Sin Separates Us From God

"When King David heard all this, he was furious. And Absalom never said a word to Amnon, either good or bad; he hated Amnon because he had disgraced his sister Tamar."
~2 Samuel 13:21-23 (NIV)

We see two different reactions to the news that Amnon had raped his sister Tamar. Absolom kept his mouth shut & David was furious. It doesn't mean Absalom was any less furious than David, we just see two men handling a situation in two different ways.

King David had many children with many different women. So I imagine being a parent to all of those children while also being king of Israel was difficult but I had 12 kids, so I know how hard it is to raise a brood like that. On the other hand, I also know what it's like to be a working mom and still raise kids. So the fact that David was king of Israel should have nothing to do with his parenting skills, or lack thereof. The Bible tells us that David was furious but later on in other chapters, we see David did nothing. He did not speak to Amnom, he did not correct Amnom, and he certainly did not punish Amnon. In those days, according to the Torah, the punishment for what Amnon had done to Tamar was death. Perhaps knowing this, David simply could not bring himself to make the charge against his own son -- his first born son, the one who would presumably become king after David's death. Whatever the case was, David made a grave mistake here.

Not only did Absalom wind up killing Amnon, Absolom wound up trying to stage a coup and being killed. David lost two sons and his daughter spent her days a broken woman.

When it comes to sin we must correct it quickly. Sin has devastating effects on our lives, the lives of those we live with, the lives of those we love, and the lives of those who have to deal with us on a daily basis.

Allowing sin to continue without saying something, and to continue in the sin that we are committing, allows that sin to continue to grow into something ugly, and the effects can be devastating to everyone.

David made some huge mistakes in his life and every time he did, it cost him the life of one of his children.  Our punishment in life may not be as devastating as losing a child, however as long as we continue in sin we are going to lose something. We will lose people in our lives, maybe not by death but by them walking away and leaving us because they cannot continue watching what we are doing. And then, in our sin we are also separated from Jesus Christ -- and that is the most devastating blow of all.

©Marie McGaha 2017
No reproduction without author's permission

The End Times, The Rapture, & The Tribulation

Pastor Irvin Baxter's associate & son-in-law, Dave Robbins explains Revelation & Daniel's 70 weeks.
Common Rapture Misconceptions

September 23, 2017: Signs In The Sky?

There has been a lot of hype about what's going to happen on September 23rd of this year when the constellations move into a certain pattern. These are rumors and are being used simply to promote certain blogs and basically, this is another Y2K.

It is not the sign of the Rapture. It is not a sign of the end of days. It is simply an occurrence in the constellations. This goes on all of the time. Our stars move, our planets move, the sun moves... this is a well-known fact that goes back thousands of years. Simply because some of the constellations move in a certain pattern hundreds of years apart, and this is the first time that we get to see them, does not mean it is the Great Day of the Lord.

Some are using Revelation 12:1-2 "And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth," as the basis for claiming that this is the Rapture. This verse is actually a picture if Israel with the 12 stars being the 12 tribes, and the woman giving birth to a man child is a picture of Messiah - Jesus coming out of Israel. 

If we take a look at Matthew 24:29-31, we read Jesus' words explaining when He will return. "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." 

Notice He says, "immediately after the tribulation." And we know the tribulation is seven years long with the last 3.5 years being the great tribulation. The first 3.5 years, Israel is protected but during the last 3.5 years we will all experience the horrible things to come. Christians will not be spared the tribulation until the last trumpet sounds and Christ returns. The we will meet Him in the air and be with Him forever
(1 Thessalonians 4:13-17).

There is simply not enough time for everything to occur biblically before September. Read the Bible, study under someone who knows more than I do and pray for God to reveal Himself to you. I suggest Irvin Baxter's Understanding The Endtimes. The videos are also available on YouTube.

You can watch Pastor Baxter explain about the above topic when I asked him on the air. September 23 about 13.5 minutes in.

Another excellent resource is Rabbi Schneider at Discovering The Jewish Jesus. Rabbi has some excellent videos on YouTube as well.

Hindsight

For I know the plans that I have in mind for you,” declares Adonai, “plans for shalom and not calamity—to give you a future and a hope.

~Jeremiah 29:11 (TLV)

A familiar verse that we all know and have probably used. But when life takes a hard left, do we believe God? Do we trust His word? Sometimes, it takes a little time and distance in order for us to see God's hand in our lives. Sometimes, the event causing the stress seems so big in our eyes, it's difficult to see that God can be anywhere around.

"Now we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28, TLV)."

With time and distance, we can see how God works in our lives. Even the things that threaten to destroy our faith, bodies, minds, health, families, and the very structure of our existance can be used to change and improve who we are.

I was born with a bone disease and by the age of 34, I was in a wheelchair. I couldn't walk more than a few steps because my left hip had disintegrated. Over the next two years, I had surgeries on both hips and after a year, I could walk on a walker, and then a cane. But I hated that year in a wheelchair. I hated being "disabled." I had five kids still at home and everyone's life changed when mine did. Of course, I felt sorry for myself. I also felt angry. My body had betrayed me, my life had stopped, or so I thought, and God had let me down. I had prayed for healing: I had been prayed for by countless people who had annointed me with oil and laid hands on me. God didn't heal me.

Didn't I even have faith the size of a mustard seed (Matthew 17:20)? I thought my faith was strong. I was an ordained minister; I'd been all over the country preaching in jails, prisons, churches, and biker clubs. I'd seen people healed, saved, and their lives changed, surely I had some measure of faith! So if God heard and answered my prayers for others, why not for my own body?

While in the wheelchair, with husband at work and kids in school, I was bored out of my mind. At that time, the state had some great college grants for people like me, so I enrolled. I had nothing particular in mind, so I took classes that interested me--water exercises, English literature, sign language, and I found a class on grief. Having lost our 16-year-old daughter a few years earlier, I was interested. Not only did that class rip my heart out over and over, it changed the course of my life. I went on to get a degree in counseling with specialty certifications in grief counseling and addiction. And some 25 years later, that certification list has grown as I continue my education to this day.

God took a situation that I hated, didn't understand, had left me in extreme pain and used it not only for my good, the good of others but also for His glory. Without that wheelchair, I wouldn't have gone to college when I did. I wouldn't have become a counselor. I wouldn't have worked in prisons, for probation and parole, I wouldn't have started groups for addicts, abused women, or grief support. My life, and hopefully, the lives of others, were changed because God had a plan for my future that I couldn't have imagined or seen with a telescope.

When we look at our life situations, we can only see the moment in front of us but when we look to God, we allow Him to intervene on a level that only He can imagine.

"These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have shalom. In the world you will have trouble, but take heart! I have overcome the world!” 

~John 16:33

©Marie McGaha 2017

No reproduction without author's permission

No Excuses

Romans 1:20-21 (TLV)
"His invisible attributes—His eternal power and His divine nature—have been clearly seen ever since the creation of the world, being understood through the things that have been made. So people are without excuse— for even though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give Him thanks. Instead, their thinking became futile, and their senseless hearts were made dark."

Have you ever noticed that people who say they don't believe in God are the first ones that use His name in vain, and they're also the first ones that want prayer when something goes wrong in life? I'm not talking about just atheists but all non-believers, or at least all of those who profess that they don't really believe in God.

We are made in God's image. All human beings are made in God's image. A God-shaped hole was placed inside of us when we were created and the only thing that is going to fill the God-shaped hole within us is God Himself. We all have a natural instinct to run to daddy when something goes wrong. As children we run to our Earthly fathers but as adults that need deep within us to run to our father was put there by God for us to run to Him.

All of creation, including us, know there is a God. We have to work really hard to avoid God and to avoid our belief that there is a God. I remember back in my younger days when I was trying to "find" myself and figure out things, I started practicing Wicca, which is mostly just a bunch of tree huggers who refuse to believe that God is God, and want to believe in Mother Earth and all of that kind of stuff that's really just purely stupid. It took physical work for me to believe in this Pagan practice of Wicca. It didn't give me any sense of fulfillment, it didn't give me any sense of worshipping something greater than I am; and isn't that what we're all looking for -- Something higher than we are, something greater than we are, some meaning to our existence? I didn't find it by burning candles, or waving a knife around, or looking up at the full moon.

Psalm 42:7 tells us that deep calls to deep, that is, the Spirit of God calls to our spirit because there are things that only the spirit can understand. There are things that only the spirit can relate to, and the only thing that our spirit can truly relate to is the Spirit of God.

He is the vine and we are the branches, apart from Him we can do nothing (John 15:5). So is it any wonder that so many lives are in disarray? Is there any wonder that the world is as upside down as it is today? We try so hard to do things on our own when we weren't created to do things on our own. We were created to do things through the power of God. When Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden, they walked with God and talked with God on a regular basis. We were created in God's image to be a friend of God, to commune with God, to be part of the perfect world He created in the Garden of Eden. With that failing, God created the perfect Sacrifice so that we would not have to do things under our own power; so we would not have to follow the ruined nature of man. He sent Jesus Christ, the fleshly embodiment of God Himself, to be a pure sacrifice for us so that we could come back to the perfect relationship that was originally created in the Garden of Eden.

God simplified all of the Law and the Prophets so that we would not have to do anything under our own power, except confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and accept Him as our Lord and Savior. That's all we have to do and Jesus Christ does the rest. Anyone who does not do that is missing out on the most basic part of human nature and that is God within us. We fill that God-shaped hole with everything except God, and when it doesn't fit we move on to the next thing. But nothing is ever going to fill that void because God is the only One who can fill that void.

God came to Earth in the flesh of Jesus Christ to fill that void, to be the propitiation for our sins, to be everything that we cannot be on our own. He came as a sacrifice for our sins against Himself, to keep our very souls until the day that we are in Heaven with Him forever. He is not looking for perfect people, He is looking for faithful people.

©Marie McGaha 2017
No reproduction without author's permission

You're Gonna Die

1 Corinthians 15:41-44 (TLV)
"There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory.
So also is the resurrection of the dead:
Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption!
Sown in dishonor, raised in glory!
Sown in weakness, raised in power!
Sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body!
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body."

Most people don't like to think about it, but we are all going to die. You are going to die, your mom is going to die, your children are going to die. When a loved one dies, even though we know death is a natural process and the end of life, we're never really ready for it to happen. Death is painful for us even if it's the death of a grandmother or grandfather who have lived out their lives and died at a ripe old age. Death is never easy for us to accept.

I have had a lot of deaths in my life. When I was 19 my first born son, Eric, died, and in 1992 my sixteen-year-old daughter Cassandra died. In between those years I lost grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles, and since then I have lost a husband and several grandchildren. Death is never easy and grief can be overwhelming. But we have to find our way through it and continue to live even in dark days when we don't want to. Life goes on whether we want it to or not.

As painful as death is when we lose a loved one, we can be comforted in the knowledge that if they were a Christian and loved the Lord, they are now in heaven. It is only through the grace of God and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we can get through this life, and especially get through the loss of life as we continue our walk each and every day.

Sometimes death makes absolutely no sense and we look for someone to blame. But when we are in Christ Jesus, we realize that there is no one to blame. Death is a fact of life and it is no respecter of persons. While the grief of losing a child is much different than the grief of losing a husband, which is much different than losing a grandparent or a parent, the sense of loss and the questions of why still remain. But when we are grounded in the word of God, we know that death is not the end because we know that our spirits live on, and while life on planet Earth may be over, life in heaven has just begun. We have the promises of the Bible that even though death comes to all, there is life in the Spirit and there is a reward for our faith in Jesus Christ. That reward is living forever in heaven, and the promise that we will see our loved ones again.

©Marie McGaha 2017
No reproduction without author's permission

Where's Your Focus?

Focus your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.
~Colossians 3:2 (TLV)

Focus is everything. Our eyes focus depending on available light so we can see better. We have to stay focused at work in order to complete the daily tasks and keep the boss happy. We hear about staying focused in life from the time we start school. Stay focused and keep your eye on the prize whether it's graduating with a degree, getting a driver's license, or our dream car. Life is all about focus. So why do so many lives seem to fall off track?

The verse above explains it. We are to focus on the things above - the things of God through Jesus Christ rather than the things of this world. When we focus on Christ first, keeping His ways always in sight, we will have the "desires of (our) heart" (Psalm 37:4).

Too many people seek their own praise and glory instead of seeking God. Matthew 6:33 tells us to first seek God and His righteousness, and then everything else will be added to our lives.

Too many times we get bogged down in doing life on planet Earth that we forget about afterlife on planet Jesus. Our jobs, spouses, kids, friends, all can take our focus off Jesus and keep it on our mortal lives. Even our ministries can bog us down in the doing of them if we aren't taking time to be alone with the Lord and allow Him to both center us and be the center of us.

And finally, (sisters), "whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."
~Philippians 4:8

©Marie McGaha 2017
No reproduction without author's permission