Salvation found in Christ!

"Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. Unless one places their loyal trust in Jesus Christ that He in fact did die for our sins, was buried and did come back to life eternal three days later…unless one believes Jesus was and is who He said He was and is, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus told about the narrow path leading to the small gate. The small gate is Him and the narrow path leading to Him is the only way to heaven. Reference in Matthew.

The full and complete gospel is this:

-Starting with Adam, we have been a depraved people separated from God in need of salvation otherwise we all have been doomed from that time until today as a ruthlessly sinful people. As Scriptures tell us, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Furthermore, it is appointed that each person die once. After this is the judgement of God.

-God made a way though for our sins to be atoned for and forgiven through His Son Jesus Christ by voluntarily going to the cross for us and dying. This was determined by the grace of God. Grace is simply this…unmerited favor of God.

-However, the good news does not end there. Jesus did not stay dead. God brought Him back to perfect life in three days. He conquered death for us by rising from the grave. We celebrate this each year called Easter.

-The best news is that Jesus Christ sets at the right hand of the Father reigning as our Lord and King. He is there as the filter by which God the Father sees us. He cannot look upon sin, but Jesus made it possible for God to look at each of those He elected to be saved.

What does this mean for you? If you place your undivided loyal trust in Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior today, your eternity with God starts at that moment. We are immediately justified by Christ actions on the cross. The rest of our earthly life is our sanctification. But God will make sure His people endure to the end.

Realize this, not one of us will ever be good enough to enter the kingdom of heaven apart from Jesus Christ as our mediator between the Father and us. So, if you want help with this you can stop right where you are and place your trust in Christ today.

You must first admit before God you have been a sinner, that you cannot on your own merits gain salvation. Tell God with His intervention in your life you will forever change the sinful direction you are going now called repenting of our sins. Then tell Jesus you are trusting in Him today to save you and your are making Him the Lord of your life forever more. Thank Him for the salvation you just received. This must be done from a heart that is serious. It is not mouthing a prayer, it is not walking an isle to the front of a church, and it is not living a good life. Salvation is placing your true authentic trust in Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior. From this authentic life, you will ultimately desire to be holy and bring God glory with your life. Yes, we will make mistakes along the way, but our underlying desire is to please and obey God.

I would encourage you if you have trusted in Christ, to seek out a good Bible teaching and preaching church, read your Bible daily, and pray often.

Amen and congratulations to those who have given their life to God."

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Don't Wait!

When we put off forgiving others it is never a good thing. The regrets just mount up like piles of mud on our heart. A verse of Scripture crossed my path this morning and a wonderful little story to signify the purpose not to let your forgiveness be filed away for some other day.

Jesus reminded the people, "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins." -Mark 11:25 (TEV)

It was a cold winters evening when an older man in his seventies suffered a serious heart attack while shoveling snow from his sidewalk. He was immediately admitted to the local hospital. He was then treated at once in the emergency room to stabilize him and placed in the ICU room for observation.

Once the man gained his "where-abouts" he motioned for the nurse to come to his side. The nurse quietly asked, "Is there anything I can get for you?"

The man replied, "Can you call my daughter to simply let her know what has happened? She is the only family I have left in this world"

The nurse said she would and went to her desk to make the call.

As the nurse made the call the daughter answered the phone. Once hearing the news the daughter, Donna, became very upset at the news. The daughter nearly shouting into the phone while crying told the nurse, "You must not let him die. Dad and I had an argument over a year ago and I have not spoken to him since. My last words to him were "I hate you!" and I stormed out of his life. For nearly 15 months I have wanted to go back to him and beg his forgiveness, but just put it off. Please, don't let him die until I can get there to see him. I'll be there in about thirty minutes."

As the nurse hung up the phone and walked towards the patients room she notice the alarm going off in his room and staff from everywhere running into the man's room. He had gone into a full cardiac arrest. For nearly twenty minutes solid they tried everything from jump starting his heart to adrenaline in his veins, but nothing would revive him. The old man died just minutes before his daughter could arrive to see him.

As the nurse was cleaning up the area around the man's bed, she noticed the daughter outside talking to the doctor. She was visibly upset. The nurse went to speak with her to help console her. She could see the pain and anguish on the daughters face. A since of failure and hopelessness was welling up inside the daughter, Donna.

Donna began to explain how she never hated her daddy, but always wanted to be approved by him. She did not want to go another day without his forgiveness for their argument months before, but just never got around to going to see him. Now, it was too late. But she insisted on going in to him one last time.

The nurse thinking why put yourself through more anguish lead the daughter into the room. Donna walked on over to his side and buried her face into the sheets of the bed sobbing and crying loudly as she convulsed on the bedside.

The nurse trying not to watch this exhibition of anguish and sorrow noticed a piece of paper and pencil on the night table next to the bed. She made her way around to where it was and picked up the paper to read it. As she read it, tears began to roll down her own face and she handed it to the daughter to read. It was a quick and scribbled little note that read:

"My Dearest Donna, I do forgive you. I pray you will forgive me. I know that you love me. I love you too. -Daddy"

The story for these two ends here. The tragedy of guilt and shame of what could have been comes to mind here as we ponder the thought of forgiveness earlier in this father and daughter relationship. The simple answer to this story is "Don't wait!".

"Forgiveness is man's deepest need..." -Horace Bushnell

The ability to forgive is a gift from God and He intends we use our gifts everyday.

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Grace out of nowhere!

"The grace of God is His unmerited love for His people proven through the death, burial, and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ."

Ever thought much about the grace that brought you to the cross and delivered you into eternal salvation through Jesus Christ? I never thought much about the details, just always understood it was God's grace which is simply God's unmerited favor towards those who will Believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Well, this brings me to a little story I wanted to share.

A little over one hundred and fifty years ago in a rather large community of England a huge prospering church had started three smaller mission churches on the outskirts of town. These churches happened to be in the slums and more poor areas of the community. However, often they would gather at the mother church for one large communion service. People from every church would gather at one location to observe the sacraments of communion.

At the alter area where a communion rail was set up you would have former thieves, burglars, rapist, murderers, bankers, lawyers, doctors, housewives, etc all lined up observing communion together. On one particular special service event a young pastor observed two people taking communion side by side at the rail.

He knew the background behind both men. Neither of these men seemed to realize they were even next to each other at the communion rail. However, the pastor certainly did. You see the one on the left was a Supreme Court Judge out of England. Next to him was a former hardened criminal described further as a thief. This judge had sentenced this thief to several years in prison years before. Now, they are both at the same table, kneeling before the same God in communion.

The story goes on to tell us the burglar or thief once out of prison was converted to Christianity shortly after that. His life change was proven in the years of Christian work and the fact he had left the old life of being a thief behind.

After this particular service, the judge and the pastor were walking home together when the judge ask the pastor if he knew who was kneeling at the communion rail beside him on his right.

The pastor was stunned at the question, because he had assumed the judge hadn't noticed. "Yes I did", said the pastor, "but I didn't think you had noticed."

The two walked along in silence for several more minutes when the judge spoke, "What a miracle grace is."

The pastor replied with a simple, "Yes, what a wonderful grace."

The judge assuming the pastor did not understand his meaning asked, "But to whom do you refer?"

"Well, of course to the conversion of the thief!", the pastor confidently replied.

The judge quickly came back with, "I am not referring to the thief, I am speaking of myself."

The pastor stopped walking and with squinted eyes said, "You're thinking of yourself? I certainly don't understand what you are talking about."

The judge gently begin to explain, "Yes, I am referring to myself in this matter of grace. You see, it didn't cost the thief very much to get converted when he was released from prison. I am not downplaying his conversion, I am speaking of the amount of grace upon the thief. I mean, the thief had nothing but a history of burglary, stealing, thieving, and so on. He could only respond to Christ with a big YES when Jesus came calling him. He had nothing within himself to fall back on to keep him from it. But look at me and my life on the other hand. I was born into a family who were Believers, they brought me up in the church, they taught me from early on in my childhood to be truthful, not steal, to be an upstanding person in the community. I mean I went to Oxford University and received all these wonderful degrees eventually becoming a judge. So, pastor, I want you to understand that nothing but grace could save a person like me. Only the grace of God could make me admit I needed a Savior. Only grace could penetrate such a snobby heart to see that I was just as bad a sinner as any person I had put behind bars. Pastor, it took more grace to bring me to salvation than the thief I was kneeling beside at the communion service today."

Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this not from yourselves, it is a gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast."

Interesting view of the grace of God isn't it. Do you understand what it took to bring you to salvation? I feel much like the judge. To bring an upstanding person to the throne of grace is such an odd thing, but yet it is still unmerited favor with God. I don't deserve His grace or His salvation anymore than anyone else does. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

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Forgiven & Forgotten!

"What a tremendous gift from God it is when we are able to forgive and let go of others ills against us - forigve & forget! This is the way our Lord deals with us, when we genuinely ask for forgiveness in repentance, God forgives & it is as if we never committed the sin which made us an enemy to Him in the first place.

I read a story the other day about a young seminary professor who would always introduce his New Testament class with a story from his past.

He and his dad were close and one day he told his dad a lie which hurt his father deeply. For years this young man grew older, but let the lie go unresolved. Guilt built up inside him about the lie and eventually a sense of tremendous remorse began to knaw inside of him. So, finally he sat down and wrote his dad a letter.

In the letter, he reminded his dad of the incident which he lied to him in case he did not remember. He explained in genuine tone his remorse over the lie and asked forgiveness without any explanation or excuse for the lie. The man went about his days when fairly quickly a reply letter came from his dad. It simply read, "Sure I remember the incident and YES your are forgiven!".

To the son this was a tremendious weight lifted from his shoulders as he had carried the weight of the unresolved lie for years. The further payoff came many years later when his mother and father both were much older, became ill, and died within a few months of each other.

He was the oldest child, so it was he duty to go to the parents home and start the process of sifting through their belongings. He ventured into the attic and found an old trunk with many momentos they had kept throughout their life together. Everything that was really precious to them monitarily was in that trunk.

As he was wiping tears away at the memories his parents had kept from he and his siblings childhood years, he came across that letter he had sent to his dad asking his forgiveness. He wiped the tears back, opened up the letter to re-read what he had written. As he turned the letter over on the backside was written in his father's own handwriting a word "FORGIVEN!" and it was underlined. His father had forgiven him and when his dad was done with something and beyond he would write it down and underline it meaning "finished".

By the letter being in that old trunk of mementos, with the word FORGIVEN written on it was his dads way of saying I have no unfinished business in this trunk. This was a tremendous gift his dad had given to him not only at the time of the reply letter, but years later when he found the letter as a treasure and the word FORGIVEN written on it. His dad had relinquished all traces of the hurt, the resentment, and the bitterness over the years.

In the same way, our heavenly Father will forgive us when we are genuinely remorseful and repentent before Him. I understand from my own experience, we sometimes need to ask for forgiveness from someone, and at other times we need to simply forgive someone and let go of the hurt and pain they might have caused. Either way forgiveness whether given by us or received by us is a gift from God to be treasured. God is here to help us in either situation.

In Matthew 6:14-15 Jesus tells us, "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins." This is speaking about an attitude of heart and action from that attitude.

Geroge Herbert once wrote - "He who cannot forgive others breaks the brdige over which he must pass himself."

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It's Who You Know!

I ran across a great little story I wanted to share today.

"During the Civil War, a young soldier walking over a battle field came across a dear friend who had been shot. His life was rapidly draining from him. The concerned soldier straightened his shatted limb, washed the blood from his fallen comrade's face, and made him as comfortable as possible under the most difficult of circumstances. He then said he would stay by his friends side as long as life was still in him. At this moment he asked his fallen friend is there was anything he could do for him.

"Yes," replied the dying soldier, "if you have a piece of paper, I will dictate a note to my father and I think I can still sign it. My father is a prominent judge in the North and if you take this note message to him at any time he will help you."

The note simply read, "Dear Father, I am dying on the battlefield; one of my best friends is helping me and has done his best for me. If he ever comes to you, be kind to him for your son Charlie's sake." With rapidly stiffening fingers, Charlie signed his name.

After the war, the young soldier in a worn out uniform sought out the prominent judge. The servants at the house first refused to admit him because he looked like many of the other war veteran tramps coming by the judge's home for free handouts.

He made a ruckus and insisted he see the judge at once. Finally, the judge hearing the commotion out front of the house, came out and read the note. At first, he was convinced it was another beggar's trickery and appeal. But the judge studied the signature and even in its scribbled state he was still able to recognize it as his own son's signature.

The judge embraced the veteran soldier, led him into his home and said, with tears coursing down his cheeks, "You can have anything that my money can buy and everything my influence can secure."

What brought about the sudden change in the judge's attitude? It was the signature of his son, Charlie, affixed to the bottom of that note. It was the father-son relationship that made all the difference.

There is an old saying in our world, "It's not what you know, but who you know that counts!"

This same principle holds true in the spiritual world as well. All the knowledge in the world will not help you as you approach your heavenly Father, but your personal relationship with Jesus Christ, His Son, will open to you all kinds of possibilities! It's not too late to make right the relationship with the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who will in turn provide you an access to the throne room of heaven before His Father!

J. Hudson Taylor once said, "All God's giants have been weak men who did great things for Him, because they reckoned on His being with them!"

At the moment we know the Son, we instantly are known by the Father too. In John 16:23 Jesus says, "In that day you will no longer ask me anything. I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name."

It is who you know that counts eternally.

*Story adapted from the book "Moments for Fathers" by Robert Strand

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We are declared new & we are being made new...daily!

"God is in the process of transforming us into the same image of His Son Jesus Christ...this process is also known as "Sanctificaiton". "What joy the gospel gives me! I can approach the throne of God with confidence-not because I've done a good job at my spiritual duties, but because I'm clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ." -CJ MaHaney

So, stop spinning plates as the monks do & renounce our self-righteousness behavior...boast in the achievement & work of our substitute & Savior Jesus Christ. We shouldnt be trying to smuggle a holy character into the free grace of God.

To clarify a couple of things that are confusing to most people including me:

Justification is being declared righteous. This is our position before God permanently ours at the time we are converted. Justificaiton is immediate and complete at conversion because of the Person Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross and resurrection. We cannot be more justified before our holy God in the future.

Sanctification is the process after our salvation which is us being made righteous...this is until we go to be with Him in heaven. We are daily being conformed into the image of Jesus Christ. It is our practices which continue while living here on earth. Remember, Justificaiton is the declaration, and Sanctificaiton is the process. We can become more Sanctified each day but not more Justified. The motivation for our Sanctification is based a grace filled obedience to God.

Finally, Justificaiton is objective because of Christ's work for us on our behalf. Sanctification is subjective because it is Christ continual work in us throughout life.

A brand new Believer in Jesus Christ is equally justified as any great saint in the past who lived for Christ fifty years or more...they are on equal ground. Because in the sight of God we are either completely justified or completely condemned...depends on our trust in Jesus Christ or not.

to read exerpts from my newly published book "A Pilgrimage Through the Wilderness" goto The Pilgrimage Book

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The Way is Narrow into the Kingdom!

"Jesus also tells the listeners John 14:6 “I am the way and the truth
and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He
is the ONLY way to the Father in heaven. This goes against
everything a secular humanistic people are brought up to believe. How
can this be? “I thought all I needed to do was walk an isle in a
church, repeat a little prayer after the preacher and boom, I am
in the family”.... for more go to Pilgrimage-Wilderness.

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Post from A Pilgrimage Through the Wilderness by Scott Bailey

"Confession time is in order here. I still have times when life just
piles on top of me more than I can handle. It weighs me down to my
knees to the point of crying out before God. There is no way I can see
God if..." to read the rest go to A Pilgrimage Through the Wilderness" by author Scott Bailey

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Strange Humiliating Situations

An exerpt from A Pilgrimage Through the Wilderness"

"God places us in humiliating situations in strange ways, but it is
necessary in order for us to understand the importance of total denial
of our self and total obedience to His commands. Self-denial is
described in many ways, but most vivid is we are to murder everything
about ourselves which gets in the way of obedience to God. Whatever
we do, say or think that draws our desires from doing what God wants
us to do should be spiritually mortified. The wilderness experiences of
professional trapper, Hugh Glass and God’s commander on the
ground in Egypt, Moses, came at what they would tell you a “strange
time”. As Believers, however, we must embrace the wilderness
experiences as a purposeful part of God’s sovereign plan. God’s plan
is to use us in the advancement of His kingdom and His greater glory.
We must yield ourselves to this season of life when we feel lonely,
traumatized, in horrific pain, bleeding from our exposed flesh, so
hungry our ribs are showing or thirsty. The strength, direction, and
ability to learn are planted deep within us by God Himself and when
needed, He will draw out of that well." -A Pilgrimage Through the Wilderness

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