² And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples ³ and said to Him, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?”

Is all that Jesus is what you thought He would be (or should be)? If not, then ask God to make some modifications and transformations in your life so you can have a clear understanding and vision on who the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, really is. Let us not be mistaken; God works His perfect will through our lives; not our worthless will through God. God is God and we are human. We bow down to Him and He shall never bow down to us. Now, if we adjust our vision to truly see Christ in His glory, standing at the right hand of God, we will see all He does is more than we ever need. He provides in abundance to our situations and does not cater to our greed and selfishness. Thank God for being who He is and not conforming to who we try to turn Him into. Glory to God forever and ever! Amen.

A lot of times, we may feel we do all the work and our bosses just sit around playing solitaire in their luxurious offices. Whether or not that may be true of our earthly bosses, our Heavenly Father never stops working. Jesus could have went on vacation after sending out His twelve disciples, instead He went to teach and preach in the cities. To this day, the Holy Spirit is always working very diligently, calling out the lost sheep, to bring them home. I thank God Jesus never quits, never gets depressed, never says anything is impossible, never gives up! If we can do all things through Christ, it’s only natural Christ Himself can do ALL things! Let us keep our hearts open to fulfilling the will of our God. Amen.

⁴¹Anyone who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and anyone who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man’s reward. ⁴²And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward

God has given us the greatest gift: salvation through Jesus Christ. That is a gift we cannot obtain through any other method. However, our Heavenly Father also wants to reward His children. As children, we have a desire to please our Father, to put a smile on His face. As any parent who is pleased by the works and efforts of their children, our Heavenly Father is eager to reward us. Let’s make a clear distinction, we are saved by grace through our faith in Jesus Christ, and once we are saved, our Heavenly Father wants to bless us and reward us for all the works for His kingdom. Howe great is our God that He would give us such a gift of eternal life through the death and resurrection of His only Son Jesus Christ, and then also want to reward us. Blessed be the name of the Lord, our God, Jesus Christ!

Now, my beloved, let us not be selfish, but be filled with loving hearts, compassion, forgiveness, and receiving everyone. Remember Jesus said what we do to the least, we also do it onto Him. We must not gossip and have hate filled hearts towards one another. We cannot say we love Jesus but hate everyone else. If we love Jesus, we must love and care for everyone else and if we hate everyone who displeases us, we also hate Jesus. When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we were filled with the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which never departs from us. The love that was shown to us and for us on the cross must be reflected through each second of our lives receiving our brothers and sisters, sitting them down at our tables, loving one another as Christ first loved us.

We are constantly thinking about ourselves and what we want. When we pray to God, we ask over and over again give me this house, give me this mate, give me this job, give me, me,me. We ask for all of this because our self-centeredness makes us believe the universe revolves around us and for God’s glory to be revealed to the world, it must be through our selfishness.

However, God knows our heart. Those who ask for all earthly possessions will not receive it from God because He knows once we have it, we will want more. Before we even thank Him for what we do have, we plan our next wants and desires.

We see ourselves as perfect, but He sees us as a beautiful mess. He wants to fix our mess so desperately, but our arrogance and pride hinders that from happening.

However, our eyes are wide open to see what is going on in the lives of others. We are very foolish. We gossip about other people, putting them down in the presence of others but laughing with them to their face. Gossip hurts three people; the two talking about a person, and the person who is being talked about.

Yet, we call ourselves Christians, but is it not in the Spirit of Christ to take aside a person, have a loving conversation to explain to them what is going on? We constantly look for someone to blame when we are to be blamed.

Just recently someone asked if I knew the number to INS. In case you are unaware, INS is the branch of the government who deports “illegal” residents from the land of the “free.” I replied that I did not have it and inquired why it was needed. To my dismay, they wanted to deport a person because a friend left his/her child with the person in question. She did not do a good job watching the child and the parent of the child wanted to have this lady deported.

I rebuked the thought and let it be known that I cannot take part in condemning anyone. It is not what I was commanded to do by my Lord Jesus Christ. However, I did ask how people can entrust their children with just anyone because it is free. Nonetheless, I was cast away for my heart being in the place of finding a resolution through the name of Jesus and not through man’s own understanding.

In another situation, a person sent out a message that can be hurtful to a certain group of people. I asked them, as a Christian, is that message the best way to address the situation by putting down and quite possibly humiliating them. I was informed they are entitled to their own thoughts and opinions.

However, Christians, if you believe this you do not fully believe, understand, and trust the Lord Jesus Christ. We by no means are entitled to our own opinions. Remember, we surrendered ALL to Christ Jesus, so that His Holy Spirit could fill us, overwhelm us and it be His thoughts and opinions that fill our mind. We laid our thoughts and opinions at the feet of the cross and left it there and left with Him, our new life, a life more abundantly. That is what allows us to be called a Christian. We take CHRIST as our LORD and SAVIOR. We sometimes think because we pray or read our bible that makes us a Christian or closer to God, but my beloved, Atheist, Muslims, and even the devil read the Bible, and because we are constantly in petty dispute within our faith, we hinder the wonderful works of the Holy Spirit, and it allows the enemies of God to use scripture against us.

These three words however have the capability of being the most beautiful words ever used. When we are filled with love, peace, and joy from the Holy Spirit of God, He allows us to genuinely say “I love you.” We also find ourselves saying “Use me Lord to carry out Your will,” or “How can I serve you?”

These are the most beautiful combinations of these three words that can be used against the evil and depravity these words are currently being associated with. However, the greatest of all, which makes the most life changing experience and opened the door to Selfless Faith, is “I surrender ALL to you Jesus, my LORD and SAVIOR.”

Searching for something? I have heard so many people say they are trying to find themselves, and they search their entire life, and find nothing but heartache, disparity, pain, agony and eventually death. It is really not worth finding because we will surely be disappointed in what we find. I found myself once, and upon that discovery, I was in fear for my life. I packaged it in a same day delivery envelope addressed to Jesus, with a short note, “it’s all Yours, do as You will with it.” This is the reason Jesus tells us if we find our life, we will surely lose it. However, if we lose our life, we will give up on our own personal search, our desires, our wants, our lusts of the flesh for Christ’s sake, we will find the true and pure life worth finding, and a life worth living. My beloved, let us give up our lives and let God work His perfect will for us through it. Glory to God forever and ever. Amen.

Often times, we accept Christ as our Savior but not as our Lord. However, He will not be one without the other. If He is our Lord,then He MUST be our Savior; if He is our Savior, then He MUST be our Lord. Yet, a lot of times, we say we are saved but we run completely away from Him. My beloved, if we are truly saved, we must follow Him. We must walk with Him, and He will walk with us, and within us. The apostle Paul says if we confess with our mouths that “Jesus is Lord” and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, then we will be saved. If we believe it in our hearts, we have no choice to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not possible to lose our salvation, but we must examine ourselves and make sure we have it already. As Jesus said “Not everyone who says Lord, Lord shall enter.” My beloved, know Jesus, follow Jesus, be guided by Jesus with your hearts and not only your mouths. As God said, “I will be their God, and they will be My people.” Let us pick up our cross and follow after the Lord Jesus Christ.

Simply stated, Jesus comes first. If we put anything before the Lord Jesus Christ, then we are not worthy of Him. He died for our sins on the brutal cross of Calvary, and rose again to give us life, not putting His own life first, but putting our lives first. He was rich, but became poor, so that we could become rich in His name; He gave up everything, so that we could gain everything. However, we can so easily put our jobs, personal lives, husband or wife, even our children or parents first before the Lord. Nothing comes first. Even at times, we may fall into the trap of serving God before God. My beloved, be careful. As John wrote in his epistle “Little children, keep away from idols.” Let trust in the Lord with all your mind, body, soul and spirit, and He will guide us exactly where He wants us, and that is exactly where we need to be.

Jesus knows the heart of men and their unwillingness to trust Him and walk in His light. Therefore, He tells His disciples what is to come. Without Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we love our sins more than anything else, and those who sin with us. However, when we turn from our sins, we also turn from those who sin with us, and they turn against us. Why must this be? The enemy of God is sin. God hates sin, and sin hates God. This is the spiritual warfare that we go through. As we have seen, betrayal comes from within and we must continue to seek the Lord and trust in Him that we may handle any circumstances we may face with His guidance.

Let us not fool or confuse ourselves on the purpose of the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. There can never be peace on earth until all the sins, iniquities, and transgressions that are in this world is wiped away completely. That is why our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ, came to bring a sword, Himself, the Word of God, to defeat the evil and wickedness of the world, and conquer the enemy once and for all. Until all evil and wickedness is cast into the fiery pit of eternal damnation, there will not be peace on earth, because Jesus Christ, our Lord, is the Prince of Peace. Without the Prince of Peace living in each and everyone one of us, there cannot be peace anywhere. When we think we are at peace, the enemy is always orchestrating a plan to devour us. Be watchful and stand guard.