I am here, not going anywhere!: I am here, not going anywhere!

I am here, not going anywhere!: I am here, not going anywhere!: I am going to say something here some may not like but here goes! I am a believer, I am an American, I am a patriot, I am a father, a husb...

I am here, not going anywhere!

I am going to say something here some may not like but here goes! I am a believer, I am an American, I am a patriot, I am a father, a husband, a grandfather, and Oh yes a Pastor! I will vote in the presidential election to do my part! If my candidate does not get elected you will never see me want to leave this country, I will stand beside those who need to be encouraged to stay strong. 

I am so tired of people making the comments they do, I will leave if this or that person gets elected! You are not threatening that because of the election, you are threatening that because you did not get your way, and that is the easy way to say I don't care about this country or it's outcome! 

This country was founded, whether you like it or not on, God, freedom from tyranny, a place no dictator could rule, there are so many more! Men and women gave their lives for this freedom that we so take advantage of and for granted! We cry and moan about so many things, it has become a country of spoiled children throwing tantrums! 

Well I will tell you this no one, and I mean no one will run me and my family from this country and for what it should stand for! If you feel like that then this is not your country in the first place! The sad reality of it all, if the complainers and protesters lived in countries whose freedoms are nothing like here, you would never get away with the rhetoric you do! 

And if you continued to threaten your countries leaders you would be found as traitors and tried as such! I am not sure it will get better here, since I believe in God's word I don't expect it to! But the thing I want to get across is I will never cut and run, I am an American, I was born here and I will die here! 

And I will never give up on anyone, the worse it gets the more Jesus I will share! We will only change this country one soul at a time! We all want changes but what are we willing to do to make these changes happen? Whining and complaining will not do it, siting back and doing nothing will not do it, protesting has never worked! 

You have to step up and step out! It amazes me that all the protesting and upheaval people are doing has done nothing to bring any peace to anyone, quit the contrary! All it has done is shown people, we have people with to much idle time on their hands and instead of doing constructive things they are destroying the very thing they claim they are trying to accomplish! 

They want the right to take others rights away totally contradicting their claim that people have rights! People should always have rights, except when the conflict with the law! Burning and destroying property that is not theirs is not a right, it is breaking the law! But since this country does not want to impose on their rights they are allowed to continue to break the law! 

People say they want equality for all, except for those who disagree with them, that is not true equality! Believers need to pray more, stand on their faith, live their faith, according to scripture! We cannot act like the world to get our point across either! Ugliness from either side accomplishes nothing except ugliness, hurt and separation! 

If we are to be united we have to be able to dialog and not argue, remembering Jesus only argued with the hypocritical religious people and talked to everyone else, He came to seek and save the lost He would not have done that by forcing, arguing, or any other way! Remember not all who heard Him speak accepted Him! 

That said, and I will repeat myself, no matter who gets in, I will not desert this country, I may not be happy but I will continue to try and make a difference! I love you all, we may not agree but but I am here!!!

Name Calling Changes Nothing, We Need To Change!

Name Calling Changes Nothing, We Need To Change!

All the name calling and ugliness because of who is running for President makes me laugh! It's sad that the people who are being this way, have whined all their lives and made no changes at all! All they have done is made noise, and looked for the hand outs and the way out of serving their country in any way! Even when one of their own said "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" President John F Kennedy!  A democrat! Even he did not agree with entitlement! The point is all this talk of free is not even reasonable! Do people out there not understand where this money comes from? The tax payer that's who!! The Government that is now broke because of all the misuse of our tax dollars, and you can blame the Republicans or the Democrats all you want! Truly speaking the buck stops with us and our vote! Am I an idiot and a fool because who I will vote for? No more or no less than who you may vote for! The point is this, stop whining and getting ugly, VOTE for who you feel is best for you, remembering no one person can change a thing on their own! We the people need to stand up and be counted! People who want to vote for Trump are no more or less intelligent then those who want to vote Bernie or Hillary! They want change! But change does not come through one person! Be real people we are in charge of the changes that need to be made! If we do not change our attitudes and stand up truly for what this country represents, we will not change a thing! Most on here know me I will stand on the word of God and make my difference through prayer and seeking God's guidance, that way I stay focused on what is important! Family, Jobs, the safety of this country, making it a place that is stable for our grandchildren! Sadly to say we have put more trust in man then we have in God, I don't care how you believe! When we changed toward our Creator things went down in this country! Calling people names and being ugly toward one another will not change a thing! Only in our eyes are we different, but not in God's! If we treated one another as His word challenges us to, what a difference we can make! Sad though, most people do not truly want change, they want only their needs met at the expense of others! We have to deal with the real and true problem, us! You want change? Then change something in yourself before trying to change everyone else, in reality only God can change people anyhow! Even people out there will have something ugly to say about this why? People truly do not want to hear truth and we have seen that haven’t we?

We Need Iron Men of Faith!

We give kudos to sports athletes for their ability to play their sport under adverse conditions and injury! Bret Favre was dubbed the iron man of football because he would not be pulled out of a game injured or not, impressive!

Men how about us in our service to Christ? Where are our iron men for Jesus? For us it seems, it does not take much for us to sit the bench rather than stay in the game!  We so easily want to leave the game when the biggest hurdles come our way, or we are hurt or injured!

When will we stand up and be counted in a world that wants to challenge our faith? We need to have iron men of faith, men willing to stand no matter what the cost as we have such a cloud of witnesses as examples!

We need Joshua's, we need Caleb's, we need most of all to set an example, and let people see in us the greatest iron man of all Jesus! Ok men it's not only about the bike you ride, ministry you are in, being a veteran, or a supporter of veterans or any other thing!

It is how you stand in the gap when things go wrong, or not your way! How you stand up to the evil that is coming at you and your families! It's no more making excuse how you cannot serve, stand up and be counted, when it counts!

 It's coming along side your Pastor and praying for them, holding their hands up as Aaron and Hur did for Moses! It's asking them what you can do to serve the church better and more, not making the excuse you do enough!

If men, we did enough the church would be full of men leading the way instead of our gals doing it all!! God called us to lead the way by example and we have shrunk back from the task! It's time now to stand up more than ever before and be the men called us to be, not what we think we ought to be!

Be iron men for Jesus, let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and give God the glory!!

Joshua 24:15English Standard Version (ESV)

15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

You never Know!

You know sometimes we sit here and read all the things people are going through, and say to ourselves my life is not that bad! Our struggles are not that hard, nothing worth giving up over! I have found that I have been given you all to pray for.

It gives me strength to get through those days that seem tougher than others. Though we have all lost loved ones, we still have people who need our love. Though we may be hurting, God wants us to use that hurt to help others overcome theirs.And when we do this our hurts seem a little less.

We never know why we go through what we do, maybe because God wants us to be able to use our life's experience to help others through theirs? If we set our eyes on God the Author and finisher of our faith.

We may see that what we go through and the purpose of it, is a training to help those who may not have the strength on their own to endure! But when we don't have that strength ourselves, God puts someone there to help, that seems to be going through the same or worse, to distract us from getting stuck in our own lives!

Life is a learning experience not a punishment as some seem! Your life and mine has a purpose, we can lose that by losing focus on our situation. Or share our situation with others who need to know others are going through the same struggles or worse!

We may never see the help we can be until we get out of the funk we may be in! Our trials are important to God not just for our struggle, but for our faith building and testimony to others! It is through these trials we grow or wither!

If when we are going through the fire, we reach out and share our lives, that is when we will see victory. It may be a life that was about to end in hopelessness, won back to hope, just with you reaching out with your hope!

This hope does not disappoint as Paul wrote in Romans 5:5. We do not understand always why people go through what they do except, to help others who do not have the strength of the faith to reach out!

It also helps us to see in our own lives that we have a God who is there no matter what we are going through! He does not want us stuck in our circumstances, but focused on His purposes for our circumstances! And that is always to use them to reach others with the Hope of salvation!

There is not a person in scripture that did not struggle somehow or someway! But in all ways they saw God working in and through their lives! All they went through was used to make a difference in someone else's life!

And through their trials they would come to know Jesus! Just read the book of Acts! Hope this may be helpful to someone out there who is struggling right now. You are not alone, everyone is going through something, never hesitate to ask or share your hurts, you never know who you may be helping in doing so!

Do we weep for the lost?

As I was reading my devotion this morning in the Daily Bread. I was reading about a young teenager who wept over the fact a 20 year old homeless man refused Jesus! She wept because she knew if he died without Jesus where he was destined to go!

As I read this the conviction came over me and I asked myself, do I weep for the lost? Is my heart truly burdened for those who do not know Jesus? Has my heart become hardened over the fact that people just don't want to know? Or they are just finding more excuses not to?

I watched a movie called Saving Private Ryan. I wept throughout the movie over the lives lost in that terrible battle on D-Day! But it came to me, even though people die as heroes, do they know Jesus? Was I weeping over the fact they were lost?

We as believers weep over many things. But do we truly weep that people are lost out there and that our responsibility is to reach a lost and dying world for Jesus no matter what? Or have we become hardened in our hearts already making the determination that people have made their choice?

Regardless how the Apostle Paul was treated by his countryman, most wanted him dead! He wept for their souls he never stopped sharing Jesus. He took every opportunity whether on trial, or in prison to share the Gospel. We must never forget when even on the Cross surrounded by an angry crowd, Jesus cried out for their forgiveness!

We should not be spending our time making the determination who or who is not allowed into heaven. We should be weeping for their souls, and no matter what, sharing the Gospel message whether they accept it or not. We are not to argue the cause just plant the seed!

And even if they reject it now, you can be at the very least relieved, that you took the time to give them the Gospel. The rest is up to Jesus Christ who does the saving and changing of lives! But we, if we have hardened our hearts we will miss many opportunities!

The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 9:1-5, I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, 2 that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen[a] according to the flesh, 4 who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; 5 of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.

How about you? Would you be wiling to trade places? Would you be willing to give up what you have in Jesus for at least one soul? That is true love and sacrifice. Even as Stephan was being stoned to death for his relationship with Jesus, he asked God to forgive them Acts 7. Who are we to be any different? Are we truly weeping for the lost?

You can win if you are willing to make the right choices!

I watched the movie The Aviator with Karen my wife. The movie is about Howard Hughes, who at that time became the wealthiest man in the world, worth about 2.5 billion! The sad thing was, with all his accomplishments and money he had a tragic sad life! He had all the things money could by except health and happiness!

He was a very unsettled man and struggled with OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. He had multiple relationships with many starlets of the day including Katherine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, just to name a few, yet never settled never happy still struggled with life and sought no help! Ultimately he became a recluse trying to hide from the fears that gripped him until he died malnutritioned and lonely!

He looked so bad the the FBI had to identify him by finger prints, sad life! My point in writing this is never feel you are alone, never feel no one cares, ask for help! Howard Hughes did not have a relationship with God so his life became hopeless even with all he had, it just proves the things of the world truly do not satisfy!

He did not know the trouble he was in because he had no one to turn to! But you do if you turn to Christ as your help, He will never leave you or forsake you, He will not let you down but will give you the courage and wisdom to press on! Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is still out there and consumes peoples lives, owns them traps them in fear and anguish keeps them alone feeling there is no way out!

If you know someone like this pray for them, touch base with them, encourage them, that seeking the right help they can defeat this terrible debilitating sickness! I personally know a young lady who struggled greatly with this sickness! She got in the fight for her life, she took a tough and long journey to defeat it and won!

She had the support of her family and youth Pastor! She learned it is not about the things life offers, it's about life itself and she wanted to live a normal life and won that victory! She started by the admission she had a dangerous problem that was not fixing itself or going away no matter all the little things she felt she had to do.

She had to change some things in her life if her life was going to change! She went to what ever length it took and won, with God's help and the support of those around her she won! The main scripture applied, Philippians 4:13 became the verse she lived by! Standing on the promises that God could and would deliver her and He did!

Victory is just an asking away and sometimes involves work and commitment on our part, trust in God, and a willingness to say I need to change some things! Just so you know the young lady whom I speak about now has a family and stays busy and attentive to how she lives her life! Living a victorious life and learning everyday!

You can win to if you focus on the right things and not the things your mind tell you you need but the reality of what you need to win!

Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!