek what’s true to us?
The difference affects eternity.
We really have to realize what the Bible says. We cannot look at salvation as a get out of jail free card.
1 Corinthians 6:9 – 9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex
with men 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
Galatians 5:19-21- 19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not
inherit the kingdom of God.
Take a look at the list!
My heart is troubled. Not only is the world steeped into these very things, I believe we ourselves always try to look past them or justify them.
Humans are good at grading on the curve. The scriptures are never talking about us, it’s always the people struggling just below us.
It’s nothing to play with. I know tons of people and so do you that drink like fish. Many others are being sexually immoral. Our society is filled with growing same sex relationships. Oh and by the way some of
our most popular books and movies are about witchcraft.
God didn’t give us a free will to choose what’s best for us. He didn’t want robots and He wanted free willed beings that choose to love Him and obey Him. Christ wasn’t thinking about Himself when He died for our sins. God wasn’t thinking about Himself when He sent His only Son to do so.
So why do we always seek what’s best for us instead of what’s best for the Lord and the Kingdom?
It’s called the fall. God doesn’t want us living for our own selfish ambitions. He wants us to live for Him and the Kingdom. What will you choose?
Pretty soon it will be on this earth. However, Revelation 19 wraps up a very nasty and deadly 7 year tribulation. You don’t want to be here for that.
Revelation 19:6 – 6 Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting:
“Hallelujah!
For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
Since our God reigns on Heaven and soon to be on earth, we need to treat Him like the King everyday of our lives.