Category: Scripture
From the Holy Bible
Eternity and God’s Provision
I love that this Scripture verse says that God, our Creator, has put eternity into our hearts. Of course, our human hearts will one day stop and out body that it supports and keeps alive will die here on earth. But the heart that we have that is attached to God is also attached to eternity, the Heavenly home that He has prepared for us and where we will always be with the Lord. It is a great mystery what God has done, most likely because our finite minds cannot fathom the works of an infinite God.
I am overwhelmed with thanksgiving that God always provides just what we need when we need it. Just as He provided manna for the Israelites in the wilderness, He provides for us. And when they reached the Promised Land and could eat from the abundance there, the manna no longer appeared daily for the Israelites to pick up and eat. God knows what He is doing even when we don’t always understand it!
Have a blessed and wonderful day, always remembering that you are a child of the King!
No Fear of Death
bible.com/bible/113/psa.49.15.NIVUK
There is no fear of dying for Christians because dying on earth means living eternally in the presence of the Lord. The thought of dying can be scary for some people because it is an unknown that we have never faced and when we finally face death, it’s for the first and last time. We cannot go through the occasion again and tell others about our experiences so that they won’t be afraid. The good news is that Jesus died BUT He came back to life again and because He lives, I know that one day when I die, I will also be resurrected and live with Him. I’m sorry for all those who do not believe this Biblical truth because they are truly without hope. The older I get, the more I anticipate being with the Lord forever. It will be glorious, beyond what I can think or imagine. It is normal that those left behind will grieve, but they also have hope of seeing their loved ones again in Heaven. “Ever be with the Lord” is not just a Biblical phrase. It’s the hope that I cling to as I face every challenge of being elderly, complete with aches and pains and a body that is breaking down, just as it is supposed to. I just read about the death of Moses and was amazed that he seemed to be totally spry at death…clear vision and a spring in his step. After all, he was able to climb a mountain to see the Holy Land before he died. I’m not Moses, though, and my seventy year old body is weary. Nevertheless, I am called to keep on keeping on until the Lord calls me to my eternal rest. I pray that you have the same hope of eternity with the Lord. No pain, no sorrow, no tears. Just Heaven! As the song says, “I Can Only Imagine.”
I pray that God will bless and keep you today and give you the gift of hope and the refreshing presence of His Spirit guiding you in all your ways.
What’s Next?
Let’s assume that you have followed the Roman Road, confessed your sins and accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. So, what do you do next? Do you just return to life the way it has always been for you? The most important thing you can do is to establish a routine of reading your Bible and praying daily. The Bible is God’s instruction book for our lives and in it He tells us His expectations of us and His promises for us. Praying is simply talking to God. How long would you expect to have a relationship if you never talked to the person with whom you are trying to establish one? You need to get into the habit of talking to God daily, about little things, big things, everything. If it bothers you, talk to God about it. If it puzzles you, talk to God about it. If it pleases you and makes you happy, talk to God about it and tell Him how thankful you are. Then, after you have done your talking, sit quietly and wait for Him to talk to you. Sometimes, He speaks to me through a Scripture verse that He puts into my mind or a song that I recall or sometimes He just speaks to me to be still and let Him calm me and prepare me for the day. Regardless, give God a chance to speak to you so you don’t always have a a one-way conversation.
Here are some Scripture verses that were in my devotional this morning to encourage you along the way.
Reading your Bible is a good start, but you also need to put His Word into your heart and apply it to your own life. I call that meditation on God’s Word. For example, the first verse above, as I think about it, I ponder what it means to continue to live my life in Him. What are the daily choices I make that would please Him? Are there changes that I need to make in order to walk more closely with Him?
Ultimately, your life as a Christian is still filled with choices. Every day, I make the choice to read a certain book or watch a certain show, based on what its effect might be on my faith in Jesus. I know that no matter where I go or what I do, Jesus is with me now and I want to choose to do things and see things that are pleasing to Him. The choices are still ours to make. That’s why we have to be rooted in Him, dependent on Him to help us make the right choices. Will you mess up? Probably. We all do. But God’s love is so big that He forgives again and again. We just have to be honest with Him and tell him that we sinned again and ask for His forgiveness again. Be careful with that, though. You can’t plan to sin knowing that you will then ask for forgiveness later. That’s like a premeditated act of defiance against God. The sins we continue to commit because we all have a sin nature are from choices that we make without thinking of consequences for ourselves, our spiritual relationship with God and for others. I have found that it helps to pause and pray before I make choices. The pause is brief, the prayer is brief, but if I feel any hesitation at all about the choice, I save the choice for later and wait for God to lead me in the direction He wants me to go.
The Christian walk is just that, a walk that you start again daily. Sometimes, you may go off on the wrong path (sin), but when you pray, God will lead you back to where you should be. One of the things that will help you to persevere as the Scripture above says is to find a good, Bible-believing church and attend regularly. How do you do that? Well, you visit the pastor beforehand and ask about some of the church’s basic beliefs. If they have a firm foundation on God’s Word, it would be a good place for you to plug into to be nurtured with other Christians, some of them new to the faith just like you. I can’t tell you what a good church looks like or believes because that is up to the leading of the Holy Spirit inside you. Yes! Another promise! Jesus said that when He returned to the Father, He would send a new comforter, the Holy Spirit, who will lead and guide us in all things. So, when you pray, asking for a church to call home, ask for the guidance and leading of the Holy Spirit to help you find the place you should be. My husband and I have moved over 25 times (military family) and each time we move, the first thing we do is visit local churches and find one that meets our spiritual needs. When our children were at home (they are all grown now), we always chose a church that had programs for them because we knew it was important for them to be fed spiritually, too.
I hope that this rambling missive has been helpful and instructive. If you have questions, just ask me via the comments or my email address on the site. I have been where you are, many years ago, but I have been standing in your place, bewildered about how to move on with God. Just take the first step and He will meet you there and tell you what’s next.
God bless and keep each of you as you make choices that will glorify and honor our Lord and Savior.
How to Be Saved from Your Sins
A sweet online friend pointed out that I did not elaborate in my post yesterday about how to be saved. Thus, that is the theme of today’s post because I certainly want anyone who reads my blog and who needs salvation to come to the Lord in repentance and to be saved.
This is an astonishing promise! It doesn’t say that you have to walk right, talk right or be right. God makes you right with Him through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ.
The steps to take for salvation are easy to follow. They are commonly known as the “Roman Road” because the verses are found in the Book of Romans. There are no special words to say or a sinner’s prayer that you have to utter. In fact, the words, “sinner’s prayer” are not in the Bible. You just have to believe that Jesus died for you, confess that you are a sinner to Him and accept His free gift of salvation.
Here are the accompanying Scripture verses to ponder in your hearts as you face the choice of eternal life with God:
Not Good Enough
Part of our message in church yesterday was that we cannot be good enough to save ourselves from eternity in hell. Before I became a Bible-believing, Jesus-confessing Christian, I thought that I was a pretty good person. I didn’t do too many bad things and I generally felt bad and apologized quickly when I did offend someone. I didn’t kill or steal or destroy things, so I thought I was okay. Then, one night when I was alone and reading the Book of John, I was convicted that I am a sinner, saved by grace and that God had to send His Son into the world for die because of my sins. Well, really the whole world’s sins, but He died for me! I discovered almost fifty years ago that I would never be good enough to have a relationship with God without Jesus as my Intercessor.
No matter how much we think that we are doing right, even when we are doing things that we think are for God, we are not good enough to have a relationship with Him without Jesus forming the bridge between us. God established His plan of salvation from the beginning of the world. I am not wise enough to understand how God knew from creation that he would need to send His Son to save us all from our sins, but Genesis 3:15 is called the proto-evangelical verse because in it God says, speaking to the serpent in the garden: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.” (MEV) On the day of Jesus’s crucifixion, part of this Scripture came to pass, when Jesus was nailed to the cross. Satan thought he had finally won the war, but Jesus rose again and showed to Satan and all of mankind that the ultimate victory is His. God knew we need a Savior, yet so many are still lost in their sins, thinking that they are good enough and they just want to live their own lives without any “interference” from God. God doesn’t want to interfere in your life, my friends. He wants to bless it beyond what you can ever imagine. Furthermore, He wants to spend eternity with you. But, as the old saying goes, the ball is in your court now. You have to choose to believe that you are not good enough and that you need a Savior to be saved from your sin. Your eternal destiny depends on your own choice, so choose wisely!
God So Loved by We The Kingdom
Have a blessed day and remember to make choices that promote God’s kingdom, not your own.
He Is Risen!
Christ the Lord Is Risen Today-The Tabernacle Choir
A Day of Waiting
bible.com/bible/113/psa.130.5.NIVUK
The somber day of Jesus’s crucifixion is done. The celebration of His Resurrection is yet to happen. What do we do on this Holy Saturday? Like the disciples, we wait. Unlike them, on that day after His death, we know that the future is bright because of His empty tomb. The disciples had to be terrified that they, the ones closest to the Messiah, would also be arrested, tortured and put to death. They scattered and hid because they had lost their shepherd. We have the hope that they did not have and know that Sunday is coming! We put our hope in God’s Word, waiting with expectation for the next great thing He will do in our lives to show His love for us. He already did the greatest thing possible when He sacrificed His Only Son for our sins. How can we not believe in His great love for us?
Have a blessed day as you reflect on the sacrifice of the Lord and wait for the celebration of the Resurrection Day.
Jesus’s Sacrifice
Since it is Holy Week, all of my devotional material is focused on Jesus and His death, burial and resurrection, just as it should be, of course. In keeping with that theme, that is my focus this week.
There is absolutely nothing we could ever do to be righteous enough to stand before the Lord on our own merits. We were not saved by our own works but rather by the sacrificial blood of Jesus. But He didn’t stop there. He also renews us daily by His Holy Spirit. Accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior means entering into a relationship with a God who held out His hand to us first, expecting nothing in return, and who made the ultimate sacrifice for our benefit. I think that often when I plan to do something for someone, my selfish thoughts first go to how a certain action will affect me. God just sent His Only Son to die for us, without a single selfish thought.
Our response to the sacrifice of Jesus is to devote ourselves to doing good. No, good works don’t save us! Jesus does! The good works are our response to having Him live in our hearts. Our lives are only productive if we are meeting the needs of others instead of only focusing on self.
The excuse that many use for not doing good is that others will ridicule us because of our position as Christians. A younger me shied away from helping others publicly because I didn’t want anyone to notice me. But Jesus was not ashamed of me when He went to the cross willingly. There is nothing that I can do for others to ever compare to what Jesus did for me. So, ridicule is nothing. Being called names online…nothing. Being ostracized from certain unbelieving family members…nothing. Yes, my beliefs might be considered radical to some. After all, I believe in a risen Savior who died that I might live eternally with Him! But isn’t that what His sacrifice on the cross was all about? His entire life was focused on doing God’s will and fulfilling the destiny that He knew God the Father had established for Him. Can I do any less than seek God’s will and do it, regardless of peer pressure?
May you have a quiet day of meditation and reflection about all the Lord has done for you and all He is still doing for you daily. God bless you!
Rejoicing During Holy Week
There are many praise songs about Resurrection Week, so I didn’t know what to choose to share with you. Instead, here are some favorite Scriptures praising the Lord. Take time to meditate on God and how truly great He is, not for what He has done for you personally, but just because He is God and worthy to be praised.
Vickie's Book Nook and Meditation Corner 