He died for us all

So much trouble…

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

On many days during life, we think we are having a lot of troubles when we really aren’t. When you look at the actual news in the world, not what is reported by our media outlets, you will find that there are many places and people who are having a much worse day than you are. Some have lost homes or family members, some are living with terrible diseases like cancer or in some cases, diabetes or MS. There are others in countries where civil war is going on or other conflicts which are devastating lives and economies.

Trouble seems to be the default condition in our world regardless of the country where you may live. So, why are we having all of this happening in our lives? Mainly it is because of the time in which we are living. We have been told in God’s Word that the world around us would resemble the world in Noah’s day, just before the flood happened, and it would be this way before Jesus’ return. I am not speaking of His physical return to the Earth, not yet. I am speaking of the time just before He comes to take His people home.

I know that many don’t think about the trouble in life. Some people seem to have it made, but that condition is not the default condition even in America. Of course, much of the world thinks that every person here is rich and when compared to the poverty in some countries we may be well off, but not rich by any definition. God does bless us by our service to His Kingdom, although not in the way that many in the prosperity movement try to convince people about.

Faith is better expressed by those who feel the need for God’s provision in their life and when you have an abundance of money you don’t feel that need much at all. This is why Jesus told His disciples that it “is hard for a rich man to enter Heaven“.  It is not impossible but those who don’t have daily needs met put more faith and have more dependence on God than someone who can get what they want or need easily.

God love all of us, but He doesn’t like the sinful lives which many of us insist on living in. I implore those who read this to consider giving their heart to Jesus because when this life is over, your choice has been made.

Advertisement

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!

So much to be thankful for

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

Our world has much to be thankful for, yet we don’t seem to be thankful for it. There are wars in many places, there are famines and terrorists in other places, so what could we be thankful for? It is true that, outside America, most countries don’t celebrate a Thanksgiving holiday but we still should give thanks to God for the grace and mercy that He has given to all of us.

You might ask me, “What has He done for me, I live in poverty and hunger all of the time?”. If you still live, He has given you life and breath and another day to live. He will provide for you if you will give your heart to Him, even more than He provides for you now. I know that many people consider us wealthy who live in America and for most of the world’s areas that live on the equivalent of one dollar or so a day that may be true.

We have more food available to us, we have cars and homes to live in comfortably and yet there are people here who live in poverty just as bad as those in India or Sub-Saharan Africa. They make boxes to live in or they use whatever lumber they can find and drape a plastic sheet over it as shelter in the mountain winter. Yes, there is poverty in the so-called “land of plenty”.

So, how can I write that we should be thankful for what we have? Did you wake this morning with the ability to walk and get up from your mat or bed? Can you walk and when you find something to eat, can you eat it and digest it? We take so much for granted in America and in the world at large until we don’t realize that there are people, children and adults, who are suffering from disease and treatments of disease which leave them unable to walk, unable to eat or even digest what they get as nutrition. If you can eat a piece of fish and drink a little water, that is a blessing.

For many people, that small blessing of being able to eat and digest their food is something that they would give all they have for. So, yes, we all have something to thank God for. The sun shining in the sky and the moon at night are the lights which He placed there to show His mercy and grace toward us. The stars and galaxies which we cannot see with our eyes, but He flung them out and He knows each one of them by name. They are there to show His majesty and His power. Can He take care of you? Yes, He can!

In six days He created all that you see and many things that you don’t, but all that is around us, including humanity, He created. Our problems are big problems to us, but to God they are small. He can take care of you, just as He takes care of the fish and the birds and the whales and all of the life on this planet. He knows when a sparrow dies and falls to the ground, so don’t you think He cares for you too? Seek Him out, find a way to learn of Him if possible. If you only read this site and can’t get to a church or find a Bible, then ask Him…ask God to make Himself known to you, He has done it before and He can do it for you if you will ask.

Don’t turn away from the opportunity to know Him…to know Jesus. You have this life, regardless of how your existence may be, and it is during the time that you have here that you must make the decision to follow Him, to give your life to Jesus. Because, once you are dead you will be in His Presence and the time to give your life to Him will be over. Make that decision while you can because He will answer you and come to you if you are seeking Him.

I pray for all of those who are reading this site and my others too. Please don’t let your chance to know Him slip away.

Manna

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

The word above means “what is it?”. In truth it is angel food or bread from Heaven. The Israelites were fed by God for forty years with this and it sustained them for that time. Many of them did not like it and asked for meat, so He sent millions of quail into the camp and they feasted on that until they could stand it no more!

God knew that His bread would sustain them for the time that they needed it as long as they would follow His direction for using it. Some of them hated it, but it sustained them for the travels that they had before them.

Why am I speaking about this today? Because, our Lord and Messiah, Jesus the Christ IS THE BREAD OF LIFE! He provides the way to become adopted into God’s family. God sent Him to be the sacrifice for ALL of humanity. If you believe in Him and the atonement which He provided for us, then you can be and will be saved! Amen.

The bread of life is also the Word of God. It teaches you about God and His principles and His laws and the way to come to salvation. The Bible and the words in it will NOT save you and cannot save you! Sitting in church for forty years or more doesn’t make you a Christian. Getting baptized when you feel an urge to do what your friends are doing does NOT save you!

Only a broken and contrite heart and repentance from your sins will bring you to your knees and you will say, “God, I’m sorry for the way that I have lived. Please forgive me and cleanse my heart and my life. I ask Jesus to come into my heart and save me from myself so that I can be a servant of yours. Thank you, Lord. Amen.”

I am not saying that you have to recite this word for word, but a conviction from the Holy Spirit will break your heart and if you don’t respond to it…if you walk away from Him in that moment, then you may not get another chance. The Bible says that “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Matthew 7:22, 23.” Many who think that they are saved have felt a feeling of relief and hope when they are baptized and for a while they read the Bible and pray. Then, after a while, they go back to their life, their sins, their way of doing things and some never return to the Word or to church…but they believe they are saved.

Not so. A truly changed heart, broken and reformed by the Holy Spirit cannot go back to sin without being convicted of that sin’s consequences. If you are a child of God changed by the Spirit you cannot go back to the mud and the mire of sin that you were in. It will be distasteful and you will know it. Yes, you can go back if you ignore the conviction over and over, but you will have quenched the Spirit’s work in your life. You may be saved, but your reward will be eternal life without reward or crown and if you live in the time when man is given a choice of taking the mark of the Beast and you choose it, then your salvation is forfeit.

God loves you and He has given you the manna of Jesus and the manna of the Bible. Eat of them, take them into your life and your heart so that you can and will be changed into the child of God that you were meant to be. The food for eternity is there, all that you have to do is choose to take it and make it yours…or not. It is your choice.

The Bread of Life!

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

There are two definitions for the Bread of Life and sometimes we get them confused. One of them is the Bible, the Word of God, is the Bread of Life because it points us toward the way to be saved. The other is Jesus our Savior, the Bread of Life Himself.

The manna which the Israelites ate in the desert could be termed the bread of life because they lived on its sustenance for forty years. It is true, of course, that they got tired of it and complained about it but it was their food for a long time.

Jesus is our Bread of Life because by believing in Him we can have life, eternal life with Him. That belief is one which doesn’t doubt and one which totally believes in Jesus as the Son of God and our Savior! It is not enough to go to church a few times in your life, nor is it enough to go to church every time the doors are open. Why? Because going to church is like going to work or going to visit a friend, nothing there can save your soul except if you are seeking Jesus as your Savior!

IAM-Jesus

Love…what is it?

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

In our societies and the cultures all over the world today, love is expressed in many different ways. Some of it is expressed in the way that we understand and sometimes it is expressed  far differently. Have you been exposed to real, honest, true love? The kind which would do anything for you without expecting anything in return?

We are not wired that way. Most of us want something in return for our affection, our love, especially when it is given to someone else. Is it possible for us to really know what unselfish love is? For the most part, the love of a parent for their children is that. We love our children, regardless of what they do just because they are our children. We usually love our spouses the same way because that is the way we are commanded to love them by God. We are to love our spouse as Jesus loves the church.

Do you feel this way toward your family…your wife or husband and your children? I pray that you do. I am not trying to bring judgement on you or anyone that you know, I am just stating that Jesus commanded us to love each other as He loved the church and us. Because there is nothing that we could ever give to God in return for His love except by giving our love to Him. Isn’t that what we all desire? To be loved as much or more than we love.

It is impossible for us to understand the depth of God’s love for each one of us because His ways and thoughts are higher than ours. He is the Creator and we are the created. God is love and He expresses His love in ways that we can see and feel by giving us our lives to live, and the warmth of the sun on our faces. Every breath that you take is given to you by Him…allowed by Him, so that you can bring glory to His name by honoring Him in your life.

Do we do this at all today? Many people don’t. Because God has been taken out of every school, prayer has been taken out of school, even reading the Bible seems to be forbidden in school during free time. This cannot be kept up in the long run! Why? Because, when you forget God and take His Word and wisdom away from people as they are learning, then you have people who don’t have a moral center to guide them in life! They don’t know what or Who they are supposed to base their decisions on or around, so they use their own “wisdom” or some philosophy that they learned in school or college. They might be listening to someone who considers themselves to be more than they are, someone leading people down a dangerous path!

“Many false teachers and so-called “prophets” will come during the times before the end of the age”; this is a paraphrase of something that Jesus said to His disciples when He was telling them of this time that we are living in. Look it up in the Bible! Read it with an open mind and a prayer so that God can show you what is truth and what isn’t. No one knows the day or the hour that the end will come, but God Himself, but it will come. Be vigilant and search for God while you can!

What is going on?

/ Tracy Eldridge / 1 Comment

In our world today there are many problems and wars and diseases. Many people are wondering why would God allow all of this to happen? He allows it because He wants people to look to Him for help but He is not the cause of these problems. Satan is the cause of them because he hates us!

In many ways the old saying of “the devil made me do it” isn’t far from the truth, except that he didn’t make you do anything. He just encouraged and prodded you in that direction, you make the decision. In many ways, our world would be far better off if Satan had not come down here but that was part of God’s plan as well.

God loves us all and wants the best for us but He knew even before we were born that there would be rebellion because there was rebellion in Heaven before the world began. There are some religions today that discount the original sin of Adam, but it happened and we are all inheritors of it. God promised a way of salvation to Eve in the “seed of the woman” and to the rest of us as well. That Promise was Jesus Christ and through His sacrifice on the cross and through the grace that God has given to us through Him we can all be saved from our sins and our sinful nature.

Do we have to do anything to be saved like obey the Ten Commandments or other laws that were handed down through Moses from God? Actually, the answer is no, because we can’t accomplish more than Christ did on the cross! He paid the price needed for our salvation, all that we have to do is believe in Him and His sacrifice and ask Him into our heart to cleanse us so that we can be His.

Choose the life that you were meant to have, the one with Him in it. If you do the rewards will be unbelievable by the world’s standards, if you do not then eternity will be unbelievably long and painful because of your choice alone.

Heaven is better than hell

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

I saw something tonight which upset my whole world, I saw a post on someone’s site which said exactly the opposite of my title. How could someone, even an atheist, believe that hell could possibly be better than Heaven?

The absence of God and light, other than from the fires of hell. The absence of anything of beauty or of anything which is living other than the creatures which inhabit hell. The people and the demons (fallen angels that followed Satan) which are there have no souls, and yet they will never die, even if they wish to. There are no parties, no laughter, no joy, no peace, no water, nothing good other than what you may wish you had done in your life on earth.

This is what is waiting for those who reject God and His grace through Christ. God does not wish that any should experience this place. It was created for Satan and his followers, not for humans. And yet, if you choose to reject God and the truth told in the Bible, you are at enmity with Him just like those who followed Satan and rebelled against God.

God loves us all and doesn’t want anyone to go to this place. Give Christ your life and your heart. Ask Him to show you how to be a follower of His and what you need to do to serve Him in this life so that you will have a real life after this one. Jesus loves us all and wants us all to be there with Him. Please give Him a chance in your life today, right now!  You don’t know if you have tomorrow or next week. Don’t wait because waiting may be too late.

YOU ARE ACCOUNTABLE TO A GOD WHO TRULY WANTS TO SAVE YOU (Ezekiel18:30.32)

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

The Jews in exile were saying that God was going to condemn them so He could watch them suffer, that God would take pleasure in destroying them (vv. 30.32).

Ezekiel‘s reply to this idea was that God does not want you to die! (See v. 23.) These statements from God cannot be any more plain, forceful, or beautiful than this: I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies. (v. 32). God wanted His people to live. He did not want Judah to be destroyed; He wanted His people to live, not to die!

If they died, it would not be because God wanted it to happen; it would be instead because they refused to listen to God’s prophet and turn from their sins that they might be saved, so they might live! Even so today: If you die, if you are lost now and are lost eternally, it is not  because that is what God wants. God does not want anyone to perish (2 Peter 3:9); rather, He wants everyone to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4). Jesus died for all (Hebrews 2:9); the grace of God that brings salvation is available to all (Titus 2:11). If you ultimately are lost, then, why will it happen? The answer is sin.

Sin condemns (Romans 6:23), regardless of the type of sin that it may be.

Even that answer is incomplete. We are lost because of our sins, certainly; but if that were the complete answer, everyone would be lost eternally, for all have sinned (Romans 3:23). Why will you be lost? The answer is unrepented-of sins! That was Judah’s problem: It was not merely that Judah had sinned, but that Judah had, in spite of the warnings of the prophets, refused to repent. Ezekiel came with a final appeal: Repent and live.! (18:32b). In the end, Judah was destroyed as a result of the people’s failure to heed Ezekiel’s appeal.

Likewise, if anyone should perish, the reason will not be that God wanted it to happen. Rather, destruction will come because you have failed to heed the warnings found repeatedly in His Word. Our Creator loves all of humanity, regardless of where you live or who you are. He wants us all to come to repentance if we will only give our lives to Him and follow Him and do what is right in His sight daily. Repent, accept Jesus and live!

Life is too short, like a puff of wind

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

In the world of fiction, such as in vampire stories, human lives are measured in decades instead of centuries. If our lives on earth could be immortal, what would our world be like? Would we be better at being killers? Would we all be rich? Would there be fewer people crowding our cities and streets? If we were immortal and able to fight off most diseases that ravage mankind now, what would our world be like?

The human heart, immortal or not, is ruled by its own desires and those are and always have been violent toward anyone who may have something which you don’t have. If we could be immortal, would it be worth it? Would our world be any better than it is now or would it be worse? There are no wrong answers to these questions and yet, the only answer would be that our civilization would have died long ago.

Our Creator and our only true God kept his creation from taking from the tree of Life to preclude our having immortality and some say that was wrong but in His wisdom and knowledge it was and is right. The only way that we will have immortality is through giving our hearts to Jesus and serving Him now and in eternity. Your family can have the same if they will give their hearts to Him which would allow you to be surrounded by family for all time, in service to the Creator.

Our lives don’t really have much in the way of true meaning in this life other than raising our children and living happily with our spouse, if we are lucky enough to find someone who truly loves us for who we are inside and not for something we can do for them. Jesus said, “I am the way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”  God gave His only Son for us all as a perfect  sacrifice for the world’s sins, if you want to have eternal (immortal) life on earth or in Heaven, give your life and heart to Him. You will not be disappointed.

Romans 8:23