Keep Looking UP!

 

  "The disciples came to Him privately, saying, “what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3)

     Today people are in a frenzied panic, clearing grocery store shelves of toilet paper, hand sanitizer and water because they are looking only at the immediate looming problem; albeit a global pandemic. 

     I won't even mention the name of the specific virus because everyone on the planet has already heard it repeated every five seconds on the news and Internet.

     Yesterday I was getting freaked out a little by the local and national state of emergencies being issued. Not because I'm afraid of getting sick, or even dying. What scares me are hordes of crazy people with guns robbing people and invading our homes looking for food and toilet paper. That's the real Zombie Apocalypse.

     Seriously though, we who belong to Jesus Christ should not live in fear, even in frightening times such as these. Why? Because God has promised us some amazing promises:

"These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

     And this: 

“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.” (John 14:1-4)

     And:

"Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand." (Isaiah 41:10)

     Read the entire Bible—the Letter from my Father—and you will find thousands of comforting and encouraging promises from God to His people.

     Besides all that, God told us in advance of the signs of the times signaling the end of the age, and His Second Coming. So while things like the current pandemic are very alarming, we shouldn't be caught by surprise when they do occur. Here Jesus talks about the specific signs preceding His return:

"And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows." (Matthew 24:6-8)

'Hundreds of millions of desert locusts swarmed into Kenya from Ethiopia and Somalia, decimating farmland, threatening the food supply of tens of millions' (National Geographic, 2/14/2020).

'The national Earthquake Information Center now locates about 20,000 earthquakes each year, or approximately 55 per day.' (www.usgs.gov)

'Rumors of wars' with Iran and North Korea flood the news and Internet on a continuing basis.

"115 Million people are on the brink of starvation worldwide.' (UN, 4/12/2019)

     Jesus warned His people of the signs of the times that will signal the end of the age and His Second Coming. Knowing that, we should be aware of these things and be looking up, excitedly anticipating His return!

     When we allow ourselves to focus on, get distracted and bogged down by, and even afraid of the things happening in this fallen world today, we take our eyes off Jesus and His promises in the Bible. 

     And that is not a good witness to the sea of lost souls all around us.

     In troubled times we who put faith in Christ should be people who are living in confidence in our Savior, loving one another, full of hope, ready to help, loving the unlovable. Forgiving those who wrong us. 

     People are watching us. Seeing how we react to the times we are living in. How we respond to trouble in our lives. Are we walking what we talk? 

     Point people to Jesus Christ. The whole world needs the Savior. 

     Scary times like we are living in tend to bring the people to their knees who were once so self confident and who didn't previously see their need for God.

     God is calling them.

     But they won't know the Gospel unless we share it with them.

"How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written:

“How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!” (Romans 10:14-15)

—God is Love and Love Never Fails.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/173437120X/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=a+letter+from+my+father&qid=1581637434&s=books&sr=1-6

A Letter From My Father Published

My new book, "A Letter From My Father" has been over 45 years in the making.

However, I first wrote about that specific topic here on my blog on July 29, 2018.

Writing a book has been a dream of mine since I was a kid. It became a greater desire when I had a creative writing class for summer school in my senior year of high school in 1977.

I loved reading Hemingway's short stories of Nick Lyons fly fishing for trout in Big Two-Hearted River. My writing teacher had a wonderful gift of seeing the potential in each of her students and carefully encouraging it out of us.

While it has been my life-long dream to write a book someday, I didn't think it would ever actually happen. It just seemed too far out of reach. I think it's that nagging voice from the past that tries to tell you, "You'll never be good enough."

When God led me to start this little blog in 2010 He began to help me find my voice. And though it's clearly evident I'm not an English major, I love to pour my heart for God out in my writing, such as it is.

Several of my friends encouraged me over the years to write a book, even to possibly compile this blog into some sort of a book. I will be eternally grateful to all of you for all of your prayers, patience and encouragement along the way.

My own father wrote me a vignette of personal letters, the last of which was much the inspiration for writing my book.

My passion and desire for the book is that many will come to know God as their Everlasting Father; personally and intimately. I believe God did not give us His Word just so that we can 'know the Bible cover to cover'.

He gave us the Bible so that we can know Him.

Anyway, please read the book for yourself. I'd love to hear your comments and reviews.

Please note; I am in no way lessening the importance of studying the Scriptures. On the contrary, I believe it is exponentially more important to study God's Word as His letter to us, and not as one would study a college textbook. His Letter to us is alive. It's personal. It's intimate. It's powerful. It's prophetic. It's eternal.

My early years of trying to study the Bible like I did a text book never really brought me much closer to a closer relationship with God.

The book is available in paperback on Amazon.com. And in e-book edition in the Kindle Store.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/173437120X/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=a+letter+from+my+father&qid=1581637434&s=books&sr=1-6

To God the Father be all glory!



—God is Love and Love Never Fails.

To Whom We Must Give Account

 "And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account." (Hebrews 4:13)

What does that verse really say to you?

What is that going to look like when we each stand before God and give an account of our life?

Our sins have been washed away by the blood of Jesus. We're under the covering of God's grace. We are eternally saved.

But we still have to give Jesus an account of our life.

I would be dishonest if I said I wasn't a little afraid of that day.

Because I know the things I've done since I became a Christian. Some things I'm not proud of. Things I'm even ashamed of. How can I stand before the God of grace who willingly hung on a cross and died a brutal death on my behalf so that all my sins could be forgiven forever and tell Him of all the ungodly things I did as a Christian? How will I be able to bring myself to utter those words? Confess to all the shameful things I did in His sight?

It gives me great pause to number my remaining days and consider my ways in the few years I have left in this present life.

What things do I spend the majority of my time and resources on? What issues am I most passionate about? What am I known for?

What will be my legacy?

What about you? 

What is the hill that you will die on? The things you're the most passionate and outspoken about? 

Now put all that in the context of the Day you stand before Jesus at the Judgment Seat of Christ for believers, where you will give an account to Him of every deed you did in the body, both good and bad.

"Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad." (2 Corinthians 5:9-10)

Kind of puts things in a new perspective, does it not?

-God is Love and Love Never Fails.

And When You Pray

 "Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us." (1 John 5:14)

What is the right way to pray?

And how can I know that God will give me what I pray for?

You can't, really. 

I know that's probably not the answer you wanted to hear. But as we just read in the verse above from 1 John 5:14 God only gives us that which we ask of Him if it is "according to His will."

That verse is the sifter by which every other bible verse on prayer must first be poured through.

The opposite would be if we ask anything that is not according to God's will He does not hear us, or give it to us.

This truth must be settled in our hearts.

It doesn't matter how much you believe what you pray, or how loudly you claim it as yours. If it's not God's will, you're not getting it from Him.

Now that doesn't mean that God won't give you an answer when you pray. But the answers are going to typically be one of the following:

1. "No."

2. "Yes."

3. "Wait."

The fact is we rarely know what God's perfect will is when we ask Him for something. 

You might pray and ask Him for a new job because you aren't making as much money as you feel you're worth and because you cant stand your boss because he's an arrogant narcissist. But God's will may actually be for you to stay in that job until you learn to be content with your wages and you learn to submit to the authority you have been placed under, no matter how painful it is.

God begins His life-long process of sanctification in us from the moment we are born again: setting us apart for holiness and for His purposes in our life. Sanctification is a refining fire of sorts. God is getting us ready for Heaven. Shaping us into new people who are not earth bound by our lust and love for the things in it. Like it or not, He is helping us loose our grasp on the temporary things of earth that do not satisfy us. They only bog us down and hold us back.

When I pray, I pray from a position of relationship: God is my Father. He made me to be his son. And I ask my Father to help me, to heal me, to provide for me, whatever I need. To fix situations. And then I completely trust Him with the outcome.

For a sizeable portion of the modern Christian community I think they believe if they just want it bad enough, ask for it hard enough, and believe it strongly enough, that whatever they pray for the answer will always be "yes." But God says that His thoughts are not our thoughts, and our ways are not His ways. Sometimes we humans think that we know what God's perfect will is. But we don't. Not very often anyway.

Most of the time I don't know exactly how I should pray. So I'll usually say, "Father in Heaven I pray that Your good and perfect will be done in this situation, in the name of Jesus. Amen." You are never wrong when you pray that prayer.

Look at the Lord's Prayer by Jesus Himself. He didn't pray a lot of specifics. That prayer lasts only a few seconds. And He covers all the bases. That's a great model for how we should pray. But the part where He says, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." (See Matthew 6:10) That pretty much covers everything and it's all about what God's will is. 

Even when Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane that the cup of suffering from the Cross would be taken from Him, He said; "Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done." (See Luke 22:42)

I actually think it's a great blessing that when I pray certain prayers and they don't get answered with a "yes." Because then I know it wasn't God's will for that specific prayer to get answered in the way I had hoped. 

But think about it; God alone knows the end from the beginning, He knows all things, He created all things, He holds all things together by the word of his power, He knows the future, He has a perfect plan for humanity: for the world, for heaven, for eternity. So praise God that He doesn't give us everything we pray for. I know that if He gave me everything I've ever asked for my life would be a mess.

'Modern Christianity' has set many up to fail with this promise of a 'Happy Little Christian Life' where we get everything that we want and everything always goes smoothly. But that's a myth, not reality. In the Bible, God never promised us that. A lot of people who are in the 'name and claim it' camp like to quote the passage where Jesus says, "If you say to this mountain be removed and cast into the sea it will be given you." But how many people in the history of humanity since the days of Jesus have ever spoken to a mountain and it was recorded as being plucked up and cast into the sea? Not one that I know of. 

My faith (trust) is not in my faith. I have no faith in my ability to trust perfectly all of the time. All of my faith, all of my trust, is in God and His absolute ability to do His own will. 

So I can be confident and rest in Him whenever I pray. 

I don't have to worry about if He's going to bless my sales, my finances, or my job. He might. He might not. His will might be for me to fail again because I need humbling, and because like most people, too often I think I can trust in my own self dependence.

Even great man of faith the Apostle Paul prayed and got a response that he probably did not expect.

"And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9)

He's a Good Father and He knows what's best. His grace is sufficient us.

Trust in God.


—God is Love and Love Never Fails.