We are in a time of war, not peace.

Because of the apostasy in the church, it is as hard to find the real Jesus in the church as it is finding real food in the grocery store. Many are disillusioned and wandering from teaching to teacher, trying to please a God they neither know nor like. Most have concluded that they will “do the best they can under the circumstances and take their chances”. What a freaky absurd approach to determining their eternal destiny and the daily care of their souls.

Some are talking about the annihilation of the earth while others are still touting belief in a return to the old American dream; the pursuit of (personal) happiness and success. Which will it be, survival or success?  And are either of these really what life is all about?

 

Kingdom of God

Living in these uncertain days has made us certain of one thing, Jesus Christ must come back. There seems to be no human solution to the complex problems and personal pain we are in. Our Government is broken as well as broke. The bottom line is not raising the debt ceiling or taxes or lowering spending or any magical combination of the two.

The bottom line is sincere and absolute repentance. We need the Revelation of Jesus Christ to understand the urgency of that Repentance, noting that the first public sermon Jesus Christ made when He walked among us and surveyed the damage and human carnage left by sin was “ Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand”, (Matt. 4:17).

 

Help, I’ve been left behind – What do I do now?

For some yesterday, May 21, 2011 was just an ordinary day, a day we either served the Lord Jesus Christ, or a day we frittered away on the things of this world. For others, this was supposed to be the Big Day. Homecoming didn’t happen. But that does not mean it won’t.

Actually, Jesus said He was coming in a day when we did not think He would. It will be an ordinary day. So, let us not worry about when it is. If you are ready, (suitcases will not fly), there is no way you can miss the bus. So get busy doing the Lord’s business till He comes back.

 

Sound the Alarm

All of us have heard some version of the story of the little boy sent out to watch his father’s sheep who called “wolf, wolf”, when there was no wolf.  But just because there was no wolf, – at least not that day – the threat of there being any wolf at all soon faded from mind and the alarm lost its power to bring warning or help.

How many times have we heard the alarms of the Bible sounded without there being any apparent danger? Life in our part of the pasture was fine, or at least manageable. We were busy getting ready for something or trying to recover from it or rewarding ourselves for being so good or clever or successful or pulling ourselves out of some bad mood or relationship dysfunction.  

 

Today, the Rapture?

Another scare about the date the world will end has been issued by those who may think they have heard from God, but do not know their Bibles. It says expressly that we do not know the day, May 21, 2011, or the hour, (Matt. 24:36). We, those of us who have ears to hear, will know the time and the season.

“Times” in the Bible often speak of years and “seasons”, would denote the time in the year. We all have our opinions about where we are at on the timeline of Judgment and none of them are sacred or necessarily right.

 

EAT WHAT I GIVE YOU

Last week I started a blog on “Cravings”.  Those cravings can include food and drink, or any behaviors that seem to control our choices and enslave our lives. Being bound and controlled by the appetites of the flesh, or hindered in our service to God because of an addiction has become the consuming distraction in many a believer’s life.

Failure to overcome the habit opens the door for condemnation that silences our witness for Christ. It shuts down any other activities directed toward the furtherance of the Kingdom of God, making these kinds of demonic obstructions quite effective in the Enemy’s derailing of the people of God.

 

EATING BY THE RULES

I will be starting a new series out of my new “Cravings” manual. The key to sobriety, weight-loss, and a myriad of other plaguing human problems is deliverance. “Cravings” will give you the spiritual insight you need to get past the “want to” and “will power” and into the true keys to freedom.  -Marjorie Cole

EATING BY THE RULES
It may sound like “over spiritualizing” to make eating good food an act of obedience, but that is exactly what God did. If God gave a commandment, then breaking the commandment is possible, just like posting a speed limit now makes speeding illegal. Before the posting, speeding was simply the way one preferred to drive and not punishable as a crime.

So why did God make a law if He knew people would just break it? For the same basic reason we pass laws in society, to keep people from getting killed, ripped off, and treated unfairly. Does is work? Not usually. Why? Because the law does not bring with it the power to make anyone keep it, in spite of the consequences. We still have the freedom to ignore or disregard it’s protection. Neither does keeping the law justify us.

 

2011 Off With a Bang!

Wow!!  What’s happening out there? Earthquakes, wars,  riots, bloodshed, lies, treachery and betrayal of countries by kings and citizens by their governments! The bigger question, however, may not be how did we get here, but where are we going and what are we going to do about dangerous place we are in?

Everyone will answer that differently. Some will try to get more involved in their church, or country, or make a shift in the direction they sense their moral ship is going. Others will continue to live a laissez-faire life of ease and self-indulgence common to the those whose finances allow them to live the life of the generally privileged. Some may still be ambitious enough to think we can make a difference. Others are wondering where God is or waiting for Him to step in and put this world in a judgment head-lock.

Some are sad and won’t be putting forth as much effort to believe for anything. “It is what it is” is all it will ever be, has bound them to the past with the belief that nothing will ever change. Many are tired of lies and false hope. Their gods and grues have misled them or left them stranded on the undefined shores of a distant land and all they want to do is go home. And for the ambitious and oblivious, life is far too busy and full of fun to despair of hope or think soberly about it all ending.

It truly is  as in the days of Noah. They continued on with their daily activities, eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage and never giving a thought to anything more pressing than the moment, until the flood came and swept them all away.

These are the best of times and the worst of times, as were many other times recorded in the chronicles of mankind. “Perilous times” (II Tim.3:1) the Bible calls them. “For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despiser of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.”

If there is any consolation in this passage and ones like it, that comfort comes from the fact that even as we see these things appearing before our very eyes, we can also know that what they predict is not far behind.

If all this stuff about God and what His Word says will happen, is true, then both wisdom and logic would tell us, our only hope is in the One True God. In spite of the fact that most have left Him for dead, or gotten mad at Him for being sovereign or for not catering to their every whim, He is still in control of everything, even those things that seem to be “out of control”.

I am more convinced than ever that very few of us understand the weight of the spiritual context in which this life is written. The battle between God and Satan sits at the core of everything that happens down here whether we want to believe it or not.

I know many of you do not believe in the devil, or in God, for that matter. Nothing says you have to believe in anything. Nothing forces you to believe in God, or in His Son, Jesus Christ. You can believe whatever you want, but remember, just because you believe something does not make it true.

One objective observation on truth is that the One Who seems to pull the highest ratings as  public offender number one, is Jesus Christ.  What world act of violence He actually did to get those ratings is not clear, though what is clear is that when He was down here, His actions were the essence of justice, truth, mercy, goodness, love, patience, tolerance, meekness, hope.

Doesn’t the fact that He kept His word even to the point of personal sacrifice and death make you wonder, who determines the” Man of the Millennium” ratings, and who is the most threatened by His continued presence here on the earth?

We are His disciples and if they hated Jesus Christ, they will hate us. Jesus Christ is the anointed appointed Redeemer sent to pay the ransom and release the prisoners of sin and death.

Don’t be fooled by this world’s discussion of truth or their new standards of tolerance and social justice.

Follow those who criticize the Son of God or the sovereignty of God at your own risk. What merit or testimony can they add to yours on that final day when we all must appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ?

No one who follows Jesus Christ will ever be politically cool or correct as long as the prince of the power of the air rules the world. We are not shocked that the prince does not like his territory being threatened. Nor are we surprised when he messes with those who do not serve him.

The Day of the Lord is at hand. He told us to look up and watch for His return when He will come back as the King of Kings,to set up His Kingdom and rule here on this earth as the Prince of Peace.

God’s will for us has always been peace, but not the global passivity that steals men’s freedom. We serve out of love, not fear.

God has come to save us from the Devil’s domination and eternal damnation.

So what can we know for sure about the end, about what is next, about now?  First, we cannot change ourselves, though we may all feel the pressure to do so. No amount of change, or achievement, or fun, or stuff will ultimately deliver us from the feelings that drive us to anxiety. Only the peace of Christ within us will quiet our restless souls and calm our anxious minds in these troubled times.

It is sure, the earth is not going to repent of its ways. It is sure, that the prince of this world is not going to give up his prisoners without a fight. It is sure the lies that spew out from everywhere will continue to dominate our thinking, our purchases, our activities and our general direction, unless we  repent, (change our minds) and let the Lord God defend us in the up coming battle. Call upon His Name, (Romans 10:9-10). Submit to Him, trust His Word, rely on His Faithfulness, He is coming back to rule and reign upon this earth and His reward is with Him.

In Him,

Marjorie

 

“But what will you do in the end?”

As good soldiers we must know what we believe in and how to “contend earnestly for the faith, (Jude 3). Let us begin with the basics. “”In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1).
“In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was with God, and the WORD was God.” ( Jo. 1:1). God spoke the worlds into existence through the WORD. Jesus Christ is the WORD of God incarnate. He is the “appointed heir of all things, through Whom He (God) also made the worlds;” (Heb.1:2).
He is the “express image” of the invisible God Who “upholds all things by the word of His power, (Who) when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,” (Heb.1: 3). “…by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, …all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.” (Col. 1:16 & 17).
As the One Who sustains all creation, Jesus Christ holds enough credentials to substantiate His claim, not only as the Creator, but also His right to intervene in every activity of that creation. He is the beginning, the middle and the end of all things. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, (Jo. 14:6).

He is the WAY, (God’s method or means) of salvation and atonement for our sin. He embodies the TRUTH that settles the debate with Satan over our souls and every claim sin and death have made on them. He sounds the gavel of justice and closes the discussion on ‘what is truth’. He laid down His Life to gain everlasting life for whosoever would call upon Him. He has gone back to His homeland to prepare a place for us, (Jo. 14:1-2) an eternal home for the homeless and an everlasting place of rest for the weary, for those who would call upon Him.
Jesus Christ defines LIFE. In Him are contained all the codes for that life, including every genetic script for every form of life and its function throughout the universes. He is the author of all forms of life, past, future, and now, for He ever lives in the eternal NOW of forever.
There is no other god or force or demon that can compare to our God or defeat Him! “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name (or doctrine or method or gospel), given among men whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12). This is the simple Gospel and the truth for all men, for all time. This is the simple and complete Gospel of Jesus Christ.
In Him are restoration, life, grace, purpose, and peace, for even as He sustains all creation, He embodies all truth and gives value and purpose to those of His creatures who seek Him. But even as the simple is the profound, Paul’s fear has come true in that our “minds are being corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
The simple gospel of Jesus Christ has become profoundly perverted by the same serpent who provoked Eve’s innocence with his provocative and dubious, ‘did God say?’, (Gen. 3:1). Not much has changed. We are still being led away for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, to follow many other jesus’ and their gospels of folly and self-serving gimmicks.
The things we are witnessing in these last days that present themselves as part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ are a shocking confirmation of God’s Words both through His prophets of old and the New Testament warnings of the disciples of Jesus Christ.
“Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore watch, and remember…I did not cease to warn everyone night an day with tears.” (Acts 20:28-31).
Jeremiah weeps to see the words of his day fully come to pass in ours. “An astonishing and horrible thing has been committed in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule by their own power; and My people love to have it so. But what will you do in the end?” (Jer. 5:30-31).
Prayer:
Lord, again, have mercy on us, for we have sinned greatly against You and Your truth. On every hand, in the church, in our land, in our nation and in our world, we have been consumed by the lie. “We lie down in our shame, and our reproach covers us. For we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day, and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.” (Jer. 3:25).
Open our eyes and cause us to see the evil that works in the very midst of us and cause us to weep over our sins, our rebellion, our hardness of heart and our disdain for the truth. Forgive us for we are truly in need of Your Mercy. Amen.
To ponder: Knowing the truth, (the ability to recognize the truth without any other means then that which is already present within the individual), is intrinsic to those created in the image of God even as breathing is an innate, unlearned part of our natural life. “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things.” (I Jo. 2:20)