Christianity

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

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God is everywhere!

/ Tracy Eldridge / 1 Comment

I read an email from a friend a few years ago and it had a story in it that many of you have likely seen before but here is the gist of it:

A man walked up to a boy on his way to school many years ago and said to him, “I will give you a nickel if you can tell me where God is.” (Had to be many years ago because a nickel wouldn’t interest too many kids today). The boy asked him, “How long do I have to find God for you mister?” The man said, “Until this afternoon when you get out of school, I will be close by.”

So the boy went to school and looked and read some books and asked a teacher or two about where God could be found. By that afternoon, the little boy found the man on his way home and he told him, “Mister, you can keep your nickel, because I found that God is all around us! I would be willing to give you a dollar if you could tell me where God isn’t!”

The boy is right, God is everywhere! But, that doesn’t mean that we are “gods” or that the planet that we live on is a “god”, like many so-called “new age religions” try to make you see in yourself. God created all that is in our universe. All of the planets, the stars, the comets, every tree and blade of grass and each of us! HE had a part, a very BIG part, in creating you and me and every other person on Earth as well as all of the things which we see and feel around us every day!

Don’t count Jesus out of your life because He is God’s Son, the Living Word, and He was instrumental in creation! The Holy Spirit also played a big part in creation, because He is part of the Trinity and also the Spirit of God which brought to life Adam and which hovered over the waters before the light was brought into existence.

Yes, there are many who will tell me that this is not true or that the Bible is a book full of errors and lies…but it isn’t. Many of the prophecies in its pages have already come true and there are some which are going to come true soon, then the whole world will see that He is real and that His Word is Truth!

Seek Him while there is time to do so, because we are not guaranteed tomorrow morning. Today is all that you have and even the moments which have not passed aren’t sure for anyone because they are still in the future. Time is moving and it is moving faster, it seems, but in a few minutes it will be one minute after 8, this is Central Time, but what I am pointing to is that by the time I finish this, it will be later than that!

God loves you!

/ Tracy Eldridge / 2 Comments

YoushallbesavedBelieve it or not, He really does! Otherwise, He wouldn’t have sent Jesus to pay for our sins in the first place. We are all sinners, backsliders, liars, thieves, adulterers, and murderers to some extent but the sins have been paid for, the penalty for each of them has been paid for by Jesus! All you have to do is realize that you need Him and that your lifestyle is sinful in some way then turn away from your sins and ask Him to come into your life and give you the victory over sin!

Is it a quick fix? Sometimes but sometimes it takes a little time, but with Jesus in your corner what do you have to fear? He is the Alpha and the Omega, our Creator and the King of Kings! He is over ALL of creation because He created it all! The good, bad, the ugly and the indifferent but He created all of it!

The children’s song, “Jesus loves me”, is so true because He does and He wouldn’t have come to pay for our sin debt if He did not love each of us. So, why do people seem to so against Him and His love? To me, it doesn’t make much sense at all. Pick between two different people to be your parent–One Who loves you beyond your ability to measure, and the other who tells you that he loves you but can’t help you in any situation requiring the power of God. Why? Because Satan doesn’t know how to heal and he can’t. He doesn’t care about your soul except to keep you from giving your heart to Jesus! He will laugh at you when you are in hell with him because you believed his lies!

How did you hear his lies if you went to church all of your life? By not studying the Word of God, by making God fit into your idea of Who He is (making your own god), by thinking that you are righteous because of your length of time in the church. All of these and more will send many people to hell, even though they will think that they are going to Heaven.

God loves you but He cannot be put in a “box of your own making”. You have heard people say something like “My God wouldn’t do that!” “He wouldn’t send you to Hell for …..”; no, your “god” wouldn’t, but if your version doesn’t line up with the One in Scripture then we aren’t talking about the same God!

Jesus came to do the Father’s will while He was with the disciples during His ministry, and He was just as much a part of the Trinity while here as He was in Heaven! Yes, Jesus was born of a woman but His nature was of His Father not that of sinful man. So, He was just as much Creator and God as He was man!

In John 3:16,17,18 it says:  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God”

Believing in Jesus isn’t very hard to do. Read John and the book of Romans completely, then if you don’t want to believe or you don’t find anyone to believe in through those verses of Scripture…then all I can do is pray for you. God does love you and He has shown it through His Son…all that you have to do to have eternal life is to repent of your sins and believe in Jesus. That’s it! A child can understand it.

God wins!

/ Tracy Eldridge / 1 Comment

There are many people who are saying that Christianity is losing ground to new religions and to old ones that are seeing new converts. The “falling away” actually hasn’t happened yet, it may be beginning but there is more to come. Why would I say this on a blog which usually expounds on God’s Word and His way to salvation? Because it is in His Word that we find out about it in the first place.

There are many temptations and other religions which will entice people away from Christianity and it seems that many are “taking the bait” today. The problem with this is eternal and many of them don’t realize this, or they don’t care. Consider for a moment that there is an eternity waiting for you on the other side of death. Where will you spend it?

God cares about all of you, whether you are a Christian believer or not. This is why Jesus was sent to fulfill the purpose of God when He gave Himself as the ransom for our sin debts! The price for ALL of us, no matter who or where you are or what you may have done in your life HAS BEEN PAID! Jesus paid it in full on the cross!

Nothing that you or I can do will aid in our salvation or our entrance into Heaven, yet many seem to think that we should “help” God save us in some way. Do you really think that the Creator of all things NEEDS our help? That would be like asking an ant to help build your house, it would be of no use whatsoever and neither can we. Even if the ant could understand you and attempted to help, what could it do in the building of your house? Not much at all, if anything.

That is how we are in “helping” God…we can’t and He doesn’t need us to do so. Consider standing before a gigantic being, one that doesn’t need you and could crush you easily. If there was a stone about eight feet in diameter and two feet thick which needed to be moved, could you do it on your own? Of course not, but the being which is standing next to you would have no trouble at all moving this stone and he needs no help from you. I am not speaking of a giant such as Goliath from the story of David, I am talking about one who is about twenty or thirty feet tall, that stone would be like a rock to for him.

In other words, your entrance into Heaven is already paid for, the place that you could live forever is already furnished and waiting and all that you have to do is realize that you need Jesus in your life. So, seek Him out and ask Him to come into your heart and save you from an eternity without Him. Think about it from our world’s viewpoint: if you found out that you had an account with ten million dollars in it and a very nice house already furnished with three cars in the garage which were your dream cars and all you had to do was ask for it and accept it…would you? Of course you would!

The only difference between the life that you would have in my last illustration and the one where you accept Jesus as your Savior is that eternal life begins when this life ends. You won’t be able to show your mansion to anyone unless they are saved too. The biggest difference from my point of view is that the money, the house and the cars are all temporary because as soon as you take possession of them, that night you will die.

I’ll get back to you…

/ Tracy Eldridge / 1 Comment

How would this attitude feel if you had to put up with it every week or so? It is amazing that God’s patience with us has lasted so long. Especially in light of the fact that the world that He created didn’t last as long before the flood as it has since Jesus’ resurrection! People go to church or to synagogue each week and then go home and act as if they never met the Creator!

While it is true that we don’t meet Him face to face in our religious meetings each week, we are supposed to be seeking Him out to find out Who He really is and get to know Him better. But…do you? We leave our worship services with a vague notion of Who He is or Who Jesus is IF our teacher or preacher is teaching from God’s Word. It seems that many of us go out the door and mostly forget what we have heard or what we have read about in our Bibles!

It is as if the “meeting” that we attend each week is just a meeting of other people who are religious about meeting at this place and time. It seems that our reason for going to church is to be seen by others and not to learn about why we come to worship or even Who it is that we are coming to worship! We pray and sing a few songs and listen to our teacher/preacher telling us stories from his perspective or sometimes from the Bible and then we go home thinking that we have been taught what we need to know.

So let me ask you this: What did you learn about Jesus on Sunday? Do you remember what the sermon was about or the scripture that it was taught from? Did you even tell anyone about what you learned at church and invite them to come and hear about the man, Jesus, who is the Savior of us all?

Some of you did, many more who attended church this past weekend did not. Some even sat with an earphone from your iPod or iPhone stuck in your ear or you just tuned the sermon completely out.

“I’ll get back to you” is a phrase that is used in many areas of life but it shouldn’t be used when you are speaking to or learning from God and His Word! Why? Because you might not get back. The sinner’s prayer is easy to say but it has to come from a sincerely broken heart, one that knows that it is a sinner and that it has sinned and that it needs God, it needs Jesus! You can recite it just as many of us learned to do with the “Pledge of Allegiance” when we were young, although they don’t do that anymore because they don’t want to offend anyone.

The sinner’s prayer goes something like this:

Jesus, I know that you are Lord of Heaven and Earth. I know that you came here to die for my sins, and you proved yourself as the Son of God by rising from the dead after being crucified. I am a sinner and I need You for my redemption. Jesus, I accept you into my life and ask for your forgiveness for me.  Amen.

That is all it takes. If you know that you need Him don’t “get back to Him”, ask Him to come into your heart and He will be there forever.

Life and time

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

Each of us is given these from the moment we are born. How much of either we will enjoy is up to God. Life is our daily walk through our time here, sometimes it is easy, sometimes it is hard, at other times it is a blend of the two whether we enjoy it or not.

Why we live and learn the way we do is a question for God alone, not the doctors or even your parents. Life teaches us wisdom with enough time. Sometimes we learn from it and sometimes we need a refresher, but eventually we do get it.

Why am I writing a short piece on this topic today? I just felt reflective this morning, so feel free to use these words to inspire your own journey, your own learning. If, that is, you can spare the time to learn about Life.

The Life which I speak of here is the giver and sustainer of Life, Jesus Christ. Your life and mine depend upon Him or at least they should. Give Him a bit of your day each day and you will learn of the ways that He can teach you and the wisdom contained within His Words in the Bible. Whether you believe in Him or not, He is the One Who woke you this morning, gives you the strength to go through your day and the ability to interact with your world.

No part of our world or the universe could exist without Him, without His strength and His guidance because it is all under His direction and control! He is the Creator and sustainer of it all. Look up the protein which exists in your cells which is the “glue” which holds them together, it is called laminin and here is a picture of it.

I knowlaminin.jpg that it looks like a cross, but I think that He designed it just that way so that scientists will see His hand in our world and in each one of us. God loves each of us enough that we will never understand His love until we are in His Presence. There is no evolutionary reason that this molecule, this protein should look this way. It is this way because He designed it this way!

Your life and mine as well as the time that we have to enjoy it are given to each of us in order to allow us the opportunity to learn about Him and that we truly need Him. You can ignore Him if you wish, you can say that He is not real and that there is no hell or Heaven. New age believers think this way and they think that they are god but they are going to find Someone different when their life ends.

Seek Jesus out while you have the time to do so, because it is only while you live that you are given the chance to ask Him into your life. Once this life…this time is over, there is no second chance.

Suffering..

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

God, unlike some of the sermons that are heard and preached, doesn’t allow you to suffer. Yes, He is in control. Yes, He told Satan to test Job and Peter but His Spirit was there with them even through all that they went through. God gave them the strength to go through what they had to suffer but He did NOT cause their suffering. God’s only reason behind the testing was to prove to Satan the faith that His servant, Job, had in Him.

We are not made to suffer by a loving God. Jesus did not make Peter suffer, though He did tell Peter that Satan had asked to “sift him as wheat“. He also told Peter that He had prayed for his strength to stand against his sifting. Peter failed because he denied Jesus three times, though truthfully Jesus had also told Peter ahead of time that he would do this as well. Our God and our Lord know us better than we know ourselves, we may think our faith is strong only to find that is not the case in the time that we face a trial.

The most positive point that I can give you here is that after Jesus was resurrected, He forgave and restored Peter. Afterward, Peter became one of the most faithful of His disciples.

We can too! IF we will learn to give our hearts and our faith to God completely, unashamedly and without reserve! This kind of commitment is not impossible, couples who are committed to each other in marriage do it. So, why can’t we give this kind of service and commitment to our Lord and Savior when He gave His life for us?

True, He knew that He could take His life up again but His human body still had to endure the suffering and the pain of the scourging and the cross! That part of Him that was God, had to endure something worse…the separation from His Father during the time on the cross! Something which He had never had to experience from eternity past! A suffering that we, as Christians, won’t have to endure. Those who refuse to believe in Him and live their lives for Him will endure that separation forever, tormented by the fact that their belief in Jesus could’ve saved them from it.

That is the punishment of hell. Yes, there may be a lake of fire. It is mentioned in Scripture, weeping and gnashing of teeth are also mentioned. The torment most grievous will be the separation from God and everything that is good and light and cool. Consider this, search the Bible for your answers, seek out Jesus while you still draw breath because when you die…there are no do-overs, no second chances, no re-spawn to life! That’s it!

What will you do with your life? What are you expecting in eternity? Not believing in eternity now will not change the fact that God says there is an eternity after this life. Make sure of yours while you can.

We celebrate the birth…

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

Nativity-29Though many are more into the commercial aspect of Christmas these days, we truly should be celebrating the birth of our Savior. But, what about the love that He expressed from God toward all of us thirty years or so later. What was it that brought Him to Jerusalem at Passover to be offered up as a perfect lamb for the sins of the world?

He did it because of love. The love for mankind that He had and that He had seen expressed through the Father since Creation. He did it because His Father sent Him to the world to show the love of God to mankind. Everyone seems to look at the Jewish high priests who were scared of Him and blames them for getting Jesus crucified but they were only part of the equation.

God had put all of the parts in motion when He told Eve and Adam that the Seed of the woman would come one day and crush the serpent’s head. Though God had known that it would be necessary for this to happen even before He said “Let there be light!”. Nothing in the universe takes God by surprise because He is in control of it all, whether we agree with Him or like how He does things or not.

God looked into time before it started counting and He saw you and me and He knew that we needed a Savior. The only One that could fill that requirement and the sacrifice that would be needed was the Son and He would have to come as a baby born of a woman by God’s Spirit. No Earthly man could fulfill the requirement for a Savior, only One Who had the nature of God Himself, unstained by the sins of previous generations.

What was it that held Jesus on the cross? Many would say that it was the Roman nails of which there were three. Some would say that He was put there because His people rejected His teachings and His offer of salvation. The truth is that it was love which held Him there. He had more love and compassion for His people, not just the Jewish people but ALL of us, than He could express in His life.

So, with His death He provided a way for all of us to be saved through belief in Him and His life. Also, the message which He brought to us through His teachings and His disciples which the church is supposed to be taking to the rest of the world until He comes again. His birth brought joy into the world because of God’s love for man. His death and resurrection brought salvation to us through our belief in Him and His love for us.

What more could we ask for? A perfect world? We wouldn’t be satisfied with it. All the money we could ever need? It would be nice for a while, but ultimately if everyone on Earth had all that they needed, they would still want more. We are offered eternity through Jesus’ life, burial and resurrection if we will accept it humbly and believe in Him. There is no greater gift that we could be given than that.

You are valuable!

/ Tracy Eldridge / 1 Comment

Our Savior, Jesus Christ, said “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” I used to wonder what in the world He was speaking of…and now I know. Think of it this way if you can, picture all of the wealth of the entire world! The oil fields, all of the gold and platinum and silver, all of the diamonds and emeralds and rubies and sapphires that you can imagine, all of the real estate and mansions of every nation on Earth…and God considers your soul worth MORE than all of that. Why?

Because, NONE of that wealth will buy your way into Heaven! It is worthless compared to the worth of your soul…just yours! There are billions of people on Earth and God considers just one worth more than the entire wealth of the world! That is why He sent Jesus to die for us, all of us, but He would’ve sent Him even if there was only one more person who would accept Him. Isn’t that AWESOME!!!

God loves you and me and every person on Earth. He doesn’t love the sins that we commit though like using His name as a cuss word or using drugs or alcohol in an abusive way. There are many more sins than this but you know what I’m talking about. You are loved and valued by the Creator and He extends His grace and His love to you every day. You have a chance to accept Jesus as your Savior, while you live here, the problem is that many people think that they have plenty of time to “get right with God”.

That is a lie from Satan! You may be in a wreck tomorrow. You may have a heart attack tonight or tomorrow. You can’t “get right” after you die! The decision is yours but it has to be made as soon as possible! Then, read the Bible and study it because it has instructions for your life and how to live it! Trust in Jesus and His atonement for you because that is all that is required. Baptism is good, confessing your sins is good, but giving your heart to Jesus and believing in Him is what opens the door. The thief on the cross couldn’t get baptized and he didn’t have a chance to witness to anyone or confess his sins…all he did was believe that Jesus was Who He claimed to be, and Jesus said that he would be with Him in Paradise today!

God doesn’t want you to spend one day in hell, but Satan does because he wants to take you away from God’s presence! Life is only in the Prince of Peace and the King of Kings, Jesus the Son of God! Ask Him into your life today!

We truly are…

/ Tracy Eldridge / Leave a comment

Vessels of God’s Spirit and we are also where He resides in us and not in a temple.  When  you have given your life to Jesus, you become the home, the dwelling place for the Spirit of God. At this point in time, we are very important to Him because everything that we do or say from that point on reflects on His Kingdom and His Glory. We are His and He is ours because we  have taken His Spirit in to live in us.

So what have you done to let anyone know Who lives inside you? Have you ever even thought about telling someone about your salvation? Many Christians really don’t think about it, but that is exactly what we are told to do by Jesus himself. We are supposed to go and tell the world or as many people as we can. If you are shy, ask God for help in that area.

People should be able to tell if you are a Christian, but in some parts of the world that is a dangerous thing. True, being a Christian is something which takes courage and strength especially today but it has been this way for many years. It is sad that we are walking away from Him and His Wisdom in droves today, many are even running as fast as they can or trying to take as many people with them as possible.

A line has been drawn, from the beginning at Eden, between good and evil, between God and Satan the world that we live in is being pulled and drawn in directions opposing each other. Please, read the Bible. Pray for clarity and understanding so that God can help you to understand His Word and the Truth held within it.

Jesus died for your sins and mine so that we can be forgiven by God. He is the Creator and the One that can see all that is happening today and tomorrow. When we realize this and ask His forgiveness for our sins and then turn to Jesus and allow Him to create in us a pure heart that the Spirit can inhabit, then we can begin to heal our world and our communities.

The only REAL fix and cure for the ills in the world and the problems which are coming in the near future, is Jesus the Messiah. Not Muhammad, nor Buddha or any of the other “man created” saviors of the past few thousand years, but Yeshua is the One and Only Son of God and He is standing at the right hand of God waiting for the order to be given to get the church, the Bride of Christ. When that happens, there won’t be anything holding the real evil in this world back any longer.

God’s Word is True and it is the Truth. Why or how could you get a book written by about forty different men, separated by hundreds or thousands of years and yet their writings all point, in some prophecy contained within, toward Jesus? It isn’t possible today and it wouldn’t have been possible then, but the Hebrew people who kept the records made sure that the Word and the laws that they were writing down were accurate.

Please read Romans 8, the whole chapter, and see that a man who had tried to destroy the church actually built most of it by his writings and by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Paul wrote 13 books out of the New Testament, he had been trained as a Pharisee, he knew the Torah and all of the writings by memory. Yet, it took an encounter with the glorified Jesus on the road to Damascus to bring him to belief and he did!