Warning! The thief is here!

On Sunday we will be driving to the west coast of Latvia again. We will have the morning meeting in Liepaja and the afternoon meeting in Ilmaja on our way back to Riga.

In Liepaja I will preach about the thief being among us. He wants to steal, kill and destroy. But we are given an alternative, Jesus has come to give us life, and life to the fullI (Joh 10:10).

The thief is stealing from us in many ways. He has stolen Hope for the future from many people. From others he has stolen joy, peace and many other things.

But what I want to stress the most is how the thief today wants to steal our faith in the word of God. Because if he succeeds to steal our trust in the Bible then we cannot get saved, be forgiven or have a hope for the future. All these are promises from the Bible and if we do not trust the Bible we cannot trust our salvation or anything else.

It used to be that Christians believed in the Bible and non-Christians did not believe in the Bible. But today you hear Christians who do not value the Bible. Some even say that it is not important with the Bible since we can hear directly from God without being dependent on a book.

It is of course possible that Jesus can come into our mind, presenting himlself as Jesus and telling us about his death on the cross, how I can be saved and about his coming back to this world. But normally it does not work in this way.

And when we listen to God we can be mistaken. We can not allways be sure that the thoughts are coming exclusively from Jesus. What we hear can be mixed with our own feelings, hopes and even with the voice of the thief. The only way we can test messages is through the Bible. But if we do not trust the Bible...

The thief has not changed a lot through history. Already in the creation story he tries to create mistrust in the word of God "Did God really say....". He succeeded to steal the life God planned for Adam end Eve and he is stealing the same thing from many people today.

Do not let him steal from you! You can trust the word of God. In the Bible you can clearly see Jesus who can save, forgive and give you new hope for this life and the life to come.

/PB