Author: sharborr

In life we have choices to make every day. The biggest choice is whether we choose Jesus/God over things of this world that are attractive and seemingly innocent. When we become chained to these things and ignore God’s desires for us, we have chosen our own desires over God’s desires, which is a sinful choice.

God wants His children to grow in their faith in Him…to do what He knows will cause that to happen. Such as:

• attend a good Bible-believing church
• spend time with Him in His Presence while reading the Bible and praying
• study the Bible with other believers
• fellowship with other believers by eating together and by just plain having a good time
• serve in some way in your church
• care about others by helping to meet their physical and emotional needs and being generous
• share the Gospel message of what Jesus did for mankind on the cross and His resurrection
• discipling those who decide that they want to put their trust in Jesus as their Savior by faith by helping them to grow in their faith

If we do the things that God desires of us, we won’t have time or the desire to allow ourselves to be chained to worldly things that will pass away and that have no eternal value, whatsoever. Doing Jesus’ will is the most fulfilling life a person can live. It is not only fulfilling, it is also joyful, peaceful and happy! What more do you want?! What more do you need?!

Now, if you’ve never really humbled yourself before Jesus and received His true Salvation through your faith in Him, if you do humble yourself, the Holy Spirit will help you to see your sins so you can confess them and repent and receive His forgiveness. This will eliminate your sin penalties forever so you can receive Eternal Life in Heaven with Jesus and other true believers.

If you think that your friends will be going to hell and you’d rather be with them, there will be no fellowship in hell. Everyone will be alone and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth because it will be so terrible.

That is why you NEED Jesus! Humble yourself before Him today and receive His forgiveness. Jesus came down from Heaven to suffer for YOUR sins, so YOU won’t have to!!! That’s quite a free gift Jesus/God is offering you.

If you want to talk to me about this, you can email me at sharborr@comcast.net. I’m praying for you and everyone who reads this, as well as those who decide not to.

I recently read the most wonderful article about waiting on God. There is more than one way to wait on Him.

Psalm 27:13-14 and Psalm 28:6 are the verses God gave to me five months before I received my kidney and liver transplants. The verses read (Psalm 27:13-14) “13 I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. 14 Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. (Psalm 28:6) “6 Praise be to the Lord, for he has heard my cry for mercy.” I believed that God was going to heal me, and I was waiting on His timing. After my transplants, he gave me Psalm 30:2 which reads, “2 Lord my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me.” God kept His promise to me!

That is only one way we should wait on God. We should also wait on God during our prayer times. We may tend to think about our own needs, and we let God know what those are and then close our prayer. There is so much more to prayer. We need to think about God and Who He is because He is the One that we wait on. We need to adore Him and think of reasons to do that. Then we should quietly wait in His Presence and realize He is right there with us, wanting us to be quiet in His Presence. He wants to come and reveal Himself to us by speaking to us in our quietness, letting us know we need to be dependent on Him and thoroughly trust Him. Keep waiting on God in stillness until you know you have met with Him, and then continue with your prayer which will now have a different purpose to it because you have humbled yourself before Him.

You now need to confess your sins and repent of them. After that, wait on God and be quiet again. Continue praying with thankfulness to Him for all He has done for You and has given to You. Then, wait on Him, once again in His Presence. And last, but not least, bring your personal requests and the requests of others to the Father and wait on Him one last time. If you take the time to allow God to reveal Himself to you and focus on Him during your prayers, your prayer time will stop being self-centered and become God-centered. That is definitely what we need and want. So there is more than one way to wait on God.

If you don’t yet know Jesus as both your Savior and Lord through faith, the only prayer that Jesus is waiting to hear from you is one of confession, repentance and humility, admitting you need Jesus to forgive you of your sin penalties and thank Him for His resurrection from the dead, which conquered death for you so you can spend eternity in Heaven with Him instead of in hell where you would be completely alone. Salvation requires humility and repentance, which is turning away from our human arrogance and seeing God as God, instead of ourselves as God! We make Him Lord. We need to let God be in control, and when we do, we will have peace.

God says in the Bible, “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)

Sharon

If we are focused on ourselves because of our insecurities and false pride, and we need to feel better about who we are, we’ve lost the reason for living that God has planned for us. God created us to know Him better because He loves us so much. He loves who and what He created us to be. When we say that we don’t like who we are, we’re insulting God! Getting to know God better will change us to be more like Him.

God says that He wants us to live our lives for Him. He wants us to get to know Him more and more by reading His Word, the Bible, studying and obeying it and praying to Him. He also wants us to fellowship with other true believers who have received forgiveness for their sin penalties by believing by faith in what Jesus did for them when He shed His blood and died on the cross and then rose again, which gives them forgiveness and eternal life.

God also wants us to serve Him with our lives. He wants us to tell others about Jesus and His salvation, serve in God’s true church that is based solely on the Bible and not on idols or ideas that have been thought up and instituted by man. Only what God says in the Bible is Truth.

He also wants us to be Jesus to others by helping the poor, needy and those hurting physically, emotionally and spiritually – whatever God wants us to do for them and Him.

If that is God’s will for true believers in Jesus, then what should we be focused on in life? Not ourselves!

If you are not focusing on God, then go to Him now and confess and repent of your sins against Him and start living God’s purpose for you.

If you don’t yet know Jesus as your Savior, confess and repent of your sins and put your FAITH in what He did for you on the cross and His resurrection from the dead, right now. Then your true purpose begins!

Sharon

“We weren’t meant to BE somebody –
we were meant to KNOW Somebody.”
John Piper
Christian Theologian, Pastor, Speaker and Author

The Bible mentions a hell 167 times. It is sometimes called Gehenna, Hades, the pit, the Abyss, or everlasting punishment. Jesus spoke of heaven and hell as real.

Hell was created for the devil (Satan) and the angels that followed him. Satan’s name in heaven as the most beautiful angel was Lucifer. Pride got the best of him wanting to be God himself. Because of Lucifer’s prideful sin, God threw him out of heaven, along with his followers, which included one-third of the angels. Hell is a literal place of torment, but humans do not know where it is. We don’t know how hot hell is or will be, but it is also called the Lake of Fire. It is also described as outer darkness. The fire may describe God’s wrath and the outer darkness may describe alienation from God’s love, mercy and grace. We can be confident that it is an awful and scary place. Those that will be cast into it, will never be given a way of escape. They will be there forever and ever, suffering for their own sins.

Here are some verses in the Bible referring to hell:

Matthew 25:41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’”

2 Thessalonians 1:6-9, “God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with His powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might.”

Revelation 20:10, 15, “And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. . . Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”

Romans 2:8 “But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.”

Okay, you say, but Sharon, you said that God is a God of love in one of your other blog posts. Yes, I did. However, one of God’s other attributes is His righteousness (sinless). It is because of His righteousness that God created a hell to hold those who reject Jesus, His Son, whom He sent to earth to be born, die and rise again for the sins of mankind. If a person humbles himself before God, confessing his sins and repents (turning away) from them and, by faith, puts his trust in Jesus’ shed blood, death and resurrection, he will be given salvation from his own sin penalties and receive eternal life. Taking this lightly will end in eternal death in hell. God cannot allow sin or unforgiven sinners into His heaven.

It is God’s love that caused Him to make a way to avoid hell by sending His own Son to pay the price, Himself, for our sins, IF, we trust in Jesus’ sacrifice for us by FAITH. He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and He wants us to worship Him, obey Him, thank Him and desire a close relationship with Him. That happens by reading the Bible and praying to Him. He uses His own Word, the Bible, to help us to grow in our faith in Him.

I thank God for providing a way to keep me from spending eternity in hell. He IS a loving God, you see!

2 Corinthians 6:2 says, “…now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.”

Humble yourself before Him right now and put your faith in Him. If you are willing, I would love to help you grow in your faith. We could do it through emails.

Sharon

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how are YOU doing? God gets a 10 because HE IS LOVE! God wants us to grow in His love to be more like Him. But first you must confess and repent of your sins and put your faith in Jesus’ death on the cross to pay for your sin penalties and His resurrection to conquer death so you can live in eternity in Heaven. When you do that, you will begin to take on more of the characteristics of the definition of love, above. I’m so thankful for Jesus!

Sharon

James 3:17-18 New International Version (NIV) says:

¹⁷ But the wisdom that comes from heaven is, first of all, pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. ¹⁸ Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

These verses say a mouthful. Our Christian lives are not supposed to be tied to the things of this world. They are supposed to be connected to Jesus and becoming more and more like Him. Being a peacemaker is being like Jesus.

If we are always looking at what pleases us and not at what pleases God and helping others, our focus is our sinful selves. The verse says we need to raise a harvest of righteousness.

A peacemaker is filled with the Holy Spirit.

Galatians 5:22-23 New International Version (NIV) says:

²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Notice that peace is mentioned here. These are the things that God produces in us when we are filled with His Holy Spirit. They are fruits of righteousness.

Don’t you want to have these fruits in your life? Humble yourself before Jesus and ask Him to change you from the inside out. Read God’s Word and pray everyday and allow the Holy Spirit to control your thoughts and desires. Confess current sins and repent from them. Become not only a peacemaker, but also a loving, joyful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle and self-controlled child of God. That pleases God!

I couldn’t decide on the title for this. Both apply!

Hebrews 6:1-11 talks about professing Christians who have not truly put their faith in Jesus resulting in no true service to God. They are serving themselves in what they say and do. They continue to crucify Jesus and subject Him to public disgrace. They are only producing thorns and thistles with their lives. In the end these things will be burned.

It also talks about true Christians who soak themselves in God’s Word and produce a good works “crop” that is useful to those it was planted for, receiving blessings from God, In the end, they are counted as obedient to God.

It goes on to say that true Christians need to continue serving God until the very end. This will prove that their hope in Jesus is sure. So, we cannot become lazy in our service to God. The faithful men and women of old who have served God should be examples to us of how we should live our lives today.

We need to live our lives to please God . . . not ourselves. Pleasing ourselves is a waste of time and brings no rewards in the end.

We need to wake up Christians!

Sharon