SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/3/2022 9:48 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-6 “The
Principle”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
16:24
Message
of the verse: “24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes
to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”
Today
we continue looking at Matthew 16:24 as this has been a very long verse to dig
through and understand what our Lord is telling us. The following is something that could be the
most important step that one takes in his life and that is to understand what
it means to become a true born-again believer in Jesus Christ. To come to Jesus Christ for salvation is not
to raise a hand or sign a card, although such things may sometimes play a
part. To come to Jesus Christ is to come
to the end of self and sin and to become so desirous of Christ and His
righteousness that one will make any sacrifice for Him. One has to come to the end of one’s self,
realizing that in and of themselves that there is nothing on their own that
they can do in order to become a believer, a true believer in Jesus Christ. It was late in the year 1972 when the Holy
Spirit began to do a work in my heart, to begin to show me that there was
something missing in my life that I needed.
I had been divorced from my first wife for a couple of years, I was in a
difficult part of my life, trying to fill my life with things like smoking
dope, going out with different women, things that people try to do each and
every day in order to find contentment and meaning in my life. It certainly was not working at all. In March of 1972 I met the woman that I would
marry in August of 1973, life was still not I really wanted it to be. In January of 1974 I went on a vacation by
myself to visit a high-school friend who lived in Florida. Things did not work out the way that I wanted
them to do, they worked out better. I
would sit at my friend’s house and listen to some audio tapes from a man who
was preaching to some college kids about the end of the world. He stated that something had happened in May
of 1948 that was predicted in the Word of God, which would be something that
would trigger the end times. In May of
1948 Israel became a nation again, which was predicted by the ancient Jewish
prophet Ezekiel. To understand it like I
understand it now shows to me that it was a miracle of God. In June of 1967 Israel was in another war
with their Arab enemies and in the end they possessed sovereign control of the
ancient city of Jerusalem, something they still have today. To listen to tapes on how that happened was
another miracle from the Lord. Well back
to 1974 and me listening to those prophetic sermons by a man named Hal Lindsey
I began to realize that what he was talking about at the end of his sermons was
something that I had to have. He would
say that all people are born wrong, all people are born sinners and can do
nothing about it on their own, but God the Father sent His Son to planet earth
almost 2000 years before to pay for my sin, to die in my place on the cross
outside of Jerusalem. He explained that
I needed to realize that I was born wrong, born a sinner and could do nothing
on my own to become a child of God, but to accept the salvation offer that
Jesus paid for almost 2000 years ago. It
was on the 26th of January of 1974 that God, through His Holy Spirit
and the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ saved me to which I am eternally
thankful and have a desire to live for Him doing what He has planned for me to
do for the cause of Christ in eternity past.
I believe that the writing of these blogs, and the teaching of different
classes is what God planned for me to do in eternity past and that is what my
passion is to do, that is why I do it in order to continue to grow in my walk
with the Lord and in order to tell others whom the Holy Spirit of God will
bring to my blog sites to read and to grow and if a person is not yet a
believer in Jesus Christ that they will find the truth here in order to become
like I did in January of 1974, to become a true child of God.
Looks like that there will
be a part seven in order to continue looking at Matthew 16:24.
10/3/2022 10:13 AM
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