July 29, 2017

Greetings My Friend,

Monday night's revival spoke to the church about their walk with Jesus. Some people want to mark off their life bucket list, "keep from going to hell." They may walk down the aisle" to get saved and are very serious about their salvation, for a moment anyway. the Pastor was teaching us to know if we are learning to be in a close relationship with Jesus or not. One of the first signs would be if we choose to be in church on Sunday, the Bible teaches we should meet together regularly to pray and to worship Jesus and to be in the Word. Some of the signs of your desire show up in how you live your life like do you choose to go camping instead of meeting with other believers week in and week out or do you tell yourself to stay in bed, the only day you can rest instead of desiring to be in church. The list goes on from there. Other people try to earn their way into heaven by doing "works", they overload their lives with things to volunteer for until they reach exhaustion to earn their way into heaven. Then there are the Sunday Christians that show up to church on Sunday when Monday comes they are back into the world until the next Sunday. A faith walk with Jesus is a life that is changing and cleaning of our old ways, day by day, one step at a time. The Pastor also taught that we should be reading the Bible on a consistent basis throughout the week so that we know if what is being taught is the true Word of God or  feel good teaching that does not change you. My sense was that if we as followers of Jesus are actually learning and growing in our faith then the unbelievers will see and many will want what we have, the inner peace and contentment we have in our life even if we are dealing with a lot of stress. We need to be genuine in our walk, not "acting out" faith but truly allowing God to circumcise our hearts from those things of the flesh that keeps us from walking close to Him. If we who are walking with Jesus are sincere about our walk it will be noticed then imitated. Others are always watching to see if we are truly walking the walk and talking the talk of a true relationship with Jesus. The more I read the Bible, the more my spirit grows and shapes my life choices. My fleshly desires become a desire to please Jesus and to imitate His teachings. The church then won't need to have entertainment in order to spread the Gospel, it will thirst for the true Word of God. Junior and I have caught a couple of errors in preaching, mainly I could tell they knew their facts but mixed them up as they taught. That is understandable, what is not right is when Pastor's make the Word fit their own belief, agenda. If we aren't reading for ourselves God's Word then we won't know false teaching from right teaching. Lastly I hear often people say it is in the Bible, yes it is although if you are reading it you know that God is not happy with some of the practices His people were doing. I recalled a movie from the 80's I think about called "Field of Dreams". The catch phrase was "build it and they will come," my thought is if the true Word is preached, no sugar coating the Word, the people will come. A Pastor or 2 taught us that Jesus talked more about hell than He did about Heaven. This tells me that hell is just as real as heaven is real. I see that where we live in eternity is a choice entirely in our own decision, will we begin to follow Jesus fully or not? As I think on it we will decide whether we want to live in the smoking section or the non smoking part of eternity. We choose where we will live, God calls us to see the error of our ways and invites us to come to Him, again we decide if we will choose life or choose the eternal fire. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet