Category Archives: the gospel

Faith From Death Alone

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A pathetically struggling Christian is hardly any Christian at all.  While he may still be a Christian, by a margin only God himself can know, his testimony is exceedingly small, if alive at all.

What can he say if he decides to testify?  Will he say, “Jesus saves”, while he dabbles deeply in sin?  What proof does he have that his words are true?  And though a man may believe his words, in three days time no proof will appear.

The hearer may prosper in time, but the testimony of the weakened one will prove to be a block and a wall; a hindrance rather than a help.

I do not say this to shame my weaker brother.  Rather I say this to spur him on.  And I do not say these things without knowledge.  For I lived that fruitless and pathetic life for 20 years or more.

Do you really want to conquer sin?  Do you really want to become profitable for the Holy Lord of life?  Are you willing to confess that being a victim is a very comfortable way to live?  Despite your tears, which only oil your next slide to hell.

The victim rises up toward righteousness then falls back quickly for, “It is too hard.”  So he squanders hours and days filling himself with pleasure.  “I will repent soon and the Lord will take me back.”

Such behavior only produces a kind of faith that raises this one from the dead, over and over and over.  Why do you spend your faith on such a trivial life?  When, if such a faith were applied toward righteousness and obedience, it would conquer the very sin you love so much.

This is what I have found.  This key unlocks the chains of death and folly.  Using my faith to bring Him glory instead of pleasure for me.

There is no excuse for the man who lives swinging precariously between life and death.  For what we practice so we are.  He who practices failure is a failure!  While he who practices righteousness, even to the death, is righteous.

“Salvation belongs to our God and to the lamb!”  Have you read the lyrics to the new song in Revelation?   And have you heard that there is no one righteous but God alone?  Have you read and understood that the Lord Jesus came as the willing proof of God’s desire to save his creation?

Did he come to save us that we may squander our life in pathetic dangling between heaven and hell?  Did he not warn us that those who gamble their eternity in unrighteous, ungodly, unholy, wicked and perverse behavior, will certainly not enter the kingdom of God?

All the while you suffer and struggle, your heavenly Father desires to give you righteousness.  But by the confession of your habits you say he is powerless to save you.  Thus your testimony is worthless.  Your prayers are ineffective and infrequent.  Your faith waxes dead more than alive.  And you have gained no ground worthy of mention.

When you could have so very much, if you simply asked, with earnest and truth filled heart, your hands are thoroughly empty of gifts for the crowned King of glory.

You do not pray for release, you simply pray for a calm in the enticements.  You pray for forgiveness while you secretly plot for your next adventure to wickedness. 

Just how long do you expect the Holy Lord of life to display his patience kindness to you?  Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, your neat little trick of rising from the dead will no longer have any effect.

Pray for wisdom and do not cease.  Pray for understanding and cease your desire to lie to God.  Ask for desire toward righteousness.  Beg him that you may learn to abhor your sins.

Turn from your endless wandering.  Let him open your eyes to see the hideous nature of what you have loved to embrace.

I testify to you that there is such a thing as overcoming sin.  You may say you know that but where is your proof?

Those who humble themselves before God seeking what is absolute and true, and turn from their wicked ways, these find favor with God and receive His righteousness upon them even now! 

To say otherwise makes God out to be a liar.  And it pronounces the victory of Christ as if it is of no effect at all!

Answer yourself for yourself:  who has been the liar and of no effect at all?

Believe!

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Men do not believe.  They do not believe that God is true.  So they go about their hopeless affairs as if God does not care. 

Why?   Why can men not bring themselves to believe that God cares?  Is it that they have not read his promises?  Or is it that they have prejudged the Holy Lord and decided even his writings are of no value.

Men do not believe the words of the Holy Lord of life, because they themselves are the only witness they witness.  And they count the Holy One as if he were like them.

They live their lives in error, far more than correctness.  They are full of fault and double minded in everything they do.  Their lives are a series of catastrophic failures.  All the while they live in a place that renews, even by itself, sustained by the Holy Lord, for the mercy of salvation.

They are wicked to the very core of their existence, and cannot find one righteous pure action within their members.  They wake in the morning having sinned on their bed.  They go through their day without knowledge, and lost in futility.  Evening comes to them and finds them immersed in trivial and worthless things.

Everyday is the same.  Therefore they judge from their own knowledge.

They know they are made of such things, and they suppose there is no better than they.  For along with the futility of their life, comes pride.  Humility is not desired, for certainly their weakness will be known.  Truth is far from them.  And embracing life is better.

So with a small wave of their hand and up raised chin, they dismiss the things of the Holy Lord of life.

They have lost nothing for they had nothing.  They stand to gain nothing for they will not believe. 

They look for proof that God is, and that He is righteous.  They set their feet firm saying, “I will not move until I know for sure.”

They spout great things of how the Lord will receive them because they are good people.  They are vicious creatures against the rule of God, while they consider themselves as pure.  All the while the Lord remains a fire of pure Holy Righteousness and merciful Love.

They look for mercy but do not repent of their sins.  They make no effort to learn of, or please the Most High God.  They count him as less than what is flushed down the toilet.  How then shall they be received by He who is Holy and Eternal?

You who do not believe.  You know that there is more than yourself.  Yet you remain like stone in your rebellion.

Remain then and die.  The Lord’s kingdom will move far from this place without you.  You will be left a beggar with your own witness witnessing against you.

The good news of God is all over this world.  The glorious news that God has prepared a way to embrace you, abounds.  Make your choice today.

This Day, the Trembling Rabbit

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This day has never been.  And wicked men wake with fear.  Yesterday is now a testimony both for and against all men who lived it.  It is written in stone; unmovable and sure.

As men slept. their testimony of yesterday was rolled up as a scroll.  It was set in a place unreachable by the desire and hands of men.  It was set among the scrolls of all their yesterdays.  And the living God, himself alone. knows the place.

Men may remember small elements of yesterday.  But they are powerless to affect the testimony, either for good or for bad.  What remains in the hand of men is either regret or joy.

Left alone, regret is quickly covered up.  Perhaps a man drinks himself to oblivion to forget.  Perhaps he dresses his mind with the things he has learned to enjoy.  He says,  “I will cover my regret.  It is too much for me to bear.”

But regret is like a hungry wolf who walks beside you in the woods.  You hear the leaves rustle, just beyond your ability to see through the brush.  The snap of a tiny twig.  The brush of a branch against heavy fir.  The sound of heavy breathing as desire looks your way.  And if you could hear it, your ears would hear a drop of salivation strike the ground beneath his gaping mouth.  So it is with your regret which you hurry to mask as you wake from sleep.

If this is the case of yesterday, what will be today.  You will sleep tonight.  Will the morning see you scramble to cover today’s crop of regret?  Will you spend tomorrow trembling as you walk its path?

WHY?  Why do you live this way?  Why do you allow all your days to hunt you in the darkness?  Is it that you don’t know how to be released?  Is it that you have so well learned wickedness that you think it is normal?  Have you even come to the point where you attribute your own wicked ways to the living God and His holy son?  Do you say with confidence, “There is no way out!”

By this testimony you have no joy!  It is ripped away from the reach of your hand.  And you have ripped it away of your own volition.

How pathetic that men cover their regret with such trivial joy.  How sad that men should even know the word eternity.  How horrible the men should speak the word “joy”.

Black and dark are your days.  Hunted like some terror filled rabbit, you spend your day in useless trivia.  Ignoring the wolf does not quench his hunger for your blood.

Would you be free of this hideous cycle of hopeless behavior?  Or have you come to love the thrill of death?  Do you take joy in your useless life?

Have you heard of the gospel of Christ Jesus, the Holy Son of the living God?  I tell you a truth.  He can release you from your days as a victim of regret.  But the choice remains yours.

You may read the Bible.  You may listen to sermons.  You may witness people who live free of regret.  You may ask them and receive their answer.  But if you would join them you must do the things of God.

It is not enough to hear.  A blade of grass may shiver in its place from the sound waves of truth that shake its form.  Never the less, it is cut down by the gardener.  So it is with those who hear and do not do.

What is the urgency in your heart to be free of this cycle of death?  Go!  Go visit the holy and living words that can transform your very soul.  Force your blind eyes to read.  Then ask the living God for release.  And continue for the rest of your days doing these things.  This is the life that will bring you freedom.

Do you think he does not love you?  Is not this thought a product of your own wicked and unloving heart?  If God did not love you, would he have sent His Son to be murdered in your place?  Why would the Holy living God do such a foolish and wicked thing?

Release is!  The transformation from pathetic  rabbit to a godly joyous man is real!  Do not let your eyes look at others.  Many will testify that they have looked and found nothing.  How then can this man write these words?  Pay no attention to them.  They lie from the wickedness that is stored up in their own heart.

Regret comes to you because there are words describing joy.  People are clean and are free and you have seen them.  What will you give to join them?

You will answer me

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“Answer me.” God says. “Show me what is in your heart.  Confess what you have done.  Confess what you are. Confess what you desire.

I clearly see all these things, but I demand an accounting from you.  Confess now, that grace may abound and cause you to become a godly man.  Or wait until you appear before me where your confession will do you no good.”

Each man will choose what he will do in response to these commands.  The word of his lips, uttered to another man, will do him no good.  God demands the response of action.

The cross of Christ has opened the door to freedom from sin.  Who has guts enough to take it?

The glowing cross

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Bob:  “That’s a great saying!  I’ll have to practice that one.”

Nancy:  “Oh I adore it!  We’ll have to use it in our evangelism  push this year.”

Drew:  “Absolutely!  Nobody in the world would take offense at that.  We start saying things like that and the entire world will realize we love them.”

Ben:  “Well I hate to be a stick in the mud, but I have to disagree with all of you.  Its sayings like that that turn the offense of the bloody cross into a pink warm fuzzy one.  A cross that glows at night so nobody gets scared of the dark.

We ought to be so different that we scare the socks off of people.  They hated our Lord why are we trying to make them love us? 

I just don’t get it.  I realize I don’t fit in here.”

The Land of Shadows

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Man, who are you; you who live in darkness and refer to heaven as if it is but a Shadow?  Because you have never perceived it, you deny it.  You accuse what is true, without thought.

You have never touched it, or so you think.  You have never seen it, or so you think.  You have never heard it, or so you think.  You do not know its dimensions or what it contains, or so you think.

You mock what is holy, without knowledge.  All the while you, who live in the land of shadow, unjustly refer to heaven as shadow.  By this you speak your own language.  By this you use false accusation against He who is Holy and true.

You contrive your own vision while ignoring what can be seen.  You invent sounds of your own to replace what can be heard.  You relegate the space of a building, that you have erected with your own hands, and call it holy.  There you have placed God.  And you will not welcome him in your streets or homes!  God is driven from your business for the sake of money and power.

You dress yourself with glory among men.  But you push God of as a popper and a beggar.  You promote what is vile, while you call what is holy vile.  How shall you be received?

The glory of God can be seen in the things that were made without your hands.  All creation testifies to life and faithfulness but you close your eyes.  “These cannot be truth they are not built by man.”  So you say.  And by this saying you retain your own condemnation.

The Word of God is present among the people but you refuse to listen.  You prefer the sounds of shadow.  And you sin against the Lord by calling the shadow good.  You refuse to listen to the words of life.  Therefore you remain a shadow.

The dimensions of your world end at the sight of your eyes.  What is within your world is not holy and good.  You know this but prefer to ignore.  Therefore you are blind.

Holy is a blazing, eternal life.  When it appears the shadows are dispelled.  Your eyes cannot stand the intensity of what is true.  Your ears cannot interpret the sounds of heaven.  And though you live your life of shadows within the holy God, you cannot perceive his dimension or nature.

Who are you?  Who are you to love what is shadow and ignore what is pure light?  You hinder yourself.

The door approaches.  Even as you live this day, it has come that much closer.  Soon it will engulf you.  And you will permanently leave this place of shadows.

Allow yourself to wake up.  Now is the day of salvation.  The sights, sounds, dimensions, and nature of eternity will confront you.  If you remain in shadows you will not perceive correctly on that day.   Though you will stand in the presence of heaven you will be locked eternally with blindness deafness and no ability to perceive.

Salvation is near.  You live in eternity.  For God lives forever, and this place of shadows is in his presence.

By his great wisdom he has created this place of blindness.  Frustrated by he who accused, it has become a land full of shadow and sin.  By this place he will know the heart of all men.  By this place he has proved his faithfulness.  By this place his Holy Son sits enthroned forever.

Will you mock him?  Will you continue to contrive your own heaven?  Will you remain apart from him?  Will you invent your own God?

Or will you stop?  Will you humbly ask for eyes that see?  Will you humble yourself and ask for ears that hear?  Will you throw away your pride and receive the knowledge his wisdom is willing to give?

A cloak is placed over what is holy, in this realm of shadows.  It is not to be perceived nor movable by man, without the mercy of God.  But to those who will humble themselves, and ask with consistent and earnest heart, the Lord reveals what is true.

The land of shadows today says, “We are better than those who came before”.  Prove to me then how you are dissimilar to all men!   You elevate yourself!

If you point to your toys I will call you a liar.  Your toys are not you!  This is a lie you embrace willingly, which is spawned from those who live in the land of shadows.

If you show me what is called the modern God, I will call you a liar!  For Jesus Christ is the exact representation of the Heavenly Father, and he is the same yesterday, today and forever.  Your modern God is nothing more than some rock you have carved.  With great pride and a lifted chin, you look down on what is true. This idol is a spawn of those who live in the land of shadows.

Testify!  Prove to me that you know the living God, and I will remove these words from before your face.  I have eternal confidence these words will never move.

You punish a man who in endangers others and himself.  You restrain him for his safety and that of others.  You chastise the rebellious among you liberally. Yet you balk at these words.

You consider these words harsh.  They are but the tip of a feather against the skin.  These words a testimony from a man.  On the day you are engulfed the approaching door, you will hear these words from the Holy One himself.  Do you think you will balk then?