For Christ or Yourself

               There has been something eating at me for the last few weeks and I have been praying about whether or not I should share this with those who read this blog, and the decision that I have been led to is that it is something that should be addressed. I warn you before you start reading, I am going to be frank in the writing and it might offend some who read it, remember that at anytime you have to option to stop reading or to continue.

                I have been trying to come to terms with why it is so hard for people to believe and make the decision to accept Christ into their lives and become a believer and receive their salvation. I know from personal experience that it is so much harder to fight the Love that God puts into your heart and accept Christ than to just completely submit to that same Love and live your life for Christ and God.

John 3:16

“For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.”

    

Think about that verse right there, in the Old Testament God was exact and unforgiving in his decisions. If you disobeyed him you usually died or had some sort of really bad thing happen to you. With the coming of His One and Only Son that brought a changing of the times so to speak. God had put his Son on this world to teach us about God and show us the way to our Salvation. Yet people still didn’t believe and His own people crucified him. The above verse though says it plain enough; all you have to do to receive your salvation is believe in Him. Why do people find this to be so difficult? For me I think the problem for most people is the complete submission to the Lord that gets people stumbled up. I was one of those people as a matter of fact. What I can tell you is that once I made that leap and just submitted my whole life and everything in it to the Lord, I now have a feeling of spiritual completeness that I never had in my life. My whole life I always felt as if something was missing and after 36 years I finally found it.

Colossians 2:6-12


“Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus in the Lord, walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, just as you were taught, overflowing with gratitude. Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elemental forces of the world, and not based on Christ. For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ, and you have been filled by Him, who is the head over every ruler and authority.”

So let’s say that you are one of the people out there who believe in God and in Jesus but have not found your salvation because you are too scared or stubborn to submit your life to the Lord, what are you waiting for? I caution you though because receiving your salvation is not the end of the race, it is just the beginning. Receiving Christ into your heart starts the longest, hardest, and most rewarding race of your life. From the moment you accept Christ into your heart it is your duty to live your life for Christ and do everything to Glorify the Lord through your actions. This is not a onetime deal but a lifetime decision to do everything that you do to Glorify the Lord. I deal with this everyday in my life and in my family’s life. My wife and I are now constantly vigilante to ensure that everything that we are doing is being done to Glorify the Lord, and reinforcing this concept in our children as well.



Colossians 3:16-17

 “Let the message about the Messiah dwell richly among you, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, and singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

My family has definitely taken the saying in the Word, under the Word, and in Prayer, to heart and put it to use in our everyday lives. We read the Word every day; Sometimes on our own, but also as a family. It is my responsibility as the spiritual leader of the house to ensure that my Children are doing this and we have Bible study at home to accomplish this. We study the Word every day in the home and EVERY opportunity that presents itself at the Church. Wednesday nights we attend our Thrive group at the Church and Sundays our entire day is dedicated to the Lord and the Church. We attend our Bible study, followed up with the Church Service, and completed with our night of AWANA. Lastly we are always in Prayer every day. We have submerged our lives into the Word of the Lord and the Church. There is not much that we do now that doesn’t involve the Church and I am not sure that our faith with be as strong as it is without the Church. You see you can’t have one without the other. You can have all the intentions of bringing Christ into your life, but if you stop at your salvation and then decide that that was all you had to do, it is much harder to grow spiritually. The Church has provided a place where we can worship our Lord with others that we Love and has provided a place to where we can continue to learn more about the Word each time we go in to the House of the Lord. If you are just attending Church to get that once a week feeling of spiritual relief, I challenge you to extend yourself out more and attend every event that your Church offers. I promise you that you will feel more spiritually complete and you will be built up stronger for it. If you refuse to do this or don’t think you need to, if you find yourself making excuses continuously for why you can’t be there, maybe you should ask yourself this question; am I just Playing Church? Thank you for reading and God Bless.

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Obedience

Obedience

Exodus 19: 5

Now if you will listen to Me and carefully keep my covenant, you will be My own possession out of all the peoples, although all the earth is Mine

                When you see the word obedience in your normal everyday life a lot of different things come to mind as to what that can mean. Some see or hear the word and do the exact opposite; they relate obedience to submission and become immediately defiant against what they are being told to do. As a Christian I have learned that when God puts something on your heart and leads you in the direction that you should go that it is my responsibility to be obedient and do His will. Some things here recently in my life that have come up are perfect examples of this.

                I have been going to college on-line now for about 6 years I think. My level of dedication to this adventure had been minimal due to a few factors in life that I would love to blame, but I am starting to understand it was because I never had a true direction with what I wanted to do or was being led to do. I started my degree in criminal justice with a minor in forensics, then when it was apparent that I would not be able to be a police officer because of my disabilities I switched to homeland security. That did not last so long as I lost interest in it, I then kicked around the thought of going through nursing school, and then quickly switched over to business management. I was kind of just floating out there. It wasn’t until I had accepted Christ that I had that overwhelming sense of direction laid upon my heart. That is when I realized I wanted to study everything that I could about Christianity and our Lord and the Ministry. Since I had obeyed what was put on my heart everything has been pretty much gravy from there. Sure there was the speed bump with Moody Bible Institute but I now know that was Gods way of telling me he had a different direction and school for me to attend. This was even more reinforced last week when I was talking to my mother and it finally donned on her what I was going to college for and that I was going to be pursing spreading Gods word and working toward becoming a pastor. The first thing that she said was that there was going to be no money in it, it was hard for me to explain to my mother that this decision has nothing to do with money or fame or acclaim, but that it was something that was put on my heart and I had no other choice that to obey what I was being led to do.

                My professional life here recently has given me some very interesting opportunities as well. I have had the chance to apply for higher paying positions that would help out in my house financially. Given the opportunity to make a good amount of money in a short period of time which would help to financially take care of my family. The problem was that with each one of these opportunities it would have affected my schooling. Although they each looked so good when I first heard about them, after talking to my better half and us praying about these situations it just was not what God has in store for me. It is clear that school is what I need to be focusing on and I will not let anything material get in the way of that.

                Most recently I have the opportunity to be a part of a team that will help to expand our Church growth and reach other people in the community. Reach, Share, and Serve is the focus for my Church body/ family and it is definitely more than just a motto to my family. My children thoroughly enjoy the S.O.U.L. program this summer and love helping people. My wife and I pour all our time into whatever our Church might need, whether it is in Children’s Church, the Nursery, AWANA, or media we are here to serve the Lord in whatever way He commands us. With this new project that my Church has going we were asked to pray over whether or not we would like to participate. I have been praying and I have made the decision to obey what has been put on my heart and to commit myself to this project. I know that this is the direction I am supposed to go, through this project not only will I be able to help Grow my Church body, but I will be able to Reach, Share, and Serve the community, and I will also continue to grow spiritually through this process. The whole time doing this being able to Glorify God through my faith with my works.

                So as a Christian I my views on obedience are fairly simple. I said at the beginning that obedience is a responsibility but let me correct that by stating that obedience to God is not a responsibility but as a Christian it is my Duty to be obedient. Thank you for reading and God Bless.

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Child Salvation

Coming to the Cross

            Well let me tell you something, this week has been an exciting and spiritually fulfilling week not only for myself, but for my entire family. If you are a parent and have not had the opportunity to be an active part in one of your children coming to Christ, you are missing out on something huge. This weekend our son Gregory made that leap of faith and accepted Christ as his Savior, but I can tell you it was a process that my wife and I had felt and seen coming for weeks now I believe. There is nothing material in this world I would have rather experienced than him coming to Christ and I could not be happier for him.

            The signs are really kind of subtle but in your face if you have a child who is seeking to give their life to Christ. As a parent, there are a plethora of situations throughout your children’s lives that you are expected to be ready to handle. One of those situations that I found out I was not ready to handle properly was guiding my child to the Lord. You see I think that Gregory had done everything he could to let me know what he wanted and was looking for me to confirm that for him and I just kept missing the early signs.

            About a month ago or maybe more, I was in the pool cleaning and vacuuming my son just came out and said to me “dad guess what, I just prayed to God to forgive me for my sins and to help make me a better person.” Do you know what I did? I blew him off is what I did. Looking back now, I truly think that this was the moment that my son took Jesus into his heart and found his salvation. He was not prompted in any way to come out and say that to me, it was just something that was on his heart that he wanted to share and I didn’t catch it and missed my chance at that time. From that moment on Gregory’s attitude towards the Word and Jesus had changed.

            Soon after the pool incident, my wife and I started to know a steady spiritual growth in Gregory as the days and weeks progressed. They were subtle and things that you can write off as a child being a child, but now that we look back at it they were the things we should have been picking up on. Gregory was all of a sudden extremely focused on saying grace at the table, wanting to learn more about the Bible and Jesus, and was periodically just jazzed up by some of the music that our worship band would play. I remember one Saturday in particular during the bands rehearsal my son telling me how much he loved one of the songs that was played, when I asked him “why” he told me “because it talks about Jesus and I love Jesus.”

            This past week we enrolled Gregory in the connect class for our Church to let him learn more about Jesus and his personal relationship with Him. I also started to conduct a Bible study with the kids at night; it was during this Bible study last Friday that it finally hit me that I hadn’t been listening to my son. I asked Gregory to open us up in prayer and noticed that he was praying specifically to become a Christian by the end of the month. He was associating the act of becoming a Christian with the completion of this class from Church and Baptism alone. After the class I pulled him out to talk to Shannon and myself. We explained to him that becoming a Christian did not mean you had to complete a class and that it was something your heart will tell you when it is time. We also made the decision to have him talk to Mrs. Nicole at band practice in the morning.

            Mrs. Nicole did get a chance to speak with Gregory the next day, and confirmed what we had thought. Gregory was right there on the edge just waiting to make that leap. The one thing about Gregory is that he is intelligent and was thinking too much about this. I know that he was thinking about that eternal commitment to Christ and that he understood that giving control of his life over to the Lord meant changes in his life. This kind of slowed him down a little.

            This Sunday during service our family tried a new approach with our kids to attending the adult service. We took away the video games and had our children actually listen to the message being delivered by Pastor Greg. Well it went as expected causing my wife a lot of grief, since I was running the media booth and not sitting with her. About 10 minutes in I had to have Gregory come and sit with me in the booth. At this time I made him actually listen to the message and surprisingly he started taking notes. When the time came for the invitation I noticed that Gregory had gotten on his knees inside the booth and started praying. I explained to him at this time what the invitation period was for and asked him if he wanted to go to the front of the Church and pray at the Altar. He answered yes but asked if I would go with him. We went up and prayed and on the way back I asked him what he prayed for and he told me “for God to take away my sins and to take charge of his life.” I wasn’t going to miss this for a second time. I immediately asked him if he wanted to talk to Pastor Greg and have him say a prayer for him and Gregory said yes. It was all over from there, it was awesome watching Gregory answer the questions that Pastor Greg had for him. What was even better was seeing that he understood the gravity of the answers he was giving and he understood that he had to surrender to Christ and let Christ lead his life.

            This was one of the most spiritually satisfying experiences I have ever encountered. Watching him go through this process has strengthened my faith and my family is stronger for it. The Lords Kingdom is being built up strong in our family and God is our life. There is nothing we won’t do or are unwilling to do for Him and we will happily give everything we have for Him. Now onto Zachary who is being our stubborn hold out, but as it was pointed out to us, God knows when and where Zachary will feel it in his heart and realize that the only way to live is to live through Christ. Thank you for reading and God Bless.

1 John 3:18-20 Little children, we must not love with word or speech, but with truth and actions. This is how we will know we belong to the presence, even if our conscience condemns us, that God is greater than our conscience, and He knows all things.

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