A Good Man Still Needs To Find

He was a good man. He had a good family. He prayed. He gave. He treated those different than him well. He served his country. His community respected him. He was “a righteous and God-fearing man”

Yet there was still something he needed to do to be saved.

Now there was a man at Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian cohort, a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, and gave many alms to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually.

Acts 10:1-2

So when the word of God came to him, he listened. He didn’t just listen, he obeyed. He went searching for the answer he needed. He found it in Joppa in a man named Simon. So he brought him to his house and gathered his family to hear “ all that you have been commanded by the Lord" (Acts 10:33). So Simon Peter told the story of Jesus and the need to believe in him for salvation.

Cornelius knew the words Peter spoke to him would be the means to which he and his household would be saved (Acts 11:14). So he listened and obeyed the order to believe and be baptized (Acts 10:48).

Some say if you are a good man you don’t need to do anything to be saved. Some say faith alone grants salvation. Some say baptism is an unnecessary addition that doesn’t have anything to do with salvation.

Yet that wasn’t what Cornelius was told. This good man understood that his goodness wasn’t enough, his faith was proved by his actions, and his salvation came by the word God’s message, one that told him to be baptized.

What’s a good man to do? If he wants to be saved, exactly what the word of God says!

Comments

Until Midnight

In Acts 20, there is the tragicomic event surrounding a young man by the name of Eutychus. He did what a lot of folks before and after him did, he fell asleep during a sermon. Unfortunately, he was setting in in the third story window at the time. So instead of nodding off and hitting the pew in front of him, he fell to his death. The good news was the apostle Paul was delivering the sermon and had the ability to bring him back. I don’t know, however, if we can judge Eutychus too harshly. The sermon had gone on till midnight. Paul wouldn’t finish it up till daybreak. That’s a long lesson. I know some folks that might want to jump out of a window if I had a lesson that long, yet these Christians wanted to be there to hear Paul. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pushing for all night sermons but I think we might need to adopt these folks' dedication. They knew that Paul was only in town for a limited time only and they were determined to ...

The Gift You Give Yourself

I always hated buying gifts for my Mom. If I got her something like a new set of pans, it was like saying “Here’s something you can use to go make me something to eat”. A gift for her was seemingly a gift for me. There are however gifts you give that benefit you more than the receiver. For example, forgiveness. When you give it, you are giving it to yourself as much as you are giving it to them. Jesus said that when we forgive others it means God is forgiving us our wrongs (Matthew 6:14-15). I once read: “ Heaven is where everyone's forgiven. Hell is where nobody's forgiven. So, when we forgive we pull heaven down into our lives. When we withhold forgiveness, we pull hell up into our lives ” Give yourself something nice today, Forgive.

Why Does A Lion Tamer Use a Chair?

Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission. It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog