God

Is it Wrong to Ask God for Proof of Himself, Other Than the Bible?

Here’s an interesting question:

Is it wrong to ask God for proof of himself, other than the bible?

No, it is not. That’s the beauty of it all. In fact, people in the Bible asked God to prove Himself. My favorite story is Gideon. I’ll just paste the passage here:

 So Gideon said to God, “If You will save Israel by my hand as You have said—look, I shall put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor; if there is dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that You will save Israel by my hand, as You have said.” And it was so. When he rose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece together, he wrung the dew out of the fleece, a bowlful of water. Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me, but let me speak just once more: Let me test, I pray, just once more with the fleece; let it now be dry only on the fleece, but on all the ground let there be dew.” And God did so that night. It was dry on the fleece only, but there was dew on all the ground.

That passage was from Judges 6:36-40. This isn’t the only time Gideon asked God to prove Himself. But, this is my favorite. He asked God to basically go against the laws of nature…twice. Absolutely fantastic.

Don’t be afraid to ask of God in this way. Approach with respect and adoration. You are not challenging Him. If anything, you are seeking confirmation. Yet, God wants us to rely on faith. So, His response will be one of two things. Either he’ll accept the test, or ask you to jump anyway. But, I think it’s no problem to ask. Ya never know how God will reveal Himself.

Yeah, It’s Very Possible God Has Other Children Besides Humans

We talk about life on other planets. Aliens. Are they out there? Are they looking for us? Are they friendly?

I happen to believe in other lifeforms on other planets, and it’s for one specific reason: God.

God is the creator of the universe and all that dwells. There is a very real chance that humans are not the only life He’s created. Heck, the earth itself has so much life.

But, what about souls? Spirits? Are humans the only people that posses the ability to be saved by Jesus?

This is all completely a theory…well, hypothesis on the subject. I have no scripture references for you. I only have who God is.

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Is There A Reward System In Heaven?

This one is gonna be fun. Ready?

Everybody that accepts Jesus as their Lord and personal Savior is guaranteed a spot in heaven. But, what if…what if depending on how you lived, you had more “rewards” in heaven?

There are a few Bible verses that somewhat indicate this, so I’m not completely making something up. However, before I mention those verses, I’m going to share with you my personal thoughts about this question.

We all know that the way salvation works can be…annoying to many. As Christians, we live for God. Well, we’re supposed to. Anyway, sometimes it can be infuriating when we see non-Christians apparently thriving more than us, children of the most high God.

It can also seem unfair that people can be unsaved all of their lives, then get saved at the last minute, and then get into heaven, when you spent 50 years getting beaten by the same person for being a Christian. Youch!

To me, I look at God as a God of justice. I think He honors those who have served Him. High honors. I think not everybody will hear “Well done, my good and faithful servant”. That’s what I believe.

Think about it. If you accept Jesus in your life, then spend the rest of it not following Him, does it make sense for God to still tell you good job? You didn’t do what you were supposed to do, so this would be undeserved praise. As merciful as God is, I think He’s also a fair God.

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Christians: Have We Created Our Own God?

Oh Lord.

Let me share a fairly funny story. I’m a single guy in his 20s. I think I’m still young enough where I’m not looked at as “he’s gay” or “there must be a serious problem”. You get that a lot about singles in their 30s.

Anyway, as you have probably heard, I run a lighting ministry at my church. My crew mainly consists of teenagers. They are adorable. So young. So innocent (most of the time!). But, really, just a great group of kid-uh I mean…young people…no wait…teens. F it. Great group of teens.

Sometimes though, they go a little too far.

Early 2014, as we were working on our church’s Good Friday play (and y’all know that was a traumatic experience for me), one of my girls did something that I couldn’t believe: She signed me up for Christian Mingle, the dating website.

My teens are…they can be bold sometimes. I have my hands full as this was one of the tamer things they’ve done. But yeah, she signed me up for this service. She managed to do this while I was only feet away from her! Noooo, she didn’t wait until she was home or whatever. Her sister and another girl on the crew begin filling out parts of the profile and stuff.

You know how I eventually found out? I got an email from the site thanking me for signing up. I’m looking on my phone’s screen trying to recall when I even bothered with it. I look at the girls, who had just been asking me what type of woman I want and what my hobbies are and I didn’t think much of it. But that email pretty much put me on notice.

I tell her to delete the darn thing. “I forgot the password”. Oh, yeah right. I’m really in a fit right now, looking at her. Curse her disarming smile though.

I go home, intent on deleting the darn account. So, I go and there’s this long process before I can delete the account. After resetting the password and getting back in, they force you to complete parts of the profile before you can access the thing and delete it. I’m like…what?

Don’t worry, this is the part where I lead into my story for this post. One of the things they ask you is what denomination you are part of. It just so happens the church I am a part of is non-denominational. But, that drop down list exposed me to a LOT more denominations than I thought there were.

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Update: Accept Jesus

So you’re ready to make the greatest decision of your life? And yes, this is the smartest thing you can do. Accepting Jesus into your life is the best thing to do. I do want to say something though. It’s about what to expect when you first accept Jesus into your life. I just want you to know what you’re getting into. If you want to skip on ahead to the prayer, it’s at the bottom of the page.

There are many positives to accepting Jesus. For one thing, you now have eternal life. What you need to understand is, as an unsaved person, you are spiritually dead. Why? Jesus took our sinful lives to die on the cross so that we may have new life in Him. And the thing with Jesus’ life: it never dies. His spirit lives on forever and, if we accept Jesus, that spirit now lives in us.

Make sure you understand that Jesus died and took the ultimate punishment for us. Just like we are so grateful that the fireman saved us from the fire. But then, he died while getting you to safety. You were supposed to burn, but the fireman took your place. It’s basically the same thing with Jesus. You were supposed to be on that cross; but Jesus loved you enough to say that he would die for all of us so that we can live.

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A Harsh Truth About the Fruit of the Spirit

I’m going to tell you something that I stumbled upon concerning the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Obviously, you can feel free to disagree. You can tell me how wrong I am. You can quit following this blog.

But, I have to say this because I play the role of the bad guy.

The harsh truth about the fruit of the Spirit is that, if you don’t have the Holy Spirit in you, you cannot produce this fruit. Only the Holy Spirit can produce such fruit.

In case you don’t know what this fruit is: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

That’s Galatians 5:22-23.

This means, if you do not have the Holy Spirit, you cannot love. You cannot truly love. That’s right. You cannot have nor bring joy. There is no peace. Forget about being patient. You can’t truly be kind. There is…there is no goodness.

Shake my head.

You don’t have faith. You just can’t. You can’t be gentle. You have no self control.

The Holy Spirit produces this fruit.

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