God wants to be your friend

God wants a close relationship with each of us. It brings true peace. 

email: RuggedTruthGodsWord@gmail.com

God has a super huge plan. We all have to do our part as He assigns to us. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello brothers and sisters in the Lord. This is Brother Rick. I hope you all are having a good day and enjoying the weather. I'm doing pretty good. I've been fighting some sinus issues and uh but the Lord is good and he's got me up and kicking again. I hope there's some folks that are listening and uh they'd like to know more about the Lord, as we all would like to know more about him, and to find out that his way is the best way. It's the only way out of this world to a good ending, an eternal good ending. Anything but with Jesus Christ is in a bad direction and a bad way to be, bad way to live. And speaking about that, I'd like to talk about our relationships. And the main relationship we need to have is with God, and that's through Christ. God desires a relationship with each and every one of us, whether we believe it or not. We say, not me, he couldn't want anything to do with me. He does. No matter what you've done, you can be forgiven. All you asked is say, Lord God, I am so sorry for what I've done. Please forgive me in the name of Jesus and mean it. That just means you repent of it. You don't want to do it anymore. And follow Christ. But God really does want a relationship with each and every one of us. Each and every one of us. I grew up in a hard situation and I didn't let anybody near me. Nobody. And I still yet have trouble with that, but I did finally get thumped in the head by the good Lord in a dream. And uh he says, Hey Rick, I said, Yes, sir. He didn't have to do that for me, but he did. He had mercy on me, and that dream shook me up. And here I am today, still alive and kicking thanks to God, and I wouldn't be alive right now if it wasn't for him. I would definitely be dead and in serious trouble in hell. But if we have a relationship with God through Christ, we won't have to go to hell. The relationship with him is good and pure and peaceful. God also wants us to have relationships with people down here. That's how we get people to come to know the Lord. We build a relationship and we talk to them and we be honest with them. And we we show them the way of the Lord. And you can't just slap somebody in the face with the Bible and say, Oh, you're going to hell, and they're convinced. You talk to them and you convince them out of the Bible. And you do that by building a relationship with them. You befriend them, and when they come to know the Lord, they're part of your family, and you love them. And you could even love them beforehand. I mean, we love the people and not the things that's done. That's like when somebody does something terrible to you. You have to forgive them. You don't have to even like them. That'll come. It takes time. That's the grace of the Lord coming over you. But we have to forgive them. We don't have to trust them, but we have to forgive them. All that will come as Christ changes them. Hopefully He will. And each relationship we we develop, either with our spouse or our co-workers or our boss or our children or just our friends, is very important. And being honest with people and admitting that you are a Christian and talking to them about Christ, it doesn't have to be a, like I say, a slap in the face thing, but it's very important because something we have to realize is that every person that has been born has been born on the path to hell. Every person. I'm not being nasty in this, that's the truth of it. And we have to help them get on the path to Christ. We can't save them ourselves, but we set up the introduction. We show them what Christ has done for us and that He can help them with their problems and He can show them a better life and show them an eternal life, give them eternal life. But speaking a few words and calling it good so you don't have to do anything, all you have to do is speak the word, say, Lord, forgive me in the name of Jesus, amen. And go on living your life, that's nothing. You won't get into heaven like that. That's just like the uh one servant that uh was taking the talent. In Matthew 25, 14 to 30, it talks about when the master left. I gave the wrong numbers before. He gave five talents and two talents and one talent to his servants and told them to go make some money, go put it to work. Well, uh the one with five talents did good. He he doubled his, and the one with three talents doubled his, and the one with one talent went and buried his. And when the master came back, they all reported and gave their talents to the to the master, and they said, Oh, good job, good job. And in the last one, he said, the the servant says, Well, I know that you're a hard man and you take where you didn't you didn't put, and you you're not uh, you know, he and he pretty much told his master that he wasn't a good person. The master snatched what that one had and gave it to the one with uh who had doubled his to ten talents to use, and he threw that one out into the darkness where there's gnashing of teeth, and that is not good. That's where the ones go that say, oh, I'm saved, I'm saved, but they there's no proof. It's like if someone says they're a Christian and things are going great for them, there's a good chance that they're it's they're having trouble and it's not the way they say it is, because Satan will be right there at their heels if they are a Christian and they're working for the Lord. They put he puts all kinds of stumbling blocks. But if someone uh is struggling and they they love the Lord and they're poor as a church mouse, that's the one that has the biggest crowns in heaven. This being similar to the story the Lord told uh in Matthew 19 and 24, Mark 20 or 10, 25, and Luke 18, 25. He's talking about uh it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. They have it the easiest of all. And how many of them think that they're going to heaven? They say, Oh, I've got this. Me and God's got a deal worked out. There's only one deal with God, and that's through Christ. That's the only deal he allows. And with our relationship with Christ, we build it each day. We make it a little stronger each day. It's like building a house. It takes time. You build a good, strong house, you put a good foundation, and a good place to start in the Bible if somebody's just getting started is in the book of John. And just read through it. I would I would suggest reading through it quickly. Just read through it and then go back and then just take your time and go through it and learn it. And if you have questions, find an elder or someone that's been a Christian for a while and talk to them about it and ask them. But our relationship with Christ and with God is a daily process, it's a daily building. We get stronger with the Lord each day we're with him. Each day he lets our heart beat and he gives us breath to breathe. We should be thankful and develop our relationship with the Lord. It really is a father-son, father-daughter relationship that we're building. In Luke chapter 11, 11 to 13, we're talking about when uh how much God does love us much more than our earthly fathers. And our earthly fathers are hopefully good to us, sometimes not, but they're they try to be good to us, but God Almighty is much better. He provides everything for us. And enveloping our relationship with God and developing our relationship with others, they go hand in hand. In Philippians chapter 2, we're taught that we put others first. We lift others up. We consider them more high than ourselves. We help others. And as we're building our relationship with God, we realize that Christianity is a lifestyle. It's not something you do on Sunday morning or Sunday night or Wednesday or whenever you go to church. It's an all-the-time thing. 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. That's our goal is to be like that, is to be with God all the time. And how we do that is uh in 1 Thessalonians 5.17, it talks about pray without ceasing. That just means keep an open line of communication. Just keep talking to God, just keep it open, say, hey Lord, you know, and all the time. All the time. Just keep Him in your head all the time. It really is possible. It really is. In 2 Corinthians 5.7, it talks about we walk by faith and not by sight. And it's a continual uh walk, it's a continual communication with God. That's where our faith is. We trust God to be able to do all of this. We can't do it, we can't do anything. In our relationship with God, we come to realize that He is the only thing we need, and He can do it all for us. We can't do anything. We give up, we give it to Him. We can't defeat anything on our own. And in our day-to-day walk, we'll grow closer to God, we'll get a better and better relationship, and we'll get to know Him a little better and a little more, and you'll have feelings, what you think is feelings, and it's just a pull of the Holy Spirit in you that will want you to do things and want you to say things, and uh some people want to attribute it to everybody's got a conscience. Well, yeah, and God's put it that way. But your relationship with God is where you find peace, you find victory, you find rest in the Lord. Because this crazy world is spinning faster, faster, faster, headed toward more and more perversion. And we need to get with the Lord because he isn't going to put up with this much longer. So what say we just start getting closer to the Lord each day? Let's grow our relationship with the Lord, brothers and sisters. Well, this is Brother Rick, and I'm going to get off of here for now, and I pray the good Lord save your souls. Pray his face shine down upon you and bless you. And until next time, I love you in the name of Jesus Christ.