Month: December 2024

Lord willing, we will enter a new year in three short days. I challenge you to join me in resolving to make improvements to our lives now without waiting for another day to pass. There is nothing magical about New Year’s Day. This is a day the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it. Let us be better in our Christian life and walk with our Lord this day than we were yesterday, as we continue to draw closer to our Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit within us.

Let the light of God’s love, mercy and grace have our full attention and focus at all times, like a lighthouse keeping us in safe waters, in spite of any storm or distraction the enemy puts in our path to cause fear or doubt. When we focus on God’s light, we don’t ignore those around us. They will all see God’s light reflected in us and in God’s light we will see how we can help and encourage each of them. I pray that each person reading this has a great new year. Let it begin today!

I want to wish each of you reading this a blessed and merry Christmas and a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year. If you are traveling this year, I pray you will return home safely.

I have a special message for those who, like me, miss a loved one during the Holidays. If you keep the love you share in your heart and the memories you made together in your mind, they won’t be far away.  Most important, as believers in and followers of Jesus Christ, we are promised we will be with them again forever once our mission for the Lord is completed here on Earth and He calls us home to be with Him, as He is with us throughout our Christian life here. There is so much to celebrate this Holiday season, some now and some still ahead of us later.

What a surprise this morning on my Facebook time line! It was a video of Jeff and Sheri Easter singing a song that could be the theme song of my life-story.  It was one more reminder that if God can use Facebook to cheer and  encourage me, He can use you and me to cheer and encourage those around us. Here are a few lines from my new song.

“Hey, I’m just an old chunk of coal. But i’m gonna be a diamond some day. I’m  gonna grow and glow ’til I’m so blue pure perfect. I’m  gonna put a smile on everybody’s face. I’m gonna kneel and pray every day. Lest I become vain along the way. I’m just an old chunk of coal now, Lord. But I’m gonna be a diamond some day.”

For a chunk of coal to become a beautiful diamond, it takes years of intense pressure and heat. Then a skilled gemologist must carefully chip away the impurities: not a pleasant process for the coal. For my transformation, God placed a bright and shiny new born, eternal spirit within me when I began to believe in and follow Jesus Christ, who took on  that unbearable heat and pressure in my place. Since then, the Supreme Gemologist (my Heavenly Father) has been chipping away the impurities in my life. It isn’t a pleasant process, but it is necessary to expose the beauty of God’s handiwork within me to everyone with whom I come in contact. Praise God! Through His mercy and grace I am no longer a clump of coal. I will be a shiny diamond to add to His collection when I report to Him at the end of my tour of duty here on Earth.

In the summer of 1954, in a Vacation Bible School assembly at Grace Baptist Church in Evansville, Indiana, Christianity became personal to me. As I knelt at the altar, a teacher knelt beside me. She asked my name and I told her, then she said, “Repeat after me. God so loved Jim Anderson that He gave His only begotten Son so by believing in Him, Jim Anderson will not perish but have eternal life. Do you truly believe those words?” I nodded yes choking back tears of joy as God’s mercy and grace became very personal to me.

Through my 70 years of Christian life, God’s word has become even more personal. About 45 years ago, I came across a paper back book titled, How To Be A Christian Without Being Religious. It was an illustrated version of John’s Gospel. After reading it many times, I saw clearly that my faith is not a “religion”. It is a personal “relationship” with God through Jesus Christ.  It isn’t just John 3:16 that is personal. In the 17th chapter of John, Jesus prayed that all who believe as a result of the message of the disciples, that is me (and you) become one. In John 20:29, Jesus tells Thomas that those who believe in Him without seeing him are blessed. That’s me (and you).

About 35 years ago, a coworker announced he was quitting to go into full time ministry. I gave him my well worn paper back. He looked at it and asked me, “Do you think I need this?” I told him that I think everyone including me can use it. Then I asked him to read it, take what you can use, then pass it on.

A friend on social media who is older than me and a cancer survivor posted this today. “If you are alive, there is a reason. Whether you are 30, 50 or 95, there is something God wants you to do.” It sounds to me like he has finally found the reason he survived a violent form of cancer that takes the lives of so many people every year. God bless him as God continues to bless me.

When my wife died ten years ago, I was lost without her, or any other family. I wanted to find the reason I was alive and she wasn’t. God began to build a family of brothers and sisters in my life including a young preacher who in the middle of a sermon, paused , turned my way and said, “God isn’t done with you yet.” After that service, I stopped at a fast food place for lunch. As I sat in my car eating, Pastor Rick Warren came on the radio. He quoted Mark Twain, “The two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you discover why.” I bowed my head and said, “OK Lord. You got my attention, please lead the way.”  The Way has taken me to this blog as well as given me the opportunity to mentor and encourage new Christians.

If you are still searching for the why of your life, just ask God in prayer to lead you to it and He will. Then obediently serve Him. You will never regret that decision.

A high school classmate of mine lost her son, and only child, to cancer at age  57 just before Thanksgiving. She is holding up through the holidays because his faith and hers assure her he is no longer in pain and it won’t be long before they will be together again for eternity. That is the same assurance that got me through the loss of my parents, my wife, and the two dear Christian friends who died recently. When we believe in and follow Jesus Christ, we know death of our body here is just a change of address to life in our forever home with Him.

In 1969, as I was adapting to civilian and married life, doctor Kubler-Ross published her best selling book titled On Death and Dying. She spent her career as a psychiatrist studying terminally ill patients , their families and near death experiences. I found her book very interesting, even though I was only 26. She listed the five stages of grief people go through: Denial, Anger, Negotiating, Depression and Acceptance. I knew even back then that Christians don’t have to spend a lot of time in any of those first four stages.

I don’t think Dr. Kubler-Ross ever discovered for herself the reason some people faced their darkest hour in peaceful acceptance, but she recognized it and described it perfectly in her book. “People are like stained glass windows. They gleam with reflected light when the sun is out, but their true beauty can’t be seen until a light from within illuminates them during their darkest hour.”

I just heard a timely word preached today based on the fourth chapter of 1st Peter. As the Disciple of Jesus wrote that letter to the churches throughout the Roman Empire, the Apostle Paul had been beheaded and Peter was in prison awaiting his death sentence from Nero. Peter warned those church members that the time for peaceful celebration of their Christian faith was coming to an end, as Nero was turning society against Christians. They must get serious about their faith and stand against that sinful society, even if they must give their physical life in exchange for eternal life in God’s presence.

I remember a time in my country in the 1950’s when I was comfortable sharing my new found Christian faith. The top song on Billboard’s Pop and Country charts was The Three Bells, that told the story of the birth, marriage and death of a Christian named Jimmy Brown. In 1957, Billy Graham held huge integrated crusade meetings nightly in New York City for the entire summer. He preached to more than two million people live not counting the huge TV and radio audiences. Hundreds of thousands accepted Christ as their Savior. There wasn’t a single protest.

Things began to cool toward Christians, but there was still comfort and celebration within churches. Then, in 1974, American society took a huge turn away from God. The political party Carol and I actively supported became the party of abortion, gay marriage, multiple genders, etc. Party leaders made it clear that our conservative Christian values were no longer acceptable in the society they wanted to create. The second we left, they labeled both liars and racists so no one would believe us if we told them about the racism that still existed in that party. It didn’t bother us that much because everyone who knew us knew those labels were false.

Things have been getting much worse since then. In the last election, that party was soundly defeated because of their policies, but they are blaming Christians and have begun stirring up their radical base to respond with violence if necessary. So, we are surrounded by a sinful violent society much like the churches Peter wrote to. GOD HELP US!!!