The Bridge

Like what the man did..
Jesus also bridged the gap that separates us from God.


He Is the Only Way to God
"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me'" (John 14:6). 

This diagram illustrates that God has bridged the gulf which separates us from Him by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross in our place to pay the penalty for our sins.

We Receive Christ by Personal Invitation
[Christ speaking] "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him"
(Revelation 3:20). 



You can receive Christ right now by faith through prayer
(Prayer is talking to God)

God knows your heart and is not so concerned with your words as He is with the attitude of your heart. The following is a suggested prayer:

"Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person You want me to be."

You have questions? 

 

References: 

http://www.jesuswho.org/english/four.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gjMx1drNWs 

Recommended books:
Life of Christ 
5 Christian Art Prints Jesus Christ/Angel Posters
Jesus Christ: The Jesus of History, the Christ of Faith 

 

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Stay alert!

Stay alert!

Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.

1 Peter 5:8

The following keyword will help us stay alert to combat the enemy from snatching our lives.

1. Be alert in what you think
The way you think and feel also largely determine the way you act.

2. Be alert in your emotion
The enemy uses our emotion to make poor choices. So be Alert!

3. Be alert in your Faith to God
people lose hope because they’ve lost faith. Set your heart to trust God in everything, at all times.

Stay Alert!

For the the target of the enemy are not those who already belong to him but instead the child of God.

Recommended Books:

Become a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving Your Life Every DayYour Best Life Begins Each Morning: Devotions to Start Every New Day of the Year (Faithwords) 
It's Your Time: Activate Your Faith, Achieve Your Dreams, and Increase in God's Favor 
Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential 

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DON'T PUT YOUR TRUST IN MAN, BUT IN GOD ALONE

Shalom

You may feel disappointed because you expect too much from someone. It maybe your family, your special someone, your classmate, your officemate, your boss, and your friend. And this caused your heart to be in trouble as well your day to be ruined. Then the verse below warns you.

Jeremiah 17:5-10

5 This is what the LORD says:
"Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who depends on flesh for his strength
and whose heart turns away from the LORD.

6 He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.

7 "But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.

8 He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit."

9 The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?

10 "I the LORD search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward a man according to his conduct,
according to what his deeds deserve."


God is telling you, Hey my child,

"I am here, I will never let you down.

Trust me, Trust me, and Trust me."

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The Saint Must Walk Alone by A.W. Tozer

Most of the world's great souls have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness.

In the morning of the world (or should we say, in that strange darkness that came soon after the dawn of man's creation), that pious soul, Enoch, walked with God and was not, for God took him; and while it is not stated in so many words, a fair inference is that Enoch walked a path quite apart from his contemporaries.

Another lonely man was Noah who, of all the antediluvians, found grace in the sight of God; and every shred of evidence points to the aloneness of his life even while surrounded by his people.

Again, Abraham had Sarah and Lot, as well as many servants and herdsmen, but who can read his story and the apostolic comment upon it without sensing instantly that he was a man "whose soul was alike a star and dwelt apart"? As far as we know not one word did God ever speak to him in the company of men. Face down he communed with his God, and the innate dignity of the man forbade that he assume this posture in the presence of others. How sweet and solemn was the scene that night of the sacrifice when he saw the lamps of fire moving between the pieces of offering. There, alone with a horror of great darkness upon him, he heard the voice of God and knew that he was a man marked for divine favor.

Moses also was a man apart. While yet attached to the court of Pharaoh he took long walks alone, and during one of these walks while far removed from the crowds he saw an Egyptian and a Hebrew fighting and came to the rescue of his countryman. After the resultant break with Egypt he dwelt in almost complete seclusion in the desert. There, while he watched his sheep alone, the wonder of the burning bush appeared to him, and later on the peak of Sinai he crouched alone to gaze in fascinated awe at the Presence, partly hidden, partly disclosed, within the cloud and fire.

The prophets of pre-Christian times differed widely from each other, but one mark they bore in common was their enforced loneliness. They loved their people and gloried in the religion of the fathers, but their loyalty to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their zeal for the welfare of the nation of Israel drove them away from the crowd and into long periods of heaviness. "I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children," cried one and unwittingly spoke for all the rest.

Most revealing of all is the sight of that One of whom Moses and all the prophets did write, treading His lonely way to the cross. His deep loneliness was unrelieved by the presence of the multitudes.

'Tis midnight, and on Olive's brow


The star is dimmed that lately shone;
'Tis midnight; in the garden now,
The suffering Savior prays alone. 


'Tis midnight, and from all removed
The Savior wrestles lone with fears;
E'en the disciple whom He loved
Heeds not his Master's grief and tears.

- William B. Tappan 

He died alone in the darkness hidden from the sight of mortal man and no one saw Him when He arose triumphant and walked out of the tomb, though many saw Him afterward and bore witness to what they saw. There are some things too sacred for any eye but God's to look upon. The curiosity, the clamor, the well-meant but blundering effort to help can only hinder the waiting soul and make unlikely if not impossible the communication of the secret message of God to the worshiping heart.

Sometimes we react by a kind of religious reflex and repeat dutifully the proper words and phrases even though they fail to express our real feelings and lack the authenticity of personal experience. Right now is such a time. A certain conventional loyalty may lead some who hear this unfamiliar truth expressed for the first time to say brightly, "Oh, I am never lonely. Christ said, `I will never leave you nor forsake you,' and `Lo, I am with you alway.' How can I be lonely when Jesus is with me?"

Now I do not want to reflect on the sincerity of any Christian soul, but this stock testimony is too neat to be real. It is obviously what the speaker thinks should be true rather than what he has proved to be true by the test of experience. This cheerful denial of loneliness proves only that the speaker has never walked with God without the support and encouragement afforded him by society. The sense of companionship which he mistakenly attributes to the presence of Christ may and probably does arise from the presence of friendly people. Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company. Though a man were surrounded by a vast crowd, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it marks him as a man apart. Society has turned against him; otherwise he would have no cross. No one is a friend to the man with a cross. "They all forsook Him, and fled."

The pain of loneliness arises from the constitution of our nature. God made us for each other. The desire for human companionship is completely natural and right. The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share inner experiences, he is forced to walk alone. The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way.

The man who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. A certain amount of social fellowship will of course be his as he mingles with religious persons in the regular activities of the church, but true spiritual fellowship will be hard to find. But he should not expect things to be otherwise. After all he is a stranger and a pilgrim, and the journey he takes is not on his feet but in his heart. He walks with God in the garden of his own soul - and who but God can walk there with him? He is of another spirit from the multitudes that tread the courts of the Lord's house. He has seen that of which they have only heard, and he walks among them somewhat as Zacharias walked after his return from the altar when the people whispered, "He has seen a vision."

The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honored but to see his Savior glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglected. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and overserious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none, he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.

It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else. He learns in inner solitude what he could not have learned in the crowd - that Christ is All in All, that He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, that in Him we have and possess life's summum bonum.

Two things remain to be said. One, that the lonely man of whom we speak is not a haughty man, nor is he the holier-than-thou, austere saint so bitterly satirized in popular literature. He is likely to feel that he is the least of all men and is sure to blame himself for his very loneliness. He wants to share his feelings with others and to open his heart to some like-minded soul who will understand him, but the spiritual climate around him does not encourage it, so he remains silent and tells his griefs to God alone.

The second thing is that the lonely saint is not the withdrawn man who hardens himself against human suffering and spends his days contemplating the heavens. Just the opposite is true. His loneliness makes him sympathetic to the approach of the brokenhearted and the fallen and the sin-bruised. Because he is detached from the world, he is all the more able to help it. Meister Eckhart taught his followers that if they should find themselves in prayer and happen to remember that a poor widow needed food, they should break off the prayer instantly and go care for the widow. "God will not suffer you to lose anything by it," he told them. "You can take up again in prayer where you left off and the Lord will make it up to you." This is typical of the great mystics and masters of the interior life from Paul to the present day.

The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world. In their effort to achieve restful "adjustment" to unregenerate society they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest. The world recognizes them and accepts them for what they are. And this is the saddest thing that can be said about them. They are not lonely, but neither are they saints.

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Prayer Request at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher

by Jeff White

HolyLandPrayers.com introduced a new service in early 2009 providing devout Christians around the world the ability to light a candle or make a prayer request at the holiest place on Earth: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. HolyLandPrayers.com is located in Jerusalem, just steps from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior was crucified, buried and resurrected.

HolyLandPrayers.com was inspired to provide this prayer request service after meeting American Christians visiting Jerusalem with their church. These new friends said they had been saving money for many years to walk in Jesus’ footsteps and felt a sense of accomplishment when they prayed at the Stone of the Anointing and lit a candle outside Jesus’ tomb. But not everybody is fortunate enough to be able to make it to Jerusalem, so HolyLandPrayers.com has created a prayer request service bringing the holiness of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to all Christians around the world.

 The experience of being physically inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre cannot be replicated, but HolyLandPrayer.com hopes with their prayer request service they can bring the same hope and solace the Church offers into your home. Walking through the Old City of Jerusalem, inside the city’s walls and the maze of markets, passing numerous churches and the 14 stations of the cross along Via Dolorosa you then enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and are immediately taken in by the sense of spirit, faith and healing in the air. Men and women of all ages, all colors and from all countries are moved to tears while they pray at Jesus’ tomb. Not every Christian can make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but you can still connect to the holiness of the site of Jesus’ last moments.

At the Stone of the Anointing where Jesus was prepared for burial visitors place their hands, personal items and crosses on the Stone as they pray over them. HolyLandPrayer.com will take your prayer request, print it out on their special stationary, place it on the Stone and take a picture for you. Around the corner at the walls outside the tomb that encompasses the place where Jesus was buried, they light your candle in honor of your requested person, place or thing and take a photo for you. Each prayer request is guaranteed with a Certificate of Authenticity and they even donate a portion of each order back to the Church for the care and upkeep of the Church. You may not be able to physically make it to spot considered closest to God and Jesus, but your prayer request can get there through HolyLandPrayer.com.

The website has monthly prayer request specials, photos of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and comments from users. The website also has a new shop showcasing special holy relics including holy water, oil, rosary and crosses directly from the Holy Land. Put your prayer request in their hands and let them help you connect with Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior at the holiest place on earth.

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Typhoon Ondoy In Manila As Reported on CNN

September 26, 2009

Many are left dead. Most of them are children and Elderly. The Philippines is shock of this unexpected calamity.

Let us all pray together:

Dear Lord, we fervently pray for your mercy ad protection so that our nation will be spared from another threatening typhoon. Our suffering people have Not recovered from Ondoy's wrath. Please prevent Pepeng from hitting any of our islands. Save us from further calamities by embracing our country with your protective grace and merciful blessings. Amen

PLEASE PASS ON TO START PRAYER BRIGADES

HOW TO HELP:

http://www.aethen.com/2009/09/help-victims-of-typhoon-ondoy-operation.html

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You Do The Math

other option in viewing this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP0Oz8SmU-U

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Albert Einstein - Does God Exist?

This video amazed me.

Recommended Books:
The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You
Today Matters: 12 Daily Practices to Guarantee Tomorrows Success (Maxwell, John C.) Relationships 101 (Maxwell, John C.)

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Video: I love my Life

Very Inspiring video..

Inspite of his condition, He became a blessing to others.

Watch it and you'll not regret

other option to watch the video..
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8ZuKF3dxCY&feature=player_embedded

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Fears – Whit Criswell

I was on a flight one day when all of a sudden, our plane started shaking. We had hit an awful storm! Our plane shook for thirty minutes. I knew I had gone pale. When I got off the plane, I immediately knelt down and kissed the ground.

Without a doubt, we live in a world of fear. According to psychiatrist James Reich, in the Journal of News and Mental Disease, 3% of the population in the United States experience panic, 6% agoraphobia, 3% generalized anxiety, more than 2% simple phobias, and nearly 2% social phobias. More than 13 million people are affected.

Donald Maderos stated in his book, Children Under Stress, that 25% of children said they are afraid they might get hurt when they leave the house, and 60% of children between ages seven and eleven are afraid someone might break into their house and hurt them. Psychology today polled its readers and found the greatest fear was death, then fear of a serious illness, and then financial worries.

Denis Witley, in his book, Seeds of Greatness, tells of a study done in the University of Michigan on fear in relationship to reality. The study indicated that 60% of our fears are totally unwanted, because they never come to pass. Twenty percent of our fears are out of our control. Ten percent of out fears are so petty they don’t make any difference at all. Of the remaining 10%, only 4-5% are real and justifiable.

Whether real or imagined, fears plague everyone. Fear is a reality. It goes back to Adam when he said to God, “I heard you in the garden and I was afraid….” (Genesis 3:10 NIV)
Babies are born with only two basic fears: The fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. So if we only have two fears when we are born, then that means we can unlearn all other fears.

I sought the Lord, and he answered me;

he delivered me from all my fears.

Psalm 34:4 NIV

Here are some ways we can overcome fear:

1. Choose Faith instead of doubt

Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
Remember you have a choice: "Attitude is 10%" of what's happening to you, but it's 90% of the way you choose to react."

2. Turn to God's word for strength

Genesis 26:24
And the LORD appeared to him the same night and said, "I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake."

Psalm 23:4
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,
for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

Psalm 34:7
The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.

1 john 4:18
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

Psalm 56:3
When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.

Psalm 56:11
In God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?

3. Find peace in the prayers of others
You pray for yourself and others. You can also ask people to pray for you. Courage is defined as fear that has said its prayers. God is never late when His Children call out!

4. Ask God to deliver you from fears
If it’s any encouragement to you, Jesus had fears too.

Matthew 26:36-42
God already knows your fears. Ask Him to extend a calming hand to you right now.

Try God

When troubles are deep and your world is dark,

Don’t give up hope, “try God”

When life turns sour and you’ve lost your way,

Don’t give up hope, “try God”

When fears stack up and you’re sure no one cares,

Don’t give up hope, “try God”

Source: Unknown

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