Christian

Time….

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

We count it and watch it, some days it seems like we don’t have enough of it yet we waste it too. So, what do you intend to do with the time that you have? How much time do you have? How much of it have you thrown away with games and silly things that don’t give you any reward? We look at a new sunrise and think that we have all day to do things when actually we have already lost six hours of that day since midnight. During the spring and fall we get two equinoxes  which give us twelve hours each of daylight and night, but as Jesus said to His disciples: “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.” John 9:4

I was curious about the hours and minutes and seconds that we have in a day so I am breaking that down here: In one twenty-four hour period there are 1440 minutes and 86,400 seconds. We tend to use part of those for sleep of course, but the point is that our time is limited. We don’t know for sure how long we will live and yet we fritter it away as if we will have a century or more.

Life begins with our conception but our breathing life begins at birth and from that point on we begin to die physically. Of course for a couple of decades we don’t notice the breakdown of our cells and our bodies, if we are lucky or blessed to be born healthy. Some don’t get that blessing though and are born with built-in limitations, which can be a blessing or a curse depending on how we look at it as we grow. The thing to remember is that GOD DOESN’T MAKE JUNK!

Physical limitations, disabilities or whatever you may call them are just points where we need to learn to lean on God more in our daily lives. The apostle Paul had a thorn that he had to deal with while he was serving the Lord and he asked God to remove it three times, but God told him that “my grace is sufficient for you“. Paul had to learn to live with it, whatever it was and he did some mighty preaching with it until his execution.

Time is given to us in increments of seconds and minutes and hours and days and months and years, but we are never guaranteed a certain amount of time. We get our days just one at a time, and no more. This is why I try to tell people about Jesus and His mercy for your life, provided on the cross and through His resurrection so that our sins are paid for. All that we need to do is to claim this grace and mercy from God.

Once you do, then you can use the remaining days that you have telling others about Jesus in your life. We are given this time to do just that, to tell others about our Lord and Savior. This is God’s will for a Christian’s life. We all don’t have glorious and grand ministries like some on TV do. But, in telling others about Jesus we do have a ministry. Because, God loves all of His creation. He doesn’t like the sins that many seem prone to live in on a daily basis, but He loves the people anyway.

Living a sinful life is not pleasing to God, whether you are a CINO (Christian in name only) or a true, born again Christian. One who truly has had their life and heart changed by the Holy Spirit cannot comfortably commit sin because you are convicted of it when the thought enters your mind even before you do anything with that thought! I don’t mean that Christians are pure and sinless because nobody lived a life on Earth that way except for Jesus.

We can live a life sanctified by Him, washed in His blood, and our records have been wiped clean from that point on, but we will still say things, think things, and do things that are sinful. We can claim His forgiveness for those sins at the point of conviction because we are covered by His righteousness. As long as we don’t choose to go back into a life of sin and ignore the Spirit’s prompting us to stop. We are still His, but like putting a white cloth in the mud we have soiled our life and our soul. If you keep on in your sin, it will get easier to ignore the Spirit’s prompting each time until one day you won’t hear it or feel it at all.

But…God is still with you. He hasn’t left you, you are the one who moved. Come back to Him, seek Him out and He will forgive your sins and take you back. Just because you have gotten off the path, doesn’t mean that you can’t find it again. Give your life and your heart to Jesus and the rest of the journey won’t be easy but He will give you the strength to get through each minute…each second…of each day that is ahead of you.

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I haven’t been here enough…

/ Tracy Eldridge / 1 Comment

This blog was my first blog actually. It started over on blogger.com and I imported its content here a few years ago. I have been concentrating on my other Christian blog, thelivingmessage.com far more than I have here.

God’s love is for everyone, whether you believe in Him or not, it is still available to you. Jesus came so that we might all have eternal life in Heaven, if you aren’t interested in that then your spirit will live eternally in the darkness of hell. Truth is truth and its found in God’s Word. It can’t be undone or ignored just because you don’t want to believe it. We are all going to face a judgement one day, good or bad, whether you believe it here or realize at the judgement that what you have heard is real.

I am a pastor of a small church and I do try to bring the message from God’s Word every Sunday morning. Sometimes I will post those sermons here or on my other blogs, sometimes I don’t, it just depends on whether I wrote them down or not. We are getting very close to a time of great change that is coming, not only to America but the whole world.

The glory of God and His Kingdom will be shown on this world, whether you believe in Him or not.  Seek Him, while you are here because once you have breathed your last breath, there are no second chances. Your life and all of the opportunities for salvation have an expiration date just like I do, but when you die those opportunities are gone.

Would anyone ever think that you are a Christian?

/ Tracy Eldridge / 2 Comments

Well? Could someone look at your life and the things that you do every day and tell that you are a Christian without you telling them? Do you frequent places of worship during the week, not just on Sunday? Does your weekly life show that you are a follower of Christ? Our country needs Christians who can stand up and show that their beliefs are real and not just words. Many people in the world and in our country can’t tell the difference between a Christian and someone who isn’t!

Do you think if your Christianity were put on trial in a court of law, would there be enough evidence to convict you of being a Christian? For many people, the answer to this question would be questionable. For some, there may be enough evidence to actually prove that they are Christians. But in the near future during the time of Tribulation, just having a Bible in your home may be enough to convict you whether you go to church or study it regularly or not.

But, just having a Bible in your home doesn’t make you a Christian. Going to church and Bible study doesn’t make you a Christian. Praying to God, if you are not a Christian, doesn’t make you a Christian unless it is a prayer of confession and submission to become a Christian. God loves you more than you can imagine, but He doesn’t push Himself into your life. You are not required to come to Him or give your heart to Him except for one purpose and that is to become more like Christ. Still, it is your choice.

Will you take that step of faith? Won’t you decide to make sure of your eternal place in God’s Kingdom? If you wish to serve Satan, ignore anything that you have read here and go on your way. He doesn’t care, because as long as he can keep you out of God’s Kingdom then you are already living in his. He doesn’t tell you that after you die, the eternity that is waiting for you is one of no forgiveness, no life, no parties, no light or water…and that its forever. He leaves out all of the fine print, until it’s too late.

Think about it.

 

Miracles

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

Do you believe in miracles happening today? Some people do because they have seen people healed when there was no chance that medicine could accomplish it. Others look at all of the problems in the world and think “Why bother? God doesn’t care anymore.”

Yes, He does. He has never stopped caring for the world and those in it. His grace for each of us today is for us to have the chance to come to know Him. He waits for us to decide to come into His Presence, and yet many are turning away because of apathy and mistrust and just plain tiredness.

Why do I say this? Because…it is true. Young people especially have turned away from God, even with the fancy churches and the concerts. Small churches which can’t afford those entertaining ways of getting your attention are losing people under forty by the thousands today. Why?

Because of boredom. In today’s world, where technology reigns supreme, people young and old just don’t get the wisdom in the Bible. It’s not flashy enough. It’s not loud enough and it doesn’t keep their attention long enough. Think about this for a moment.

Anyone born since 1980 has had video games, music videos, computers, cell phones (smart or not), and many other techno-gadgets in their lives at all times. None of this generation knows what it is like to be disconnected from family or friends because one way or another they have all had some form of communication available. Look in a crowd at a concert and see if you can count the number of screens lit up, even at a movie. Depending on the size of the crowd there will be hundreds if not thousands, so even in a venue where their attention is supposed to be focused on the stage or screen, they are usually focused on a small screen.

The only reason this doesn’t happen at my church is because it is in an area where there isn’t much cell coverage, so there isn’t any reason to look at the screen…no connection. That is also why the church is losing people in droves…no connection. How can you connect young people to a Savior and their Creator when they can’t touch Him or Google Him?

God cares for you and me. He loves each of us more than we can understand, and yet we latch on to doctrine and dogma made up by men. Just as those in the past did. The Law of Moses was held in high esteem, but it couldn’t save their souls. All that they Law could do was to point out that they couldn’t perform to perfection, that we can’t live or perform to perfection. The doctrine or discipline that some churches and their congregations cling to is no different, even though it is worded differently.

Man-made rules cannot be above God any more than we can be. His Way through Jesus is the only way to salvation, anything other than Jesus leads to death…the kind that never ends. Separation from God for eternity because of your choices, your choice, not because of any act or sin on your part except for the rejection of Jesus as your Savior. This is the unforgivable sin, and usually pride is the culprit which causes you to think that you can do better. That you can get into Heaven without Jesus.

Not possible. The door narrow and small in such a way that only you can get through with Jesus leading you in. Nothing that you have on Earth, whether it is money, power, fame or whatever it may be will help you be sinless and pure in heart enough to get into Heaven. Only through the blood of Jesus and your repentance of your sinful lifestyle whatever that may be will get you there. Some can wait until they are in the electric chair or the table to be killed by an injection in prison because they know the day and hour of their death. Most of us don’t have that luxury. Our death could come any time.

Seek Him in the Bible and pray that you can choose to follow Him for the rest of your days.

Love life, not stuff!

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

There is too much stuff in our lives today. Phones, tablets, laptops, smart televisions, web enabled refrigerators of all things, how much electronic stuff do we really need? I don’t think we actually need any of this stuff. Many of us went through school and most of our lives without this stuff, but the generation growing up today doesn’t seem to be able to take a step without tweeting about it or talking on the phone or texting many times every day.

How can we live like this? I have seen commercials with families who are texting each other at the table instead of talking. Why? Is it possible that we have become so dependent upon technology that we can’t communicate with each other anymore? I would hope not, but it does seem that way at times.

In reference to life itself and the enjoyment of it, I wrote a post on my other website about Veterans which a few people read but it seems that nobody liked it much. I realize that I compared the service jobs like police, fire and ambulance workers and their unique problems to those of Veterans, but they all face armed personnel at times and life threatening challenges every day, so even though it is true that local service people like these don’t face the exact same dangers as our armed forces veterans, they still face PTSD and other mental and physical problems, especially when they are injured by gunfire or a job related injury. We can’t leave them completely out of the support loop, even if they have never served in a war scenario, they should still be considered “brothers in arms”, at least in my opinion.

I served as an EMT/Firefighter for about ten years and it took many years of prayer and seeking help from my pastor and from God’s Word in order for me to come to a point where I didn’t wake up at night hearing sirens which weren’t there or feeling the heat from a fire which was just in my mind. I can still recall the images and feelings of those days, but my mind has, sort of created a box in which they stay in and when I choose to remember them I can put them back and shut the door and they don’t bother me anymore. I don’t want anyone to think that I am trivializing our servicemen and women and their service to our country, I am not doing that at all! The all made sacrifices, some made the ultimate sacrifice of giving their life so that others might make it home. I am just trying to point out that there are local people serving us every day who place themselves in harm’s way too and they deserve to be recognized as well, maybe not like our Vets, but at least given some form of recognition that many times they don’t get.

In reference to the stuff in our lives, we see it all of the time. On TV, in schools, on the streets, in stores. Technology and all sorts of stuff is all around us every day! God loves us, but not our stuff nor our sins. We can’t take our stuff with us, regardless of how much we have. None of it will be needed nor necessary in God’s Kingdom. The recognition of our people, who have served in any capacity, is necessary but the salvation of all people who will come to Christ is something to be desired. God is still in the business of miracles, whether it is by granting healing or health or through the change in your heart when you become a born-again Christian! Please, give your heart and life to Jesus. The time that we have is coming to a close, the second coming of Christ is on the horizon, look up for your redemption draws near! Amen!

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!

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.

In Him we are…

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

We are MORE than conquerors through Christ, no matter what this world throws at us! In Ephesians 1:16-21 says this in the Amplified Bible:

“I do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers. 17. [For I always pray to] the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, that He may grant you a spirit of wisdom and revelation [of insight into mysteries and secrets] in the [deep and intimate] knowledge of Him, 18 By having the eyes of your heart flooded with light, so that you can know and understand the hope to which He has called you, and how rich is His glorious inheritance in the saints (His set-apart ones), 19 And [so that you can know and understand] what is the immeasurable and unlimited and surpassing greatness of His power in and for us who believe, as demonstrated in the working of His mighty strength, 20 Which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His [own] right hand in the heavenly [places], 21 Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named [above every title that can be conferred], not only in this age and in this world, but also in the age and the world which are to come.”

God has given to each of us as believers, the victory through His power and through Christ who also conquered this world and the one who is in this world! You might say, “Victory over what?”!

Victory over your circumstances, whether they are involving money, loss of a job or a loved one, depression, alcoholism, drugs, illness, whatever it may be. Paul wrote the scripture above to the Ephesians because that is what he prayed for them to experience in their lives, not just some of the time but every day! I am not saying that God will heal all of your sickness or your addictions overnight, but He will comfort you and be there with you through the process of getting over them and through the healing process.

Sometimes God will heal you or me when we claim that healing through faith in Him and His power in our lives. But, Satan is going to try to derail your faith and stop any victory that you gain over his demonic powers which enslaved you to that illness or addiction. He will tell you that it isn’t possible, that God doesn’t care about you and that God won’t do anything for you that you can’t do on your own. Those are lies from the master of lies!!

God does love you. He does care about you and your problems and He will make a way for you to get through them! If you have given your heart and your life to Jesus and asked Him to come into your life and change your life into what He sees in you, then you can make it through all of the things that are going on, no matter how bad they are! It may require that you are killed by someone who is not a Christian, but you are the conqueror because as a Christian you have a sure victory through Christ and a place..an everlasting home in Heaven with Jesus!

We see and hear every day that more bad things are happening in the world because of hatred and violence in places from America to the Middle East to Africa, but these are ‘birth pains” of a world that is coming to a close. Look up and pray, expecting Jesus to come because He will. Your salvation and redemption draws closer every day!

Christians in the crosshairs

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

Some Muslims even expressed their sentiments to Christians in Baghdad at a Sunday service.

“You are the true original people here, and we are sorry for what has been done to you in the name of Islam,” whispered one Muslim woman to a Christian woman fighting away tears, according to The New York Times.

This was from an article on the forced evacuation of Mosul (Nineveh) in Iraq. For a so-called “religion of peace”, Islam is not being very peaceful at all, especially with the Christians who have inhabited this city for over one thousand years. Mosul has been a Christian dominated city for at least that long, according to the information that I have been able to find.

Here is another quote from the UK:

“What are the moderate Muslims saying?” the Lebanese Catholic Maronite Patriarch, Bechara Rai, asked acidly last week. “We do not hear the voices of those who denounce this.”

Indeed not. The Caliphate’s threat to the Christians – convert, be taxed or die – contradict, in the words of the Chaldean Patriarch, Archbishop Louis Sako,  “1,400 years of history and of the life of the Muslim world and of coexistence between different religions and different peoples”. Archbishop Sako spoke, too, this week of how Iraq itself had become a “humanitarian, cultural and historical catastrophe”. But he added that Christians in the region must remember that the Koran demands respect for minorities and that the Christian people must also remain respectful to Muslims and show “patience and endurance”. Which, I would have thought, might be turning the other saintly cheek a bit too far.

We, as Christians, should help those in need if we can. I am not sure if the help that we provide would reach the ones needing it though, so I am not sure what to do. All that I can do right now is to pray for them and I ask all of you who read this to do the same. It seems that the American government is not offering any sort of help for these, yet they are willing to help the oppressors of Israel. Of course in the media, Israel is the oppressor of the Palestinian people not the other way around. Israel has belonged to the Jewish people since at least four thousand years ago according to the covenant made with Abraham and God’s covenant cannot and will not be broken.

When you pray about the trouble in our world today, please include a prayer for those Christians being persecuted in Iraq and those in North Korea and China as well. Pray for Israel and for God’s protection for them too. We need Him and they do too.

 

What can you say….?

/ Tracy Eldridge / 3 Comments

The times and the days that we are living in are changing rapidly, yet nothing seems to be noticed by the world outside of the church that we attend. Weeks go by, sermons are preached, plates are passed, commitments are made sometimes, life goes on in between church services. It seems that not much changes. Sometimes the faces in the crowd change, some grow up and move away, some die and go home to be with our Lord. As the Preacher said in Ecclesiastes, nothing changes under the sun. All is as it was in the past and will be in the future.

So, what makes today any different from yesterday or one hundred years ago or even one thousand years ago? The only thing that has actually changed in that amount of time is our technology. We have more ways of communicating with each other, faster over longer distances than we did even fifty years ago. We see and hear the news from around the world in the same way. It is not slow and tedious as it was during the middle of the 1800’s when it would take weeks or months to find out what was  happening on the other side of the world. Even when the attack on Pearl Harbor came in 1941, it took at least thirty minutes to an hour or more to get news back and forth to Washington, DC. Now, it only takes seconds.

Is our world better off with all of the instant communication that we have? Is your day more productive because of technology? Yes, in some ways technology has made our lives better, but the Internet has also made it easier to commit an anonymous crime and get away with it too. It also puts images and videos within easy reach of our children and us. Images and videos which at one time were regulated by being only available to persons over a certain age. We have allowed pornography, murder and the ways to commit murder to come into our homes by way of games and the Internet. So, what can be said about the decline of morality in our culture today?

Religion is not the answer because you can create your own “religion”, and it will be accepted and taken up by anyone who might be disappointed with their own, if they have one at all. No, the answer to our dilemma is the Bible and the wisdom contained in it. Also, the Saviour mentioned in the New Testament has paid the price of atonement for all who will confess their sins and ask Him to come into their lives by believing that He did what He said and what He will do in the future. He is the only way…the only path to Heaven and if we lose sight of that, we have lost everything. Seek Him while He can be found.