Walking Jesus

Recently, I read a story about an old lady who was driving home one night. The weather was severe, and for her too, with the rain coming down in gray sheets it was very difficult to see. Seeing red taillights ahead of her, she decided to follow what was a truck. Not being able to see past that vehicle in front, she knew that it seemed to be going in the right direction, just the same. So she stuck in behind it, and the truck absorbed most of the heavy winds and driving rain.

Then the driver in front of her came to a stop. She began to wonder what had happened, perhaps the driver in front had hit a deer, or encountered a fallen tree or something else in the middle of the road. She began to feel uncomfortable, knowing that being stopped there in the middle of the road, in a storm in such limited visibility, often leads to multiple car accidents...Get more of this podcast online!

Proverbs 3:5–6.: 5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding;

6 in all your ways submit to him,

and he will make your paths straight.

That is also the promise God makes to you and to me. God never turns an honest doubter away. Never. Come to him with your doubts, your skepticism, your unbelief, your hard questions, your uncertainties. He welcomes your hardest questions. Doubt is not a sin. It’s what you do with your doubt that makes all the difference. Don’t let your doubts keep you from Jesus. Come to him just as you are—and bring your doubts with you. He will not turn you away. 

I can finish by saying, soak yourself in the Gospel according to: 

John 20-31: “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

Matthew 25:25-27 Good News Translation (GNT)

25 I was afraid, so I went off and hid your money in the ground. Look! Here is what belongs to you.


Thomas Edison said it like this, 

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize 

how close they were to success when they gave up.”

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The fear of failure is not new. It’s been around for ages. In fact, Jesus told us a story about it in Matthew 25.

Jesus wants us to know that when we refuse to take risks, we’re refusing to live by faith. How do we conquer our fear of failure anyway? With drugs? With hypnosis, or in buying more products?  No.

You’ve got to understand that God gave certain people in each congregation… special gifts. These are not so much miraculous gifts as they are motivational gifts.

 Each gift is not only to motivate the giver but ALSO to motivate the rest of us in the church. When you have a giver in your midst they motivate YOU to give as well.

I want to ask you to consider this title: Law or Grace. Think about the world you would like to inhabit. Would you prefer to live in a world of Law? Now, let me ask you, how about living in a world shaped by Grace?

 I have contemplated this since my childhood, and there was a stark reason for that circumstance. You see, I felt the law AND grace of God as a child. I was educated Catholic from kindergarten to the ninth grade. We believed the Ten Commandments as the Law, our law. Same for Catechism. Salvation was only by faith AND good works. Deviation was mortal sin and damnation, and that from these deviations came discipline—always meted out here on earth by the good sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary at St. Matthew’s School in East Stroudsburg, PA.

Luke 24:25–27 NIV 

“How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” 

Today, I bring you a brief story of a people who are extremely thankful and joyous, especially this present holiday season. They are called Messianic Jews. They are the Jews for Jesus. To get to where they are at in a faith journey, many of these have denied the traditional beliefs of all of their friends, their parents, and everything their brothers and sisters hold dear. They scoured the Old Testament for the Messiah, for each and every sign of a Messiah. In their long history they, as Jewish people, have encountered several false Messiahs, and they can name them alphabetically. Jews for Jesus have and continue to pay a heavy price to worship Jesus. They KNOW Jesus is Lord! They also know the OT almost by memory. ..

Backsliding Away

 Catholics don’t need to worry about backsliding. That is because they are always careening from one confession to the next, in immediate danger of hellfire—at any and all times—at least so I thought when I was a practicing Catholic. 

Thomas Aquinas, or Saint Thomas Aquinas, (1225–1274), defined mortal and venial sins in his work. It is known as: Summa Thelogica. I studied it at college. The reason I again bring it up, is that it is vitally important to Catholics, and yet, I have found little Scriptural basis for it whatsoever.

 Anyhow, if you die with a mortal sin on your soul, and it is unconfessed to a priest, you are going to hell. That’s about the long and short of what Aquinas had to say.

Most Catholics, I must here note, have a heavy burden to bear. They do not entertain the concept of backsliding. For them, it’s either heaven or hell. Maybe Purgatory is in there someplace. I’m not making fun; it is a real dilemma for the Catholic follower. There is so much guilt in Catholicism!

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The great philosophical question for the unsaved…what is the meaning of life? In other words, what are we here for, after all?

 Freud said it was all about sexual gratification, while the Epicurians, the Stoics, and the Greek philosophers all disagreed and searched for their own answer to the question of why we are here. The great Viennese writer Viktor Frankl said that what man searches for is whatever puts meaning in his life. I had to agree with him. My own search for meaning has taken me a long, long way, and far too many years.

Listen in to hear my story, and the answer to my own version of the question: "Why Am I Here?"

You know, all of us have faith in something. The question is, will your anchor of faith hold in the storm that is coming? Is your personal anchor truly an anchor? Is it built on the truth of Scripture? Is your faith tested?

Realize how valuable, revealing and full of love that a faith in Jesus Christ really is. It is not a question of if you have some sort of faith in something. It is, likewise, not a question of if the storm is coming. Rather, it truly is the question that that asks: will your anchor of faith hold fast through that coming storm?

Because, the time to anchor your faith to Christ is now, before the storm is upon us.

As the 150-year old hymn says:

"When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

On Christ the solid rock I stand;
all other ground is sinking sand...
all other ground is sinking sand."

For some, anger may remain pent up. Under a calm exterior, it ferments where no one can see it. Where some may erupt when angry, others turn red in the face and tremble. Others may become sullen and silent. Many become caustic and cutting with their tongues. However, everybody is going to deal with it somehow—anger is universal, and most of it is not good.

Listen in, and think about it.