Reverse Your Thinking

I love this video because it is my testimony.  God reversed my thinking and renewed my mind toward him.  I was not brought up with religion or the bible but I sought God for myself and found out how real He is...Hallelujah!

The Reality of Hell - The Story of the Rich Man

THE REALITY OF HELL – 10 THINGS TO REMEMBER FROM LUKE, Chapter 16

Part of the old path is telling the whole gospel, even if it is not popular.  In Luke 16, Jesus spent some time in this chapter chastising the Pharisees about their love for money.  He continues, by telling them about a rich man who went to Hell.

1.       He never says it’s a parable.

2.       The rich man did not go tell hell because he had money, but because he was selfish and loved his money more than God.

3.       God allowed Lazarus to lie at his gate every day as a reminder of what he should be doing. The rich man had every opportunity to do the right thing.  So do we.

4.       Lazarus did not ask for much, only crumbs, and the rich man would not even give him that.

5.       The rich man was very conscious in hell; he remembered his life, and his actions and those things tormented him.

6.       The atmosphere was flames, torment, and suffering.  The rich man did not want his family to come.

7.       It was ironic that in Hell the rich man was now begging.

8.       When the rich man asked that someone return from the dead to warn his brothers (who no doubt were living a similarly selfish life), Abraham refused.  Shocking people only goes so far.

 God is not interested in scaring people into salvation.  He wants us to listen to what he has already left us…THE BIBLE. 

9.       There was a “great gulf fixed” between heaven and hell,  and God’s decision about his life was final and would not be changed.   Once we pass over, there is no other chance for change.

10.   Any one that causes you to believe that Hell is a myth and not to worry about it— is deceiving you.

The Reality of Hell

This is part 8 and 9 of  "To Hell and Back".  The whole hour long video can be seen on youtube.  This particular section has an interesting testimony of a russian scientist who became a Christian after experiencing a vision of hell. 



This is the Good News

If you cannot view this. go to:  www.simplysharejesus.com 



Let's Live Holy-
 

The Old Things are Passed Away

           

          I am thanking God today for 28 years of victory over the devil.  I have a new life, a new heart; I am a new creation in Christ Jesus.  I was born into the family of God in August of 1982.  I spent my first 19 years not knowing God at all.  I was person that was hostile to Christ.  Of late, God has brought back to my mind my old life, how bad off I used to be and it only makes me rejoice about the change in my life today.  My old life is passed away—gone.  The scripture talks of walking in the “newness of life”.  When you go to the store and they say something is new, you expect that it has not been used by anyone else; it is fresh from the factory.  If you found out you’d bought a used product that you thought was new,  you would take it back.  I would.  New means new.

       A new life is not something that can be manufactured or imitated it has to be given through Jesus Christ.

     As I said, I was hostile to Christ.  If someone were passing out bible tracts, I would purposely go the other way, not because I was ashamed of what I was doing, but because I thought they were silly and beneath me, I did not want to talk with anyone about God or hear any of their testimonies—waste of time to me—embarrassing fanatics. There was a young girl I went to high school with who was saved in the next block.  One day I was riding my bike on a Sunday morning.  She yelled out to me, “You should be in church, Renee.”  She was right, but “how dare she” was my attitude, “It’s none of her business what I do with my time”.  I did not want to talk about God, period.  My sister gotten saved before me, and she used to try and talk to me about the bible and quoted scriptures.  I hated being around her.  When she started talking about God, I would get angry and go to my usual hide out—my room.  One day I was so angry, about something she said, I was in tears.  God said to me, “why do you hate me?, why do you hate your sister?”  I couldn’t answer the question as I lay there in my bed, with tears in my eyes.  Why did I hate her and not want to be around her?  She had not really done anything wrong?  I did not realize it at the time but the Word of God she was using was shining the light on my sins, sins I was not willing to repent of.

     I told God that night that I had things I wanted to do.  I was 16 and didn’t want to stop doing anything wrong and sinful because well that would be embarrassing to be a “holy roller”, as they used to call them back in the day. I turned God down that day, and rolled over in my bed crying.   However, in the next three years my life went downhill, got worse and not better.  I did things I said I would never do and went places in my heart and in my life, I said I would never go.  The devil took away my resolve and any integrity that I thought I had.  I was embarrassed about some of the people I was hanging around in college, drug dealers and users, some medical students started their pharmacy classes early if you know what I mean.   I was educated but full of sin.

      Sometimes, you think you will be embarrassed by being so dedicated to God, but I realized the devil was the one really embarrassing me.  The more I followed my own ways and did what I wanted to do, the more stupid mistakes I was making, bad moves in my personal life and definitely not getting closer to God at all. Often people think that just because they have made some good decisions and done some good things, that everything is alright spiritually, that is not always the case.  We need to look into the Bible and see how God feels about how we are living, not our own assessment.

     So, I struck a deal with God, which you really can’t do on equal terms, but to make myself feel better, I played a game with God.  “Ok.  I’ll start going to church.  I may even get baptized again”, which I promptly did.  There was church down the street from my house.  I walked in and told them I wanted to get baptized again, because I thought that would solve this problem between me and God.  You see, I grew up in house full of lies and was taught to lie from an early age, so it was really nothing for me to lie to myself.  So now that I was baptized, I’m a Christian right?  Wrong!  Now that I am a member of a fine upstanding church and joined a few clubs, I’m ok now.  Wrong again.  God was so merciful to me, because he was patient.  I did not have Christ, and He did not allow the devil to take my life in this unsaved, deceived state I was in, thinking I had done a great job by joining church.  God just gently started to deal with me over the next 2 years that there was more to salvation than this.  I started to look around me one Sunday and the choir was rockin’ and the church was beautiful and preacher fiery but I was not saved.  God began to bring to my mind one question that kept bugging me “how do you live holy?”  I would ask people who were long standing members at church and they would say “I don’t know what you’re looking for, no one is perfect”.  So I started to figure there was not much more, but I could not really believe that this is all there was to serving God because on the inside, I was not satisfied with my life.  Oh yeah, the sin thing.  I was still sinning away from church, I didn’t smoke the drugs but I was still doing a WHOLE LOT of other things.  I had just become a religious sinner.

     I asked God was there anyone living right and God answered by prayer and I met a girl in college who was truly saved, she led me to Christ.  I was in my room at home, by myself, I told God that I was tired of being shackled by my sins.  As I sat on the bed, god told me “I’ll keep you free from sin”.  Then the Lord showed me two scriptures I did not know were in the bible. I John 3:8-9 and I John 1:7.  I yielded to God at that moment, repented of my past life and sins and God forgave me and gave me this new life and I have been living for Christ. Not once did I ever have to go back to my old life, old sins, old friends,  God cleansed me and gave me power to live right and say no to wrong.  He took away from me the spirit of lying that I had so much trouble with, and He will do the same for whatever sins you are dealing with.    If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, the old things are passed away, and behold all things are become new. Praise the Lord!

 

 

Our Prayers Received....

The LORD hath heard my supplication; the LORD will receive my prayer.  Psalms 6:9

In this Psalms David is in great distress because of his enemies.  If we study the life of David we will see that he had developed a dependence on God in times of distress.    David also had great confidence that God would first, hear him, and then, that He would receive his prayers.  Often people look at prayer as just words said in private, or maybe just in your thoughts.  But David talks of tears and deep communion with God.

The word receive in this scripture is defined in the original language as something “captured, seized, fetched, to go and get, or take”.  If we live right, God will actually take our prayers in his hand, he will come from on high and go get them, to take care of them.  Often our children ask us for things (and as the holiday season comes, there is certainly more begging) and in order to remember them, we write it down.  As a parent, that is our way of making sure those requests are a taken care of.  We take those concerns into our own hands, only because it is in our power to grant their needs or wants.  We are their source of receiving.   “Mom, I want a bike”, “Dad, I need $10 by Friday for school”.  We may not be able to supply that need, at that moment, but we take it in hand.

When I am an obedient child of God, he will take my prayers in hand, write them down, and at his own time, take care of those needs. 

If I cannot pray with deep assurance that God will answer, then I need to find what may be breaking my communion with him.

Here’s a clue,

Jesus said:

If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. (St. John 15:7)

Today is a beautiful day because I know God has written down my needs.

What is Faith?

What is Faith?

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). I don’t see it, but I believe I have it.  Sounds simple right?  Sounds illogical?  But, Faith is actually very practical and sometimes logical.   If we believe God is who He is, doesn’t it follow logically that He can do all he says He can? The fact that he sees all, understands all, and controls all should be enough.  But sometimes it is not.  I have learned to have more faith in God as I move on in life.  The many miracles God has worked for our family has me awestruck.

Think about it.  The one that formed the eyes (the very concept of seeing) “shall he not see”, and the person that came up with the concept of hearing itself, ‘shall he not hear” asks the Psalmist?  You see God created reason, and often uses reason to talk to man about faith.  People talk of blind faith, but God is not against us thinking or asking.  In fact he invites us to reason and talk with Him.   What He is not happy with, is willful ignorance of Him.   God reveals himself all around us. He will converse with us and commune with us about our problems, but we must listen to HIM.

One time, my husband and I had mission work to do at Hyde Park Hospital in Chicago.  We were on staff with the Chaplain, and had duties we were scheduled to perform that day in visiting the patients.  We also were in serious financial troubles at the time.  My husband only had enough money to make it to work, where he had a check waiting for him.   We did not have enough bus fare to get there, stay to make visitations and get home, and our phone was cut off that morning so we couldn’t call.   Here comes logical or illogical. Why would God give us this opening, and then we miss our duties (which the hospital was very tight on)?  So we prayed, and God told us to go on to the bus stop. Illogical?  Maybe.

As we got there, we noticed a larger crowd than usual.  We asked what was going on, and no one seemed to know except that the bus was sitting at the corner down the street for the last 10 minutes.  Finally, the bus started moving toward our stop.  When the driver opened the door, he stopped everyone from boarding and said these words “listen up people, the fare box is broken in case you were wondering why I was sitting there, I was tryin’ to get it to work, but it won’t work.  So here’s what I’m going to do, I ‘m going to give everyone a transfer good for a few hours….” I almost didn’t hear the rest, my husband and I just looked at each other and laughed.  As we sat on the bus I thought about how God blessed us and the other people too.  What a miracle! And God was right on time.

--Let’s Live Holy---

What is Conviction? Part 1 How do you know …..?

Those that have been in evangelistic company have heard the words “he’s under conviction”.  The word conviction means a feeling of the weight of my sinful actions. That feeling you get when the police roll up behind you, when you know you’ve been going 80 in a 65 mile zone.  When you see those blue lights flash behind you and you know you are wrong and have been caught. That arrested feeling.  You know—the guilt, like everyone can see you nursing that Tom Collins in your hand or can smell the weed in your pocket, or see the porn under your mattress, and even though you have done it a thousand times before, all of a sudden, it feels wrong.  Things that you never gave a second thought, now feel real heavy.  Paul described it this way in giving his testimony in Romans 7: 

 13 Did that which is good (God's Law) then prove fatal [bringing death] to me? Certainly not! It was sin, working death in me by using this good thing [as a weapon], in order that through the commandment sin might be shown up clearly to be sin, that the extreme malignity and immeasurable sinfulness of sin might plainly appear.  (Amplified Bible)

….oh yeah, the sinfulness of sin.  That’s a whole lotta sin.  I had a man say one time, “you’re too sin conscious, too worried about sin”.  But isn’t that the problem?  We are not concerned enough?  Sin is what separates us from God.  Why did we need deliverance from sin?  The whole purpose of Christ’s sacrifice of his life was as an offering for sin, to take sin away from us so that we could have a path to God.  Listen to this conversation Jesus had with sinful religious people,

 ³⁴Jesus answered them, I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, Whoever commits and practices sin is the slave of sin.
³⁵Now a slave does not remain in a household permanently (forever); the son [of

 the house] does remain forever.
³⁶So if the Son liberates you [makes you free men], then you are really and

We hear this last part (v.36) hear a lot from the King James Version as:

 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

People use this quote all the time....but did you know that He was talking about being delivered from sin and not being a slave to sin anymore?

--Let’s live Holy….

 unquestionably free.

What is the Old Path?

So I guess you are wondering exactly what is the Old Path?  

The Old Path is what all Christians need to get back to! 

We live in the American age of the "mega church".   A mega church can have 100,000 members, but if none of them is living a holy life, what is the point? 

God calls people out of sin to a holy life.  He takes them from the kingdom of darkness to the light.  The old path is holiness.

Do you have to be Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama or a monk in a monastery to be holy?  Not according to the bible.  Being holy is obtained through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  Many churches teach the St. Augustine view that holiness is something imputed to us through Christ's work on the cross.  In other words  YOU CAN'T REALLY BE HOLY.    But God never asked anything that was impossible.   Christ is our righteousness, but  he also gives us power to actually live right and overcome wrong.   Holiness is not just something we dream of as a believer, but it is imparted to our lives through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

MY TESTIMONY

The Lord saved me in 1982  while attending the University of Chicago, (a hot bed of agnosticism) and to top things off,  I was a member of a mega church on the South Side of Chicago under a now infamous Pastor of national fame. Still, I found no peace.  Why? I was still carrying a load of sins. I had a whole barn full of things I was doing in my non-church life.  I think they call this "hypocrisy". 

The point is, I was going to a church where holy living was something that no one  seemed to expect nor was it taught as being a reality.  However,  through all of this, God started dealing with me about living a holy life.  I asked people at church who had been Christians longer than I had, "how do you live holy?"  None of them seemed to know.  Their response was, "nobody can be perfect", which was not what I was looking for. My soul was at stake and I needed answers.  I would have settled for staying out of trouble with God for one day.   That would have been good enough for me.

Well, before I gave up on holiness as a pipe dream, I asked God to show me someone that was living right, because frankly, I was tired of getting on my knees every night about the same sins.  "There has to be something better than this" I thought.  I was so frustrated with myself "why can't I stop doing things that I know are wrong?  Why do I keep giving in?"  God was faithful to me and heard my prayer for help.  I met a young lady in my Calculus class  who was serious about being saved--unlike me.

She was not the "I just go to church, attend bible study but I have two boyfriends and some weed in my pocket" saved", but REALLY saved from her sins.  I wanted what she had, so I followed her up.  I heard messages that convicted me of my sins.  I told God that I was tired of living this double life and that I wanted real salvation.  Mind you,  I thought I was a Christian anyway because I believed in God, Christ and all that,  and went to church; but God showed me three scriptures that I did not even know were in the bible:

I John 3:8-9 (He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.  Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.)

and

 I John 1:9 (If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness)

God saved me in my room at home, and no one had to tell me that a change had taken place in my heart.  I knew God had cleansed me, forgave and delivered me from my sins.


Come back again and I will tell you more....