Advice from my heart for the new year

Go for the genuine article. There are many deceivers in this world. Believe in God’s Word with your critical thinking cap on. Do not use blind faith when it comes to Jesus and the Word of God. You don’t need it! He has proven Himself to us. Look around! Open your eyes and open the Bible and think. 

Many deceivers are out there. The Holy Spirit will not glorify Himself but will point out your sin so you can repent and come to Jesus. Jesus does not glorify Himself but points us to the Father and redeemed us so we can be reconciled with God(Jehovah). 

When the sun is just starting to come up is my favorite time to pray to my Abba Father. Have you experienced that precious time with Him? Ask Him to reveal truth to you. Put on the whole armor of God daily; I don’t DARE start my day without it. We are in a spiritual battle for the souls of mankind. 

Are you ready to lunge forward into 2024 as a soldier of Jesus Christ? Let’s encourage and edify one another. Often our marching orders are to stand firm. Ephesians 6:13:  “Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”

Love righteousness because Jesus does. Love truth because Jesus does. John 14:6:  “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

A great devotional for your kids is I Will Stand. It goes through 20 main points on how your children can apply scripture personally to their lives and have a closer personal relationship with their Heavenly Father. May God bless you as you stand strong for Him.

I Will Stand: A Book of Commitment To Do What is Right. Check it out for yourself on Amazon!

Reprimanded by an Angel

 At church this morning we were reviewing the characters from the nativity account in Scripture. What caught my attention in Luke 1:11-22 was that Zacharias, the husband of Elizabeth (who was barren and later bore John the Baptist), questioned the angel as to how his barren wife could bare a son in their old age. Remember that this happened once before with Abraham and Sarah in the Old Testament. The passage about Zacharias is as follows:

And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.

12And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.

13But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.

14And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth.

15For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb.

16And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God.

17And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

18And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years.

19And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings.

20And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.

21And the people waited for Zacharias, and marvelled that he tarried so long in the temple.

22

And when he came out, he could not speak unto them: and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple: for he beckoned unto them, and remained speechless. 

My first thought is that Zacharias asked a reasonable question. They were old and his wife was barren. But we have learned that God can do things that in our eyes seem impossible, including opening a barren womb (as in Sarah's case). The response of Zacharias was distrust. "Whereby shall I know this?" It was like he wanted a sign that this was true. What greater sign do you need than an angel of God? And this was in answer to HIS prayer! He was in the presence of one of God's messenger angels, Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God Almighty, and the angel seems surprised at his doubting. This was good news he was bringing! Zacharias was a priest and his wife of the daughters of Aaron. Shouldn't he have more faith?

Contrast this with a lowly teenage girl, Mary. That same messenger angel, Gabriel, who had spoken with Zacharias now came to Mary. The passage is as follows in Luke 1:26-38:

And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,

27To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.

28And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.

29And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.

30And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.

31And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.

32He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:

33And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

34Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?

35And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

36And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.

37For with God nothing shall be impossible.

38And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

How was Mary's response? Well, she also asked how could this be since she is a virgin (knows not a man). God didn't come in a usual way to this earth. The Holy Ghost fertilized Mary's egg and Jesus was born of a woman, but his father was God our Heavenly Father. Joseph was more like a stepfather because while he was Jesus' earthly father, he was not his biological father. 

Mary didn't ask a question because she doubted this could happen as the angel said. She just didn't know how it could happen. The angel told her, and she said, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word." The angel departed from her and did not punish her for asking her question. What was the difference? The heart. The trust. The response. Whereby shall I know this? vs. How shall this be? How do I know I can trust you, vs. how can this happen? Do you see the difference?

How will you react when the Lord asks you to do something that you don't have all the answers to? Will you doubt God, or quit because you don't understand everything? Or will you trust in God and let it be according to God's will?

This Christmas let's not be like doubting Zacharias, who by the way did have his voice restored after the baby was born. The angel said to name him John, and when the family and friends put pressure on these parents to name their baby from their family line, Elizabeth said they would name him John. The loved ones were in an uproar, questioning the validity of Elizabeth's statement, and demanded that Zacharias straighten this whole thing out. Because he couldn't speak, he asked for paper and he wrote, "His name is John." Then immediately he could speak. Now he had the faith and the obedience to do what the angel said, and the punishment was lifted.

Let's not be doubters. Let's be obedience to God and His holy Word this Christmas season and always. What is God's will? Read the Bible, pray, go to church, repent of your sins, trust in Jesus as your Savior, tell others about Christ, and obey what He has said in His Word for us to do, such as love one another, be kind, forgive others, give to the Lord, take care of the temple of God (our bodies), teach our children about God, rejoice in the Lord always, look for His second coming, etc. Once we are doing the known will of God, then He can reveal specifics that He wants us to do. Follow Jesus and trust in the One who can do mighty things!

How Do I Discover the World Around Me?

Science is observable, measurable and repeatable. It is asking questions and exploring the world around you. It is the seeking of knowledge. Science changes as we learn more and more about our world. Science itself is not an authority as if it’s a god; it is a method to find truth. Our five senses are great resources, as is our ability to reason and come to logical conclusions. The scientific method starts with a hypothesis, an idea, in which you have a theory, and then tests are done and observations made to study the world and see if the hypothesis is correct. You keep adjusting based on what you find, allowing the truth to present itself. Truth seeking encourages questions.

For instance, if we came from monkeys, why do we still have monkeys and humans and nothing in between? If things could jump from kind to kind like a canine to a bird, why do we not observe this?  If our earth is spinning, why do we not see this when we are in a plane? If we are on a sphere, why doesn’t the nose of the plane dip every 5 minutes as the math would demand? If we are spinning, why does a cannon shot straight up come straight down from where it was shot? Why is the water, which always finds its level, from the Nile River and Suez Canal which are many miles long not running downhill? Why do the satellites not take any pictures of people in Australia or Argentina driving on roads or swimming upside down? Why is it when you go higher and higher that the horizon stays at eye level rather than moving downward like it would on a ball? Why does the sun have rays that can be measured in triangular math rather than parallel like it would if millions of miles away? Why are boats that go out of sight like you would expect if going over a curve able to be zoomed in with the new technology cameras you can buy yourself?

There are many experiments you can find online and even do yourself that are observable, measurable and repeatable that will answer your questions to find actual truth. Don’t rely on computer generated images to teach you truth, or Hollywood films. Pilots and military staff will attest to a flat, non spinning earth, and so do their technical books. The next time you are in a pool with a wet ball, throw it with a spin and see if the water clings to it, or flies off the ball. The next time you are landing in a plane, look at the ground and observe if it is a moving target. The next time you practice shooting, see if you have to calculate your shot with the earth spinning thousands of miles an hour in order to get that flying bullet to its target. The next time you fly on a plane, bring a level and see if the plane is having to dip its nose to follow the curvature of the earth and maintain its height. If the earth were spinning thousands of miles an hour as they claim, why couldn't you just hover and allow the next state to appear? If flying the same direction of the earth spinning 1,000 miles at the equator, as they claim, and 16,000 miles per hour at the poles (and everything in between would be between 1,000 and 16,000 mph), a plane going 500 miles an hour would have a very hard time arriving at its destination. How do we not feel that? If gravity were that strong to keep bodies of water and skyscrapers still and in their places even when upside down, how does a butterfly gently move through the air?

Start looking, really looking at God’s beautiful world around you that He made for you to enjoy. You matter to Him. You are not a speck of dust on a spinning rock flying around the sun, zipping through space in an infinite universe. God made the earth with the sun, moon and stars in the firmament, on sure foundations, with water above the firmament, an ice wall around the edges of the earth holding the water in, as water must be contained, a magnetic North Pole in the center of the circle of the earth, with a sun running its race along the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer.  The moon gives off its own cool light (test it! It is warmer in the shadows), which is the lesser light to rule the night, and has its course for times and seasons. What we know as planets are wandering stars. What people think of as life from other planets are demons. What we actually see as stars and planets appear as lights; the rest is all computer graphics, not photos. The globe earth is also a graphic because we have never gotten high enough to see the whole earth. NASA attests to the Van Allen radiation belts that we can’t cross yet. Satellites and weather satellites go up on helium balloons. Satellites occasionally fall and have been videoed and photographed with a balloon attached to them. It’s all in the open to see for yourself…if you will humble yourself and look.

The moon landing was a Hollywood film, and think about it: do you think the President could really talk to the astronauts on a land line? The same mountains in the background that the scientists are saying is Mars is in Egypt with a red filter on it. 

See for yourself. Look to my prior blogs with verses and videos to explore. Here are a few others you can see. Rob Skiba, Mark Sargeant, and Eric Dubay have great resources. 

Please excuse some of the swears by some of the speakers in the videos below. I wish they could just leave those out!

Why would the world system lie to us?

CGI vs. Reality

Sunlight vs. Daylight

Level documentary with words from pilots as well

Interesting facts about the sun

200 Proofs Earth is Not a Spinning Ball