Tag: christianity

Prayer – Our Lifeline to God Part 4

Forgiveness and Prayer

The lack of forgiveness among Christians is, without doubt, the biggest reason that so many Christians are living a life of ineffectiveness. This is certainly true in their prayer lives.

D. L. Moody said: “I believe this (forgiveness) keeps more people from having power with God than any other thing; they are not willing to cultivate a spirit of forgiveness. If we allow the root of bitterness to spring up in our hearts against someone, our prayers will not be answered. It may not be an easy thing to live in sweet fellowship with all those with whom we come in contact, but that is why the grace of God is given to us.”

The “Lord’s Prayer” says that God will not forgive us if we don’t forgive others. This is the only part of the Lord’s prayer that Jesus explained.

(more…)

Prayer – Our Lifeline to God Part 3

How to Pray

There has been much written on how to pray. If you are unsure how to approach God in prayer, look at the great men of prayer, such as Daniel or Paul. Both men relied on prayer as the source of their strength and on doing the will of God.

Prayer in public is good, but it is when we are alone with God that prayer can take us even closer to the Almighty. At this time, prayer should not be a one-sided conversation; it should also be a time for quiet communion, meditation, listening to the Spirit, and praising God. It is a time of looking to God, the source of our help and strength. Let the Holy Spirit lead you.

(more…)

Prayer – Our Lifeline to God Part 2

The Prayers of Jesus

As Christians, we want to pattern our lives after the life of Christ. We pray to be more like Him. We sing songs about being more like Him. There is nowhere where we should emulate Christ more than His prayer life.

Christ prayed to His Father for everything. Prayer preceded every great event in His life on earth. He prayed at His baptism (Luke 3:21-22). He prayed on the Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9:28-29). He prayed all night long before choosing the twelve disciples, whom He deemed apostles (Luke 6:12-16). And of course, He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, the night He was arrested before being crucified (Luke 22:39-44).

(more…)

Prayer – Our Lifeline to God Part I

Prayerlessness

Is not praying a sin, or is it just a weakness? We have so many excuses for not praying. We are so busy, there just isn’t time, and then there are so many distractions in our lives, not to mention the interruptions that happen. We can come up with all kinds of reasons for neglecting fellowship with our Lord.

(more…)

God’s Guarantee to Us

When you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, you will be sealed by the Holy Spirit. You can be sure you will spend eternity with the Lord.

As believers in Christ, we are sealed from the moment we become Christians until the rapture and resurrection. God’s seal is our guarantee of Heaven. 

“The Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30).

“Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come” (2 Corinthians 1:21-22).

“God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come…..For we live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:5,7).

“When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession” (Ephesians 1:13-14).

We have God’s word that He has sealed us until the day of redemption. This means that God has put His personal seal upon us through the Holy Spirit. We have His protection until the day Christ returns. The devil cannot touch us, for we belong to God. He can tempt us and he can make our lives miserable at times, but he cannot take our salvation from us. We can have that assurance that we will share eternity with Jesus.  (more…)

What will be Your Legacy?

Galatians 6:9 “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”  It is easy to become discouraged when we are seeing few if any results from our work. If only we could see into the future. This is where we need to trust God and believe that He will bless our efforts, especially when we are doing His will. Like the missionary, Hudson Taylor, we may not see the results of our efforts in our life time, but in the eternal picture, that doesn’t matter. It is enough to know that God is faithful and good and we will eventually be rewarded for our efforts at the right time, even if we don’t see immediate results.

(more…)

Getting to Heaven

Jesus is preparing a place for us in heaven.

“My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14: 2-3).

(more…)

Christianity — Living with a Loving God

Religion is a system of beliefs that leads to worshipping a divine being. Based on this definition, Christianity is a religion. But there are ways in which Christianity is different from all other religions—primarily, the value of the human being in the sight of the Deity. 

(more…)

Jesus

The life of Jesus is a part of documented history. No historian of any credibility would deny that Jesus lived. His life is a part of recorded history, not just in the Bible and by religious writers, but by secular historians of His day.

The fulfillment of Bible prophecy by Jesus should have left no doubt about the deity of Christ. The Old Testament was written over a period of 1000 years. During that time God gave his prophets over 300 prophecies concerning the messiah’s coming. In the Old Testament, there are 60 major messianic prophecies and 270 minor prophecies or conditions that were fulfilled by one person. That person was Jesus Christ.

   Professor Peter Stoner and his mathematical class spent several months doing a mathematical analysis overseen by the American Scientific Affrication and by the Executive Council of the same group, using the modern science of probability in reference to eight major prophecies found that the chance that any man might have lived to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in 10 to the seventeenth power. That’s 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. Or to put it in perspective that would be like covering the state of Texas 2 ft. deep in quarters, marking one quarter, burying it somewhere in Texas, blindfolding a person, and telling him to go find it on the 1st try. They determined that the odds for someone to fulfill 8 of the prophecies was 1 in 13 trillion. 

Amazing isn’t it that Jesus not only fulfilled those 8 prophecies but he also fulfilled all 330 prophecies. God did not intend that there be any mistake about who the Messiah was.

    We can track the lineage of Jesus in Genesis from Adam to his birth. Genesis and Jeremiah both specified his ancestry; he would be a descendant of Shem, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, from the tribe of Judah, the house of David. 

In Isaiah 7:14 we were told that the Messiah would be born of a virgin. Micah 5:2 said that he would be born in Bethlehem. Isaiah 53 pictures a messiah who would suffer and die for the sins of Israel and the World. This was 700 years before Jesus lived.

Isaiah predicted the Jews would reject him and the Gentiles would believe in him. Psalms 22 foretold the crucifixion of Jesus 800 years before the crucifixion was invented by the Romans. 

   Psalms tell us the Messiah would be betrayed by a friend for 30 pieces of silver and that it would be cast on the floor of the temple and used to buy a potter’s field, and that’s exactly what happened.

   Malachi 3:1 & 4 other Old Testament verses require the Messiah to come while the Temple of Jerusalem is still standing. This is significant when we realize that the temple was destroyed about 37 years after Jesus ascended to heaven to sit at the right hand of God and it has never been rebuilt since.

   Isaiah 40:3 and Malachi 3:1 states that there will be a forerunner for the Messiah, a voice crying in the wilderness, one preparing the way before the Lord. John the Baptist fulfilled that prediction.

   God through the Old Testament predicted the precise lineage of Jesus, the time of his coming, the manner of his birth, the place of his birth, his betrayal by Judas, and the betrayal price. The manner of his death, the people’s reaction, the mocking and spitting, the casting of dice for his clothes, the non-tearing of his garments, his resurrection, and hundreds of other prophecies and details.

The New Testament documents the life of Jesus from His birth to His ascension to heaven. But there are many other references to Jesus besides the Bible. 

There is so much more proof that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God the Father. To see more evidence of Jesus’s deity, check out my book “Things You Didn’t Learn in Church.”

Books by Jerry, many of which you may read for free on Prime: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jerry-Blount/author/B06XK4GJT1

  1. Things You Probably Didn’t Learn in Chruch
  2. Basic Christianity: Living a Joy-Filled Life and Making a Difference
  3. The End Times: Signs and Prophecy
  4. Noah and the Great Flood: Proof and Effects
  5. Following Jesus and Fishing Along the Way: Stories of God’s Great Outdoors
  6. The Rapture: Coming Soon 

Our Perception of God

How we live our lives as Christians is usually on the same level as our perception of God. The greater our perception of God, the greater our trust in Him. Therefore, the closer and more intimate our relationship with Him is.

Theology is the human attempt to understand God. It is absolutely impossible for us as humans to understand God. God is far greater than we can ever comprehend in our wildest dreams. 

God tells us in Isaiah 55: 8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

(more…)