Christ is the standard

So many times, even as Christians, we measure ourselves according to other people. We are to measure ourselves according to what God wants from us. Keep looking up brothers and sisters in the Lord. 

email: RuggedTruthGodsWord@gmail.com

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

Transcript

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Hello, brothers and sisters in the Lord and hopeful people gonna be joining the family. This is Brother Rick, and I sure do hope you all are having a good day and a good weekend. Just looking up and being in a good positive frame of mind. There's all kinds of things that'll drag you down if you let it, but we have a a big God, an almighty God, on our side, and he wants us to uh have a good life, enjoy life. That doesn't mean having a barrel full of money, but having a pure soul through his Holy Spirit and being forgiven. That is great wealth, much wealth. In Luke chapter 10, verse 20, the Lord was telling the apostles to be happy that their names are written in heaven. There are so many poor people that are looking at things through a lens of success by how much money you make and how educated you are. Well, that's not the way God looks at it. He looks at it if your name's written in the Lamb's book of life. That's what's important. In Matthew 16 and 26, and again in Mark 8 and 36, the Lord Himself was saying, What good is it to gain the whole world and lose your soul? Rich folks have it fine for a little while, and this little speck of a minute of a second of a life, an eternity, it really is a brief situation. They have it well, and then they are in trouble unless they repent, which everybody has to repent. Money itself isn't bad or good, it just is. But the accumulation and the desire for it can overwhelm people, can overwhelm all of us if we're not careful. I was doing really well financially, and uh I'd taken my eyes off the Lord, and as a child of God, the Lord said, Oh no, no, no, no, you're mine, boy. And I was in an automobile accident in my work van and it flipped several times, and as it began, the accident that is, it took a little while for it to stop. I hollered, Lord, Lord help me. And he kept me in the seat of that van, and I was good shape. It shook me up and changed my mind. But I realized that I had fallen from the Lord and I was putting my eyes on money. And thank the Lord because I would rather be poor on this side than rich in hell. Of course, they're not going to be rich in hell, they'll just be rich here, and then everybody is empty-handed when they leave the world just like they're empty-handed when they come into the world. In the book of Job, chapter 1, verse 21. He said that he came into the world with nothing or naked, and he'll leave the world the same way, empty-handed. So it's a good thing for every Christian there is to pay it forward. Just give to the Lord and either our time, our money, uh, our abilities. Uh there are a lot of people that do good that don't know the Lord, but it's still emptiness without the Lord. Uh the Lord judges our works, and He's going to judge everybody according to their works. In Luke chapter 12, verses 47 and 48, uh, Jesus talks about there will be uh degrees of punishment. And we need to be about the Lord's will. We don't want to be on that end of it. We don't want to have to have him take us to the woodshed. I am very thankful that he did to me what he did. And he he got me back in line, and I am his. He sicked the hounds of heaven on me. I pray if you're having troubles and you're getting your eyes off of him, he sicks the hounds of heaven on you because it is a much better way to be, being in the Lord's will. God is the standard for all good. He is the absolute standard for all pure, all cleanness. If we try to judge ourselves or compare ourselves to others, yeah, we might be doing this a little better, that a little better, or whatever, but there'll be things we won't be doing better at. We don't judge ourselves according to others, we judge ourselves according to what the Lord wants. What Jesus told us, that's how we're to live our lives. Each generation seems to slip a little further from the Lord. And that's the general tendency. That's every society. That happened with Israel. You can look at, you could see it through the book of Judges, how that they would have a, the Lord would raise up a judge and he'd help bring them back. Well, then that person would die, then they would start slipping away a little at a time. It doesn't happen all at once, but it does happen. And it's happened to America terribly. We've got to compare ourselves to what God wants us to do. We don't say, uh, oh, that this isn't so bad. Our parents did this, you know, this is all right. We don't do that. And being religious doesn't do it. You could go to church a thousand times and never come to know the Lord. You can go three, four, five times a week and don't know the Lord. Satan goes very often, especially to churches that don't have the Spirit of the Lord in there. And the Spirit of the Lord is in the people. And when the people are together in his name, the Lord knows his, and he'll be right there amongst them. Satan won't be there then, but there are many other churches that Satan is sitting in the pew, listening, causing trouble. So we just be concerned with ourselves and how God wants us to live. And we help direct others, we talk to others, we show love and kindness and grace, because there go I but for the grace of God is an old saying. So we can't be saying, oh, I would never do this, I would never do that. Be careful, folks, please be careful. God is good and he is all-powerful, and he will, uh, if he sees something, somebody needs to learn a little something, which I've been there, and boy, howdy, I should be the wisest person in the world as many times as I screwed up. But he is also a very loving God. So loving that in John 3.16, he sent his one and only Son to save us, and the only way he could save us was to die for us and shed his blood for us. And Jesus asks us to repent of our sins. Uh He talks about it in Matthew chapter 4, verse 17, uh chapter 10, verse 7, and also in Luke it it's called for again in 13, 3 and 13, 5. Uh we repent of our own sins. We don't worry about somebody else's. We worry about ours. And then we can help guide others to Him. We don't we don't be blaming people because people are that are lost, we were all there at one time or another. And some of us might still be there if we're listening to this. We just have to, as it says in Philippians 2, 12, to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. That just means to make absolute sure because we don't want to just get that close and just miss it. It's up to each one of us to follow Christ. We take up our cross daily. We repent of our sins and we take up our cross daily. In Luke chapter 9, verse 23, the Lord tells us that we have to do that. So we have to deny ourselves, we take up our cross daily and follow him. I just that means to follow his teachings, to and all that he has taught us. We ask for forgiveness in his name. We ask the Father for forgiveness in Jesus' name. We repent, that just means changing our minds and don't want to do it anymore. And take up our cross and follow him daily. It's something that's needed, though. It's not heavy. In Matthew 11, 30, Christ uh tells us that uh we give up our heavy burdens, our worries, our troubles, all that we've done got caught up in, everything, all the sinfulness, all the things we've ever done can be forgiven. We just give it up and we take on his light burden. It's much easier to walk with him than to do this all by yourself. And it's getting harder and harder to walk a good life in this world. Satan is coming out more and more. And I figure the uh Antichrist is going to be born pretty soon if he's not already rolling, and it might even he might even be an AI individual. I don't know. But I do know is going to be a man of total weakness. So we just measure ourselves according to what God wants, and we walk with him. We walk with Christ, we follow Christ daily. Just means in the morning, get started with him. All through the day, keep an open line of communication. And one of my favorite verses, 1 Thessalonians 5 17, talks about just praying continually. That just means keeping an open line of communication. God wants that. Believe it, he does. And when you're doing that, you're going to have a real hard time sinning that way. You just keep talking to God, the Holy One of forever. He's always been, and as humans, it's hard for us to grab wrap our minds around that and grab a hold of that, but it's just the way it is. Kind of like the couple of weeks a mosquito gets to live, and you know, it would look at us as like, oh, they're so eternal, they're or something. But we have to remember that God is the standard. And we follow what God in Christ. Christ is God, is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit that lives in the believers. And they are the standard, they have set the standard for us. And when Christ was here, he walked a perfect life uh walk and lived a perfect life, and we murdered him for it. Because uh the Pharisees and all, I can't say them because I probably would have been one of them too. I'd be as the terrible things I've done. Uh but uh we murdered him. And anybody that doesn't accept the gift of salvation and forgiveness from God through Christ will be considered a murderer of Christ. So I would just rather not be there, uh, folks. So uh please come on, join the join the good side, join Christ's side, the winning side. All right, brothers and sisters, I'm gonna get off of here. I try to keep these short, folks like hearing short ones. Uh I pray the good Lord bless you and save your souls. I pray his face shine down upon you. And until next time, I love you in the name of Jesus Christ.