"Jesus Appears to Thomas"

  "One of the twelve disciples, Thomas (nicknamed the Twin), was not with the others when Jesus came. They told him, "We have seen the Lord!" 

 But he replied, "I won't believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side." 

 Eight days later the disciples were together again, and this time Thomas was with them. The doors were locked; but suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them. "Peace be with you," he said. Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don't be faithless and longer. Believe!" 

 "My Lord and my God!" Thomas exclaimed.

 Then Jesus told him, "You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me."" (John 20:24-29 NLT)

  "Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?" (Isaiah 53:1 KJV)

 It has been quite a while since I have thought about quitting this, so called, 'Adventure.' Not that I am sick of it, because it seriously moves me and breaks me, day after day; but because I feel as though it tends to make me weary some days, almost as if I am all alone, beating a drum, that becomes annoying and real unpleasant to some. 

 Before we start in this, "Doubting Thomas," adventure, I would like to share something that I took away from church last night, that I might have already known, but never really given much thought to, at least not like I did last night. Pastor Bryan mentioned two things that caught my attention: one being, "Heaven is for you!" Which basically means, that God loves you, and wants to see you make it into heaven! The other was: "You have to work towards going to hell!" Which means that you need to make hell your destination, because God is going to offer you Heaven! 

 I hope that anyone reading this understands what all that means, because our God is filled with mercy and grace! He doesn't send anyone to hell, they make a way to get there on their own, by rejecting His great love, and choosing to turn away from His open arms, which offer salvation! 

 This is the bottom line! You just need to Believe! No matter what they say, believing is the key to the door into salvation! Once you believe, all the other things will become your desire and passion: confessing with your mouth, getting baptized, walking away from things that are bad, doing the things that are right; whatever it is that moves you, you will be either amazed or convicted; but you will never again be alone! 

 Sometimes I don't say enough, sometimes I say too much; but today I am focused on believing...

"For God so [greatly] loved and dearly prized the world, that He [even] gave His [One and] only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him [as Savior] shall not perish, but have eternal life." (John 3:16 Amplified Bible)