Will you?

Will you?
Billy Graham asked the question,
“The great question of our time is, 'Will we be motivated by materialistic philosophy or by spiritual power?”
     Billy Graham.
I live in what I believe is perhaps the most materialistic society on earth, North America.     Each day you are inundated with thousands of images and words wanting us to buy the latest gadget. The advertisers tell us that this thing or that thing will make our life easier.
People are drowning in debt because they swallowed the mantra of buy now pay later. People work long hours, take work home with them, all to have enough money to have "the good life".
Now there’s nothing wrong with having money, with being rich and having all the latest gadgets. Money and the things it buys are not sinful in themselves. Many of the things we buy do in fact make our life easier.
The trouble comes when we want them so badly we become obsessed with them. So much so they become our god. Which in both North America and the western world materialism has become to some degree.
The apostle Paul talking to Christians said,
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” 
                                                                                        1 Timothy 6:10.
He’s right. The love of money has driven people to crime in various forms. It’s caused people to loose everything.
Many people go bankrupt because of their obsession with getting things.
The trouble with materialism is it cannot fill the true need of the human heart. Only God can do that.
Many men have reached the end of their life to find it filled with a kings ransom in material riches only to realize that they are lacking and empty inside.
Likewise I have met people who have little more than the clothes on their back, that have had a rich fulfilling life. They have looked forward on their death bed to an eternity in heaven with Christ.
Where do you stand?
Jesus said,
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” 
                  John 10:10.
He also said,
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 
                                                        Matthew 11:28-30.
I have found Christ’s words to be true. Yes I have some of the latest gadgets but they are not first in my life.
First place in my life goes to God. Who is the author and finisher of my faith.
I have found that with Christ in my life my life is rich and fulfilling. I also know that with God in my life, I have life everlasting with God in heaven.
Question: Where is your faith?
Please Think about it.

What the world needs

What the world needs.

“Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole  duty  of man. 
For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
     Ecclesiastes 12:13,14.
Abba Hillel Silver wrote,
“Faith in God is the strongest bulwark of a free society.  Human freedom began when men became conscious that over and above society and nature there is a God who created them...who fashioned them in His likeness, and that they are, therefore, possessed of intrinsic and independent significance and are endowed, as individuals, with original and irrevocable rights and authority”.
                                                                                                                                    Abba Hillel Silver
As I look at our society I see an increasingly secular society that is not meeting the spiritual and emotional needs of the individual. They have increasingly turned from God.
Western society seems to me to feed the masses materialism and there is nothing wrong with materialism in balance. The things we want are not evil in themselves.
They however fail to meet man’s real needs, his spiritual need. And man most definitely has a spiritual dimension.
People may deny their need for God or the fact that God exists but it doesn’t eliminate the fact that man has a deep need that only God can fill.
The words of Jesus are as relevant today as they were when he said them. The  Matthew’s gospel recording Jesus as saying,
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 
                                                Matthew 11:28-30
I believe our society as a whole is destined to fail if the spiritual dimension in the individual is not met and mankind fails to turn to God.
Please think about it.

The Beginning of Wisdom

The beginning of wisdom

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise.” 
                                                       Psalm 111:10.
Mankind left to his own devices would have wiped himself out centuries ago. If it were left to survival of the fittest it would be the most vicious that dominated and would lead to the extinction of the human race,
Mankind needs a moral code to live by. I cannot believe primitive man suddenly sat down with representatives of every tribe and wrote a moral code. Which thinking logically would have had to happened. For if even one group refused to live by something as simple as do not kill while the others did. Those who did not believe in do not kill would potentially dominate the world. They would simply wipe out the others,
Mankind needs a moral code to survive.
Abba Hillel Silver wrote,
“Faith in God is the strongest bulwark of a free society.  Human freedom began when men became conscious that over and above society and nature there is a God who created them...who fashioned them in His likeness, and that they are, therefore, possessed of intrinsic and independent significance and are endowed, as individuals, with original and irrevocable rights and authority.”
                                                                                                                                    Abba Hillel Silver.
God has placed in the hearts of all men what is right and wrong. It is only when men decide to turn away from what is right and wrong that problems occur.
That is what happened in World War two. Hitler and his henchmen convinced a country of very cultured people that some ethnic groups were sub human and not worthy of life. Thus the holocaust was permitted to happen.
Today men claiming to be followers of God are beheading, torturing and murdering people simply because they disagree with them. These men are not followers of God. They are as bad if not worse than the Nazis of world war two.
I firmly believe there is a need to turn to God. To turn to the teachings of Jesus who said,
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  
But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  
that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  
If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?  
 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?”
Matthew 5:43-47 
Jesus who answered the question,
 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 
Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  
This is the first and greatest commandment.  
And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  
All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” 
                                                                                             Matthew 22:37-40.
If we are following these teachings of Jesus we cannot go wrong. What Jesus said by any standards is the right thing to do.
I believe that if more people, from the leaders of our countries, to the leaders of the terrorist groups around the world, to the individual on the street, would follow the teaching of Love for God, ones fellow man and even ones enemy, our world would be a better place.
Please think about it.

A Fragrance

A Fragrance

“For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.  
To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?”
2 Corinthians 2:15,16
There are two kinds of people that hear the message of Christ those who smell the sweet aroma of life everlasting through accepting Christ Jesus as their saviour and those who see it as the smell of death, those who reject Christ.
The apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians in a previous letter wrote,
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
                               1 Corinthians 1:18.
  Christians are entrusted with a sacred duty to present the two options all people have to accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour of their lives or to reject Him. Jesus said,
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.  Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son." 
                                                                                                             John 3:16-18.
Christian teaching is black and white. Either you accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour and go to heaven or you do not. There is no in between.
C. S. Lewis wrote,
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” 
                                                                                                              C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
The choice however is up to the reader.
I would urge anyone who is truly seeking the truth about God to pray and ask Him to show you the truth.
I would ask you read the New Testament read carefully the first four books, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and see what Jesus and others said about him. Then make up your own mind.
Please think about it.

Of Jesus

Of Jesus
“The unique impression of Jesus upon mankind - whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of the world - is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion.  Jesus belonged to the race of prophets.  He saw with open eyes the mystery of the soul.  One man was true to what is in you and me.  He, as I think, is the only soul in history who has appreciated the worth of man.”
                                                                                                                  Ralph Waldo Emerson
I don’t know if Emerson was a Christian but he is right when he states, “He, as I think, is the only soul in history who has appreciated the worth of man.”
Jesus did know the full worth of man because he is God and he created man. He wanted man to have fellowship with Him.
In our world today life is cheap. Murder on and industrial scale has been going on since before the twentieth century. The twentieth however put murder in the form of war into overdrive and the carnage continues as we enter the twenty-first century.
The carnage on a lesser scale also happens in the form of murders by individuals on the streets of our cities. Crime is everywhere.
Some people within our society have no fear of the law. Their conscience seems to be non-existent. They to steal, murder, rape and kill at will.
 Abba Hillel Silver wrote,
“Faith in God is the strongest bulwark of a free society.  Human freedom began when men became conscious that over and above society and nature there is a God who created them...who fashioned them in His likeness, and that they are, therefore, possessed of intrinsic and independent significance and are endowed, as individuals, with original and irrevocable rights and authority.”
           Abba Hillel Silver
The more our society becomes more secularized and God is taken out of it or as in the case of groups like ISIS the morals of God are twisted the worse our society becomes.
Our society needs moral absolutes and unless we the inhabitants of Planet Earth turn back to God’s absolutes I’m afraid our society will eventually spiral down to anarchy or end in hell.
Think about it.

I Believe

I Believe

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: 
a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, 
a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, 
a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, 
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, 
a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, 
a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, 
a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.” 
                                                                               Ecclesiastes 3:2-8
The writer of Ecclesiastes is right. There is a time for everything. You don’t have to be a wise man to necessarily realize this. The writer is just stating the obvious. There is a time and a season for everything.
In my sixty years on this earth I have seen and experienced a lot. Everything from war, to the death of loved ones, to serious illnesses of both my wife and myself.
I have felt the joy of the birth of my children and been amazed as they grew to manhood going on to serve their Lord and Saviour.
I have rejoiced and danced at the wedding of my son. Praising God for the love he and his wife have for each other.
And through it all I am amazed at the Love God has shown to both me and my family.
In our life we have had more than our share of tragedy, the near death of one of my sons,  A serious injuries to another that could have crippled him for life. 
Both my wife and I almost dying in separate incidents just months apart. A diagnosis of Bipolar disorder that did change my life forever. Even a house fire that took all our earthly possessions.
Yet through it all I can truly praise God. Even when we lost our house, on which we had no insurance, we never went homeless. There was one waiting for us, in a better location no less.
God is truly good.
After the loss of our house we were also able to attend a wonderful bible based evangelical church. A family place in which we could bring up our children.
It was a place my wife and now our sons can serve the Lord. And that for my family and I that is important.
The events of my life have for me proven there is a loving God who cares for the individual. Who cares for those love him.
I know there are many out there that would deny God exists but I cannot believe this. I believe the word of the apostle John who wrote,
"Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—  children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God". 
                         John 1:12,13.
I believe the writer of the Apostles creed who wrote,

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,

      who was conceived by the Holy Spirit

      and born of the virgin Mary.

      He suffered under Pontius Pilate,

      was crucified, died, and was buried;

      he descended to hell.

      The third day he rose again from the dead.

      He ascended to heaven

      and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.

      From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

      the holy catholic* church,

      the communion of saints,

      the forgiveness of sins,

      the resurrection of the body,

      and the life everlasting. Amen.

(*that is, the true Christian church of all times and all places)
I believe the writer of Ecclesiastes was right when he said,
“Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole  duty  of man. 
For God will bring every deed into judgement, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
   Ecclesiastes 12:13,14
For me there is no debate. What you the reader believes is entirely up to you. It is my prayer that you at least examine the Bible and make up your own mind. Still ultimately belief in God is an act of faith.
Think about it