In the Twinkling of an Eye

1 Corinthians 15:52-"In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."

Last night, I texted my best friend at maybe a quarter after nine. She responded around nine thirty, and said that she would be able to talk in about thirty minutes. So, I waited, and waited, and waited. I never got a response back, and I figured that she was busy, so around eleven, I went to bed.

This morning, I woke up with a text from eleven thirty last night, saying that she had been in a bad wreck the night before. My mind absolutely panicked. She said that the car flipped several times, and it could have easily been the end of her life. Though, she walked out of the wreck only having minor scratches and cuts. 

I told this story to show how quickly life can be taken away from us. I texted my friend, and in just a short time period between when she texted me next, her life was almost ended. We have no guarantee of the next second to come. Before we take our next breath, we can be in eternity. Let's really think about that. Let's ask ourselves where we would be if we died in the next few seconds.

My dad preached a funeral for a very Godly man that went to our church today. He was very blessed to live a total of ninety six years, which is obviously super uncommon. The majority of the man's family does not attend church, and doesn't profess to have Jesus in their hearts. As I looked around at all the faces of family members, it scared me. It scared me because any of them could die at any moment, and open their eyes to Hell. They aren't necessarily bad people, but being good won't do anything for them when they enter eternity. All that matters is if they have received Jesus as their savior, and I hate to see lives spent on this Earth for sixty, seventy years, to never realize this, and end up in Hell.

Ecclesiastes 12:7- “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”

We are all going to die one day; God says this. We will all return to the earth one day, our grave. It may be ten years, and it may be ten minutes away, but we will die. The most important question that we can ask ourselves right now is simply, "Am I saved?" Three simple words, but so much meaning. No matter what we have done on this Earth, the only thing that matters when it comes to death is if we're saved. If we are saved, we have everything, but if we're not, our life has been in vain.

I didn't write this blog to scare anyone, but to give them the warning that they need to hear. I don't want to see anyone die and go to Hell, but that is where the people that reject God is going to go, and once there, they have no chance of ever escaping. I plea with you to just simply take time out of your day to make sure that you are happy with the place that you would spend eternity if you were to die this very second. Don't go another second, without knowing that you would be satisfied with your end. Remember that God loves you, send His only son to die for you, and He wants to see you in Heaven one day. The things that you will have to give up on this Earth for God is nothing compared to what you will gain in Heaven, if you will accept Jesus into your heart. 

Before You Go To Sleep, Make Sure You Are....

Before you go to sleep, make sure you are...

1) SAVED:

1 John- "These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God."

Going to bed knowing that you are saved is the best feeling in the world. You don't have to worry about what will happen once you go to sleep. No matter what happens in your life, your final destination is Heaven.

2) THANKFUL:

2 Corinthians- "Thanks [be] unto God for his unspeakable gift."

God sacrificed everything for us, including His own son, the least we can do is thank Him for what He has done in our lives. He blesses us, and keeps us safe on a daily basis, and that is definitely something to be thankful for. God deserves praise.

3) FORGIVEN:

1 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."

Asking God for forgiveness will prepare the heart to do the things of God. If we have sin in our heart, it is preventing us from being as Godly as we can be. With sin, we are weak, but with God, we are strong. 

4) BURDEN FREE:

Psalms 55:22 - "Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved."

Galatians 6:2 - "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ."

Giving all of your burdens to God before falling to sleep will help you be worry free, and release what is bearing down on your heart. Praying for those things and the prayers of others will give you hope that God will take care of those things, and give you the Godly end that you are hopefully looking for.

 
5) READ UP:

Romans 15:4 - "For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope."

Reading the Bible gives a peace that can't come from anything else. It contains promises and hope for what is to come, and you can rest easy knowing those hopes are in your heart. 

Receiving Jesus VS. Professing Jesus

There is a huge difference in actually accepting Jesus as your personal savior, and solely professing to know Jesus. By receiving Jesus into your heart, I mean, asking Him for forgiveness and dedicating your life to Him. By professing Jesus, I mean, a person is simply saying that they know God, when they truly don't. Or in other words, putting on a fake to the world. I have personal experience in both of these.

When I was around twelve, I got under conviction. God was drawing me to Him one night at Bible School, and the teacher prayed with me, and after the prayer, I thought that I was saved, simply because I went through the process of praying to God. I professed to everyone that I accepted Jesus into my heart, but in reality, I hadn't at all. At the time, I didn't really understand what it was to get saved. I knew that I needed salvation, but I didn't fully understand the severity of the sacrifice Jesus made for us. So, needless to say, nothing changed in my life. I continued living in my sin, and God was clearly not present in my life. For a long time, I told the world I was saved because I didn't want them to think badly of me, and I wanted to believe that I was saved. Though, this was only taking away chance after chance of me getting truly right with God. Thankfully, God kept giving me opportunities to get saved, and thank God, I accepted Jesus on March 31st, 2011. After I did get saved, and I committed my life to God, which wasn't instant, I saw everything in such a new light.

I think that a huge problem in Christianity is that people are fooled by the world and the devil into believing that they are saved when they really aren't. I was fooled for about 3 years, believing that I was saved, and it was completely my fault. I let my emotions and the devil convince me that I was okay with God, but me saying that I was saved didn't do anything. When I accepted Jesus, and gave my life to Him, that is when I got saved. 

There's so many beliefs on how a person gets saved, but there's only one way. A person must accept Jesus into their heart if they want God to be in their life. There's not going to be any change until this happens.

Romans 10:9-10 - "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."

I personally was so amazed by the change that I experienced. After I professed to getting saved, I was so confused why nothing changed, and why God wasn't working in my life. When I committed myself to God, I saw drastic changes to obstacles that I never thought I would overcome. A major obstacle being, saying 'I love you.' I've never been the most loving, but because Jesus showed me love, I am now doing the same.  

Before becoming truly saved, I was lost in the world of sin. I had no joy for God, no desire to read my bible or pray, and I certainly wasn't thankful towards God. The desire didn't come until the salvation was real. With salvation comes a love for God and a want to live for Him. Until Jesus is accepted into a person's heart, the real effects of a Christian relationship with God will not happen. 

Honoring God's Forgiveness

Ephesians 2:8-9 - "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: [it is] the gift of God."

God's forgiveness is unbelievably incredible. The Bible tells us that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. God sent His only son to die for us, people that sin against God daily. What could be more selfless than that? He looks past all of our failures, and has mercy on us. Once saved, God takes away all of the sins from our past, and sets aside a place for us in Heaven. 

God makes receiving forgiveness from Him very simple. All that has to be done is a person asking God to forgive them, and He will. The bad thing about forgiveness being so simple is the fact that people take advantage of God's great mercy.

God's forgiveness is something that should be treasured, but so many people use it to their own advantage. Some will ask God to forgive them, and once He does, they will go back to their sinful ways. I have to point the finger at me first on this. Like in the book of Hosea, Gomer was a prostitute, and God ordered Hosea to take her as a wife. God gave Gomer a great opportunity to live for God, but instead, she went back to her sinful ways. God saves us, in hopes that we will live for Him. It shouldn't be a question if we live for Him or not, especially after thinking about what He has done for us.  

We as Christians should never take God for granted. He has done more for us than we could ever imagine. We wouldn't treat a person bad if they were to save us from getting hit by a car, so why would we treat God bad when He saved us from an eternity in Hell? God's forgiveness is great, and is something that should be praised. It is what will lead us to Heaven one day, and it shouldn't be taken lightly. 

Finding Peace In The Sight Of Death

The fear of death is something that I believe we all experience, I know that I fear the day that I die. I'm terrified of how I will die mostly, instead of the afterlife. There are some absolutely terrible ways that people can die; murder, cancer, heart attack, car wreck, etc. Just yesterday, a reporter and cameraman were shot to death while on air during the morning news. They had no idea that it was the morning that they would die. There was no warnings, and it was a horrific way to spend their last minutes. Though, the person dying is not the major issue, it's what their plans are for the afterlife. 

For those that are not saved, they will have a horrific afterlife, but for those that are saved by God's grace, they are promised a land of joy and peace. Revelation 21:4 - "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." God has given us a way to escape all the pain and heartache that we may feel while on the Earth. We don't have to fear what is to come after our bodies have passed away. It can be certain that we can reach a much happier destination after death. 

Romans 14:8 - "For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's."

Once God saves us, we are His forever. Living or dead, we are His, and nothing can change that. By taking the opportunity to get right with God, God will write your name in the Book of Life. All that has to be done is ask God for forgiveness of your sins. That's all. God made getting saved so easy, though, Jesus paying the price for our sins weren't so easy, seeing that he died on the cross for us. Death doesn't have to be feared, it can be rejoiced about, because we are able to spend our eternity with Jesus, who saves us from our sins. 

How I Came to Christ

Before I started in on the actual blogging, I wanted to share my story of how I became a Christian and began my journey with God. My whole life, I have been in church. I have always been taught the ways of God and what it means to be a Christian. When I was about eleven or twelve, I started feeling a tugging at my heart when my pastor would preach about being saved. I would feel that God was wanting me to come to Him to ask forgiveness. I believe that it was in middle school that I felt the tugging, or conviction, very strongly at a Bible School at my church. I'm not going to lie, it is a very scary feeling of coming to realization that you must be saved if you don't want to go to Hell, but it is completely worth it in the end. I went to my teacher and told him that I wanted to be saved, and he prayed with me. I confessed to becoming saved, but God hadn't really come into my heart yet. I had asked God to save me without having offering a complete understanding that I was a sinner. I went along thinking that I was saved until I was a sophomore in high school. The December within my sophomore year, I started to feel the conviction again, and I tried my best to ignore it, but there was no hiding from God. When January came, the conviction became worse and worse. Then February, then March, and the conviction was completely awful. I was constantly worried that I was going to die and go to Hell. I couldn't drive without being scared, I couldn't sleep without worrying about what was going to happen once I fell asleep, and just being alive scared me because I knew that at any moment, it could be my time to die. I'm not complaining though because this was God's way of opening my mind and heart to the idea that I was in great need of accepting Jesus into my heart. So on March thirty-first, my pastor at the time preached a sermon on Hell and the importance of accepting Jesus. That night, I accepted Jesus into my heart. It was the best decision that I have ever made in my life.