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Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Peace of Mind: Where's the app for that


You may have seen the television commercial featuring a character by the name of "Mayhem" who goes about creating all kinds of trouble for his innocent, unsuspecting victims. After each disaster he causes, Mayhem is heard to say,
"If you had [blank] insurance you'd be protected from mayhem like me."
Most people buy insurance to protect them from the unexpected—a sudden illness, car accident, house fire, travel mishap, and even death. People live each day with the element of surprise hanging over their heads. They leave home each day, drive to work, drop the kids off at school, board buses, trains and planes to go about routine activities— all without any certainty or guarantee of how their day will end.

Like mayhem, there is a real life character who also preys upon the lives of people for no other reason than to harm or defeat us. His name is Satan. You may be familiar with his other names—the devil, the accuser, thief and the father of lies. The bible calls Satan "the god of this world" because he rules earth and is responsible for all the evil and wickedness in the world (2 Corinthians 4:4). You see his influence in people who steal, lie, cheat, quarrel, murder, bully and inflict harm on others (Romans 1:29-32). In the bible Satan is depicted as a roaring lion on the prowl looking for someone to attack (1 Peter 5:8).

Satan could care less whether you are a Christian, some other religion or no religion at all. He's an equal opportunity destroyer who hates God, and wants to destroy everything that God has created. But here's the Good News. the God of the bible provides an insurance policy against Satan's attacks backed by faith in his Son, Jesus Christ. The bible says that Jesus came into the world to destroy the power of the devil over humankind.

God's insurance policy comes with an ironclad guarantee that anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:13). The only stipulation is that you accept the salvation that Jesus' death and resurrection provides. God's insurance policy is activated by saying a simple prayer like this:
Jesus, I confess that I am a sinner. I believe you died on the cross for my sins. Please forgive my sins, come into my heart and help me live the rest of my life for you.  
If you recited the prayer and meant it with all your heart, starting now whenever mayhem strikes, you'll have peace of mind knowing God's got you covered.











Sunday, October 4, 2015

God with us

In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears.—Psalm 18:6 KJV

It should be a comfort, if you are a Christian, to know that God hears you. The question is—do you have faith enough to believe it? I encounter people all the time who say they are Christians but who are weak in the knees when it comes to believing God for what they need. They don't have confidence to approach God's throne of grace themselves so they ask others to do it for them— "Please pray for me." No question intercessory prayer is a powerful ally, but our personal prayers are what's needed to move God to act on our behalf. The Bible clearly states in James 5:16—
The earnest (heartfelt, continued) prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available [dynamic in its working].—AMP
With that kind of power right at our fingertips, prayer should be automatic in every situation we face. Nevertheless, God is gracious to answer our unspoken prayers as well as the prayers of others for us. Sometimes, when someone experiences an instant or miraculous answer to prayer, you know without a doubt that it came from God. At other times, He may delay the answer or give a partial answer so that we might labor in prayer until the answer comes.

God knows everything about us before we even open our mouths to tell him. He wouldn't be God if He didn't. He's the omniscient, omnipotent (all-knowing, all powerful) God, nothing is hidden from His sight. David wrote in Psalm 139:2—
Im an open book to you; even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back; I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say before I start the first sentence.
So, you ask, why pray if God knows everything? One reason is because God commands us to "pray without ceasing"... because this is the way God wants those who belong to Christ Jesus to live (1 Thessalonians 5:16). The other reason is our prayers unleash God's power into the situation. Angels spring into action at God's command to rescue believing Christians who cry out to Him. That's what prayer does. Here's a simple analogy: You have a car at your disposal to take you anywhere you want to go, at anytime. You have the keys to the car. But if you don't put them in the ignition and start the car, it will never do what it's suppose to do. It's the same with prayer—it works best when you use it.

A final thought, if God is ever present in a believer's life, then the reverse must also be true—the believer is always in God's presence. Now that's reason to rejoice and pray.

Note: If you are unsure of or want a closer relationship with the God of the Bible, you'll find help at Peace with God.

Friday, April 3, 2015

Jesus' resurrection takes the fear out of dying



Death is not a blind alley that leads the human race into a state of nothingness, but an open door which leads man into life eternal.— Dr Martin Luther King Jr

Several years ago, I was talking with a friend, and just happened to mention that a famous Broadway producer we met on a cruise had died. My friend looked straight at me and said, "I'm ready." I didn't realize what she meant until a few days later when I received a call that my friend had died. As shocking as the news was, I took comfort in the fact that she didn't fear death. You might say she looked forward to it because she was a Christian.

Christians die like everybody else, and often from all the bad things in this world that kill everybody else. The difference is when Christians die, they know they won't stay dead forever. According to Christian belief, anyone who believes in Jesus Christ will never really die. This truth is rooted in God's unshakable promise of eternal life to anyone who accepts his Christ.
For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 NLT
I haven't faced the moment of death personally, but I have been present when others have. You can tell a lot about a person by how they face the moment of death. Their last words, the look on their face say a lot about the kind of life they lived. For instance, some people curse God as they are dying, others make last-minute pleas for forgiveness, which God does honor.

And then, there are the true Christians. You can tell by the radiant look on their faces, as they lay dying, that they must see heaven open up and angels descending to take them home. When my mother died from MS at age 83, she had that look. I was happy for her, and I admit a little envious because I knew without a doubt she was heading for a place where she'd be more alive than she'd ever been in life. For the believer in Christ, death is the fulfillment of this scripture:
And we are not afraid but are quite content to die, for then we will be at home with the Lord. 2 Corinthians 5:8 TLB
Easter marks a sacred time on the Christian calendar because it symbolizes Christ's victory over death, and by association, the victory of every believing Christian. Essentially, that's what Jesus' resurrection means in a world of believers and non-believers. Refusing to believe doesn't change or negate the reality of what Jesus accomplished. The Scriptures tell his story:
Jesus died a physical death on the cross and was raised by God's spirit from the dead. Christ's resurrection is evidenced by the empty tomb in Jerusalem, by the written testimony of his disciples in the Gospels, and by the more than 500 sightings of others who encountered  Jesus after his resurrection prior to his ascension into heaven.
What Jesus did made death merely an event, not a dead end. Christ's resurrection took the sting out of death. No wonder Christians don't view death in the same way others do. Christians see death as a home-going. Christian songwriters write songs like Soon and Very Soon and I Can Only Imagine that celebrate the certainty of an afterlife. Christians know that one day they will see this Jesus, who died not only for their sins, but also for the sins of everyone. No one needs to hold onto a fear of death because Jesus is alive.
Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.  Romans 5:1 NLT

This post is dedicated to the family and friends of the 150 people who died tragically in the Ethiopian airliner crash (March, 2019), to those persons who lost friends and family in the Alabama tornado (March 2019) and to survivors of natural disasters and wars everywhere in the world.