Category: Uncategorized

It’s Time to Get Perspective

Your number one responsibility is to be right with Jesus Christ. No disease, no politician, no economy, and no power of hell itself can destroy a person who is right with Jesus Christ. (Romans 8:31) Only when the Lord allows something to happen to one of His children, can a circumstance occur; and, in that case, God will work it for the making of that believer into a more fervent follower of Jesus Christ. (Romans 8:28-29) The difficulty will not be wasted; it will be used for the glorious and eternal purposes of sovereign God.

We need to focus on our Savior and not other people, leaders, conditions, frustrations, or hindrances. Talk about your Lord. Serve your Lord. Make Jesus huge in your sphere of influence. (1 Corinthians 6:20)

Yes, we are to act as responsible citizens of the nation in which we reside. We are to pray for our leaders and exercise our responsibility to participate in government. We must uphold freedom, for true, spiritual freedom is at the heart of the Gospel! (John 8:36) All other freedom flows from that reality.

However, dear Christian, our ultimate hope is in the proclamation of the entire counsel of God’s Word. We must declare Jesus as Creator, Sustainer, and soon-coming King! We must emphasize that a person can only truly be safe when they are in Christ. (Psalm 2:12)

The world is going to eventually come to a point when one, deceptive, wicked, peace-proclaiming leader will be set as ruler of a global government. His propaganda man will unite spirituality with politics, and deceive everyone who does not have the Holy Spirit abiding in them. He will demand to be worshipped as the hope of humanity, set in one universal leader. (Revelation 13:7-8)

My friends, we cannot put our ultimate hope in government. We must strive to do what we are called to do as citizens, while always holding our vision far above our earthly citizenship, to that of our heavenly allegiance. (Philippians 3:20-21)

As we worship God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, He will provide what we need to make it through this life and to the blessed hope of the life to come.

How do you want to be known and remembered? With what will people say that you most associated? Your opinions and views on so many things, or your passion for Jesus Christ?

Perspective. Keep perspective. The right perspective is summarized in one word, Jesus.

– Shelli Prindle

“Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” (Psalm 2:12)

“But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the LORD Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” (Philippians 3:20-21)

No Ordinary Book

Open the Bible and read God’s Word. This is no ordinary book. In fact, it’s more than even an extraordinary book. The Bible is alive, because the Spirit of God illuminates it’s truth to those who will receive it by the grace of God, through Jesus Christ.

Call on Jesus, and then open the Bible. Let your soul be immersed in God’s Word, and the Lord will perform a work in your heart.

More than you need the news, more than you need human advice, more than you need diversion or entertainment, you need to hear from God Almighty.

Approach the Bible with awe and expectation. God wants to speak to you. Jesus has made the way for God to be known, and the Bible reveals Jesus.

The Father and the Son are in Heaven right now, and the Holy Spirit is here with us. Wherever you are, He is there – waiting to work in you. The Bible is the tool that the Holy Spirit uses.

Please utter a sincere and simple prayer for understanding, and God will open the Word to you in incredible, unexpected, and life-giving ways.

– Shelli Prindle

“The living and abiding word of God…The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” (1 Peter 1:23-25)

Keep Your Eyes on the Truth

Christian friend, we’re not looking for the antichrist; we’re waiting for the Christ! We’re not preoccupied with the mark of the beast; we’re fixated on the seal of the saved – the blessed Holy Spirit of God who lives in us! Keep your eyes on the truth, and the lies will be obvious, the fears will flee, and our only end-time obsession will be sweet Jesus!

– Shelli Prindle

“Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks.” (Luke 12:35-36)

Do Not Neglect to Articulate the Gospel

Christian martyrs in the first century were not persecuted and killed because they were “kind” or “giving” people. They were not murdered for feeding the poor or loving others, although those are things the church did. They were executed because of their belief and proclamation that the God-Man, Jesus Christ, actually – in real time and space – died on the cross in Jerusalem under the Roman government, and then miraculously rose from the dead! They gave their lives away, standing on the premise that God had come to earth in Jesus, and paid for our sins by conquering death. They died standing on the truth that, because Christ had died on their behalf and risen from the dead, that they would rise from death too!

I ask you, what is the message of the church? Yes, we are to do good as a result of what Jesus has done for us. We are to love others and thereby, demonstrate our love for God. However, good works alone do not save! The heartbeat of the Gospel, and what gets the devil really ramped up is when the people of God proclaim the death and resurrection of Jesus as our actual victory over sin and death!

Has Jesus cleansed you by His blood? Is His Spirit alive in you? Proclaim that! And, by all means, do what He calls you to do! But do not neglect to articulate the Gospel – the divine rescue of humans by the blood of the Son of God!

– Shelli Prindle

“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you – unless you believed in vain.
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)

Shadows of the Tribulation

The rapture is the very next event in the sequence of end-time occurrences. The “Church Age” or the “Age of Grace” in which we now live, will suddenly and without warning come to an end with the rapture of believers. At this time, Jesus will descend not fully to earth, but will come into the stratosphere, and take us up to Himself in the air. (John 14:1-3; 1 Corinthians 15: 51-52; 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)

Immediately following the rapture of believers, the age of grace ends, and the time of tribulation begins. During the first half of the seven-year tribulation, the antichrist will deceive the nations (including Israel) into believing that he is a peacemaker. He will make a treaty with the nation of Israel and allow the restoration of their sacrificial system.

However, he is a filled with the power of Satan, who is the “father of lies.” The antichrist will suddenly break his treaty with Israel after three and one-half years, and then he will unleash his evil regime, demanding that the world worship him, and he will desecrate the temple in Jerusalem.

These events will mark the beginning of the “Great Tribulation,” of which Jesus said, “then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be” (Matthew 24:21). During this period, God Himself will unleash a kind of trouble that we have never seen. It will be His direct wrath upon godlessness, as Revelation reveals that Jesus Himself opens the seven seals of the deed to the universe in order that these horrors may begin. (Revelation 5:1-5; 6:1-17) God at this time, is still attempting to reach hardened hearts.

I am forever grateful that I will not be on earth to endure this wrath, because the wrath of God for my sin has already been poured out on Jesus Christ at the cross of Calvary two thousand years ago. (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10)

Please know that the horror of this time, plagues will occur that exceed anything that we can imagine (such as one hundred pound hailstones, rains of sulfur and blood, locust-like demons with the power to torment with scorpion-like stings for five months, myriad public calamities, an earthquake accompanied by a “sky quake,” horrible sores breaking out on bodies, etc.)

Make no mistake, COVID-19 is nothing compared to what is to come. The economic disaster is nothing compared to what will come when the antichrist allows no one to buy or sell without his mark, the mark of the beast. Right now, the earth and humanity are groaning and heaving under the weight of the sin curse GENERALLY. In that time, humans and the earth will be suffering the wrath of God SPECIFICALLY.

The horrors of the tribulation – though we are not experiencing them yet – CAST THEIR SHADOWS into our day. (Note the graphic attached.) The events are so grave, and so unlike anything we have ever seen, that they cast the shadow of horror to us now, as a warning or precursor.

You still have time to repent. You still have time to yield your heart to God by admitting that you are a sinner in need of Jesus to cover your sin with His blood. You still have time to let the wrath of God that you deserve for your sin to be placed onto the shoulders of Jesus, who bore that sin on the cross so long ago. If Jesus took that hit for you, and you claim it in reality, then God will never again punish that sin – not now, and not in the time of tribulation, for you will be gone with Jesus! (Romans 6:23; John 3:36)

– Shelli Prindle

“For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.” (Jesus, in Matthew 24:21)

Right Focus

My friend, keep your eyes on Jesus, not your disappointments, not your frustrations, and not your fears. Looking about at troubles will be the temptation and the “natural” tendency. But fixing your eyes on your Savior is your privilege, as the Holy Spirit lives in you and empowers you. Do it. Staying focused on Jesus is real living, in the deepest and eternal sense.

– Shelli Prindle

“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” (Isaiah 26:3)

Not a Statistic

You are not simply a statistic. You are not just an isolated person, or just a case of COVID-19, or just an unemployed person, or just one who is depressed, or just a member of the human race during a pandemic; no, you are individually known and loved by the God who created the galaxies. He is reaching out to you right now. He knows your name and every detail of your life. He sent His Son to die for you. You are special to your Creator, if not to anyone else in the world. Pick up a Bible (or let me know if you don’t have one), and read His truth. You are known and loved infinitely.

– Shelli Prindle

“O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” (Psalm 139:1, 7-10)

Scattering Worry or Uniting Your Heart?

We can scatter many unhealthy worries all over the place as we try to handle our own lives, OR we can unite all of fear into the one, healthy reverence for the Lord Almighty! Yielding our heart to fear God and God alone, will cause the other worries to dissipate, as we trust in Him for the powerful, sovereign God that He is. He is in control, and if our hearts reverence Him properly, everything else will begin to fall into proper perspective.

– Shelli Prindle

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33)

Don’t Despise Desperation

Do not despise God for allowing something to happen that causes you to drop to your knees in desperation to know Him and seek Him as you never have before. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that is more important than your relationship with Jesus and the heavenly treasure we build as we direct others to God. Do not you let anyone or any demon in hell to drive you to despondency, when the Holy Spirit is seeking to compel you to the beautiful heart of Jesus, to depend on Him and walk with Him in deeper and more glorious ways than you have ever known. This world is a preparation for Heaven; this life is not for fun and comfort. It is a battle ground, where Satan tries to drive you to distraction or despair, as God works to bring you to a vibrant relationship with Him that outshines anything else in life or the world.

– Shelli Prindle

P.S. I speak from personal experience, and I am advising myself as I write.

“Answer me quickly, O LORD! My spirit fails! Hide not your face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the pit. Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. Let your good Spirit lead me on level ground!” (Psalm 143:7-8)

One Breath Away

At any moment, we are all just one breath away from Heaven or Hell. We could be one instant from eternal, unhindered joy in the presence of God; or everlasting, unmitigated misery, separated from His being forever. So I ask you, are you moving in the direction of God, by the grace and blood of Jesus Christ? Or are you ignoring the Lord, thereby, through default, moving further from Him?

– Shelli Prindle

“It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgement.” (Hebrews 9:27)

Pray. Pray. Pray.

Pray. Before you plan, pray. Before you work frantically, pray. Instead of worrying, pray. Lift your heart and mind to the One who is already in the future, who loves you, and who holds the destiny of the whole world in His hands.

– Shelli Prindle

“The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.” (Psalm 33:11)

Atheist Mocks the Blood of Jesus

As I sit and read the famous atheist Richard Dawkins’ latest book, as he mocks the atonement and the sacrifice of the blood of Jesus, I am wondering how many Christians today even understand atonement, and how many churches preach the blood of Jesus as the only hope of humanity for forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God.

The core doctrines of the Bible seem to have been partially shelved or deemphasized in order to appease the masses that we want to attend our churches. But then, after they come into the church, what do they receive? Do they truly enter into salvation, or just a surface religious experience that makes them feel better about themselves?

If the leading atheists and skeptics of our day have enough time and influence to write and promote what opposes genuine Christianity, isn’t it time that preachers of the Gospel take seriously the call to preach and teach the whole counsel of God?

If the Gospel becomes watered down with each passing generation, what will be left for the people coming behind us? I guess this is precisely why Jesus, Paul, and many prophets emphasized the dangerous and rampant deception of the end times.

Dear Lord, make me part of the remnant who stays true to You and Your Holy Word.

– Shelli Prindle

“Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.”  (Acts 20:28)