Category Archives: Faith

God Removes All Tears

In the New Jerusalem, where all God’s people will be for eternity, God removes all tears and crying.  All bad and negative things have been dealt with. No more pain, no more crying, no more devil, no more sin,and no more bad things. Everything evil is taken care of by God.  Right now on the earth is a lot of good and bad, and lot of wonderful things and a lot of evil. So be sure you are ready for acceptance into the New Jerusalem by receiving Jesus Christ.  Your good works will not get you there, just a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Revelation 21:4  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away

Inspirational Quotes

Here are some great Inspirational Quotes   “…let us run with patience the race that is set before us, 2 looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith…”   This is from Hebrews chapter 12, a very encouraging quote. The Bible is full of encouragement (and warnings) because God knows what we have to go through to live on the earth.

Abiding in Him – How to Pray

This blog taken from a video at Drew’s YouTube channel.  The video is also  posted on Vimeo

John 15:7 says, “If you abide in Me”, that is, if you are following the Lord, remaining in the Lord, doing what God wants you to do, and you are up to date with your obedience to God, and, “My words abide in you”,  then you can ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you.  What does this mean? If we are abiding in Christ, and His words are abiding in us just like Paul says in the book of Colossians, this means we are one with the Lord. When these things are true, you can say God is asking in our asking, or God is praying in our prayer.  Another way to say it is we are praying or asking the prayer of God. If you are one with the Lord, you are obeying the Lord, you are abiding in the Lord, and His Word is dwelling in you, then you are one with the Lord, and what the Lord wants to pray, you want to pray, what the Lord wants to ask the Father through your prayer, you want to ask the Father.  So who is really praying here?  Is it us praying or is it God praying?  It is kind of hard to understand. When we abide in the Lord and just stay with Him, this is the best way to pray.

The video this text is taken from is on  Drew’s YouTube channel.  This portion is at YouTube.

Prayer – Let The Word of Christ Dwell In Us

We have a passage in the book of Colossians.  Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell (or remain) in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs , singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” Just the first part of that verse says, “Let the word of Christ remain or dwell in you richly”.   I believe that this is talking about the Word of God referred to, here, and the word that God speaks to us personally. By the way, the word God speaks to us personally should always correspond to this Bible. It should never contradict it. That is a good test.

Gideon Asks God to Prove Himself

Gideon Asks God to Prove Himself

There is an Old Testament story of a man named Gideon. We don’t have time to get into much detail, but God was speaking to him about raising an army to defeat the enemy of the Lord. God spoke in a definite way to him. Gideon heard it but I believe Gideon was afraid because he said, “Well, God, I am not sure if I’m really supposed to this, or not supposed to do this.” He, then, put out the fleece for God.  He said, “If You really spoke to me, then please make the fleece wet by the morning.”  Some people read that story and conclude that when you think God is speaking to you, you should put out a fleece to make the Lord prove Himself to you—-that yes, that was really the Lord speaking. The point of that story was not an encouragement to do that sort of thing, because when God speaks, God speaks. Gideon definitely heard the voice of the Lord, but because of his fear, and because of his slowness to hear what God was asking him to do, and his slowness to do what God wanted him to do, he was asking God for some kind of sign.  In the book of Matthew, we read that some of the religious people were asking Jesus Christ, the Son of God, for some kind of sign from heaven that He was really the Messiah.  Matthew 12:39, “But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign…”  In other words, it is evil if you are not willing to listen to what He says or what He speaks to you.  That is kind of a strong word, there.  Anyway, that is the story of Gideon. Gideon, not really wanting to obey God, was asking God for some kind of a sign to prove to him that it was really Him speaking, and yet all the time, Gideon knew in his heart that it was God speaking to him.  Eventually Gideon followed through with what God wanted to do.

This blog was taken from a video on Drew’s YouTube channel.

God Cares What We Do

The Children of Israel Disobey God and Suffer Discipline

Now, we want to look at the example of the children of Israel in the Old Testament. God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt and brought them into their own land, the land of Canaan. God told them that as long as they served Him, the true God, and kept the sacrifices, and did the things He commanded them to do, He would preserve them in that land. The people obeyed for a while, but eventually they decided to do their own thing. They began to worship other gods and do things God wasn’t happy with.  God sent several prophets to them during that time. One of the big prophets was Jeremiah. Another one was Ezekiel. God kept speaking to His people and warning them. He basically said to them, “If you continue in this unrighteous way and continue to disobey Me, I will allow an enemy to come in and capture you.”  Sure enough, that is what happened.  God allowed the enemy to come in and devastate His people. Did God send this enemy or allow it? God had warned His people over and over again through prophet after prophet, “If you don’t obey Me, and if you don’t do the things I proscribed for you to do through Moses, then I will allow the enemy to come in, and that enemy will devastate you. “ The people absolutely ignored the prophets. They ignored Jeremiah.  They ignored Ezekiel and other prophets.  God allowed Assyria to come in, the Egyptians and eventually the Babylonians to come in.  They burned a lot of the cities and did a lot of damage, and took many Israelites captive back to Babylon.  Why did God allow that to happen? Number one, His people were not doing the things He told them to do. Just like Jonah got himself into a lot of trouble because he didn’t go where God told him to go, so the children of Israel had problems with their enemies because they did not obey the voice of the Lord and do the things that He wanted them to do.

But check the end of the Bible,  God does not give up on His people. He still wanted Israel to fulfill the original intention, purpose, and burden that He had for Israel. God eventually gets His way for all of us.

Jonah in the Bible

Jonah – When God speaks, He eventually gets His way.

Jonah was commissioned by God to go to Nineveh to preach and teach there, and to bring the people of that city to the Lord. We might tend to think Jonah should be able to go wherever he wanted to go, but that is not a principle taught in the Bible.  Jonah decided to go in a direction completely opposite the direction the Lord wanted him to go. Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh because he knew the people in that city were very cruel. Jonah feared that if they didn’t accept the message God had for them they might persecute or even kill him. We can understand why he wouldn’t want to go there!

We read that Jonah went out from the presence of the Lord. He turned his back on the Lord and went his own way!  Jonah took passage on a ship to go where he wanted to go.  Eventually they found themselves in the middle of a ferocious storm and the people on the boat learned that Jonah wasn’t doing what his God told him to do. Jonah knew this storm was a direct result his disobedience to the Lord, so he directed them to throw him overboard.  He saw that as the only chance of saving the ship and crew. What happened next seems rather strange to some people but it says God prepared a fish.  Some say it was a whale but the Bible doesn’t really say that.  It was a big fish.  This big fish swallowed Jonah, and he was in the belly of this fish for three days.  That is a brief summary of Jonah chapter one.

In chapter 2, we find Jonah in the belly of this big fish. He begins to pray and cry out to God?  Why?  He is in a big predicament and he doesn’t know if it will be life or death for him.  Jonah eventually prays and God delivers him. This fish spits him out on the shore.

In Jonah 3 it says that God spoke again to Jonah. In other words, God didn’t give-up on Jonah. He still wanted Jonah to fulfill the original intention, purpose or burden that God had for him. God again asked Jonah to go to Nineveh, the city He had originally commissioned him to go to. Eventually Jonah obeys, goes to that city and preaches, and as a result those people turned away from their unrighteousness and to God.

What is the simple principle we can learn from the story of Jonah?  When God speaks, eventually God gets His way.  If we don’t follow or go along with the Lord, He will sometimes allow something to happen that will bring God to our attention. In Jonah’s case, he spent three days in the belly of a big fish. There are two other examples in the Bible of people who went their own way and did their own thing and eventually got into trouble. Don’t forget, eventually God gets His way. 

The video this text is taken from is being uploaded to  Drew’s YouTube channel.

What is Prayer?

Prayer is just talking to God.  God is real, He exists and listens, we just need to start talking to Him.    Prayer does not need to be formal or in some special place or with some special people. Prayer is just talking to God in reality. So we don’t need to be phony or make-up something, just start saying what is on your heart as you think about God.  Prayer is just a dialog between us and God.  Prayer can be alone for with others.  Prayer can be when we are happy and when we are sad.  Prayer can be what we feel when we are very encouraged and when we are very depressed and low.   Prayer can be when we are a sinner (and we all are sinners) and when we feel we are a saint.  Prayer can be when we love God and when we hate God. Sometimes we are hurting because of something that happened, so tell that to God.  Sometimes after we pray we feel high and sometimes low.

Sometimes we have things we want God to fix or do.  Sometime He does them, other times it just does not happen.  We can in prayer talk to God about ourselves and talk about others.

In the Bible there are many sample prayers. These Bible prayers are great examples of words if we need them, but still the best is what just comes from our heart as we think about God.

Three quick tips to help your prayer:
1. To know Jesus Christ as savior makes a big difference in prayer results
2. To know the Bible also helps our prayer
3. To obey the Lord also helps our prayer

So try some prayers, just talk to God what ever words come to you as you consider God.