Bible

Why do relationships go wrong?

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

Truly the reason that this happens is because of the foundation. Many marriages begin on the wrong foot and certainly on sand or loose gravel for a foundation. Why do we pursue a relationship that ultimately will fail?

IAM-JesusWe do this because we haven’t found the Relationship which can’t fail. We are born searching for something or Someone but for years we search and look for things and people to fill that void, that empty place which always feels as if it needs…to be filled. It is a scientific principle which states quite accurately that “nature abhors a vacuum”. At some point, something will fill that space whether it is good or bad, God or Satan, it doesn’t matter which, but it will be filled.

If we try to fill it with a career or a family, that can work for a while but it isn’t permanent. If we try to fill it with drugs or alcohol, our life and our relationships are doomed to fail because those things are designed to destroy whatever they come in contact with! But…if we will seek out our Savior, Jesus the Christ, and repent of the attempts which we have tried before, and ask Him to come in and clean our heart up, then our life will be placed on the right path.

Following Him, learning about Him by reading and studying the Bible, praying about your family and your problems, all of these will begin to fix your pathway and your life in such a way that your foundation will become complete and solid. When this happens, your relationship with your spouse and your family will begin to level out and become less bumpy and more smooth. This is the foundation which should guide our lives today but we tend to follow along with the rest of the crowd at school or church, if we go at all.

If everyone at school or at church is just going along to get along for the sake of being thought of as a “pillar of the community”, that is the wrong reason. Trying to earn a place in the eyes of people and “fair weather friends”, no matter how you earn it, doesn’t help you in the long run. Why? Because it isn’t built on God’s foundation which is Jesus.

You can decide to ignore this advice if you wish or just don’t read this at all, it doesn’t hurt my feelings one way or the other. But…what if I am right. When your life is going to hell on a slippery slope, which of your friends could possibly pull you out of it? A rich kid that you went to school with? No, they are likely off enjoying life just as they think they should. What about your dear friend from work? Not likely, they come home feeling even more tired than they did last year.

The only One Who can get your life back on the right path and give you strength enough to make it through all of your trouble is Jesus. No other religion or “holy man” or prophet can do that because all of them are dead! He is alive at the Father’s right hand and He is able to help you in your time of need. Seek Him out and make sure that He is your foundation and your Solid Rock, your Savior. Because without Him, we can do nothing.

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Peace on Earth….

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

Today, we don’t think it is possible but God is going to bring it to us soon. He is the only One Who can bring peace to us. We cannot do it ourselves. Peace is not possible by our strength or negotiations or our weapons. Peace comes from the Prince of Peace and only from Him.

Seek Him out, the Babe from Bethlehem, because He is your Savior and your Messiah! He is also our Shepherd toward eternity and the only way to have it. God loves us far more than we realize, because He sent His Son to pay our sin debts! Not just that of the disciples and the early church but the sins of those from Adam’s time forward until the end of days.

Jesus was the only One Who could pay that size of debt and He did it, and then rose to life again on the third day so that we could also rise to eternal life as long as we belong to Him and He belongs to each of us. How can we know that we are His?

By believing in His sacrifice for us and in what He accomplished for us, like a child. Take the Word of God as the Truth because it is! Don’t dispute it because He inspired those who wrote it down to write the words which He gave them. His Word is True, therefore His Son’s sacrifice and its atonement for you and me is true. Repent of your sinful ways, and believe!

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The truth of the Bible!

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

Emperors like Diocletian have decreed its extermination, atheists like Voltaire have railed against it, agnostics through the years have cynically sneered at it, and liberals strive to remove the miracles from the Bible. Materialists have simply ignored it. How is it that the Bible still stands after centuries of attempts to destroy it? Because the Bible is eternal, settled in heaven.

It is, very simply, God’s Word to mankind! Breathed by the Holy Spirit into the minds of men who wrote the words down so that we can benefit from its wisdom. There is no way of getting rid of its timeless wisdom or ignoring it in any way. You may do so, if you wish, but it will gain you nothing except a life of missed chances to be of any worth to the Kingdom of God. You can ignore it, but when you face your judgement in the presence of God, it will convict you of your ignorance and your reluctance toward the message that it carries.

It is a book of knowledge and power, and one which contains historical words of wisdom and the history of the Jewish people. It contains the story of creation, betrayal, murder and redemption, adultery, incest, and savage cruelty and slavery. But…it also carries a line of hope and love beyond measure and a promise that your life and mine can be made whole again regardless of the way we may have been before coming to Jesus!

God’s Word contained in the Bible has all of these elements in it as well as the hope that we can come back into the perfect relationship that was intended at the beginning. For that, we shouldn’t give up on its wisdom or dismiss it as an old book which is outdated for our time. We should use it, every day to bring new meaning and purpose into our lives and to learn the wisdom contained in its pages as well. If for no other reason than to teach it to our children and our grandchildren, that is why it exists.

God gave all of the books of the Bible, Old and New Testaments, to us for instruction and learning, for wisdom and for the Truth that it contains. We cannot ignore it or deny its existence and we can’t just throw it away. It is a Holy Book and truly should be treated as such. In reality, we should treat the Bible at least as necessary as our cell phones which people can’t live without these days. We should carry it with us every day and miss it if we find out we have left it behind. Its wisdom is necessary for our existence and we should use it and treat it as being important to us, especially if we are born-again Christians!

Although today people who don’t believe the words contained in it are very vocal with their opinions, some are even belligerent to the point of being rude and obnoxious. Just because the Word of God tells the absolute Truth and has been the model for much of our nations laws is no reason to be this way. It does step on people’s toes a bit because it brings to light their sins and their nature that is opposite of the Word of God and many people can’t handle their faults being brought into the light this way. The Bible is still and will always be the Word of God!

It has been established in Heaven and the words in it were given to the writers by the Holy Spirit, part of the Trinity. The Word of God, contained in the Bible, has been around for over three thousand years and it is NOT going away, EVER!! You can get rid of them, burn them, destroy them, but the Word is still around in the hearts and minds of Christians and Jewish people! These two faiths contain the entirety of the Bible and the Word of God cannot be destroyed and never will be, regardless of the feelings of many who don’t go along with its words and beliefs.

History foretold

/ Tracy Eldridge / 1 Comment

That is simply what prophecy is, history foretold. To put it another way it would be history revealed. Our world and many of the people in it seems to be on the edge of hysteria because of prophecies which are in the midst of coming true! Some people think that they are the instruments of this, forcing the end-time prophecies to come about. Others are just reading it in their Bible and praying that they will be taken out of here before any of the “tribulation” begins. Still others look at Bible prophecy and the news and see it unfolding before their eyes one day at a time.

We are living in that time which is on the edge of time where prophecy becomes reality. Some people are looking forward to it, others are dreading it and still others could care less because they don’t believe any of it. The problem with refusing to see it happening or disbelieving that which has been foretold won’t stop it from coming true. God says in His Word: “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” Isaiah 55:11

The prophecies which are contained in the Bible have all come to pass except for the ones in the book of Revelation, and we are seeing them come to pass a little bit at a time every day in the news. It is true that we haven’t seen any of the judgements or heard the trumpet blast, yet…but the things such as the violent weather patterns and the numerous conflicts all around Israel are happening with more frequency every day.

The judgements of God won’t fall on mankind until the real tribulation period begins, but we will see and experience the events leading up to it. When that Trumpet sounds, there will be no mistake as to what or Who it is, yet many will still wonder about it.

Are you ready for it? What will be your position when “the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.…”? 1 Thessalonians 4:16,17

Will you be one of those that rises to meet the Lord in the air? Or will you be waiting for the noise to go away so you can get back to your life? With all of the cars crashing and the air planes falling from the sky, your life and many of lives of the people on Earth will change dramatically. Consider this and read the Bible, seek Him while there is still time to do so. God will not stop seeking you even after this happens, but it will likely be harder to find a Bible or a believer to guide you at this time. Ask Jesus to come into your life today because we are not sure of tomorrow.

Fear and anger being stirred up

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

In our country this is the only way that people seem to be getting attention, why? What is the reason for it? The more fear that can be stirred into each city, through riots and calling people racist then there will be even more fear and more riots. It never ends, it will never end because once the so-called “ball” gets rolling, there is no stopping it! Why? Is there so much anger against people, white or black, that we are going to begin a war of races? What good will come of this? ABSOLUTELY NONE!

The emotions being stirred up in the nation is what is fuelling this type of activity and they will begin to tear down our society and our nation. What can be done? Not much, other than prayer and seeking God’s wisdom in this because only He has the answer to the problems that are plaguing our nation. Just as our nation was founded on Biblical principles by flawed humans, so is this movement which is beginning in America today. The difference is that today, the movement is not based on Scripture or on anything that God said but on emotions, emotions of anger, jealousy, fear and hate. This movement will rip our lives and our country apart if we don’t get on our knees and pray NOW!

Seeking His guidance and His wisdom is the only answer to the problems that America is facing today, right now because God is the only person who can bring healing to our land and to the world itself. How will He do it? I can’t give you that answer. Just as when the Pharisees were inciting the mob to cry “Crucify him!” and call for the release of Barabbas, the anger that they were stirring up is the same that is being stirred up now and God allowed it to happen then as it is happening now. What will be the outcome? God is the only One that knows that answer and unless someone who is charismatic enough to calm a mob to the point of them really listening, I don’t think the outcome will be good at all.

It will be more like someone dropping a match in a gasoline plant, a fireball that engulfs those around it and those all over the country as well. The things that we, as a people, regardless of race or country, pursue are just stuff whether you are looking for more money, or fame or drugs or sex or alcohol and NONE of it satisfies our true needs. These are just “wants” and what we truly need is to realize that our lives were created to have a true relationship with God and Jesus and that spot, that part of your life, your heart is only satisfied with Jesus and a relationship with Him.

Pray about this, now! This is what our country needs, what all of us need not what you want or I want but what God wants for you! Give your life to Him, seek the answers in His Word because His wisdom is the answer that you need, NOW!

Can God use you for His purposes?

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

Are you willing to let God use you in your life? Have you given your heart to Him so that He can use you? There are many people who don’t know about the Bible or what is in it these days in America. It really isn’t hard to understand why though. We have pushed the Bible, prayer, reading the Bible and many other activities related to being a Christian completely out of our lives. There are many who don’t know the first book in the Bible and many others who can’t even name the four gospels telling of the life of Jesus and the good news that was His life and ministry. I use “was” to denote that it happened about two thousand years ago, not that He is dead because He isn’t, Jesus sits at the right hand of God awaiting the time that He will come back and get the Church.

I am getting a bit ahead of myself here though. Are you a Christian or do you want to be a Christian? If you do, then ask Jesus to come into your heart and forgive you for the life that you have lived. He will show you how to live a different way with a new purpose and a new attitude. Once you have done this, pick up a Bible and pray that God will teach you through it because He will do that. Just reading it will help, but asking God to show you the things that you need to learn will help more than even going to church.

Although you will want to attend a church which teaches from the Bible soon because meeting with others who believe like you do is necessary. The early church in Jerusalem met in their homes, but they did meet together. The fellowship gained during this time is necessary for your growth in Christ as well as your learning more about Him. It is also necessary to your growth as a Christian because the fellowship that you enjoy with other believers grows sweeter and more like family as you grow in your faith!

Now, to get to the issue of being used for His purpose…first of course you have to be a believer and you should be willing to do the will of God. That being said, it is not an automatic thing that every believer is going to work for God in some way. The easiest way to do this is by studying God’s Word daily, then praying about what you have read and seeking His will for your life. He will answer your prayers in His time, of course, not yours so be patient. The best advice I can give you at this point is DON’T EVER ASK GOD FOR PATIENCE! He will hear that prayer and you will learn patience but you may not like the lessons!

God loves you and all of humanity and He does answer prayers, just realize that some of those answers are His way of testing you and teaching you. So, don’t be surprised with the answers that you get especially those that don’t seem to be what you asked for. God loves each of us and He does take care of our needs every day, but He is not One that you can ask for money and it will just fall into your account. Prosperity comes with sacrifice and work, not from schemes and gambling. Read through Proverbs carefully in either the Living Bible translation or the English Standard Version, then you will understand His view toward work and laziness and debt.

The Bible can teach you more than a college can in four years, but you have to meditate on it, pray about it and ask Him to give you the wisdom to understand His message for your situation when you are reading it. Believe me, I used to think that it was just an old book until I became a Christian and started really studying it and praying about what I read. Then I learned that your education is severely lacking if the Bible is not part of it. Give God’s Word and Jesus a chance in your life and your life will never be the same again…it will be one hundred percent BETTER!!!

Irrational belief

/ Tracy Eldridge / 15 Comments

“If there is a textbook example of being irrational, then irrationality believes in something without any evidence.” – Atheist reference to Christianity

What about the seemingly universal belief, in most of academia, in evolution? Do they truly have proof of something evolving into another type/kind of animal? Is there a fossil of an evolutionary form that anyone can recognize as being between (transitional form) from one animal and another?

The most famous claim that I am aware of is that whales came from hippo-sized land animals many millions of years ago, and yet there is not one fossil that has been found that shows such a transformation. It didn’t happen overnight, because evolution takes millions of years, right? This “hippo” just didn’t jump into the ocean and its legs automatically shrank to the size of flippers?! Irrationality and insanity go hand in hand it seems. Thinking that just by belief and the so-called “fact” that there is no evidence for such a thing happening automatically makes evolution the correct assumption! Really?!?

Come on, if there was a shred of evidence that I could look at and perceive that one animal is changing/evolving into another, then I would believe it. But, there isn’t!

The statement at the beginning of this article is really a definition for a type of faith, so this person is not talking of irrationality it is really a jab at Christianity. Actually, it is a definition of “blind faith”, the kind which goes along with things like theories that have no proof but if enough people teach it for long enough it is taken as fact.

Christian faith is not blind faith, it is backed up by history and by eyewitness accounts from historical documents, so the recorded stories in the Bible (Old and New Testaments) can be traced to historically documents and other proofs. Can anyone show proof positive that evolutionary processes took place to create man or are those skeletons just skeletons of apes from thousands of years ago?

I don’t think that there will be any such evidence because it doesn’t exist! Many of the biological life that has been on earth since its creation are still in the same forms that they always were to begin with, so where is the proof of evolution?

Belief in evolution is backed up by this phrase: Insanity that is backed up by enough people to make it acceptable to all.

If you don’t want to believe in Christian beliefs or an afterlife or anything to do with the Bible, then do what most people do when they find something that they don’t like…change the channel! Don’t listen to Christian radio or to television programs that have things which you don’t agree with in them. That is exactly what Christians do! We try to tell people what our faith tells us to say, just as Muslims or Mormons do, but when we do it we are called insensitive, irrational, and narrow minded. Any other religion in the world is tolerated except Christianity.

So, if you want to be irrational then go ahead. I just want to ask one simple question: “What if my faith and its beliefs are right?”

The Bible, God’s Word

/ Tracy Eldridge / 1 Comment

I watched the entire series on the History Channel this past month and I was impressed. They didn’t make fun of it or anything in it and it got some people interested in the Word of God, so it accomplished what it was supposed to.

Many people don’t think that the Word is viable today because of its age but no one questions college professors when they assign the Iliad and it is an ancient story too. There are fewer actual copies of it than there are of the Bible, yet there are many people who still don’t think that the Bible is true. The reason behind this is easy to find and it starts in the first book of the Bible, Genesis.

Satan tempted Adam and Eve and got them to rebel against a command that God had given them, ever since then there have been questions about the veracity of the words contained in it. Yet, the prophecies in the Old Testament have nearly all came true. The ones concerning Jesus were fulfilled when He came and through His teaching, and crucifixion and resurrection they were verified. Whether people choose to believe is totally under their own control.

For many people, I think it is their ability to choose that is the stumbling block in their ability to follow Jesus. We like having the freedom to choose but it is used against us because our nature chooses not to follow Christ until we have come to a point where we know that we can’t control our lives on our own anymore. Some people choose to use drugs or alcohol to numb their perception of life, but this is only a temporary, chemical induced feeling and it doesn’t last.

The Bible shows us that people tend to choose their own ways over the ways of God and following Him. All through the Old Testament, Israel would choose to follow God until things started going good, then they would turn to whatever the people surrounding them were worshiping. At which point, God would send someone like the Babylonians or Assyria to take them as slaves until they decided that they needed God again.

In our technological lives today, we don’t see the need for God and His Word until there is a real turning point in our life brought on by something in our life like a death in the family or cancer that comes suddenly to our attention. When these things happen, we realize that we need someone who can do something about this and for many people that someone is God. Doctors can’t cure everything and many times the treatment for cancer is worse than the disease since it poisons not only the cancer cells but the rest of the body as well.

Can we trust God’s Word? Absolutely! Because it has been proven by archaeology and history and by prophecy that has come true. The New Testament shows the beginnings of the church after Christ went back to the Father and yet He said that He would return one day. With few exceptions, most of the prophecies concerning the beginning of the “end times” have already come to pass. Israel being a country again and the language of the Jewish nation being spoken again after over one thousand years of being “lost” are but two of the prophecies that have been fulfilled in the past one hundred years.

The Bible is a great book of literature but it is also a collection of stories written at the prompting of God’s Holy Spirit. The reason that I say this is because of the way it is arranged and how many authors are involved in it. The Bible spans more than three thousand years, has sixty-six books written by over forty authors from all walks of life and yet they all point to Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection at one point or another in each book, and toward His second coming from the point of the prophetic books of which most were written at least four hundred or more years before He was born!

Read it, study it but don’t discount it. The Bible is and has been the most important book in the history of mankind and until Jesus comes to set up His kingdom on this earth it will remain so.

What does Easter mean to you?

/ Tracy Eldridge / 1 Comment

The passion of Christ, His crucifixion and resurrection…what does it mean for us, for you?

In our daily life and our lives in general it means the difference between having hope for eternity and having no hope at all. Your life and the meaning of your life while you are here doesn’t mean much to the world in general. Most people or countries don’t care anything about us as individuals. We are just numbers and revenue in the form of taxes and consumerism.

To Christ we are important. We, each of us, are important enough that He came and died for us so that we could have eternal life. But, it was not just for our benefit that He came and died, it was for the Kingdom of God and for His Glory. The work that we can do through Him and the work that He can do through us is the reason for our salvation and for His sacrifice.

So, why does life seem to be without hope to most people? Even if they are or claim to be Christians? It could be that they have not given themselves totally to Christ. Many people think that because they have asked Jesus into their lives and their heart that that is all that is required. True, for you to have eternal life that is it, but an abundant life and the eternal rewards that you will receive for the work that you do as a follower of Christ is what you do beyond that.

For Easter and its Christian meaning to have real meaning for you, your life in Christ has to have or be meaningful. I am not speaking of being a mother or father or of your job, those positions are important because your Christian life can shine through those areas as well. To be meaningful in Christ your life in Him must show to the outside world in some way that others will see it and want what you have.

The mini-series that is on the history channel, “The Bible”, this year is one couple’s way of doing that. Each of us can be more or do more with the strength and wisdom given to us by God and that is what I am speaking of in this writing.

Many people wonder, “Does God give me a gift or the wisdom to do these things?”, the answer to that is Yes! In the Bible, there is a passage that says (paraphrased) “ask of God and He will give you wisdom” James 1:5; each of us is unable to do the things that we do in the ministries that we have unless we have the ability and the wisdom from Him to do them.

The writing that I have been doing for these past five years or so would be impossible for me to to without the words and the wisdom that God gives me. I don’t have it in me to create this much or for it to make sense the way it seems to unless these words come from God and not me!

Easter is a time to celebrate Christ’s sacrifice for each of us, not to celebrate spring or chocolate or colored eggs. The celebration that we see each year is a pagan celebration of spring, that is all. Celebrating the love and compassion that God has for us and that through His Son, He could make a way for each of us to be reconciled to Him is what we should celebrate and truly be thankful for.

The love that God has for each of us is the reason that He came and sacrificed Himself for us to reconcile each of us to Himself, there was no other way to do it. Your life..our lives can have so much more meaning and purpose through Christ and with Him working through us. Give Jesus a chance to come into your heart and make it His home because once He does your life will never be the same!

Can you imagine a world without Jesus?

/ Tracy Eldridge / 1 Comment

I know that today there are may who think they would enjoy a world in which Christianity didn’t exist and one in which Jesus had never been born. Could anyone truly want to live in a world like that?

There are some who would truly enjoy this because it would give them so much “freedom”, in quotes because they would not know what they were free from. The world would be a very ugly place, even more than it is today if Jesus had not been born.

Satan would have completely free reign over our world although God would not allow him to go too far. God’s plan was in place before Satan ever rebelled and convinced a third of the angels to follow him. There couldn’t be a world without Jesus, period!

He is the Word of God who came to ransom our souls from sin and He is the Creator along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. They are the triune God, the Trinity and without them the entire universe would not exist.

It is humbling to know that the Creator of the universe cares for each of us and craves a relationship with us!

My imagination can’t come up with a scenario to illustrate how different the world would be if Jesus had never been involved in it. Put bluntly, the world would not exist as it is today. He is the Word of God incarnate who became a man to die for our sins so that we can be covered by His sacrifice and forgiven of our sins.

To answer the question I will attempt to list some things which would be vastly different if Jesus had not come to die for us.

1. If Jesus had not come, there would be no church of any denomination, only other religions would exist.

2. The only knowledge of God we would have would be from the Jewish Torah (Old Testament) because there would be no New Testament.

3. We would all be looking for the Messiah since He was prophesied to come in the Old Testament. This is why we couldn’t have a world without Jesus, because if He had not come at the time that He did then God would be a liar and therefore He wouldn’t be God.

The promises and prophecies that the Old Testament prophets wrote down came to them through the Holy Spirit so if they weren’t true then the whole story of Creation would be suspect.

God has to keep His promises because He is God and cannot lie, so the Messiah had to come when He did and at the time that He did. He will come back at the appointed time as well so there is no question about His coming, we just don’t know when things will come about. The time will be accomplished in God’s time not our own, just as everything else is and has been from the beginning.

In this world and at this time, we have been pushing God out of every aspect of our lives. From public places and government and schools to television, there are people who cannot stand to hear any reference to the Bible or Jesus or salvation. God has always wanted a relationship with us but humanity, since the fall in Eden, has been on an ego trip. “I can do it myself” has been our mantra for many generations and it is not true! We cannot do it alone, just like toddlers who say “I can do it myself” we have to have help.

In spiritual matters we are dumb without God and His Word! The man-made religions of the world are just that, “man-made”! They didn’t do anything or create anything or anyone. Like a block of wood or stone or gold formed into an idol, man-made religions don’t have the ability to truly do anything! Just like those idols, our religions are static, stagnant, and dead.

God is everlasting and the Creator of all. To worship Him is to worship the True God not something that was brought on by a drug or lack of sleep or lack of water! Dreams, visions, and feelings can’t form a seed or a fish with a word or put stars in their places by thinking of where they should be, but God can and He did! Trust Him, follow Him and ask for His forgiveness because He loves you!