James 1:17 – Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

If you’re like most people, you work hard for a living, and you take pride in the “things” you have accumulated over the years such as a comfortable house, a nice car, and even your children and grandchildren. God wants us to enjoy life and acquire “things” that make us feel happy and secure, but He also wants us to understand that although we “work out” the money we use to buy all of those things, they are still gifts from Him, and Him alone.

Take a few moments to ponder exactly how you acquired the possessions that mean the most to you. Sure, you’re the one who is working the long hours to pay for a great house or a fancy car, but it is God who gives you the strength, knowledge and perseverance required to keep your job and that steady paycheck coming in -  and if it ever fits into His master plan for your life He can just as easily take it all away.

It makes no difference whether a person is a believer or not, all good things still come from above. Sometimes we might wonder why God often chooses to bless unbelievers with just as many nice things as believers, and often more, but we can rest assured that it is all according to His plan. As humans, we cannot even begin to understand the mind of God or the motivation He has for doing the things He does.

But we do know that our Creator is filled with love and compassion for all men and women, even the most wicked of sinners. After all, He sent His beloved Son down to earth to die a miserable death on the cross at Calvary so that we sinners could have the precious Gift of Life. Just think about that for a moment. The greatest gift that God ever gives to anybody is given to sinners and unbelievers.

God loved us so much that He offered up His only son, Jesus Christ - the perfect Lamb of God – to be slaughtered so that His shed blood could atone for the sins of the world. We surely didn’t deserve it, but through His mercy and grace He gave us the gift of eternal life anyway. It is my hope that we will always remember that all good things come from God…and I do mean ALL good things!

Genesis 3:6 – And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

When God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, He gave them the freedom to eat anything they found there except for the fruit of a single tree which was located in the midst of the garden. But Eve allowed herself to be deceived by the serpent (satan in disguise), and she ate of that tree – and Adam ate of it as well. Adam committed the first sin in human history by failing to obey an explicit commandment which had been given to him by his Creator: God.

Isaiah 59:2 – But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.

Romans 3:23 – For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

When Adam and Eve committed that original sin by eating of the forbidden fruit, that one simple act of disobedience plunged them and every human being who would come after them into a state of separation from God. This includes me, you, and everyone else who has ever walked (or will walk) upon the face of the earth, except for Jesus Christ Himself.

Romans 6:23 – For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

As sinners, each and every one of us has been “sentenced” to die after enjoying just a relatively few years of life here on earth. Worse yet, we have been “sentenced” to spend eternity suffering in unimaginable and never-ending misery in a fiery hell, and that punishment will begin immediately after we take our last breath of life.

John 3:16 – For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

But God is a merciful God, and He made a way for us all to avoid hell and spend eternity with Him in heaven instead. What must we do to redeem ourselves and be saved? Well, there is absolutely nothing we can do ourselves to earn salvation. Except for Jesus Himself (who was fully God as well as fully human), it is literally impossible for any human being to “be good enough” or do enough good works to make him/her worthy of entering into the Kingdom of Heaven and avoiding the fires of hell. That’s the bad news…

The good news is that getting saved is much easier than most people realize. We don’t have to do anything at all except for the following three simple things:

1 – Repent of your sins by first admitting that you are a sinner, and then asking God to forgive you. Regardless of how serious your sins have been in the past or how many of them you actually committed, all it takes to be forgiven for each and every one of them in one fell swoop is to ask God to forgive you. It really is that simple!

2 – Believe and confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and that He died on the cross as the perfect sacrifice and shed His precious blood in order that our sins might be forgiven. Only the blood of Jesus can wash away our sins – nothing else. Period.

Romans 10:9 – That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

Acts 16:31 – And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.

3 – Call on Jesus to come into your life and and save you by praying the following prayer or something similar:

“Dear Lord, I am a sinner, and I come before you asking to be forgiven of my sins. I believe that your precious Son Jesus died for me on the cross at Calvary and rose from the dead three days later, and I also believe that today He is alive and well, and with you up in Heaven. I am asking you to save me, and as of this very moment I am committing my life to Jesus – my Saviour and my Lord. This I ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Romans 10:13 – For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

That’s really all there is to getting saved. After you have taken this step – the most important step you will ever take in your entire life – I urge you to find a good Bible-believing church and start attending regularly. Listen to the preaching of God’s Word and study your Bible so that you may grow strong – and continuously – in your Christian life.

Genesis 11: 1-9

1 – And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

2 – And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

3 – And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.

4 – And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

5 – And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

6 – And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

7 – Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

8 – So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9 – Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

Sometimes we humans get “a little too big for our britches” as my Grandma used to say, and one of the best examples I can think of is the time that a bunch of folks decided to take it upon themselves to build a tower to heaven – what we know today as “The Tower of Babel”. I suppose they figured they didn’t need the Lord’s help to reach paradise, they could simply build a tower and get there on their own.

But God didn’t quite agree, so He confounded their language which made it impossible for them to work together on their wicked enterprise. He then scattered them “abroad” to diverse parts of the world, a process which created what we recognize today as tribes and nationalities. Actually, the Lord went pretty easy on them since He could have easily just killed them off as punishment for their transgression, but instead He chose to let them live.

As always, the Lord was patient and merciful in His judgment, but there will come a day when God’s patience and mercy will run out. That’s why it is so important that sinners repent and ask Jesus to save them before it’s too late. You see, our days on this earth are numbered, and not one of us even has a clue about how long it will be until we die. Not only are we not promised tomorrow, we aren’t even promised the rest of today!

In a nutshell, it all boils down to this: If you die before you “get around” to accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour, you will spend a literal eternity suffering in a fiery hell. There will be no second chances, no pardons, and no parole.

Have you accepted Jesus’ wonderful (and free) gift of life? If not, I urge you to do it right away. After all, as a mortal man or woman you just might take your last breath of life before the sun goes down tonight, and if you wait until you pass on you will have squandered your one and only chance to avoid a nightmare that will be all too real and will never come to an end.

Genesis 3:1-6

1 – Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 – And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3 – But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4 – And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 – For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

6 – And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

When God first created Adam and Eve, they were sinless and without fault, a status that no other human being except for Jesus Christ Himself has ever held. But that didn’t last very long at all after they met up with satan (in the form of the serpent).

God had given Adam and Eve free run of the garden and they were free to enjoy His magnificent creations in any way they wanted. God gave them explicit permission to eat anything and everything that caught their fancy except for the fruit of one solitary tree in the midst of the garden. I can only imagine what delectable treats the Lord must have placed in that glorious place for His new children to enjoy. After all, He had created them in His image so I’m sure that He wanted them to enjoy the most delicious food possible.

As His first human creations, Adam and Eve held a special place in God’s heart. He gave them the most wonderful place that humans have ever seen in which to live, and they didn’t even have to work for a living. Everything was “handed” to them! Even better, since they had never sinned they would never be required to feel the sting of death. Like God Himself, they would live through all eternity, never growing old and frail or falling victim to any illness or disease. As the old saying goes, “They had it made!”

But then along came the serpent – satan in disguise. He used the same tactics on Eve that he has used on every human being since then: lies, temptations and deceptions. The scoundrel told the first lie in human history when he told Eve “Ye shall not surely die“. She believed him and ate of the forbidden fruit, and talked Adam into eating it as well.

The seduction of that one simple lie led to the fall of the entire human race, plunging Adam and Eve along with all of their countless descendants into a life plagued with sorrow and hardship. Should we be bitter at our first “grandparents” for saddling us with such a hard life after God had blessed mankind with such an easy one? Not really, because even though they had never sinned before eating the forbidden fruit, they were still human, and as such they were susceptible to the lies and deceptions of the devil. In all likelihood, had you or I been in Eve’s “shoes”, we would probably have done the very same thing. Satan tempted Eve and she fell for his “line”. It’s really as simple as that. But God still loved her and Adam (and us) enough to make a way for us to regain the status of perfection that we lost so long ago in the garden…

If we will simply accept the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Saviour, His precious blood that was shed on the cross at Calvary will wash away each and every sin that we have ever committed in our lifetimes – as well as the ones we’ll commit in the future.

Through His blood, we can regain the status of perfection that will be required of us before we will be allowed to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven some sweet day. When we ultimately stand before the Lord in judgment, He will see only the blood of the precious Lamb, not a cloak of sin. Through the blood of Christ, those who are saved will appear perfect and without blemish, just like Jesus himself.

Satan may have led us humans astray with that very first lie, but Jesus holds the keys to death and hell, and everyone who accepts His free gift of life gains victory over both of them!

Mathew 26:31-35

31 – Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.

32 – But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.

33 – Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.

34 – Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.

35 – Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. Likewise also said all the disciples.

Mathew 26:69-75

69 – Now Peter sat without in the palace: and a damsel came unto him, saying, Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee.

70 – But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest.

71 – And when he was gone out into the porch, another maid saw him, and said unto them that were there, This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth.

72 – And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man.

73 – And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech bewrayeth thee.

74 – Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the cock crew.

75 – And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and wept bitterly.

Of all the twelve disciples, perhaps none loved Jesus and believed that He was truly the Son of God more strongly than Peter. After all, he had personally witnessed many of the miracles that Jesus had performed, and when his faith failed him as he was walking towards Jesus on the water and he began to sink, Jesus’ outstretched arm pulled him from what would have surely been a watery grave literally into the arms of safety.

At the Last Supper, Jesus told His disciples of the events that would soon unfold around them. He explained how His betrayal by Judas would lead to His arrest and how He would die a horrible death on the cross, only to rise again three days later and appear before them in Galilee.

He also informed them that they would all be “offended” by Him, shying away and failing to stand up and defend Him when the Roman soldiers came to arrest Him. Peter was hurt and disappointed that Jesus had included him, and He told Jesus that He would never deny Him.

But Jesus realized something that Peter did not: As much as Peter loved and trusted in Jesus, he was still just a mortal man, and when faced with defending Jesus and possibly losing his own life in the process, he would buckle under the pressure and refuse to do what He knew to be right. And sure enough, when the “rubber met the road”, he did exactly as Jesus had predicted he would do.

I have heard people say that Peter was just as bad as Judas, but I don’t agree. Peter’s denial of Christ was a deplorable, yet completely understandable failure by a man to stand up and do what was right in the face of intense pressure and possibly eminent death. Jesus understood this, and although He was deeply disappointed in Peter’s actions, those actions didn’t diminish His love for him one bit.

Judas, on the other hand, willingly betrayed Jesus in exchange for money. He did what he did out of pure greed, not because a threat of death was hanging over his head. I believe that Judas is spending eternity in hell because of unbelief. Peter is spending eternity in heaven along with the Saviour that he loved with all his heart.

Yes, Peter failed his Lord when He needed him most, but each and every one of us Christians also fail Him as we go about trying to live a good Christian life. But Jesus forgave Peter for his failure, and He will forgive ours as well if we will repent and ask forgiveness.

Mathew 14:14-20

14 – And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick.

15 – And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, This is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals.

16 – But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart; give ye them to eat.

17 – And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves, and two fishes.

18 – He said, Bring them hither to me.

19 – And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.

20 – And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full.

Jesus performed many miracles during His earthly ministry, some of which were witnessed by hundreds and even thousands of people. The story of how he fed over 5,000 people with just five loaves of bread and a couple of fish has fascinated countless youngsters in Sunday School classes over the years, but there is an important message in this story for all of us, regardless of our age…

There is absolutely nothing that our all-powerful and supremely loving Lord cannot do in order to help His children in times of need. Tasks and circumstances that seem overwhelming and even impossible to us are simple and easy for Him. After all, He created the heavens and the earth and everything contained within them by simply speaking them into existence, so it should come as no surprise that He can easily come to our aid if we only believe in Him and ask Him for help. There truly is power in prayer!