Wyoming Evangelist Pastor John Collins: Choosing your path....

From Montana, John Collins, Pastor and Evangelist of Love That Cross Ministries Wyoming asks "Where are YOU heading?"

Pastor John Collins, Evangelist with Love That Cross Ministries and Revival, brings revival across the United States.  Evangelist and Pastor, John Collins is committed to bring back God one person and one church at a time. From the beginning of Love That Cross Ministries and Love That Cross Revival in Wyoming, Pastor John Collins continues to preach that all people need to examine where they are in the eyes of God, and where they stand in their faith in Jesus Christ.  Our very salvation depends upon it.

Pastor John Collins is determined to bring back God to each person, each church, one person and one church at a time.  

 John Collins is a pastor and an evangelist who is bringing that word of God across the United States in a new series of Hope and Trust.  The Truth of God and of Jesus Christ is being preached so that all can understand it in down to earth words so that we all can once again understand the words of Christ and what was meant when Jesus came to be our Savior from death over 2000 years ago. 

Pastor John Collins does not cut corners, does not pad the truth, and does not pull his punches.   

Is God great?  Is God loving?  Is God real?  Why am I here?  These are the questions that people are still looking for, even after the Hope that is Christ was sent here to us so that we could know these answers.  Our faith is nothing compared to what those in the Holy Bible had.  The generations of people from the time of Jesus until now have watered the message down so much that the very words of the current Bible translations change the meaning of the message that God has for us! God is there for us. 

Pastor John Collins says:

“Now a certain ruler asked Him, saying, ‘Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ So, Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God’” Luke 18:18-19 (NKJV).

God is not only good, but great! God is just fabulous. God is faithful and true, merciful and kind, righteous and just and He loves you. God does want the best for you but He also wants you to learn to want what is best for you and that is not by your standards or the standards of the world but by His standards.

God does know what you need and I am not talking about material things. God knows what you need to assure that your soul is saved. It takes more than just a casual ‘belief’ that Jesus died on the Cross for you in order for you to obtain salvation and entry into heaven. It takes a true faith in Jesus and that faith will produce a belief in His sacrifice that is so strong that it will lead you into obedience to His will.

God will test you and you will go through tough times that will challenge your faith and belief. You will be put in situations that will give you different opportunities and the choices that you make are what adds up to a lifetime of testimony and what will ultimately be the fight of your life. Free will demands that you choose the paths of your life and each day will present itself with different choices. Are you loyal to God? Are you considering God when you make your choices and are you taking your salvation into consideration as you live your life?

Some people may think that God is absent from their lives, or that God has let them down. God is there and God is watching, waiting, and giving you the freedom to choose Him or not. God knows that the hardest lessons in life are the ones that we learn the best. Do your best to limit your frustrations in life by taking a moment to remember that life is short and what we do here matters. Remember that most of what seems overwhelming today may be forgotten a year from now. Trust that in the good times and in the bad times, God is there and has your best interests at heart. God wants you to learn to do what is right but more importantly, God wants you to want to do what is right.

God is amazing and is so beautiful and strong and capable. You can trust God and you can rely on God and know that He won’t let you down even if you may be struggling to deal with tough times in your life there is hope because God loves you. God knows what is right and good and will not let you down. Trust in Him, obey Him and believe in His Son and salvation is yours.

“The Lord bless you and keep you;

The Lord make His face shine upon you,

And be gracious to you;

The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,

And give you peace.” Numbers 6:24-26” (NKJV).

What isn’t being preached in the pulpits today is that we have to make the commitment to Christ and to God to do what is right.  We have to make the commitment to act Christ-like, to love others, to serve, to obey what His Son taught over 2000 years ago.  God IS real.  God’s NOT dead.  God IS there.  He has never stopped loving us humans, even when we deny Him, blame Him, ignore Him.  He IS the loving Father that we all want.  He loves us so much He knew we would be just this way, and He gave us the chance of salvation by sending Jesus Christ to us to help us understand, to teach us.  We all have that place for God built into our hearts. 

Pastor John encourages us to open that Bible, to read about God and His Son, to pray and to simply ask God and Jesus for help.  That’s what is expected of us.  To seek Them, with all our hearts.

LOVE THAT CROSS, PASTOR JOHN

Pastor John Collins, Wyoming Evangelist: Facing pride and ego

Pastor John Collins, Love That Cross, Wyoming: Pride gets us no where with God

The Giant Goliath held King Saul and his army in a siege.  In his arrogance, he taunted the army threatening anyone who would stand against him. Young David, years from becoming the next king of Israel, was there and stepped up to face Goliath.  Goliath's pride and arrogance would not allow him to see the threat that David really did present.  David's faith and humility in facing that giant pleased God, and God allowed David to defeat Goliath by hitting him with a stone thrown from a sling and then David cut off Goliath's head.  Pride gets us no where in the face of God.

Pride and humility.  We are a proud people here in the United States.  We have so much that we have accomplished, the rest of the world sometimes looks at us in disgust because we give the appearance of not being satisfied.  It’s never enough and we draw attention to ourselves where ever we go.  Celebrities are recognized and lifted up as examples for us to live by.  Through all of the media, it’s “look what I can do”.  God resists the proud. Pride will not get any soul into heaven.

“Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18

Our faith as Christians today doesn’t measure up to the faith of Abraham, of Noah, of Moses, of David.  These men were humble to begin with and knew the value and spirit of humility before God.  Our pride gets in the way.  How would God choose from among us today?  We often don’t have the strength of faith to worship Him, let alone look beyond what our human hands and minds create and put before God.  Our offerings of ourselves lack humility.  We need to let go of pride and ego, let go of the pride that we have accomplished something and let God and Jesus Christ work in our lives. 

Evangelist Pastor John Collins began a revival of awakening in Wyoming. 

That awakening stirs the spirit of those who hear him.  From a pulpit or behind the microphone of a recording studio, his words are Biblically correct. Being Biblically correct in a very politically correct world is difficult for most of the strongest of Christians today.   

Pastor John Collins says it well and puts pride and humility into this perspective:

“Then a dispute arose among them as to which of them would be greatest. And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a little child and set him by Him, and said to them, ‘Whoever receives this little child in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me. For he who is least among you all will be great.’” Luke 9:46-48

Who is worthy to be lifted up? How does God choose those that He would separate and use for His purposes? He chose Abraham and Abraham was considered a friend of God’s. He chose David and David was a man after God’s own heart. He sent His Son who died for us all.  Even those who walked with Jesus thought of themselves and the impact that they would have on this world. This is so wonderful to know that the human instinct to desire to rise above and be great was felt in those men who walked with Christ. This allows us to recognize this in ourselves and work to overcome that ego. They were corrected and they learned what true humility is. They witnessed their Lord humble Himself to the Cross. Yet there are so many that want to be great in the name of the Lord. They call attention to themselves and think highly of themselves. But, God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. Believe me when I tell you that God knows what He is doing and He knows our hearts.

Pastor John Collins of Love That Cross Wyoming Revival continues on: God has no use for pride.

God does not want servants that think highly of themselves and their eligibility. God wants people to serve Him that are humble of heart. When we choose to walk with Jesus it should be with a pure heart and a true devotion to obedience to the Lord. We should never seek our own acclaim. We should not care what others think of us. We should be concerned only with whether we are an asset to the kingdom of God or a burden. If we have selfish ambition in our heart and a desire to stand out and be important, we are seeking status in this life and we are then unworthy to be a true servant of the Lord.

We must be careful when we desire to leave a name for ourselves, to want to be recognized for our importance or to be valued among men. A truly worthy person that will serve God well is a person that has no ambition in his heart. This person thinks of salvation when he looks upon the souls of this world. This person has sadness in his heart because of the condition of the human race. This person worries of the state of others’ faith in their lives. This person considers opportunities to share the gospel and help others come to Jesus. This person wants to see others go to heaven and lives his life as an example. This person will sacrifice and find ways to be a light in a world of dark. This person will please God.

“Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?” James 2:5

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.” Matthew 5:3-6

Learning to be humble takes a commitment to become obedient to God.  In order to become obedient to God, we need to learn to draw near to Him in prayer and through the words in the Holy Bible.  God wants each of us to have the opportunity to come to know Him, so that we all can go home to Him one day.  That is the reason He sent His Son Jesus Christ, for our salvation through His sacrifice on the Cross.  Jesus humbly accepted the punishment of our sins, died publicly in humility and obedience.  God won’t ask us to do anything that He won’t equip us to handle.  We can become obedient and humble ourselves before God, just as His Son did.  God wants us to come to know Him and His love, to help us with our lives and be part of our lives here in this world.  Pride and ego turns us from God.  To be meek, to be poor in spirit means to be humble; we need to learn the humility of Christ. Bring back God in our lives, come humbly to the foot of the Cross.

“God is never secondary in my life, He is always Primary”- Pastor John Collins, Evangelist.

Wyoming Evangelist Pastor John Collins: Gossip, slander, and tales, oh my.

Wyoming evangelist Pastor John Collins gave a sermon on gossip, being a busybody, and curbing your tongue. 

Pastor John Collins is an evangelist that began a revival of renewal of faith in Wyoming two years ago.  He is biblically correct.  He does not pull punches and he does not preach what people want to hear, he preaches what we NEED to hear.  We have all fallen far from the glory of the Cross and the salvation that is from God through His Son Jesus Christ.   

Pastor John Collins puts it bluntly and clearly so that we can understand it and uses Scripture to show us exactly what he is referring to.  God doesn’t want us to continue on in our sin and our habits that pull us away from Him. He wants us back, as many as possible, to believe in Him, to trust in Him, and to get to know Him the way that we should.  That is the message of revival that Pastor John Collins is spreading. It’s time for us to find God again, to get back to the Cross.

What we say and how we say it gets us into trouble with each other and in the eyes of God.  Gossip, being a busy body with being in others’ business, carrying tales to others, talking about others even in passing turns into sin.  And with God, a sin is a sin.  Gossip and being a busybody is the same as murder in the eyes of God.  We often don’t realize that we get a thrill out of being the center of attention because we “know” something that someone else doesn’t. Evangelist Pastor John Collins preaches on gossip and slander and being a busybody in many of his sermons.  It’s time for us to recognize that what we should be talking about and how we should be speaking should reflect the Christian in us.  Talking about others hurts others, it causes them to stumble and have emotional pain.  That is not Christ-like. 

Pastor John Collins goes on to say it like this:

“I heard it through the grapevine, word on the street is, rumor has it, have you heard, what’s the latest, give me the scoop, the skinny, the 411, the juicy news, the dirt, good old fashioned gossip…the conversations we all live for, right?  There are magazines, TV shows, reality shows, locker rooms, bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, cafeterias, basements, bathrooms, internet sites, cell phones all devoted to spreading the news of the actions of others, whether famous or not.  We do it ourselves.  We are a world that thrives on gossip.

“And besides they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house, and not only idle but also gossips and busybodies, saying things which they ought not.” 1 Timothy 5:13

There are many people that make their careers on photos and stories about the dirt on others.  We lap it up like pigs.  We spew it out like geysers.  We love it, we live it, we don’t even notice when we are doing it.  Most people couldn’t tell you exactly what gossip is.  They are just asking about Bob and Sue, right?  Wondering if they are doing okay and ignoring that thrill that comes from finding out Sue just filed for divorce because she caught Bob cheating on her with Beth.

“But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness.” 2 Timothy 2:16

Wyoming’s Pastor John Collins asks: Are our own lives so boring that we must entertain ourselves with the pain and humiliation of others?  Do we really need to know who is doing what and why?  Is it any of our business?  Isn’t there something we could be doing that is productive and good?  Isn’t there a wholesome way we could converse with each other?  Is it really any of our business to discuss the sex lives of others?  Is it proper to discuss our own sex lives with others?  Is there nothing that is sacred anymore?  Is there nothing we will not expose about someone just because we can?

“Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.”  Ephesians 4:29

Gossip is the same as murder in the eyes of the Lord.  It harms people, it destroys reputations and it is just an awful way to spend your time.  It is a part of society today and it is shameful and wrong.  Think of your conversations, consider your words and know that idle speech is of the devil.  We should all cast away our joy in gossip and learn to bridle our tongues.  Be careful of what you say and what you readily listen to.  You don’t have to be polite and listen to gossip.  You can easily say, “I prefer not to hear that.”  Life can be easily simplified by not engaging in idle talk.

“But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.” James 3:8

Your tone of voice is an indication of the true intent behind your words. Someone may say something that is true and yet the way in which it is said and the words that are chosen are either combative and malicious, calm and soothing, frank and impartial, or ingratiating and patronizing. Each of us should always be careful of intentions and try to avoid causing others to stumble in this life.

Our emotions determine our actions. When we are angry at someone and have no forgiveness in our hearts for a situation or person then our speech about anything concerning that situation or person will be hateful and bitter. When we are jealous of someone then our speech about them will be spiteful and cutting. When we are hurt we can lash out and try to hurt in return and say awful things that cannot be taken back but just becomes the next set of words and the next situation that must be repented of and forgiven. Life is exhausting if you do not manage to gain the perspective that permits you to desire to seek righteousness and obtain that goal.

“There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.” Proverbs 6: 16-19.

Evangelist Pastor John Collins reminds us what righteousness is. 

It's doing the right thing all of the time and not just when it suits you. Jesus was righteous and His life taught that you can become righteous and you can do the right thing. You do this by choosing to learn how God sees things and by trusting that God will take care of the justice of this world. Humans are prideful and stubborn and always want to think that they are the wronged party, the misunderstood and the victimized. Humans just have that wrong.

Jesus came and showed us that life isn’t fair, life is tough, and people are judgmental and can be hateful. Jesus came and showed us that forgiveness is right, kindness is good and that God does value His children. Jesus showed us that our words have the power to hurt, heal, encourage, deflate, inspire and so many other wonderful and terrible things. You need to be willing to give your soul a chance at salvation and to that you need to be willing to obey the Lord, hear the Lord and submit to the Lord. You cannot do that if you are always right, always defensive or offensive, prideful, stubborn, unforgiving, hateful, bitter or unwilling to bend.

“Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell.” James 3:5-6

LOVE THAT CROSS, PASTOR JOHN COLLINS, WYOMING EVANGELIST