Monday, September 22, 2025

HAS GOD'S LOVE BEEN POURED OUT INTO YOUR HEART?

 

  
     My question for today's video post is, “Has God’s Love Been Poured Out Into Your Heart?”
     I was reading Romans 5 today, and came upon verses 3 through 5. Here they are.
“We also boast in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
     Take it in, especially the part where Paul wrote, "This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” God’s love doesn’t just trickle little by little into our hearts. His love doesn’t just fill a little bit of our hearts. It’s poured out to fill our hearts completely.
     If you’re like me, you have difficulty feeling that immense heart-filled love. We think we’re not good enough, or important enough to feel it. But, whether we feel it or not, Paul wrote the verse as a fact, not just a feeling. When we take his words at face value, we can then recognize the fact that we have our hearts full of God’s love in good times and bad—even when we don’t feel good or important enough.
     I’m retired now, and I wonder what I have left to give to my world and the people around me. Charlie Kirk was a Christian who was a legend, but is now gone. He had such an impact on so many people. I think of myself as a sort of peon who can never live up to what Charlie did. People around him called him a “joyful warrior” who faced adversity with a smile, joy, and enthusiasm—in essence, with a heart filled with God’s love. I don’t want to lift Charlie to sainthood. I know that many people thought he was Satan in the flesh. I wondered, and still wonder, why they didn’t see it the way I saw it.
     But, that being said, I want to live in my world, my surroundings, and among the people around me, with it being evident that God’s love has been ‘poured out into my heart’! What about you?

Monday, September 15, 2025

IS CHRISTIANITY A BIG DEAL—OR NOT?


     My question for today's video post is, “Is Christianity A Big Deal—Or Not?”
     In the past, I was told by a family member, alluding to their opinion that I had a somewhat unstable nature, “You get excited”. I inferred that the family member thought that I get too excited about my Christian faith. After all, I was the only family member who openly discussed my faith, and my desire for family members to experience that same joy that I felt. Of course, I defensively retorted that I had just completed a 29-year tenure in the mental health field, during which I served as the program coordinator of an employment program.
     That family member was telling me, perhaps not directly, that they didn’t feel the Christianity in my life was a ‘big deal’. That it made me become, in a way, eccentric, and not something that person wanted to follow, at least for now.
     I think there’s a dense fog surrounding Christianity that makes it difficult to navigate. Christians from different backgrounds and denominations have so many ways of thinking about their faith that differ from others that unbelievers may sense a lack of clarity in us. Let’s face it, many of us, including myself, have had a lack of clarity for a long time about our faith. We struggle with finding the best way to live it out, and we certainly struggle, at least I do, with the best way to share it.
     I love what Paul said in Ephesians 1:18-19. I think it, as well as many other scripture verses, can help us gain clarity to navigate through the dense fog we feel. Here it is:
“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the mighty working of his strength.”
     I think these verses hold step-by-step answers to our dilemma, and I pray for the Holy Spirit to help them to become more and more real to us. From the words of Paul, here’s what I think we need to gain clarity in our faith:
  1. For our hearts to be “enlightened”.
  2. To “know the hope of his calling.”
  3. To understand the “wealth of his glorious inheritance” for us.
  4. To grasp “the immeasurable greatness of his power” toward us.
  5. To fathom “the mighty working of his strength” in us.
     I think these are some first steps we need to take to bolster our own faith. Then, and only then, can we show others that Christianity is in fact—A BIG DEAL.

Monday, September 1, 2025

RICHLY PROVIDED ENTRY INTO THE ETERNAL KINGDOM

 


     The title of my post today is “Richly Provided Entry Into the Eternal Kingdom”.
     About 40 years ago, I was fascinated and longed to listen to and read the Bible. I heard that the Bible publishers hired professional readers to produce audio versions of every book of the Bible. So, after Mom died in 1988, I received a small inheritance. I was still in college, but I decided to invest about $80, a very high cost at the time, into a 48-cassette tape audio version of the NIV Bible. I loved my audio Bible.
     But one of the drawbacks of cassette tapes, as many of you Baby Boomers like me have found out, is that cassette tapes are prone to wearing out fairly quickly. And, they were very, very, very inefficient at finding specific passages. I did much winding and rewinding to find particular passages, and that led to them wearing out. I still have all those old cassettes, if you can believe it, in four nice binders on my office bookshelf, collecting dust. They may be worth some money someday, if someone can get them to work correctly.
     So I think one of the greatest advantages of modern technology in today’s world, in my opinion, is the ability to listen to the Bible on the web, in addition to reading the Bible. I love that I can click and point to specific passages of the audio Bible to listen to. No more clunky cassette tapes that require winding and rewinding.
     Oftentimes, there’s a particular passage that makes my ears perk up. That happened to me the other night when listening to 2 Peter 1:11. It goes like this:
“For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you.”
     So, entry into heaven won't be just a little bit provided, not just marginally provided, but RICHLY PROVIDED! Sometimes I feel like I’m going to enter heaven by the skin of my teeth because of all my failures and flaws. But Peter confirms in verse 10 that if I “make every effort to confirm” my “calling and election”, in other words, follow Jesus as closely and intimately as I can, that I “will never stumble”—and I will have not just a little bit provided, but a “richly provided entry into the eternal kingdom”.