Wednesday, September 21, 2016

PASTOR JOHN COLLINS, EVANGELIST: HOPE FOR ALL



On any given Christian based television or radio program you will hear preachers exclaiming that “THE END TIMES” are here in the world and that Jesus Christ is going to come back and take Christians to Heaven any day now.  It stirs a sense of fear in people who do not believe in God, people who want to know why they feel something is missing in their lives but don’t know what it is.  This is the same message that has been repeated over and over for decades:  the End is near.  Evangelist Pastor John Collins of Love That Cross Ministries will agree that today’s world is worse than Sodom and Gomorrah of the Old Testament, but Pastor John feels that God wants the people of the world to ALL have a last chance at the Hope of salvation through Jesus Christ and His resurrection.

Evangelist Pastor John Collins began his ministry with the faith and knowledge that God wants people to come back to Him.  Person by person, church by church, the world has turned from God.  Pastor John Collins’ mission has been to reach out to people and churches across the United States, one person at a time, one church at a time to bring renewal of faith and hope in God and Jesus Christ. Pastor John Collins knows that it is not yet the time of Revelation as written in the Holy Bible, but it is a time of REVIVAL and RENEWAL.

Love That Cross Ministries began in Wyoming, focusing on the message of REVIVAL.  In his first revival through Love That Cross Ministries in Wyoming communities came together to worship and celebrate the presence of God through music and witnessing. From a small town in the west, over 600 people attended the free concert and heard a message of hope and salvation in Wyoming, by well-known entertainers from around the country.  Pastor John’s message is compelling-there is STILL Hope for everyone through the salvation by Jesus Christ and His resurrection.  It is selfish for Christians to pray for Jesus Christ to return with so many people in the United States and the world not even knowing who God is and who Jesus Christ is.  In order to please God, we need to revive FAITH. God wants us back.

A REVIVAL of FAITH does not come overnight.  The deterioration of faith did not happen overnight.  Pastor John Collins will tell you to take a look at the history of the United States.  This is a paraphrased excerpt from Pastor John Collins’ radio programming:  A country that was founded on the premise of freedom no longer values those freedoms!! God blessed the men and women who settled the United States and established a nation that was based on faith in God!!  But now, for more than 50 years, the United States has increasingly kicked GOD out of everyday life!! In the 1960’s prayer and devotions were taken out of the public school system because it offended a child!! Today Christian youth have to seek special permission to worship God publically during school hours!  The freedom of religion and freedom of speech within schools is NO FREEDOM at all. The United States court houses have been mandated across the country to take the Ten Commandments down from the buildings.  The Ten Commandments are the foundation of justice, sent from GOD who is JUST and FAIR. God has been banned from courts where JUSTICE is not based on faith in GOD but on what is POLITICALLY CORRECT. Faith within families has been cast aside for more alluring attractions like television programing, computer games, social media, and technology that are EMPTY of the Word of God and the values that were taught by Jesus Christ. Churches have kicked God out, putting emphasis on profit, congregation size, and performances of the people on the pulpit rather than building FAITH and FEEDING THE SOUL to prepare for eternal life, not the life that we live HERE.

Pastor John’s message in that radio programming is sadly on target.  We as a country have kicked God out of every part of our everyday lives.  God does not force Himself into our lives; He waits with Jesus to be invited in.  Our society is the way it is because we turned our back on God.  We are getting exactly what we are asking for from God. Pastor John Collins has devoted Love That Cross Ministries to reviving the Word of God and the Hope of Jesus Christ across the United States.  He believes that God wants this country to have a chance through revival, one person at a time, one church at a time. Televangelists do preach that there is REVIVAL and RENEWAL crossing the United States.  The REVIVAL that is needed, according to Pastor John, is one of individual faith.  Without healing ourselves first, we cannot heal a church or a community. We need to turn ourselves back toward God in order for God to turn our country around.  We need to come humbly before God, on our knees, and seek His forgiveness so that we can REVIVE our country.  It isn’t about politics and doing what won’t offend people, it isn’t about being POLITICALLY CORRECT.  Pastor John Collins and many other preachers will tell you that JESUS CHRIST was not POLITICALLY CORRECT!!! Being POLITICALLY CORRECT is not going to save your soul and it’s not going to save the United States.

Pastor John Collins passionately preaches that in order for us to have REVIVAL in our country, we need to get down on our KNEES in PRAYER.  PRAYER is the way to REVIVAL.  REVIVAL is needed for our salvation. The only way we are going to turn this country around, one person at a time, is to seek the SALVATION that faith in GOD and JESUS CHRIST offers.  Pastor John will bluntly tell you it isn’t about sending money to a televangelist to pray for us.  Pastor John will tell you it isn’t about simply going to church and sitting in a pew on any given Sunday.  It IS about REVIVAL of your faith by getting your knees dirty, by caring about others, by helping the poor, by walking, living and acting your faith EVERY DAY, not just on Sunday. We have to come back to the Cross, and LOVE the Cross for what was given there for us by a God who is THERE and is WAITING for us to turn back to Him in REVIVAL and FAITH.
In the words of Pastor John Collins: “BELIEVE THAT!!”

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

PASTOR JOHN COLLINS LOVE THAT CROSS: WYOMING TURNING POINT





“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16. KJV.  This verse is probably the most singularly memorized verse in the Holy Bible.   


God put Adam and Eve in Eden and instructed them how to act, giving them one very important rule to not eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  They disobeyed, got evicted from the garden.  Man lived without written rules from God for centuries until Moses was anointed to lead God’s people, Israel out of Egypt.  God spoke to Moses who wrote His commandments on stone tablets so that man would have the needed guidelines so that we could properly worship and serve God.  There were many other directions that were given to Moses that went along with the commandments, how to live safely in the desert, how to come humbly before God, through priests.  We still couldn’t get it right.  We needed an example to help us see and understand.  We don’t follow directions well.   

To help us, God sent His Son Jesus to us so that He could teach us and show us firsthand how to be godly, how to be Christ-like.  God knew that we can’t do it on our own.  He loves us so much that He sent Jesus to teach us, show us, then sacrifice Himself for us to take away the sins of the world so that we can live a Christ-like life.  All we have to do now, instead of lists of directions in the Old Testament with old blood sacrifices and priest intervention, is believe.  Simply believe.  And in believing then change ourselves to be godly, not sinners, to become Christ-like.  Jesus led by example so that we would SEE how we are supposed to act and behave.  He taught the disciples who became His apostles who went out into the world and showed all who would listen how to turn toward God through Jesus.

Evangelist Pastor John Collins of Love That Cross Ministry and Revival that began in Wyoming was called by God over 10 years ago to serve Him.  Pastor Collins was not a godly man, he will tell you he didn’t believe in God and had very little experience with God and Jesus in his life.  That has changed for him because he accepted Jesus into his heart as his Lord and Savior.  Now he clings to the Cross that is everyone’s salvation with all his strength and all his might.  Why?  Because he knows that Jesus is the only Hope that this sad, lost, and seemingly hopeless world has.  Wyoming was a turning point in Pastor John’s career as an evangelist.  He had his first revival there through Love That Cross, and he has been leading more people to Christ ever since.

An evangelist is someone who is set apart by God to teach the ways of God.  God knows that people are visual and hands on learners, merely reading and hearing the words in the Bible isn’t enough, even though it should be.  We need to see how to act, too.  Evangelists are in the public eye because they are outspoken and profess their faith so plainly that it is hard to ignore them.  They make you uncomfortable because they cause you to take a look at what you are doing in your life, or at least that is what an evangelist is supposed to do. 

Pastor John Collins shows us that in order to get to God, we have to believe in Jesus.  We have to act like Jesus Christ.  We have to act like Christians.  There is where we fail horribly, to ACT like Christians.  Christians are supposed to help the poor, Christians are supposed to treat others as they would like to be treated.  The two commandments Jesus taught were to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength….to Jews this is part of the Shema and is the foundation of their faith in God…and the other commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself.  Pastor John Collins not only teaches these commandments in each and every one of his sermons, he acts them so that people can see how Christians are supposed to act.   

Christians aren’t supposed to show up in a church pew on a Sunday and act Christ-like only for that hour or so of worship.  Christians are supposed to act Christ-like every minute of every day.  We fall far short of that.  Pastor John teaches and walks the walk.  He lives humbly.  So many evangelists who are in the public eye have multi-million dollar homes, expensive new cars, designer clothing and pristine mega churches that they launch their ministry from.  Pastor John lives in a middle class home, drives used vehicles and preaches from pulpits of moderate to small churches all over the country.   

He is quick to help the little girl who walks into a church in her pajamas and carrying a doll, not only in feeding her, but helping the family find a way to manage the reality of latchkey children left on their own.  A conversation with a diabetic woman reveals that she has no food and is unable to get out to a store because she is ill.  A phone call to an area food bank and senior center from Pastor John helps the woman get through.  An addict who needed to get into rehab couldn’t find an open bed was assisted into a rehab center that hadn’t had any beds open.  Waiting in line at a fast food drive through, Pastor John has been known to pay for the meals of the car behind him.  Taking people in off the street to allow them a meal and place to stay, opening one of his churches up on frigid nights as a shelter to those who have nowhere else to go…all are examples of being Christ-like in the life of Pastor John Collins.

It isn’t only the acts toward people in need, it is living the fruits of the spirit, every day, in everyday life:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  It is being truthful, having integrity, standing in faith of God in the face of the world and not caring what the world says about him.  

 Pastor John says frequently “Being Christian isn’t about going to church on Sunday.  Sure, it is good to go to church to worship Jesus, but it is what you get out of the sermon, what you do in your everyday life that matters as a Christian.  It’s what you do from Sunday to Sunday that counts, not showing up and putting your time in.  Just because you go into a garage doesn’t make you a car, and just because you go to church doesn’t make you a Christian.  It’s what you do that matters.”  

 Pastor John takes his faith seriously.  He takes his relationship with God seriously, he takes the salvation offered by Jesus seriously.  He walks that walk every day, every minute.  He admits he is a sinner, he knows that he isn’t perfect, but he also knows that people are watching and need an example to live by, just like 2000 years ago when God sent Jesus to show mankind how to act.  Pastor John strives to show how we are to act as humans, as Christians.  At the end of the day, he asks for forgiveness and repents of the sins and gets up the next day to try and try and try to be the best that he can be, for God and for Jesus. 

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