Hello Reader,
Look, we live in a fallen world and we are all fallen people … we are sinners who sin. Everyone has sinned and has disappointed God. We are all in need of forgiveness from God. We all need His grace to save us and guide us through this fallen world. I am no different. My sins may not be the same as your sin but I am a sinner just like you but perhaps unlike you I am sinner who has been saved by Jesus. I have been saved from the penalty of my sin by believing in Jesus. I am trusting Jesus to plead my case for forgiveness of my sin before God based on His righteousness and His work on the cross. And like John Newton, I can say “I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.”
As a young husband and father, I had a good job and what I thought was a good family life. It was the happiest time of my life. However, what I thought was a wonderful life wasn’t so wonderful for my wife because little by little I was focusing more and more on my job and less and less on her and my family. Then one day she said to me “I’m want a divorce”. My wife was having an affair with a friend and I didn’t even know it. I was shocked and devastated. I was so out of touch with her and my kids, it was the worse thing that ever happened to me.
The real tragedy was not that I was focusing to much on my job or not enough on my wife and family. The real tragedy was that I had turned my back on God. I wasn’t reading the Bible, I wasn’t praying, I wasn’t going to church, I wasn’t following God and worst of all I wasn’t leading my family to know God and honor Him. God had to hit me with a 2×4 of His grace to wake me up but He finally got my attention.
This is when I started to write but I wasn’t writing about God, I was writing about my hurt feelings. I wrote letters to try and win my wife back but that didn’t work. I read a lot of philosophy books and wrote down the keys to happiness but that didn’t work either. Finally, a black lady from work came to me and said, “God told me you are hurting and He can heal you”. I didn’t know what to say. I had seen this lady at work but had never talked to her before. I didn’t know her but she knew God and she knew God was seeking me. She told me to read the book of John in the Bible and we could talk about it. Well, this started my relationship with God … the best thing that ever happened to me.
But in the process of knowing God, I wrote down a lot of things that didn’t make sense to me, a lot of doubting, a lot of ignoring God, rebelling, repenting and coming back to Him. I’m still a work in progress, all Christians are a work in progress, otherwise we wouldn’t be here, we’d be in Heaven. To think that you have to surrender “all” your desires to God, in order to gain what is truly “best” for you seems too risky, even crazy … or as I say now “praisey”. It is like you are not able to trust yourself to know what is best for you and actually this is true … or we won’t end up in such a big mess. This is the root of the problem, we can’t trust our judgement, it’s corrupted by sin. We must turn from trusting our judgement, to trusting Christ’s righteousness. The wisest man in the world, Solomon, wrote in Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight (direct your path).” My Christian friend put it this way, “The truth will set you free, but it will piss you off first”.
I am hope you have a Bible, read it and it will tell you who God is, why He created you and what He created you for. The world makes sense when you realize this is God’s world. It was created for His pleasure and your pleasure is only found in a relationship with God, doing His will. Only God knows how to get you through this world and He is happy to do it, if you will call on Him for salvation (click here). After making a mess of my life, I was glad to be forgiven of my sin, saved by God’s grace and have the Holy Spirit dwelling in me to direct my steps in life.
As for me, I don’t find it easy or enjoyable dying to self and living for Christ, nor am I able to do it all the time but the Lord is good and patient and forgiving. And even when I am unfaithful, God remains faithful and He will complete the work in me. Phil 1:6 “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.“
I serve in a “cross” denominational church on the coast of North Carolina, “Chapel by the Sea“. My children are married and I am now a Poppy to three wonderful grandchildren. The Lord is so good to me, He even found me my Maranatha wife through this web site and this very web page! We were married a few days before the Revelation 12 sign in 2017 and we spend our time watching the signs in the world that point to the fact that Jesus is coming soon and studying God’s word. I also like to sing and I have written some praise music that I have shared on this site. I use the handle “Rogersings” to close my articles because it was God’s saving grace that has given me a reason to sing and His grace has overcome my “stage fright” that kept me from singing in public for the first 40 years of my life. And the emoticon is; the cross over me, my glasses, nose and a smile.
Hey, if you get “blogged” down from all the articles, take a break and listen to the songs on this web site or have a good laugh by reading the Groaners.
A servant of the Lord Jesus, Rogersings +8^)
info@die2live.worthyofpraise.org
