Real Think Inc.

We design our automobiles to operate on gasoline and as passenger cars. If we’re abusive, and try using diesel fuel instead of gas, or haul loads that exceed the car’s design, we’re taking risks that will lead to catastrophe.

We design our houses to be homes, not meth-labs. We design our landscaping for beauty and for proper drainage.  We are designers of our own lives––for better or for worse.  We are designed after the image of God.

We pro-create because He so designed us. When we have children, those of us who care, do so hoping for the best: so it is with the LORD. There are no guarantees that our children will behave, even with the best training.

Israel, the nation, misbehaved.  The nation has a history of not prevailing: they are called in their own scripture, “A stiff-necked people.” (Exodus 33:5)

“Israel” is a title used in the Bible for those who have prevailed with God. (Genesis 32:28)

We are to prevail through God by reliance, trust, and faith in His faithfulness – actually by faith in Him through knowing Him in a personal relationship.

We cannot fully trust His word unless we fully trust Him. This is “Leaning not on our own understanding;” this is the meaning of “Trust in the LORD with all your heart. (Proverbs 3:5).

We don’t need to know all the details; in fact, we will never know all the details of anything.  That is far beyond our mental design. Trusting Him is possible.  We need not and cannot know all the details.  To have blessed assurance is an experience of His presence; not a collection of ideas.

The devil has also a design. He must keep us busy trying to appease a false god. The LORD does not request that we appease Him, but that we allow Him to do His finishing touches on us:  to take away our sin for us and give us joy that remains. He is the Potter.   We are invited to be the clay in His hands. He will remake us into likeness of His Son.  This is His plan.  His design for us.

The word, scripture, reminds us to return to Him who is the Comforter.   He is comforts even in the midst of confusion and dismay; feelings that come at us.

We are everlasting. His design for us is that we would invite Him who has already invited us, who has already come seeking the lost.  He has already fulfilled righteousness, and is known as the Holy–Spirit, the only Holy Spirit.

The Savior is waiting. Return, or turn for the first time in your life. The door is left open. He is the door to this relationship of comfort, and the only door.

He has designed mankind with a hole in the conscious heart which can only be at peace and full of joy by being filled with the Holy Spirit.

That  Love became my ransom fits the mindset of any of the ages of mankind. This is not fair play, it is mercy. Man did not think this up.  It was revealed to us:  it happened in history.  Jesus gave his life so that we can have life.

Mercy is the kindest behavior we can imagine.  God’s mercy endures forever.  His goodness leads us to repentance.   Repentance is a turning away and happens within our being because we’ve begun to experience a love that nothing on earth can duplicate.

Oh, reader, He has created our lives because of the hope that is set before us. We can soon see Him face-to-face; who will wipe forever from us the tears we’ve known so well here. This is His design.

“It is His will that none should perish,” (2 Peter 3:9).  That no one will forever miss this opportunity.  There are no second chances.

Buddy

One reason many young people leave the church, or a Hindu, or a Jehovah Witness, or Muslim, or any other religious heritage focuses on this question: is it the truth?

Christianity, like all culturally embraced set of ideas, persists sometimes because of deference for our parents. Church children become church parents. But is it the truth?

Many leave the church so-to-speak; they often turn away from their parent’s ideas when they can. Sometimes to turn away from the ways of your heredity may cost a person his life. Cultural and family pressure to conform can be very strong and sometimes lethal.

The suspicion that a ‘god’ exists has always been with us; even in our historic primitive past. That we have varying – multicultural we call them – religious notions today which once introduced have persisted on earth for some reason or another.

Black cannot be white. Up cannot be down. Religious and cultural differences, when they are in disagreement, cannot be both true. Therefore, this is a no-brainer, whoever has the truth, if truth is good and falsity misguides, must speak out––goodness demands it.

Ideas of today and of all times are our compilation of ideas. Some have been proven wrong. It was once taught us that religion is wrong. Not only were the Greek rationalists anti-religion, but that element from the influence of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment had its season in leadership thinking.

Education today, doesn’t allow for a critical examination of religious ideas. This satisfies the human urge to believe that something like a god is out there or in me; but closes the door to our finding actual truth.

But, among histories answers to that inner spirituality we experience is the testimony of many that God has spoken; that He has made the truth known.

When a claim is made by a person, we may reject what he said or blindly accept it; but we cannot claim that we are right in rejecting it unless we have good reason.

Jesus has proven to have been the most unusual Man ever to have lived. His goodness was unusual. His miracles were astoundingly unusual. His resurrection stands apart from all human accomplishment– all of us want to believe and be certain that we too will live again and that death is only a curtain and not the end: His death was not the end.

Jesus, known as the Christ by those who have received Him since His resurrection, is the Savior not only from our sin, but also from a sorry death.

The suspicion that God exists was answered by God’s Son. The suspicion, we call “general revelation.” Revelation is God making himself known with surety so that we need not stumble on in life blindly accepting the superstitions of our ancestors and families.

We were designed in such a way that we can know the truth when we see it. Jesus said, “I am the truth,” and He said, “Thy word is truth.” (John 14-17:17).

The only way to personally know if God is real and if life’s answers are correctly explained in the Bible are dependent on God’s direct revelation of himself and the truth. Meeting God need not be in the hazy future beyond the grave. He is God, and He has continuously reached out to man.

What a God He is! He sent His word. He sent us the Spirit of Himself. He gave us a life meant for happiness to never end and instilled in us such a desire. He sent His Son who truly has our back covered and who eagerly awaits our forward steps even the moments of today and every tomorrow until we meet Him face to face.

This Son told us of the sufferings we will face. He told us He is with us in them and that we can overcome even death – through Him.

No religion can compete with this “Gospel.” The very term, “Gospel,” earned as its synonym, “Truth.”

Is it not amazing that His church has survived; more than survived; and that revival of the Gospel’s church is happening on a global level from Singapore, Australia, Europe, and other places on Earth?

The message common to that of Jesus’ disciples still says, “It’s real!”

Jesus satisfies our every longing.

He instills in us hope.

He heals our inner man.

He inspires us to press on even as we age.

He takes away our sin and stirs in us the desire for right living.

He promised and multitudes have found it true that we shall know the Truth – Him – and that He will set us free.

The God who is there is real. He communicates with those willing to hear him. It would be strange – foreign to reason – if He who is there remained silent and left us to our guessing game. It would be tragedy to have lived a life in resistance to Him.

Dear reader, “Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near.” (Isaiah 55:6).

Buddy

He who upholds daily the universe is known to be the real and only God: Omnipotent––all powerful; Omniscient––all seeing all knowing even the end from the beginning.

He is Love whose mercy is everlasting and whose forgiveness is better, but like ours at its best.

He is all wise with a kindness that staggers our conscious thoughts when we realize: He is my Savior.

Yet, we barely remember that He who created with kind intention, who sustains – with kind outpouring–– the willing, is also never far from us. He is relentlessly involved with us.

“This is the day that the LORD has made. . . ” (Psalm 118:24).

This day, today, is better than the best of moms who make our beds soft and clean. Better than the dad who stops what seems important and joins us in our games.  Yes, and better than the friend whose talents and limitations leave us still wanting.

He is the Comforter, the Regenerator, the Scapegoat for our worst doings whose Love is past finding out.  If we have Him, really cling to Him, He will see us through–– and through and through.

The word says we should . . . “seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27).

The LORD wants to be found by us.  He brings that opportunity near us even as I write this.

He is there, and He will not leave us orphans. That is why we are encouraged to acknowledge Him in all our ways. (John 14:18, Proverbs 3:6)

To know Him, and that is an ongoing spiritual battle, and if we walk through faith daily, moment by moment––He will do great and mighty things which we know not.  We couldn’t know, but we can expect. (Jeremiah 33:3)

The scripture reads, “Let God arise. . . ” (Psalm 68:1).

There is a pregnancy in each Christian.  It is always full term.  It is that seed of Christ which “remains” so that “we cannot sin.” We must not.  It is not who we are.

The LORD is here, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22).

God is Holy.  He is Spirit.  He is Life.  He is an ever––present fountain.  He is the fountain of life within a believer ––within every molecule––within every circumstance we find ourselves.

Hear Martin Luther in the great hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God:”

“Would not (Christ) be on our side, our battling would be losing.”

Believers, we are not alone.

Buddy