Casting Pearls- Are you paying attention?

The more and more I look at the social sites of today the more I see the example of what growing up in a modern society has done for the people of today. They are caught up with little bits and bites of cute little sayings that seem to express their feelings, but never actually put across any important points. Their minds are even stretched by reading a blog like mine. I have found that the books I was brought up reading, are totally inappropriate to todays mindset. We are conditioned by TV and being able to receive an entire message about whatever we need to think about something in a 30 second spot. If it takes more than 30 seconds, it must be very important or it must be entertaining.
        Our attention span has been shortened by the instant and throw away lives we live. We spend our moments in front of a TV or a computer screen and are conditioned ny these things to be inspired by small sound bites and bits of information we receive. When we get only a small part of the information about something, we are left to assume the rest of the information regarding it.No one gives us all the information because we no longer can keep the attention span required to read through all the information about something. As Christians, we are left with the situation of attempting to reach people trapped in this lifestyle with only a few short words to catch their attention. If we can catch their attention, we can then go on to tell them in more detail about Jesus’ plan for their lives.
        Once we get someone’s attention we can begin teaching them in more detail about the plan God has for their lives and how Jesus plans to use them to spread His message of salvation to the world.The world is lost, not because it is evil, but because we are as mankind inherently evil. It has been passed on to us from Adam and Eve, who brought sin into this perfect world God made for us. If it were not for this we would not need a sacrifice or intercessor to make us worthy in God’s sight. With Jesus as our advocate, when God looks at us He sees Jesus kiving in us instead of our sinful selves. It is Only through Jesus that we are made worthy to be in God’s presence. We have an eternal home in Heaven because of Jesus’ sacrifice for us.
        Without some way of reaching people to bring them into the group listening to our teaching about Jesus, we cannot get them to hear the Gospel. God has given us the quotes we need and the interesting quips we need to reach out to the lost world. All that is left is for us to bring to them the Gospel message.

Casting Pearls-Are YOU the follower that Jesus Loved?

The Apostle John often referred to himself as ‘the apostle (or Disciple) that Jesus loved’ . Why do you think he did so? If I was to go out to eat lunch with John Hagee and Billy Graham, I would refer to it as John Hagee, Billy Graham and the man that Jesus loved went out to eat lunch. So it was not really strange for John to refer to himself in that way. The real meaning behind that phrase is much deeper for us.

Love is what God wants us to show others and what He wants to show us as His love is unfathomable. When a High Priest presented the blood of the sacrifice for their sin to God in the Holy of Holies, God did not judge the people based on their sin or their sacrifice, He judged the High Priest who represented them. The good news for us is that we are being represented by the most perfect and Holiest High Priest it is possible to be represented by; the Lord Jesus Christ. It is His blood and His sacrifice that God judges for us.

This, by no means, is an excuse for us to sin. Jesus has already paid for everything we have done or are going to do, but this is not so that we could go on living our sinful lives, It is so we could have a second chance, a new start to get it closer to right. When we got ‘saved’ we were indwelled by the Holy Spirit that influences us to do what is right in all circumstances. We have to train ourselves to listen to the Holy Spirit and not the world around us, as it says in Romans 12:2, ‘be not conformed to the world; but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.’ 

Paul tried to explain this to the believers in Galatians 2:17-21 that they were not found to be acceptable before God due to their works in the flesh. You can’t pray, read the Bible, feed enough poor people, or heal enough sick people to make yourself acceptable to God. You have to be DEAD to the flesh and alive in Christ Resurrected with Him and letting the Holy Spirit live inside you. We are dead to being judged under the law, we are made acceptable to God by Jesus.

The Bible, God’s Word, says that Jesus is the only way to Heaven. We have to accept his forgiveness to get that forgiveness. In Luke 15:3-10, Jesus told His followers and those who listened, the parable of the lost sheep, Saying that if there was a shepherd who had a hundred sheep and just One wandered away, would the shepherd not leave the ninety nine alone to go look for the one, and having found it would he not put it on his shoulders and carry it back? The shepherd would then call all his friends together to have a big party to celebrate the one being found and returning to the group. Did the shepherd not go look for it, find it, carry it back, have a party for it’s return? What did the sheep do to get itself back to the flock? All it really did was agree to return. It did not run away from the shepherd when he came up to it. He consented to be picked up and carried back. We are the sheep and Jesus is the Good Shepherd who brings us back, all we have to do is accept that He will take us back to being able to have the relationship we want with God. The Holy Spirit indwelling  us leads us to do the good works and profess Jesus to the world.

Casting pearls- Who wants to win something free!

Ever want something for nothing? Ever want to be the winner of a great lottery, or sweepstakes? God is offering that right now! He has a gift for anyone who is willing to believe on His Son, Jesus, Profess Jesus’ name before men, and that is all you must do. It is simple and it is free. It costs you nothing, only your willingness to receive.

The Christian religion is different from all the religions out there because it does not ask you to give anything to receive something. All other religions ask for something to prove yourself before you receive. The Christian religion doesn’t. It is really not fair to call Christianity a religion, it is more of a relationship. That is also one of the differences. 

  God desires a relationship with all believers, He loves them and wants them to return that love to Him. When you have a relationship with someone, you wish to spend a lot of time with them. Since there is no way to physically spend time with God, the Lord has provided the chance to spent time with His Word, The Bible. The Bible says in John 1:1 that Jesus was the Word in the beginning, He is the Word now, and the Word is God. Speaking of the Word of God which is the Bible. The Bible also says in 1 John 5:7 that there are three which bear witness in Heaven, The Father God, The Son Jesus, and The Holy Ghost.; these three are One! So, reading God’s Word is the same as spending time with Him, and Jesus, and The Holy Ghost.

  As believers in Jesus we should attempt to spend time with God every day. I personally spend time with God every morning to start my day off right. I also pray to Him every morning as God wants not only to speak to us, but to hear from us as well. We speak it in faith, knowing that the Lord already knows the things we need to pray about, we only need to show God our faith that He will move on these requests. Faith was how Abraham was able to show his righteousness, and it is how we show God our righteousness as well. It may be more to your liking to read God’s Word in the evening, It doesn't matter what time of day you spend with God, only that you do.

One of the Commandments of God is to Tithe to God a tenth of all you have. Do you give God a tenth of your time? Many people think that if they just give ten percent of their income they have given all that is required. They would be missing the real meaning. We all need to think about the time we have been given and the family we have been given, and the things we have been given, and anything we have been given by the Lord. We are required to give ten percent of it ALL. The Lord wants us to give up all control we think we have, to Him, and let Him take us where we need to go. Just as the ship that Paul was in on the way to Rome, we must not try to fight the storm, just allow it to blow us where He would have us and praise His name the whole time we are on the way there. 

You might say, well, that is asking something from me. I would tell you that if you have the Holy Ghost living inside you, you will want to do these things and more for The Lord. Spreading the Gospel to the people who need to hear will become important to you. What is truly sad is someone who has said ,well I am saved and thats enough. They have the Holy Ghost living inside but have ignored the calling of it to the point they are a detriment to God and His Church. They are so tied up in the things around them and the world that they don’t feel the urgings of the Spirit or help the Church to spread the Gospel of Jesus. 

  What all people must decide is wether they want to be in the world or to influence the world for Jesus. The world is watching you, are you wanting them to see everything about you? The programs we watch on TV are tracked, the sites you go to on the computer are tracked, the phone calls you make are tracked, the visits you make to the store are tracked, every time we do anything where a piece of electronics is involved is tracked. Our entire life can be tracked by the people, what kind of example are you? What do others see? Do they see what you want them to see? What kind of example are you setting for the world around you to follow.

The entire thing is that we are a example to the world in the life that we live. To be a good example and receive the free gift that Jesus is offering is what God desires us to do. The world says we have to give so much up to be a Christian but the truth is that you will gain so much more if you only will. 

Casting Pearls- Television, bad, Internet, Bad,

Television, when it first came out was said to be a evil influence on our children by many Christians.  As the devil loves it when we leave a vacuum for him to fill, he loved it when Christians left television free for him to influence. When radio became a viable thing for people to listen and be influenced by, Christians supported it fully and started many Christian radio stations that are still around today. We did not leave it to be open for the Devil to attack.

Just like back then with television, we now are dealing with another new form of information source, the internet, through computers, ipads, cell phones, etc. Again we have started out shunning this new information source. We have a choice, do we want to be a good influence on this new medium, or do we want to continue to leave it open to the devil.  By doing nothing, we make it to be open for the devil’s influence. I am  doing all I can from where I am to make it something that is a good influence on those who read what I put online for them to read. 

Ultimately, the individual user has the choice of my good information, or the bad information you can find out there. With television there is a rating system that we have started as an attempt by Christians to slow down the evil influence of television. I believe we should do the same thing on internet posts so that users could know before they go to a site if it contains something that would offend some people, or if our children should stay away. This would be simple for some people to make. Many web surfing programs can show a small preview of a site before we go to it, so how far fetched is it to think of something that would ‘broadcast’ a warning, if a site has questionable content,that the program could pick up. 

We can, right now, prevent internet surfers from going to sites that we know are bad, but we cannot block sites that are unknown to us prior to visiting them. Also some perverted people out there have took normal random misspellings of sites that children would go to and make sites that they will stumble on by misspelling their site. The evil one and the ones he controls have very much filled in the vacuum we left open for them.  As Christians we should continue to use what the devil has meant for evil for good, so that every day we get up the devil will say oh no, not him again!

Casting Pearls- In the Beginning

This is my belief as to the beginning of things and how this world was made. It is not in any way supposed to replace the Bible as the word of God, or make anything in it to be of no affect. It is purely a idea of mine as to how the beginning of the Earth happened. It does follow along with the creation story of Genesis in the Bible and is influenced by the leading of the Holy Spirit Though in no way do I claim to be writing words inspired by God. This is merely a story that gives the reader the imaginings of the author as to how we all came to be.

There was a time, before time began, when the world was not yet formed. Heaven was the center of the universe, because the universe did not yet exist. All was good and God was in control of everything. In the middle of all this a war began, a struggle between what was known and what was unknown, between good and evil. 

God was a very good ruler and was very good to the angels He created. He gave them great abilities and powers in the kingdom He controlled, and He made them have almost anything they could imagine. Their imaginations didn’t have all that much to imagine because their lack of knowledge of things outside of the Heaven God had created for them to live in. All they really knew was the Heaven that was their home and each other. God had created three angels that He put all other angel under the control of, these were Michael, Gabriel, and Lucifer, they were in control of one third of the angels each. 

When God had something for the angels to do, one of the three were given the order and in turn passed the order on to the angels under them to complete it. This was the order in which things were done prior to the great uprising. The head of the three angels God had put in control of the other angels was Lucifer, he was known as the Angel of Light, since he was almost as powerful as God Himself. Lucifer was just under the God of Light who is the Light of Eternity Himself. Lucifer rose up against God and proclaimed himself to be as powerful as God. Lucifer was so impressed with his own beauty and power, that he thought himself equal with his creator God. 

When Lucifer rose up in rebellion against the God of all Creation, he ordered the third of the angels he controlled to help him to take over heaven. When they  joined up with Lucifer in rebellion against God, they wrote their own future. When God and His other angels along with Michael and Gabriel, defeated the uprising, the Lord our God cast Lucifer and his third of the angels he controlled out of Heaven. The worst punishment God could think of at the time was to put them in a place that was the antithesis to what they were. Since Lucifer was the Angel of Light, God put him and his angels in a place that was dark and void of anything. 

  God had to create a place that was dark and void of anything to place The angels and Lucifer in. For a time it stayed that way, then one day God decided to do something good with the evil place He had created. He decided to make it a wonderful place that would be good and have creations in it that ,as the angels, had free will to worship and make God their Lord. God then began the creation of Earth.

God came upon the face of the Dark and void place He had created and said, “ Let there be Light” , and there was light in the darkness. The brilliant light of God’s own presence made the light out of the darkness that prevailed until then. Where light is, no darkness can be. But God divided the darkness from His light to keep Lucifer in his place of void and darkness. God saw that the thing he had created was now in light and the light was good. That was the First Day of God’s creation.

Then God said let the void and darkness have a form within it, and God then made a separation of the form from the darkness surrounding it. That was the Second Day of God’s creation of the place in which we are. 

God called the area around the Form He had created, the Heavens. Then on the next day God divided the area of the form He had created into waters and dry land, and the dry land God called Earth, and the waters God called the seas, and God saw all that He had done so far and it was all good on the face of the evil that was the place Lucifer had been cast from Heaven. 

God then made grass and trees and all kinds of plants to grow on the land He had created all sorts of plants and made them where they could have seeds and reproduce, and God saw all He had created, and said it was good on the face of the darkness God had made to cast Lucifer and his followers into. This was the Third Day of God’s creation.

  The next thing God did was make lights in the heavens around the form of Earth and made them give light on the Earth for pat of the time and light at night too, as He created two great lights, one brighter than the other, one to shine during the day and one to shine at night. All around the Earth in the void, God created other lights to shine. These man later called stars, as they were like unto the bright light that shined on the Earth. God saw all He had made and it was good.This was the Forth Day.

God then began to create the creatures in the sea, the Plankton, amoebas and the whales and all the creatures in between in size. God also made all sorts of birds in the air above the water and God saw that all these animals were good and made them where they could procreate. and God had them procreate and fill the Earth with their kind. Then God made all the animals and all other things that move upon the Land and made them to procreate and fill the land with their kind as well. God saw all the things He had created and that it was good. This was the Fifth Day. 

God then said to Himself, “ Let US make Man in OUR own image”. When God referred to Himself as US and OUR He was referring to the Triune nature of God as three in one. There is also much controversy over what God meant by IN OUR OWN IMAGE, it was not to say that we in any way look like God. We have his image in our being a triune being as well, we are made up of BODY,SOUL, and SPIRIT. While God is made up of THE FATHER GOD, THE SON, and THE HOLY SPIRIT. So, God created man in His own image and then he created woman to go along with man. God told them to replenish the Earth and control it. God gave man control over all that He had created here in the void. We were given dominion over the Earth and all that were in it. God saw all that He had made and it was all VERY GOOD.  That made up the Sixth Day of creation

                There is no evidence as to how long the time was between the creation of Man on the Sixth Day of creation and the fall of man due to sin. The only time we can track is from the fall of man until now. As i said in another blog, it is stated in 2 Peter and in Psalms that a day to God is as a Thousand years and we are approximately 6 to almost 7 thousand years since the fall of man in eden. We can be sure if things follow the seventh day of rest that God prescribes, that we are coming up on a time that God and we can rest from the attacks of satan. This would go along with the thousand year reign of Christ on earth before we see the new heaven and new earth. We as christians will be with Jesus as He reigns.