Dealing with rejection, misunderstanding, and hunger
Are you confused, hungry, or hurting in this difficult world? On one hand do you know the wonderful love of Jesus but on the other hand have you engaged in sin because you thought it would bring you lasting peace, joy, and pleasure? Have you been rejected by society because you are different? Do you feel like you are living a double life? Have people rejected you and your life and you know you have messed up? Let me tell you my friend. There is a Saviour who loves you unconditionally. Maybe you know Him already and have strayed from His loving arms. Maybe you don’t know Him at all and would like to know Him. My friend, rejection does not have to be your final place. You can know, that Jesus loved you so much that He died for all your sins. He gives you the opportunity to no longer have to carry all that baggage around. He so earnestly desires a relationship with you that He paid in His own blood, on the cross to take away your sins. Then He rose triumphantly from the grave and can legally and lovingly forgive all your sins and enter into an eternal relationship with you. All you need to do is say “Yes or I do or I accept” to Jesus Christ and His Spirit will come and make His home in you. You will be at peace with God. No longer rejected. No longer misunderstood. No longer hurting. No longer hungry. No longer thirsting for something more. The void in your heart can be filled and will be filled the instant you do so. Say with me in prayer, “Lord, I accept you as my Saviour into my heart and life. Forgive my sins as you have every right to do so, because you paid for them with your own blood. Come into my life. Make me a new person. I accept you and welcome you into my heart today. In Jesus’ name, Amen”
Dealing with addiction
Are you constantly finding yourself doing things that you feel ashamed about? Does this desire override everything in your life? Do you hide and try to appear as though everything is normal? And yet, you have this continual longing for more. You feel like just another round will satisfy you and then you can get on with life. It feels like a nervous, endless cycle. Maybe you’re like me and you had all these precious jewels of truth in your life, of loving Fathers and Mothers, and yet this thing just latched itself unto you and you gave into it so easily, knowing the temporary relief and pleasure it would bring. You thought that it wouldn’t hurt anyone else and became a professional at hiding it. But things started to unravel. A rejection by the girl friend who saw that there was something deeply wrong. God allowing you to go through hardships and uncomfortable change. Things continually not working out. Jealously rising up, relationship dynamics and general unsatisfaction with life continually making you angry at others, feeling agitated and wanting more, more, more. This my friends is where I was at. I had so many broken relationships. I sacrificed much for my addictions. The good news my friends is that God is working in your life. He is seeking for a fulfilling relationship with you. He is going to show you how much that relationship means to Him. He sent His only Son Jesus Christ to this earth, to your home, and to your heart in order to deliver you from these problems. Jesus is knocking at your hearts door. He went to the cross to die for all your sins. He took all those broken relationships and mended them at the cross. He filled the void in your heart for more, more, more. Jesus is the well that never runs dry. Since Jesus died for your sins and loves you unconditionally - you can today accept Him right into your heart and life. He will enact a beautiful change in your life. He will set you free and fill you up with something so much greater than these temporal pleasures. He will fill you with His own life running through your body, soul, and spirit. Jesus offers you this eternal life. When you receive Jesus, He never lets you go. You get born into His kingdom, which is an eternal one. He doesn’t give as the world gives. You won’t lose Him. You just receive Him like you would a gift on Christmas morning. I ask you my friend, as one who has been down the same path of addiction, why not accept Jesus Christ today and let Him change your life? You will never thirst again. The void in your life will be continually filled by His love, in an amazing, unending relationship.
Jesus said “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty" John 6:35
“Those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.” John 4:14
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
Dealing with bullies
It is hard for me to speak about being bullied as I haven’t quite wrapped my head around what it all means for me in my life. But I’ll just tell you a few things. I know that for me I had no idea why I was bullied. Maybe I just wanted to join in on a game and was rejected. I still remember running from a group of bullies. For some reason God gave me faster legs and I was able to always get away from them. I thank Him for that. Another situation which came up was that my older brothers wanted to do things together, not necessarily with me involved. I remember chasing them and trying to get in on their games. It became a game of avoiding me and seeing how successful one can be at doing so. At school it was taken to another degree, where unapologetic shaming or intimidation would take place. I learned a degree of survival measures - running away, etc. Eventually I just would fight back and stand my ground. Was I one to bully? No. But for some reason I would get picked on. In high school it was the same. Somehow I earned the bullies respect in high school so it wasn’t so bad. We live in a world where everyone is trying to prove themselves. I fall into this too. Trying to be more successful, trying to make a name for myself. But the reality is, we don’t have to try to be all these things. We are accepted and loved unconditionally by our Heavenly Creator - our Father in Heaven. My friend, Jesus was bullied. He was rejected so much it is literally mind blowing what He went through. There was no reason for it. They hated Him without a cause. But that my friends is the best news we could ever hear. Jesus was hated without a cause so He could love this broken world and bring all the bullies and non-bullies back to himself. Jesus is amazing because He can forgive the bully and heal the bullied. He can give His amazing grace to either person. I want to tell you, that God loves you unconditionally. If you’ve been bullied or have been the bully, you can be assured that God wants a relationship with you. God sent His own Son Jesus Christ to die for all our sins. I have to admit myself, while there have been times I’ve been bullied, I have also bullied. So I know that whatever your situation is, there is GRACE and FORGIVENESS and HEALING found in Jesus Christ. My friends, if you just ask Jesus Christ to come into your heart and life, He will enact that grace, forgiveness, healing - that love - for your entire life. He will cover you will His love and make you a brand new person. I would invite you to ask Jesus Christ into your life. Ask Him to change you, to make you a new person starting today. He loves you and invites you into a perfect relationship with His Heavenly Father. The same Father that raised Jesus from the dead. The same Father that gave Jesus victory and gave him to us to carry our sins to the cross. The same Father that brought us our healing. We all need healing, whether we are a bully or being bullied. Come to Jesus. Just say to Him “I accept you into my life. Come in and forgive me. Make me a new person. I want to have a relationship with you. In Jesus’ name, Amen”
Living the Christian life
As you may know or are about to know, I love to be an evangelist. Talking has been something that has come somewhat easily to me, whether its in the checkout at Dollarama or navigating a Crokinole Board sale with a customer. I think it is important for us as Christians to hold a clear idea of what the Gospel is in our minds. Firstly, it is important to remember that the good news about Jesus Christ is a gift. It is by grace we have been saved through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the GIFT of God. Not of works lest any man should boast. This makes it a lot easier for us, we don’t have to compete with each other, to be more spiritual, more giving, more evangelistic, more this or that, it is a level playing field for all - we all received Jesus by grace and our relationship with Him is entirely based on His good will towards us.
With this in mind, when it comes to evangelism, this too is based on grace. We can’t just go out there and make converts. That is God job. He wants us to be evangelists that are in relationship with Him. One person may share the good news, another person may pray for the person who has heard the good news of Jesus Christ, and then God gives the growth. So growth is entirely up to God! That is why it is so important we share the good news, so that people have a seed in them that can be watered through prayer and moved upon by God’s Holy Spirit to cause GROWTH.
The assurance of salvation
The plague of unbelief and doubt is what causes one to question their state as a child of God. Unbelief and doubt are often swept under the rug as OK to have as we live in an age of scepticism and unbelief. This attitude has often infiltrated into the church. It stifles growth and maintains itself simply through things like fear, intimidation, hopelessness, bad doctrine, and simply the lack of truth or exposure to the truth of God’s word. I struggled for many years with knowing whether I was God’s child, saved, born again. Some key take aways to my journey into belief were the following:
#1 I had to actively believe God’s Word, presently, in order to get confirmation from God that I was His child. It is all about relationship! God wants to talk with you about these things. He doesn’t mind assuring you over and over again that you are His child. He doesn’t expect anything from you. He just wants to get to know you. So the one way to get assurance is to first solidly set yourself on believing a passage like John 3:16. Then once you are in that state of belief, to ask God to fill you with His Spirit if you haven’t done that. Or maybe you don’t even remember what happened but you know you are saved and sometimes you doubt it. Then just ask God to confirm whether you are His child. Another thing to keep in mind is that a child when born into a family does not lose his or her status of being part of the family, for life. That is the wonderful thing about salvation, is that God’s saving power and gifts are irrevocable. He cannot take away that which He has promised. We are sealed with the Holy Spirit. Just like you cannot lose your state as a member of your natural family, you cannot lose your state as a member of God’s family. It is because it is based on Christ’s blood, which is final and finished covenant with those who enter into it. Nothing you can do can separate you from this everlasting life. That would mean you don’t believe in the finished work of Christ if something you do could separate you. See these verses, even sin itself cannot separate us from God’s love:
And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
To be assured of salvation you must first believe what God says is true. So if he says something like “The Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God” that means that God himself will confirm those various ways - reading His word (especially - I write these things to you, that you may know that you have eternal life) verses. Many people are saved and all they need to do is ask God to confirm that they are indeed His child. Also, the finished work of Christ is a done deal. So once you believe and God confirms it, there is nothing you can do to add or take away from that work. Christ’s blood atones for 100% of our life.
Dealing with fear - COVID-19
Right now there is a spiritual battle going on an basically the enemy is taunting us much like Goliath did to the armies of God. And we say in response to the enemy, how dare you taunt the living God! Our God is greater, our God is stronger, our God is mightier than any other. And to the fear raised and nurtured in this pandemic, we say with absolute authority “Greater is HE who is in us then he that is in the World!”
Let us turn to the weapon of Prayer and Supplication. Let us turn to the living, active God who can overturn a governments unjust edict! O God deliver this nation from fear! Deliver us by your perfect Love. God’s perfect Love casts out fear. We pray O God for the salvation of our Nation!
Let us not become bitter about the earthly governments. Let us instead pray for them to seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near! Let us pray for the Church to wake up from sleep and to sound the message of SALVATION found in Jesus Christ. This is what we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen!
It is important to read our Bibles, meditate on God’s Word, and especially to actively share the Hope we have of eternal life found in Christ at this time. Let’s not live passive Christian lives, let us actively focus ourselves, set ourselves on reaching out with a tract or with a Word given, or with the special insight God provides! Let us be clear in our presentation of the Good news, that it is all by God’s grace alone, through faith in Him alone!