Month: September 2014

Life, do you participate in it?

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

Many people think that they do. They get up each morning, eat breakfast and then head out for work or to the doctor’s office or maybe to the grocery store. To many people, this is participation and life itself. But, what is life? What kind of life are we supposed to have? That depends on your perspective toward life itself. Are you a Christian or do you just believe that stuff happens by accident with no real purpose or meaning?

Accidents, other than those in cars and trucks, don’t just happen. There is a reason for them, even and especially when we are involved because humans make mistakes! Nobody is perfect and if anyone ever tells you so, they are lying. Perfection is found in natural processes, but even those are prone to mistakes because even DNA can’t replicate itself without some errors at some point. Visible perfection is what I meant when I said that it is found in nature, although our perception of it is imperfect so I suppose it is up to the beholder to judge the perfection of mountains or sunsets or a vista that you see or experience.

Participating in life is something that we all do on a daily basis if we are physically able to do so. Living beings cannot help but participate in life because we are alive. Plants, animals, people are all living beings and all of us, in general, live our lives until that life is ended whether by accident or disease or just by age. Participation is not really an option for living beings or things, it just is. God designed life to be that way, to be lived in accordance with His laws and it is. Whether you believe in Him or not, you can’t just choose to go to sleep tonight and not wake up in the morning. Your “expiration date” is determined by His timing and design not yours because He is God and you…we are not and will never be “gods”.

We live at His pleasure. We have our purpose and sustenance by His design. As it says in His Word, “you cannot make one hair white or black” Matthew 5: 33-37. Living life is a privilege and we live it by God’s grace and mercy, not by our own will. I know that many people will say, “Yes, I do live by my own will. I bow to nobody”. Right now that may be true, but one day you will stand before Him and kneel down acknowledging that He is Lord and God. Whether you did it in this life or not doesn’t matter.

God doesn’t force you to give your life to Him, you have the choice to do so or not. If you do while you still live then your meeting after this life will be a joyous one. If not, then it won’t be…it is just that simple. You cannot go on thumbing your nose at God during your lifetime and expect a welcome home when you die! Why? Because our own brand of “righteousness” is man-made and shallow and it is not given to us by Him. Read God’s Word, study it and pray about what you have read because only through the reading of it and praying for understanding can you hope to understand it! Give your life to Him each and every day, determine to follow Him each morning when you wake so that the day will be His and not just yours. This is the most important decision that you can ever make in your life, because this life is not the end but the beginning!

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Time is….

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

Time is many things to many people. There is never enough of it. Our time on Earth is too short, or hard or stressful. Time is…what you make of it. It can be rich and full of life and love or it can be full of pain and suffering and heartache. The conditions that we use to describe our time make the measure of it different for everyone regardless of where you might live.

Time is important and it is important for different reasons for everyone. A doctor or lawyer makes their living by “hours billed”. Many of us are paid hourly, so our time is worth a lot to us because every hour is part of our pay check. But, what about your time with your family? What about spending time with God every day? Are these important to you? Your family should be very important and so should your time spent with God. Many people today don’t think that God is important let alone whether spending time with Him would be. Some don’t even believe that He exists at all.

Consider this: time did not begin until it was created and since He is the Creator, then He started it all. God is in control, yet people don’t believe it because they see so much evil and pain in the world. The thing about this is that Satan is the prince of the air on Earth and the one who has many beings, former angels, who can do his bidding and help cause all of the evil and pain in the world. God allows these things, but He is also working in the background to make things work out.

We live our lives according to the clock, in our own bodies as well as that on the wall. The time that it takes to write this is important not only to me but to God, because He is the One who gives me the words to write just as He gives the words to me for my sermons every week. We are important to Him because God enjoys the fellowship that He can have with us, if we will only give Him our time. Even just a little bit of our time is really all that it takes. We don’t have to spend hours chanting and swaying for Him to notice us, He already knows where we are, what we are doing and saying and whether or not we have given our lives to Him.

Time is a gift from God, your day and your night is a gift from Him. Everything that we have from our job to our family and our friends is a gift from Him as well so we need to treat them as such.

Repentance is….

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

Something which many people seem to be against. I don’t know exactly why, but when people like certain things, they just don’t want to give them up. I understand the feelings about certain things being so strong that you just can’t seem to quit, but what about those things which will cause you pain and suffering? Why is it so impossible for some to be unable or unwilling to change their beliefs or their lifestyles so that there won’t be anymore suffering?

Before I go on with this line of thought, I am not speaking of suffering while you are enjoying your life or whatever you happen to be doing. I am speaking of pain that will come as a result of something that you are doing now. It may not come during your lifetime here on Earth, but when your life is over then you have to explain your actions to God, whether you believe in Him or not, then what will you say? “I was only having fun!”; “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody.”; the only thing that is going to be done is a view of everything that you have said and done during your lifetime which can’t be ignored nor explained to God because He already knows your answer.

Repentance is “changing your life and your mind so that you are doing things which are totally different from what your life was before Jesus.” In other words, a 180 degree turn away from sin, regardless of what that might be, and turning toward Jesus and following Him. Believing in Jesus and asking Him to forgive you and to come into your life and change you into the person that He wants you to be for Him and for His purposes and not your own is just as simple as saying, “Lord Jesus, I admit that I am a sinner and that I need you in my life. Please forgive me of my sinful ways and help me to become the person that You want me to be. I thank you for your sacrifice because it made a way for me to become an adopted child of God through  you and I believe that You did it all for me. Amen.”

It is just as simple as that. You don’t need to do anything else because He did it all for you.