by BrianRegrut | Oct 13, 2021 | Hope, Trust
One legacy of the modern world is the feeling that to believe something, there must be conclusive evidence, so conclusive that no one can possibly doubt. This is not realistic. Every day we make decisions based upon deep, unconscious and sometimes incomplete understanding. It is called faith. So it is with God. The existence of God is something we believe, even on those days when we doubt, based upon a deep sense that God is there and we can always live in his presence.
Even a trained lawyer, Chris Scruggs said, “After I believed on the basis of an answer to prayer, I was able to understand profound arguments for the existence of God from the way the world is and the underlying reliability of the Bible. Before that, there was a sense that there is a God, and God answers prayer, that faith makes sense of life and morality.” Then there is the difference that faith makes in the lives of everyone who believes.
If you really need evidence, there is an abundance of evidence that God exists in the intelligent design of the universe and the complexity of human life. There is also the affirming evidence of the fulfillment of more than 300 Bible prophecies because only God knows the future of all events. Yes, God exists and you can know Him best through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. In Him you will find all the evidence you need, plus the assurance of eternal life and peace with God.
Are you prepared to have an encounter with God that will help you discover the truth of His existence? Click on our post: How does one become a Christian?
by BrianRegrut | Sep 15, 2021 | Hope, Jesus' Teaching, Trust
The Apostle Paul, wrote to Timothy, a missionary partner who, at the time, was the leading pastor in the Asia Minor city of Ephesus. In his letter, Paul was providing guidance for leadership and reminded Timothy of the importance of The Bible as God’s inspired Word.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:16,17
Because God is the source of all truths, and it is His inspired Word, the Bible is true whether you believe it or not. You can look at it this way. The law of gravity is true. Your belief in that truth will not change how gravity affects you and everything else in the universe. Gravity does not depend upon your belief to make it true.
The Apostle John describes Jesus as the living Word of God just as Paul explained that the Bible was the written Word of God.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1:1-5
One’s personal belief does not alter the truth. Jesus, God’s son, makes a claim about truth that requires every man, woman and child to make an existential, eternal decision. Jesus said:
“I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.”
John 14:6
Further proof that the Bible is true is that it contains prophecies about the future which have turned out in every case to be true. How is that possible you might ask? Consider the fact that God exists outside of time and space and therefore sees human history as if it’s already complete. In both the Old Testament and the New Testament there are prophecies about future events which have or will come true. So the question for you to answer is, “Do you believe that the Bible is true and will you put your trust in its author, God, and accept His offer of grace, redemption and salvation in Jesus Christ?
When you genuinely seek God’s truth from his inspired living Word, the Bible, you will know the truth that will set you free to be all God created you to be. If you haven’t already taken advantage of the true gift of life that God offers, we encourage you to read our blogpost: How does one become a Christian?
We trust that you will make this decision today since no one knows if they will have tomorrow.
by BrianRegrut | Aug 18, 2021 | Creation, Death, Heaven, Hell, Hope, Uncategorized
After hearing the story of creation and the Garden of Eden, youngsters at Vacation Bible School posed numerous questions including these two. Let’s start with the second. Sin is everything that is in opposition to God.
God, creator of the universe is the embodiment of love, justice and all that is good. Therefore, that which is unlovely, unjust and bad, qualifies as sin. But sin is more than that. Whenever we choose to put anything—job, possessions, family, wealth, career, personal aggrandizement, etc.—ahead of God, we are turning our back on God and therefore are sinning. God has proclaimed that this sinning separates us from God.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23
When we lose our ability to hear God and to know how to behave according to his standards, we experience a form of spiritual death. This separation from God carries over into the afterlife where that death is forever, and heartache, torment and pain becomes an eternal punishment.
Why, then, did God allow Adam and Eve to sin? This answer is simple. God loved Adam and Eve just as much as he loves each of us. He loved us so much that he says that he made men and women in his image. (Genesis 2:1-25) He gave humans the capacity to think rationally, to communicate with one another and with God, and to love.
Everyone who has loved or been loved understands that love is a choice. God didn’t force man to love him, he offered him a choice. He created a paradise devoid of sin where Adam and Eve enjoyed perfect fellowship with God. They loved him because God love them so much that he provided for all of their needs. Unfortunately, the risk God took in giving humans free will (to love him or not) was that they might choose to reject his guidance as they did when tempted in the garden.
Listening to Satan and choosing to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree was the first act of sin and resulted in death coming to the first man. (Genesis 3:1-24) Spiritual death came first as man was separated from God and driven out of the garden. Physical death followed for Adam and Eve and everyone thereafter.
However, God didn’t give up on man. His love never stopped. In fact, he loved humans so much that he provided a way to restore fellowship with them. The death that came because sin had to be reconciled. Therefore, God performed an ultimate act of love. He sent his own son, Jesus, to take the punishment for the sins of you and me and everyone who has ever lived and everyone who is yet to be born. All he asks is that each of us who want to have a forever relationship with God, acknowledge that we are sinners in need of redemption and accept the gift of life he has to offer. To learn more about how to obtain this gift of live and turn your back on sin, we encourage you to read our May 5th blogpost: How does one become a Christian?
by BrianRegrut | Aug 4, 2021 | Death, Guide for Living, Hope, Trust
The first reason that not everyone becomes a Christian is as simple as unbelief. If people don’t believe that God exists or that they can have eternal life with him, then they are most unlikely to consider becoming a Christian. Unbelief can arise from three things: a genuine unawareness of the Christian faith; preconceived notions of what it means to be a Christian—it’s “no fun,” “not cool,” “too many rules,” a lot of “thou shalt nots”— which makes the faith unappealing; or a stubborn unwillingness to examine the truth claims of Christianity and the evidence for them.
Pride also fuels unbelief, as does sloth. If becoming a Christian means putting God first in their lives and following certain disciplines, then many people want no part of living the Christian life. They may also be held back by the fear of ridicule and rejection by unbelieving family, friends, or colleagues, or being “canceled” through social media.
Another stumbling block to seeking eternal life with God is that unbelievers simply can’t picture the glories of heaven implied in these words from a letter written by Paul, an apostle of Jesus, to the church in the Greek city of Corinth:
“What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
1 Corinthians 2:9
The cartoonish depiction of someone sitting on a cloud strumming a harp leads many to think that heaven, if it exists, would be “boring” and thus not worth pursuing. However, the glorious promises of Scripture are affirmed by countless near-death experiences such as those documented in books like John Burke’s Imagine Heaven. This book and others also testify to the reality of an afterlife in hell.
In his account of Jesus’s life and ministry, John, one of Jesus’ closest disciples gives us the main reason why not everyone becomes a Christian:
“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.”
John 3:19
Rather than sending people to hell, we learn, God gives them a choice. We encourage you to love the light, reject the darkness, and choose “the things God has prepared for those who love Him.”
If you would like to learn more about how you can be assured of enjoying an eternity where all doubts end, where there is no more pain, or suffering…an eternity beyond your greatest imaginings, we encourage you to read our May 5th blogpost: How does one become a Christian?
by BrianRegrut | Jun 30, 2021 | Guide for Living, Hope
The Bible is the only prophetic book that has been proven to be reliable for more than 2,000 years. This reliability can be seen both in its historical accuracy and in the way it has revealed the nature of God who exists outside of our understanding of time and space. God, who created the universe and whose interaction with the human race is laid out in 66 books and letters, sees human history from Genesis to Revelation as if it is already completed. That’s why we can trust that the prophecies contained in the Bible accurately describe past and future events. The timing of future events remains a mystery, but because hundreds of past events were predicted with accuracy we can be confident that more than 300 prophesies related to Jesus that were recorded in Biblical texts hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus are accurate and reliable.
Here we will present a few that clearly show that Jesus is the Messiah (or anointed one) who was sent by God to bring salvation to humankind.
Think about it this way for a moment. There are over eight billion people on planet Earth and a vast majority have cell phones. If we want to connect with someone, we start with a country code or area code. That alone cuts down the number of people into a specific geographic area. Then say we ‘dial’ in the next three digits and the field of possibilities greatly shrinks again. Finally, as we dial in the last four numbers we find a person we are looking to talk with. So, with only a total of 10 or 12 numbers we get the person. That’s really amazing.
Using that analogy, we can search the “Biblical prophetic phone directory” and search for the only person in history who could be the Messiah. So, let’s begin the quest and see if we can find Him.
- Location. Where this Messiah is to be born is a place called Bethlehem-Ephrata in Israel, a few miles south of Jerusalem. Not Bethlehem, Pa., or the other Bethlehem in northern Israel. This prophecy in Micah 5:2 is like having the country code and area code of the Messiah.
- Gender. Male or female? Isaiah 7:14, A virgin will bear a son who will be called Emmanuel, God with us. Now we have reduced the pool of possibilities to all the men who have or will be born in a small town in Israel.
- Lineage. Genesis 22:18 & 49:10, the Messiah would be a descendent of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and come from the line of Judah or King David. Both Mary and Joseph were from the line of David.
- Timing. When will the Messiah have appeared on the planet? Before 70 A.D. as that’s when the Romans destroyed the Temple and the city of Jerusalem. Jesus said that would happen and He spent considerable time at the temple. Mark13:2
- How did the Messiah die? Isaiah 53:12 & Psalm 22:16, Romans used crucifixion to kill the condemned. History says Jesus was killed, crucified in 30 A.D. This prophecy was made 700 years before crucifixion was adopted as a method of killing criminals.
So from these prophecies alone, we have identified the place he was born, that Messiah is a male, from the lineage of David, he lived before 70 A.D. and he was crucified by the Romans in 30 A.D. The life and death of Jesus was not only recorded in four separate accounts found in the Bible (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but also by the Jewish historian Josephus and Roman historian, Tacitus.
Now for the logic and the facts. No one gets to choose the place they are born, their gender or parents or ancestors, what time they would live on the planet and how they would die. And remember these prophecies were made many hundreds of years before the Messiah was born.(Note-He just didn’t appear one day down from the heavens, although He will come again one day that way as He said so himself.)
So, the only person that could possibly fit these few prophecies as Messiah is Jesus Christ. If you are still not convinced, explore other prophecies to convince yourself of this truth. God promises to reveal the Messiah to those who diligently seek Him. Finally, remember life is full of choices but as to eternity, there are only two. Wise men and women still seek Jesus the Messiah for salvation and eternal life. He said so in John 14:16, “I am the way the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except by me.” Choose wisely.
by BrianRegrut | May 5, 2021 | Death, Guide for Living, Holy Spirit, Hope, Trust
Maybe you’ve gone to church when you were younger, but never took that step to become a Christian. Maybe you’ve been living your life your own way and not taking into account what it takes to live life differently, one with meaning and purpose. Man looks on the outside but it’s really our hearts and our character that God is concerned about.
Becoming a Christian requires a decision. In the Bible we read:
“if you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that He was raised from the dead, you will be saved.”
Romans 10:8-11
Jesus waits patiently for our decision and our heart to be open to receive Him and His love. God responds to genuine humility and sincere acknowledgment that one is a sinner in need of a Savior and seeks God’s forgiveness and acceptance. God is loving and merciful and does not want anyone to be lost.
If becoming a Christian is the desire of your heart, I encourage you to talk to God and voice this simple prayer. You can do this aloud or silently because God hears your heart speaking as well as your mouth. In your own words, admit you are sinner in need of a Savior. Then ask God to help you turn away from your old way of living and thinking. (This is called repentence.) Invite God into your life and promise to follow Him for the rest of your days.
When you pray this sincerely, God, in the form of the Holy Spirit will enter your your mind and heart bringing peace, forgiveness of your sins, and assurance of eternal life with God after you physically die.
When you seek God’s forgiveness for your sin and acknowledge Jesus as your savior, you become a child of God. In effect, you become ‘born again’, a new creation in Christ and enter into a personal relationship with Him. The old life will have passed away and a new life will begin. Will everything in this life suddenly become perfect? No. But how you see and react to your circumstances and the people around you will change for the better.
Giving your life to Jesus is the most important decision you can ever make. Eternity hangs in the balance; heaven or hell. Today is the day of decision.
