Where Will You Go When You Die?

If you were to die right now, and stand before God and He were to ask you “Why should I let you into My heaven”, what would you say?

Have you ever told a lie? Have you ever stolen anything? Have you ever taken God’s name in vain? Have you ever lusted after another person? If you answered yes, then by your OWN admission, you are a lying thief and a blasphemous adulterer at heart!

Romans 3:10 says “there is none righteous, not even one.” Romans 3:23 says “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. That means you too! You’re locked up because you’re accused of committing a crime. When you stand before the judge and he passes judgment on you, if you ask him not to punish you because you think you’re a good person or you tell him you will try to do better, do you think he is going to let you go free? He can’t! He is bound by the law to sentence you for your crime. He has no choice!

The same holds true for God. He loves you but He can’t let you into heaven because He is a holy God and cannot tolerate sin in His presence. He must condemn you to hell! Romans 6:23 says “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”. You deserve death because of your sins, but God has provided a way for you to go to heaven, and He has given it to you as a free gift! It would be like when you stand before that judge to be sentenced for your crime and Christ stands up and says “Judge, let this person go free. I want to pay the fine.” It doesn’t cost you anything. It wasn’t free to God though. He paid a terrible price for it by allowing His son Jesus to be tortured, beaten, whipped with a whip that had lead balls on the ends, speared and killed. Jesus was innocent. He never sinned, yet He took upon himself YOUR sins because He loves you that much and He knew that you couldn’t live with him in heaven if you died with your sins. He sacrificed himself and allowed himself to die in your place. Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates His own love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. Why did God do this for us? John 3:16 says

“For God so loved the world (that’s YOU!) that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life!” Wow! That is amazing love! Did you know that God loves you that much? He does!

So what do you have to do to avoid spending eternity in hell, being tortured for your sins, and separated from the God who loves you so much that He wants you to come live with Him? Romans 10:9-10 says, “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” Verse 13 says “Whoever (that’s YOU!) will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved!”

If you want to spend eternity with God, you can do so by believing in Jesus Christ and accepting Him as your Lord and Savior. To do that, pray this prayer to Jesus right now. “Lord Jesus, I confess to You that I am a sinner, that I cannot save myself. I repent of my sins. I believe that You died on the cross to pay for my sins. I believe that You were raised from the dead by God, and I now receive You as my Lord and my personal Savior. Thank you for saving me. Amen.”

If you just prayed this prayer, your name was just written in the Lamb’s Book of Life in heaven and the angels are celebrating right now! You HAVE eternal life right now. John 6:47 says “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.” Not will have when you die, but HAS it right now! That is wonderful news! You will spend eternity with the Lord of the universe who loves you SO much that he allowed his Son to be sacrificed and murdered for you! Did you know that you have a mansion waiting for you in heaven made by Jesus himself? John 14:2 says “In my Father’s house are many dwelling places: if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you”.

What do you do now? Read your Bible daily. Start by reading John. Proverbs has 31 chapters. Read a chapter every day that corresponds to the same day of the month. Attend church services as often as possible and fellowship with other believers. Pray often and talk with God. Get to know the Lord of the Universe who loves you SO much!

Note: A friend of mine sent this to me in an email, but I do not know who the writer was. When asked, he said that he received it as a devotional from the Pocket Testament League. So, sorry, I cannot give proper credit to the writer...

FOUND - Cat

A few days ago, an orange tabby cat showed up on our back porch. she seemed really exhausted and didn't run when my husband found her curled up in a box. she must've trudged a long way to be that tired. She BEGS us to let her in anytime one of us goes out on the back porch. She's friendly but gets easily excited and came right to me the first time I called to her. we do have an enclosed box with a blanket in there for her to stay in in the meantime...

Anyhow, I am thinking that she belongs to somebody in the area. Maybe somebody knows somebody who has lost a cat in the Rostraver / Indian Hill area? If so, they can email me at gladimsaved@comcast.net.

The Desires of Your Heart

Here is an EXCELLENT message regarding the Scripture "The Desires of Your Heart".

The Desires of Whose Heart? by Kelly Ferrari How often we quote one of the psalms and say to one another, "The Lord will give you the desires of your heart." I've been reminding God a lot lately what the desires of my heart are - praying that He would grant them this year. But a couple of days ago a trusted sister delivered a rebuke to me from Father. He said of me, "Her desires are not always My desires for her." Wham! Sometimes our Papa has to get right in our face to cause us to remember that it's not really about OUR desires, doesn't He? I think sometimes I am guilty of assuming that if I am serving Him, I must be right in the center of His will. But am I? Or am I right in the center of my own? Francis Frangipane writes, "The Lord is concerned about fulfilling our desires, but to do so He must pry our fingers off our lives and turn our hearts toward Him. Indeed, the reason we are alive is not to fulfill our desires, but to become His worshipers." Interesting imaginery isn't it? I can imagine God reaching down and prying my fingers off my own small life, in order to set my hands to praise and glorify Him! Frangipane goes on to write about Leah, the unloved wife of Jacob. She named her first son Reuben, which means "Surely now my husband will love me." Her desire was for a husband who loved her, and the result was rejection, disappointment and bitterness. But by the time she gave birth to her fourth son, Leah had changed her priorities. She named this little one Judah, saying, "This time I will praise the Lord!" And it occurred to me that Messiah Yeshua came from the line of Judah. Through a heart turned entirely toward Yahweh in praise, desiring only Him, the seed of the Messiah came forth! Frangipane concludes, "Leah had been seeking self-fulfillment and found only heartache and pain. But as she became a worshiper of God, she entered life's highest fulfillment: she began to please God." May this always be my heart's desire, Father: to please You, and You alone.

February Snow Storm of 2010 - Round Two

Here is the sight that we woke up to this morning:

There's a half an inch of ice underneath the two inches of snow shown here. plus it's only 11 degrees out there. very COLD. Even my Husband said, "the heck with this, I'm not going ANYWHERE". He did venture out later on in the day though, after it warmed up a bit.

I went out there to try to dig my truck out AGAIN.... but this is as far as I got. It was still  so cold, that my gloved fingers were beginning to freeze. Since it keeps snowing, there is really no sense in trying to dig it out until the snow stops. We are still supposed to get an additional 4 - 8" overnight, and they have a blizzard warning out. I did go out later and dug around it a bit, and then dug a path to the tree in back so that I could knock snow off of the weighed down branches resting on the power lines again.

A close-up of our stray visitor. I am PRAYING that this is NOT a pregnant female!

Our semi-feral gray cat, peeking out from a shoveled path in the snow. 

A Cardinal couple and a Titmouse in our snow-covered crab apple tree. The snow seems to have stopped for the moment.

Global Warming

This one says it all...

February Snow Storm of 2010

To those of You who wondered why I wrote on my facebook wall "I HATE SNOW" a few weeks back... well, this should shed some light on it.

The first flakes started falling around 2:30 p.m. on Friday. There really was nothing but a dusting on the ground.

I was hoping that we were "just going to get a dusting" like some guys in the checkout line at Aldi's were saying on Thursday...

I am sure that there are folks who are worse off than me. One friend from West Mifflin said she had trees down in her driveway and her carport outside her door collapsed, and had 24 inches of snow. (but no power outage Praise God!)

Still, it was a real MIRACLE that after all of this, the frigid temps, that no pipes burst and we had hot water - INSTANTLY!!!, and all the trees still remained standing... I truly want to give God the Glory for taking such good care of us in spite of it all. Praise the Lord, for He is so Good! All the Time!!!

Anyhow, I just thought You'd like to see some recent photos.

Friday, 4 pm. I decided to walk down to the mailbox at the end of the driveway, 200 feet beyond the pine trees. there is 3" of snow here. It only took an hour and a half to accumulate this much!

Friday, 5:43 pm starting to snow really hard

Friday evening, 7:43 pm I can't get over how fast it is coming down!

Friday, 7:43 p.m. this poor tree is bent down to the ground! (I knocked snow off of it three different times after this to stand it up). At 8:11 p.m. we lost power.

Saturday 7:23 a.m. the bird feeder is pretty well covered!

Sat. morning. I turned the date/time stamp on the camera. here sits my truck. with 18" of snow on it. Cowboy managed to get out to get a load of water to deliver some to the neighbors so they could have some to flush their toilet with.

Sat. morning. here is a view out of the front window of part of our driveway.

On the way to the cistern to get some buckets filled with water to flush the toilet, I walked out to a flat part of the yard where there were no drifts. here's what it measured. just under 19" at 10:25 a.m. It was not fun walking in knee deep snow, that's for sure!

Sunday nite, 8 p.m. this is basically how we were able to see for 3 nights. oil lamps and 2 propane heaters. and flashlights, of course! Nothing much else to do. Just sit here and wait for the power to come back on. couldn't really sleep straight thru, because we had to take turns getting up every 4 hours to put new propane bottles on the heaters. On Sunday Cowboy dug out some grill tanks and hooked up to the one heater... but since they weren't full, they ran out sooner than expected. It was pretty stressful. it went down to 55 degrees in the mornings and we could only get it to go up to 64 during the day (though one time on Sunday, it briefly got to 70 degrees!) for the most part, it was normally 60 - 62 degrees for the majority of the time during the daylight. B-R-R-R. Thank God for layers of clothing!

Monday morning. the cats survived. Here is a neighborhood stray that the other ones don't seem to mind coming to partake of their food. Still haven't been able to tell if it's a she or a he; because as soon as this kitty sees one of us at the window, it beats feet outta here!! We've named it "Tuxedo".

The Power came on Monday at 12:26 p.m. From there I had a lot of work and clean-up to do. I didn't really stop until probably around 7 p.m. My back is still killing me.

Tuesday morning. Here is the bottom of our 400 foot driveway. that's 400 feet of unpaved, lumpy, bumpy, rutty driveway that is really HARD to shovel (especially when I still haven't been able to locate our snow shovel.) Can't really run a snowplow up or down it or the plow will be destroyed.

(this is the part that I have to make sure is cleared out every time the propane truck comes. I had the sense to call them for a delivery before the first snowflake fell this time.)

Everybody else in the neighborhood has paved short driveways. ours is the only one untouched.

It took me all day saturday just to dig my truck out at the top of the drive.... but I get stuck as soon as I back up out of the space that I cleared around it, since the snow's so deep and so slippery where it's packed. Cowboy is barely able to get up and down it, but he has a heavier truck and better and bigger tires than I do... plus more ground clearance underneath. Looks like I'm going to be stuck at home for a while.

He took me out late this morning, briefly, to get to the store, the first time since Friday that I've gone anywhere... It was a very scary ride going down the driveway, and even scarier struggling back up it. But we made it!!!! (of course he's a lot braver than me!!)

here's the view of my truck this afternoon. I shoveled as much as I could Saturday before I ran out of steam. There is just SO MUCH SNOW! (and remember - I was just using a #2 long handled flat shovel - not very big or very wide.) it took me FOREVER. All of this weekend's activities finally caught up with me this morning - even after the first 8 hour sleep since Friday morning, I am EXHAUSTED.

here is a view from the top of our driveway. you can't really see it, but there is a steep, 30 foot drop-off from the edge of the driveway here, down to the neighbor's yard to the left. he's on a flat. Lucky guy.

another view of the top of our driveway. I tried backing out this morning and almost got STUCK. there's just way too much snow there. and now since it's gotten cold, it's HARD and PACKED DOWN. a real BATTLE to try to shovel. there is just NO WAY.

Another view of the crappy conditions.

Here is a view near the top of the driveway, before it flattens out. it gets really steep right here. One of the feral cats (the mom cat) decided to join me while I was out taking pictures and knocking snow off of branches that were loaded down with it and laying on our power lines before the next storm (due today) arrives.

Another view looking down the driveway from near the top. you can just see our mailbox from here, if you look real hard.. It doesn't look very deep here, but it actually IS knee-deep. UN REAL.

let it snow let it snow let it snow. YEAH.... RIGHT.

It started to snow around 2:35 p.m. and it's starting to come down heavier. At least (Praise God!) our outdoor propane tanks are FULL. Prayerfully, the power will stay ON this time around.

COME ON, Springtime, is all that I can say!!!!

I've decided that it's easier to just write entries on a blog instead of emailing over 150 people... so here goes!