Separation

 There are so many ways to be separated from something or someone!!  It happens quite often; wives and husbands get separated, boyfriends and girlfriends get separated.  Your cat or dog may be separated from the family for one reason or another. People are separated by anger or by misunderstandings that take place.  Christians and non-christians are separated by theological differences. There are so many things that separate people from one another, being prejudice is another example which should never take place; we are all made in God’s image and likeness so that should never be used for an excuse to separate one from another.  The first commandment is ‘you shall love Adonai your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  And the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  This is talking about the whole world, regardless of their skin color or their ethnicity, as being our neighbor, not just the people that live next door to you.  Read the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37.

I think the worst separation of all is between God and people.  God never intended for these things or anything else to separate people from one another or from Him.  In other words, it would be like saying God created what he hated!!  Oh no, never let it be said of Him, please read John 3:16, “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.”      

There is only one reason why people are separated from God and that was the fault of man and woman, namely Adam and Eve and their rebellion against God, which effected all the human race from that day forward.  Let me remind you of this, Adam and Eve, were perfect people, without sin or a sin nature.  From that day until now, God’s Word says we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory because we inherited a sin nature as a result of their rebelliousness.  Eve was deceived and Adam chose to sin.  So, we are all separated from God from birth.

Now let me tell you this, it was not God’s intention ever that we would be separated from Him, but God, being a just God, had to punish them for their rebelliousness, which is called sin. Think of this, God would leave His throne in heaven to come down to walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day just to fellowship with them.  Sometimes I think we don’t understand the intimacy that they had together and the love and compassion He felt for them.  Now think of this, God put them in a beautiful garden and provided them with everything they needed; they were over the animals and everything was at their disposal, except the tree in the middle of the garden, which was the tree of life that He commanded them not to eat from.  It’s hard to imagine being in a place as beautiful as this garden must have been and having all your needs met and be able to fellowship with God face to face and never fear because you knew His compassion and love and mercy and grace firsthand. 

Now think of this, being in this situation and throwing it all away, by choosing to rebel against God and the heartbreak that God must have experienced, knowing that they rejected Him after He showed that kind of compassion and love and the devastation it caused, especially the separation between them and God.  Many times, we don’t think about the cost, when we rebel against the Lord because of the separation that our rebelliousness causes us.  If you think about it, that will probably be the worst punishment for everybody that ends up in Sheol and is separated from the Lord!! 

I think everybody in our situation with this COVID 19 catastrophe knows firsthand what it feels like being separated from your family and loved ones for a period of time.  It definitely is not fun, think about being separated from them forever.  This is probably one of the reasons why there is so much suicide taking place in our world today, we weren’t created to be alone without any fellowship with anyone else.  We are created to be social beings, needing one another’s fellowship.   

So, the next time you have a problem with your wife, a good friend, or a family member, remember this, losing any one of these relationships may cost you more than you realize.  You may never be able to mend that relationship, you may be separated forever.            

I think the message is clear, let’s love one another with an everlasting love.  I hope this has been a blessing and encouragement and help to all who read it.  God bless you and yours with His perfect peace, love and joy, health and happiness.  And don’t forget, if you haven’t yet today, thank and praise the Lord for He is worthy!!

 

True Love

What is true love, what you say, it’s the remedy for most of the ills today.  Why do we need it every day, because it will chase the blues away.  When the blues sneak around in those trying times, trying to find a person where it might hide, love is the thing to stem the tide, to tell the blues to take a ride!!  When love comes around and touches your life, in the form of a lovely beautiful wife, when it stirs you up in the prime of your life, it will help you with sorrow, pain and strife.  It will give you joy and that is true when true love reaches inside of you!!  If you’d like a love that can set you free like the birds in the air and the bumble bees, look no further than the cross you see, the cross on the hill of Calvary.  Jesus is the answer for you and me, the love that He has, has set many free.  And to tell you the truth, when He sets you free, you will be free indeed, you can take that from me!!  

Let me tell you a story about a prodigal son who took his inheritance and started to run.  Thinking he’d have the time of his life; the problem was he should have thought twice.  In the end it didn’t turn out to be the way this young man thought it would be. Then he decided that he would go home instead of trying to face this all alone.  His dad saw him afar and ran out to meet him cause he wanted to greet him, he hugged him and kissed him, may have told him he missed him, what a wonderful reunion it was.  His Dad fell on his neck and kissed him.  

Please read Luke 15:18-24, “I’ll get up and go to my father, and I’ll say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your presence. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired workers.’ And he got up and went to his own father. But while he was still far away, his father saw him and felt compassion. He ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your presence. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him! Put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it! Let’s celebrate with a feast! For this son of mine was dead and has come back to life—he was lost and is found!’ Then they began to celebrate.”

This demonstrates the love God the Father has for us.  This is an unconditional love.  I will be honest, like I normally am, I have a hard time understanding this kind of love; just think about Father God loving those who hated Him.  He also loved the ones that killed his Son, torturing Him before they put Him on the cross to kill Him.  That kind of love has to be supernatural.  This story truly demonstrates God the Father’s love for a prodigal.

Now think about the 100 sheep, another parable that Jesus spoke about.  If one of the sheep goes astray, the shepherd leaves the others and looks for the one who went astray until he finds it.  He will put it on his shoulders, rejoicing and when he gets home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says rejoice with me for I have found my sheep that was lost.

Now please read Luke 15:7, “I tell you, in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over the ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.”  This shows how much God loves a repentant sinner!!  I tell you the truth, it bothers me when I hear a sermon where repentance is not spoken of and then the altar call is given and no mention of repentance or any explanation of what repentance even means.  One of the first things that Jesus spoke of when he started his ministry was repentance and John the Immerser’s baptism was for repentance also, please read Matthew 4:17, “From then on, Yeshua began to proclaim, ‘Turn away from your sins, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’”

Now please read Matthew 3:4-12, “Now John wore clothing from camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were being immersed by him in the Jordan River. But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his immersion, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore produce fruit worthy of repentance; and do not think that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’! For I tell you that from these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. Already the axe is laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire!’ As for me, I immerse you in water for repentance. But the One coming after me is mightier than I am; I am not worthy to carry His sandals. He will immerse you in the Ruach ha-Kodesh and fire. His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He shall clear His threshing floor and gather His wheat into the barn; but the chaff He shall burn up with inextinguishable fire.”

Today we are not baptized for the forgiveness of sins, or saved that way, but it should demonstrate an outward appearance of an inward change that the Lord has made in our lives.  “It is by grace you have been saved through faith and not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not based on deeds so that no one may boast!!”  Ephesians 2:8-9.

We owe it all to Jesus, God’s beloved Son, for willingly laying His life down and allowing Himself to be crucified.  The Lion of Judah became the sacrificial Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  A man who had no sin became sin for us.  Only through trusting in Him and being covered and washed in His precious blood can we be saved!!  Just like Ephesians 2:8-9 says!!

So, if you’re willing to turn from your sins and truly repent, having a change of heart and mind, turning to the Lord confessing your sins and forsaking your sins, you can be washed and cleansed of your sins and experience the new birth, what is called being born-again!!  I hope if you read this and have not repented, that you will make that choice today, you will not be sorry!!  May the good Lord bless you and may this be a help and encouragement and a blessing to you!!

Positivity in all Situations

 Negativity has no place in Christianity; so, if you are in that camp, pray and ask the Lord to make you much more positive and not negative.  Negative people tend to cause other people to be just like them.  Negative people don’t seem to accomplish much.  I think many of us fall into that camp at times, but we need to be careful we don’t camp there long.

One example of this is David, who could have been very negative but didn’t   fall into that trap!!  Now think of this, negativity breeds fear, anxiousness and uncertainty.  Think of the time when David was just a boy and his dad sent him to check on his brothers, who were in King Saul’s army, to see how things were going.  Remember David was just a boy, probably in his teen years.  Maybe David didn’t know what negativity, anxiousness, uncertainty or fear was.  True faith disperses fear, anxiousness and uncertainty.  All of Saul’s soldiers shook with fear every time Goliath, the giant, came out and challenged them.  David was full of faith, in fact, when a bear or a lion came after him while he tended his father’s sheep, he would grab them by their hair and kill them with his hands.  And, he was going to kill Goliath with God’s help and he had no doubt in his mind about that because Goliath had defied the armies of the living God and he knew that God would deliver Goliath into his hands.  

So, while everyone else was shaking in their boots, David had the faith to believe that he would overcome this giant that defied the armies of God.  It was incredible the faith that David had, he didn’t waiver even with all the other negative people and their negative comments going on around him. Please read the 17^th chapter of 1 Samuel.  The worst thing anyone can experience is to have somebody around them that is so negative, because after a while that negativity will wear a person down, it is almost like a cancer that eats away at your mind and body until all of a sudden you are just like they are, and instead of one of you having to be delivered, you both need to be delivered.

What about Joshua and Caleb and the other spies that were sent out to spy out the land of Canaan?  All the other spies came back with a very negative report because of doubt and fear.  Why do you think Joshua and Caleb came back with a different report?  Maybe because they were full of faith and not doubt and fear, please read, Numbers chapters 13 and 14 to help you to get a real picture of what took place.

If you have the kind of people or friends who are so negative around you, pray for them and ask the good Lord to change their way of thinking, and while you are at it, ask the good Lord to keep you from falling into the negative camp; you may even have to confront them with love, and if they still won’t listen then you may need to find new friends. I hope this has been a blessing and an encouragement to all who read it or hear it and may all of you have a super day!!

Hell

 Hell was never meant for man or for woman or child.  We were all meant to live forever, but the man, Adam by name, chose years and years ago rebellion over obedience.  Think of Adam, he wasn’t deceived, Eve was, Adam chose to sin, choosing to rebel against God, costing us physical death and, in many cases, spiritual death also.  Hell was never God’s choice for humans, He created human beings for fellowship.  Did God know that Adam and Eve would sin, of course He did, because He knows all things.  Did He cause them to sin, of course not, He gave them a free will to choose to sin or not to sin.  He gave them a stern warning that if they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they most assuredly would die. Were they created with a sin nature as we are born with a sin nature, no they were not no more than Lucifer was, all of them chose to rebel against God!! They sinned by choice and many of us are angry because they did, but how do we know that we wouldn’t have made the same choice, if we were put in their situation?

Please read it in Genesis 2:17, “But of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you must not eat. For when you eat from it, you most assuredly will die!”  

They chose to disobey, and they sinned against God and they died spiritually at that point and they also died physically, in the end.  Because of their rebelliousness, we are born in sin and spiritually dead also, with no way for us, on our own, to get right with God.  In other words, by our own efforts or strength or power or works or knowledge or riches or prestige, can we get ourselves right with God!!  The word of God says that our righteousness is of filthy rags.  It also says there is none righteous, no not one.  Another thing it says, there is no amount of good works we can do, no matter what they are, to be right with God.  The good news is that God had a plan, because He knew people would try to use these excuses, thinking that by them they could be right with Him!!  Think of this, (It’s by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves it is a gift of God not of ‘works’ lest any man should boast.)

Now if this is true, and it is, we all deserve hell, but because of God’s grace and love He has provided a way of escape, you might say.  God sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to bear the sins of the world, a man who had no sin, became sin for us.  He provided the only way that we could come to God and be right with God, and that’s through true repentance which means having a change of heart and mind, turning from sin to God and going to God through the precious blood of his Son Jesus who became  the sacrificial Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  Without the shedding of blood there is no remittance, or forgiveness, of sins!!

Please read what Jesus said in John 14:6, “Yeshua said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life! No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”       

Jesus didn’t come to condemn us, but only through Him can we receive eternal life, please read John 3:17, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.”

Hell will be a dark, scary, lonely place with only pain and suffering.  Where everyone there will be only preoccupied with their own pain and suffering.  All who are there will be dwelling on the fact that they have separated themselves from God who truly loved them and was not willing that any be lost but all would come to repentance!!  I believe everyone gets that opportunity, but many reject it, I pray that you won’t be one of them.  I pray that this has been a help and encouragement, may God bless you all and have a super day!!