Heaven

Life’s little obstacles

/ Tracy Eldridge / 1 Comment

When you are walking barefoot, you feel every pebble no matter how small. That is what life is like when you are walking without Jesus as your guide. Every problem, every discomfort, everything gets in the way of your enjoyment. Of course, if you have never accepted Jesus, this actually feels like a normal day so it doesn’t really bother you much. You go around them, you ignore them and just move on…until you come up against one that is bigger than you can go around, then what?

It is true that many of our problems could be described as rocks and bumps in a path through this life, but then at times the pathway is almost blocked to the point of falling off on one side or another or maybe you will have to climb over this one. But…how? There aren’t any places to climb over or to put your hands and feet in order to climb over this problem, and it seems that it is on an incline and getting bigger. It may roll over you if you can’t get around or over it so now what do you do?

This is where you learn to depend upon Jesus and His atoning grace for you and your life. The obstacles which were in your way are nothing to our Creator and they can be overcome with His strength. The path becomes a bit smaller, narrower than it was before, but as long as you are following Jesus and depending upon Him, you can navigate it without difficulty. It won’t be easy because once you have given your life and heart to Him, Satan will begin to put more problems in your path.

I don’t say this to scare you away from being a Christian, just a heads-up so you won’t be blindsided by anything that may come your way. The problems that I speak of are not the kind that will kill you, because you belong to Jesus. They are temptations trying to bring you back to the life you led before. Sometimes, they are obstacles to your life with Christ or something that may keep you from fulfilling your ministry.

There are a number of little problems which Satan can magnify into larger problems, the point is that you have the power of Jesus the Christ on your side. He is the Living Word after all and the second person of the Trinity. He has already defeated Satan and the Holy Spirit is inside you, if you are a Christian. Being a Christian you are an adopted child of God, you have nothing to fear from Satan or any of the obstacles that he may place in your path.

God will give you the strength to get through these problems when they arise and He will be with you regardless of what they might be. Give Jesus a chance in your life, so you will have an eternity to praise Him and thank Him for all that He has done.

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Have you considered…eternity?

/ Tracy Eldridge / 6 Comments

Your life here is not all that there is, we were created to have an eternity to go into after this life, but many people don’t consider that to be truth. Why? Because, they can’t see any of it or any of the rewards and work to be done for God’s Kingdom in it now! There are many teachers today on the Internet, in pulpits, on television who are teaching their “version of the gospel”, which Satan does as well. He has had many years to perfect his delivery of his gospel and just as he did when he tempted Jesus, he takes scripture from the Bible and either leaves a portion out or takes it out of context. Some preachers today do that too.

Their teaching is full of partial scriptures, bits and pieces, which don’t really make much Biblical sense unless they are taught in context with the scripture or passage or paragraph that they began in. A partial truth, leaving out a word or taking Scripture out of context, is a lie! A lie that sounds like it came from God’s Word, and it did but without the text around that verse, it can be made to say almost anything. This is how Satan used scripture, by picking a verse and using it to make his point…not God’s point.

Today, not just in America but all over the world, people are being killed or put in to prison for their belief in Jesus. The problem with this is that Jesus is the only solution to our problems, here and now and into eternity! Put down your “self”, bury him or her and take up the cross of Jesus! What does that mean? It means to put others ahead of you, to be kind to one another, to love one another with an unselfish love. The kind that doesn’t say, “what’s in it for me?”!!

Living this way is following the teachings found all through the Bible, not just what Jesus taught. God has always had the answer for our lives, we are just too stubborn to listen or even look for it in His Word! Then, sometimes, when we do find the answer that we were looking for we claim it as our answer not that it came from God. We don’t give Him the credit or the glory for what we find. This is exactly what most “self-help” books do, maybe not word for word because that is plagiarism, but the advice you see in them is exactly the advice you can find in the Bible.

Eternity is going to be there after this life, but it is the experience in eternity that people should be working now to ensure. If you follow your own ways or the ways of the world, and reject any or all of the teachings found in the Bible, then your eternity is going to be very different from a Christian’s eternity.

I know, many of you will say that I am being self-righteous about Christianity but I am not. My righteousness alone is not enough and yours isn’t either, as a Christian I claim the atonement and the righteousness of Jesus that He paid for on the cross! It was the “self-righteous” priests who had Him executed because they felt that they were going to lose their “position” with the people.

Before too long it is going to be more persecution, not just in America but all over the world and it will be against Christians just as it is in Muslim countries now. For many people the prospect of persecution will be enough to keep them from becoming a Christian. For the immediate future, I understand that, but think of your eternity. Once this life is over, however the end comes, you will be faced with that. Eternal unity with God and many friends in Heaven or separation from God in a place of torment and misery forever. Which would you rather endure since while you still live, you do have a choice?

What is happening?

/ Tracy Eldridge / 1 Comment

People are going completely crazy it seems! On the news someone beat up their grandmother, and of course there are other uprisings going on all over the world because of one thing or another. How can this world be so mixed up and messed up? The reason is Satan’s hatred for us and his attempts at keeping as many people from God as he can.

The problems and craziness that is happening now and the terrible horrors of war and violence that has been going on throughout ages past is his doing as well. All of it can be laid at his feet because he wants to mess up this world and the people in it as much as possible while he can. His time is growing short and he knows it so the news is getting more graphic and horrible every week. 

Many people don’t think that he exists and that is fine with him, because if no one believes in him then they won’t realize that it is him and his demon’s influence in this world and over people’s minds that is the cause of all of our woes and heartaches. Satan has been biding his time for thousands of years and he is the prince of lies. He knows exactly what your weakness is and what mine is and how to exploit them.

When the Bible says that “Satan prowls around like a ravenous lion, seeking whom he might devour” (1 Peter 5:8), it is not a figure of speech or a metaphor but it is the truth. To those who might want to pick at what I wrote about the scripture, it is a paraphrase of the verse that I quoted. In either version, it is the truth and whether you believe it or not doesn’t change it.

Belief in the truth doesn’t change it, belief or unbelief in something that is true doesn’t change it either. Satan and his demons are real. The cause death by any means available to them and they are good at it. Cancer, bacteria which can’t be controlled or killed, viruses that were once wiped out have come back, these are examples of their work. Science may not believe it, scientists may not believe it, and I am trained as a laboratory scientist myself. But since Satan is a better theologian than any evangelist, I believe he is also a very good geneticist as well.

The problem is his pride and his ego. He thinks that he can win against God, the Creator of all including him! 

The tricks that he has devised against us have grown exponentially over the millennia as well as his ability to manipulate us and our emotions and the thoughts in our minds. He can appear as an angel of light, which he was before he tried to ascend above the stars of God.

Satan is an adversary and a liar, but with Jesus in our lives he can be defeated. Carrying the Word of Truth in your heart and reading it daily can give you protection from his ways. But, only if you do it!! 

Sitting in church doesn’t do it, reading your Bible once or twice during the week or the month doesn’t do it. He knows the scriptures like the back of his hand, so he can manipulate them so that you could believe a lie from the Word and think it was the truth. Playing at being a Christian is a very dangerous thing and it will cause you to spend eternity with Satan and his demons because that is who God created hell for. We were never intended to go there, but if you are not a child of God then you are in Satan’s camp.

Choose this day whom you will serve, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Joshua 24:15

Depression and anxiety hurt

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

For many people, coming out of the holidays is more painful in an emotional way than it is in a financial way. Sometimes we are missing loved ones who either can’t come during the holidays or they may have finished their time here on earth and have moved on. Whatever the case, it hurts in ways that many people don’t want to acknowledge.

Anxiety and depression are two of the main causes of suicide during the winter months. The reasons behind these two emotions can vary as much as there are differences between each of us. The point is that we are not alone in this, ever. God is always just a prayer away, He is by your side regardless of whether you go to mass on certain days or nights, or church on Sunday or whatever your timetable for worship happens to be.

We give days and weeks to our favorite sport, we will devote countless hours to our hobby and some number of weekends to our family but how much time do you give to God each week? How much time do you spend in the Bible, learning about God and listening to His counsel? I am not talking of going to mass or confession at a Catholic church or a Jewish synagogue or any other religion or religious service. I am talking of getting to know God, the only God that matters, the One who has known you since before the foundation of the world was laid.

I know, there are many who don’t believe in God or the Bible as His Word, which is fine. You can believe whatever you wish to believe and it won’t hurt my feelings at all, but not believing in God doesn’t change the fact that He exists and that He is your judge at the end of your life. When it comes to that moment in your life, what will you cling to that will be enough to give you eternal life? If you are clinging to anything or anyone other than Jesus and belief in His sacrifice for your sins to be forgiven then your life is over. Nothing or nobody can save you except Jesus. You are not good enough, Billy Graham is not good enough, the Pope isn’t good enough, your ancestors are not good enough, Muhammad is not good enough and neither is Allah!!!!

The only person Who can get you into Heaven is Jesus. Belief in Him and the act of submitting your will and your heart to Him is the only way into eternity. Believe or decide not to believe in Him, but when your life is over here and you stand before God, what will you say? God provided the way into eternity through Jesus and His sacrifice and all that you have to do is believe it and accept it, then repent of the sins that you are living in and become the person that God meant for you to be…His child.

What can I do with my life?

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

I have wondered that for most of my life. The answer to such a question is not easy to come to whoever asks it regardless of age, religion, or sexual preference. When we try to find our purpose in life we are usually searching for things that we like to do or places we would like to visit or even people we would like to be with. Most of our lives on earth, we are concerned more with “mine, me, or I”. It is a rare individual who is more concerned with others than themselves.

We cannot do anything good on our own because we are sinful by nature and our natural tendency is toward sin. Our lives are useful to us but even more to God and when we are serving Him, regardless of what we are doing, we are to give Him the glory. He raises us from sleep every morning and gives us the strength for each day.

Until we accept Jesus and His Grace for us, we are not His. Usually we have to come to a point where our lives are not what we want them to be and realize that we can’t make them that way on our own. When we come to that point, a choice is usually present and we must choose.


Redemption from our previous life or just continue on in the life that we are “comfortable” with? Comfort is relative however. Comfort in this life may lead to an eternity of torment and eternity is a long time! If we choose to follow Jesus and serve Him we may have to give up some friends or our favorite places to go or some things that we are “comfortable” doing right now. But, have you ever thought of how short our lives truly are? Do you think your life is all that there is?


Eternity is much longer that a billion years so our pitiful lifespan of seventy-five or eighty years is nothing more than a puff of smoke in comparison. Where would you rather spend eternity, in torment, pain, and anguish or in peace, life with Him, and happiness forever?


Each of us needs saving, but where can that redemption to come from? Buddha? Mohammed?  Jesus is the only way. “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Choose life and Jesus over spiritual death and anguish forever.

The time we have here is important

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

It is important to us, to our families and to God. Our lives are and always have been important to Him. If many of you would listen and check out His word, the Bible, you would see this is true. 

Psalms 118: 8  It is better to trust in the Lord than to put your confidence in people.

The Lord of Hosts and the Creator of the Universe loves all of His creation, especially us! He created us in His image, all of us! It is about time that we realized this. The word of God is full of passages which point to this out in detail.

We were put here to serve Him and His purposes on earth. Many people are confused about what this means. The Bible tells us if we only take the time to come to Him and pray about it while we study His word. He will reveal exactly what we are to do for Him and how to do it. The Bible is the only Living Word of God. It was sent to us to guide us and reveal to us what our purpose on earth is. Jesus was and is the Living Word and is manifested in the world now as the Bible itself. He is the Son of God and the savior of the world.

Give your life to Him and  live fully dedicated to Him and you will never regret it. He can and will reward you with more than you could ever hope for…. a life that will never end and more satisfaction in your life here than you can get from the world.

Our Service to Him….

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Should be out of love for someone who created us just the way we should be. Your life is not just yours but it belongs to God, whether you have given your life to Jesus or not. Everything on the earth no matter what it is, including everyone who is or is not a follower of Christ, belongs to God because He created everything and everyone. There are no animals, no bacteria, no insects, or fish or birds or anything on the earth that He did not want to be here.

I have never quite understood how some non-believers could come to the conclusion that man can make himself into a god. There is no possible way, because even the angels can’t do that. They are heavenly beings created by God and they are very powerful, but they are still His servants.

Our lives are intended to be extensions of His will, even though we are not forced into this. We are to give ourselves freely because that is what Christ did. He subjected Himself to His Father’s will, not His own. He went to the cross to die for us, all of us, so that when we believe in Him and His sacrifice for us we will have eternal life with Him. It is that simple!!

Simplicity makes some people scared because they think if it is too simple it must not be worth much. YOU ARE WRONG!! Our salvation is worth the price of God’s son and His death and resurrection. I don’t know of anything that could be named that would be worth even the price of my own son’s death and being human we can’t comprehend God’s ways or His thoughts about His son’s death. Of course, He knew that He was going to be resurrected and ascend to Heaven. But that is beside the point.

Would you sacrifice something so precious for beings that reject you and your ways! Even when you have given them every chance over and over and over, that is exactly what YAHWEH, Jehovah, God did for all of us. We should get down on our knees every day and thank Him that He allowed us to even get up from our bed. These facts are hard to accept, yet they are in the Bible which is the written word of God and He does NOT lie.

Please forgive me if this post is too forceful but time is running short and if you expect to be allowed into heaven, you have to get your heart and soul right with God. Once the door is shut by God, no one else can open it.