Tag: evangelical

BE COMPLETE

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BE COMPLETE

By Rick Mathes

John 15:11 These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.

I can’t help but think of the donkey that carried Jesus into Jerusalem. What was the donkey thinking? If it was me I would be astonished beyond belief that out of all the donkeys in Israel, God chose me! Seriously, I know from whence I come and I know the wretch I am. If you saw my heart as He see it, you would stop reading and trash this devotional. I might add, if I saw your heart I would run away from you as fast as I could. Let’s get this straight: He chose us. WE had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it. You and I have been personally closer because of Him.

A pregnant young lady walked into one of my ministry meetings saying that she was going to have an abortion. This was her fourth pregnancy from a variety of men she met at parties. My wife and I persuaded her to keep the baby. In time she was arrested for shoplifting and sent to prison. We helped her out and when she delivered the child in prison, we took it and came home with a two day old baby. When she turned three years old we adopted her as our own. When I go home to Jesus, my children will have to prove in court they are mine while my adopted daughter will already have that record available to the judge. In other words, my adopted child has preference over everyone else. Praise the Lord He adopted us and our family has been made full.

We abide in Him. Apart from Him we wither and dry up without value except to tinder a fire. This means the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives in making us complete. Here we are shattered and scattered in sin but thank you Jesus for my conscience convicting me of sin. We are an empty earthen vessel that is filled to the brim with all our Lord has to offer. That sure is a miracle in our lives that only His unconditional love could provide.

Now you and I need to be sensible enough to reach out to all the Lord has to offer. We can’t be a partial Christian. We can’t be partially saved. It is not an option. We must be complete in Him, period.

Once we surrender all we are for all He is we become compete in Him. This is impossible unless we tap the fullness of faith to be possessed by Him. It is worded that we are His servant to sooth some sensibilities but the word is truly not servant it is slave. It is the opposite of what your flesh craves but with the help of the Helper we can be complete and experience a relationship that can only be understood by someone who has experience in it. Press ON!

SO CLOSE AND YET SO FAR

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SO CLOSE AND YET SO FAR

By Rick Mathes

Did you know that if a baby was born the moment Jesus died and lived for seventy years and then a baby was born and lived seventy years and on and on; if you laid the bodies our end to end you would find the we are less than 30 bodies away from the Cross! Think about that the next time you are in a room with 30 people. It wasn’t that long ago!

Albert Einstein proved that light bends time. If that I true and you followed the curve of that time-line, it would meet itself and be a circle. That means time is constant and doesn’t change. The “I AM the I AM” is making a lot more sense to me. Time doesn’t exist for Jesus. It is one long continuum. Imagine that; I can’t.

I believe we are a hairs-breath away from the person of God. Our five senses as so dull that even an eagle can see better that we can and a dog has better ears that we have. We really are sadly inept to sense the presence of our Lord. We are so close and yet so far away.

I’ve even imagined alternate universes all occurring at the same time. Or imagined that our galaxy was just a speck of dust on the arm of the Lord’s throne. Or how about this one: that a molecule has a thousand universes in it, inhabited by a thousand Adams from many ages. Thinking out of the box is fun for me. I really enjoy asking “What if?”

However, all praise the glory be to Jesus, I keep my feet on the ground by keeping my nose in God’s Holy Word. It’ the only thing that brings any reason or sense to this world gone insane where evil is good and good is bad.

Thank you Jesus for assigning your buddy the Holy Spirit to keep o the right track to glory. I may not know all the answers to all my questions but I have learned from the Word has kept me healthy, happy, and content with my assurance of salvation.

I really believe God and what I believe to be time and space will never be understandable to me but at least I can think in concepts of infinity and laugh at a joke: the very things that separate me from the animal kingdom.

PRESS ON!

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BEFORE AND AFTER

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BEFORE – AFTER

By Rick Mathes

The following is a good overview of an unbeliever. I know it describes my thinking until I received my Lord’s invitation to be saved and accepted it. It might sound like you.

  1. I will not give up my sins.
  2. I will not worship an invisible God.
  3. I will not attend a place of phony worship.
  4. I really have no love for the man Jesus,
  5. I will not pray in public.
  6. I will not do a morning-evening devotional.
  7. I will not pray in the air to an invisible God.
  8. I really don’t believe anyone is really saved.
  9. I will not tithe or make donations to this nonsense.
  10. I don’t believe He rose from the dead.
  11. I will not be a hypocrite and fake it.
  12. I don’t believe in sin, death and the devil.

I don’t believe the Bible, it was just written by men. The downside of our pilgrimage on planet earth is that Satan’s kingdom is thriving and for all intents and purposes succeeding to twist the Christian truths with alternative thinking contrary to God’s purposes. The history channel’s Ancient Aliens, UFO’s, visitors from other planets, Nostradamus, the list goes on and one to prove every celestial appearance by provable and repeatable science.

Christianity is not a blind leap of faith nor man’s invention to explain the unexplainable. But unbelief is the easy, most comfortable way out. Jesus was spot-on when He published in His Word, “My people perish for lack of knowledge. ”God blessed me to my earliest remembrance as a youth to question “Why?” and “What is truth?”

Those two questions have hounded me all of my life even to this moment. I can tell you before God and man, with all the honesty, logic and secular investigation I am capable of, Jesus rose from the dean of His own volition and in His perfect timing!

This is the hinge that will take you from the before to the after if ony you will make it a priority in your studies. You won’t have a second chance. We only pass this way once. There is no room for error!Before or after, it’s your decision!