Read Matthew to Live Your Life, Read John to Save Your Soul: The Best Advice I Ever Got
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About this ebook
I recommend Dr. Kindreds book to anyone who has the desire to gain a fuller, more tangible understanding of the words of Jesus Christ. The authors very personal account of his own experiences may give others a point of reference in their own lives.
Lou Angora, Executive Producer, Morning Light Films
As I was going through a terrible trial in my life, I remembered something that my mom had said to me when I was a teenager. She said, Read Matthew to live your life, read John to save your soul. That turned out to be the best advice I ever got! I started talking to other people, sharing this with them, and I was amazed to find that so few knew what Jesus said. This led me to write this book to tell everyone what Christ said about how to live your life and how to save your soul. He gave us a how to guide. His message is clear and concise and doesnt need a lot of interpretation. He says what He means, and He means what He says. It is pure truth!Douglas Kindred
Doug Kindred earned a Bachelor’s degree in Physics and Math from East Tennessee State University and a PhD. in Optics from University of Rochester. He is President of Gradient Lens Corporation in Rochester, New York and currently resides in Ocala, Florida.
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Read Matthew to Live Your Life, Read John to Save Your Soul - Douglas Kindred
Copyright © 2014 Douglas Kindred.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
WestBow Press
A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan
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Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
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ISBN: 978-1-4908-3587-7 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4908-3586-0 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4908-3588-4 (e)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014907758
WestBow Press rev. date: 03/29/2016
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 The Rise and Fall of an Ordinary Man
The Rise
The Fall---Drifting Away
The First Sign
The Second Sign
The Chastening
Returning to the Lord
Chapter 2 Read Matthew to Live Your Life
Who Is Jesus?
What God said about Jesus
What Jesus said about Himself
Why Did Jesus Come?
To call sinners to repentance
To give His life a ransom for many
To save the lost
What Jesus Said...
About God
Seeking Him---Make God your top priority
Listening to God---Hearing His Word
Praying
Good Works
Faith in God---Having it and Sharing it
Peace and Rest
Serving God, Following Christ
What Jesus said about how we treat other people
Forgiveness
Forgiveness Again
Do Not Judge!
Helping Others
Love Your Enemies
Loving Your Neighbor
Marriage and Divorce
Children
Serving God and Man
Evil People
What Jesus Said about Ourselves
Build Your Foundation on the Rock
Humility
Our Words
The Beatitudes
Sin and the Law
What Jesus Said about Cities and Nations
Unrepentant Cities and Nations
Warnings!
Hypocritical Church People
The Straight and Narrow Path
Warning about False Messiahs and False Prophets, the Second Coming, and the End Times
Persecution
Resist the Devil
Hell
Chapter 3 Read John to Save Your Soul
Who Is Jesus and Why Did He Come?
What Jesus Said about Salvation
Why We Need to Be Saved
How are we Saved?
What happens when you are Born Again?
You receive the Holy Spirit
You get Everlasting Life
We Get Nourishment for Our Souls
Communion
You Get Light!
You Get Love and Joy
You Get Truth and Freedom
You become a Child of God
You Get Answered Prayer
You get Persecution
Jesus is the only way to be Saved
Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life
Jesus is the door to salvation
Jesus is the True Vine
Unbelief
What Happens If You Are Not Saved?
Chapter 4 The Redemption
The Pain Stopped!
Relying on God
His Wisdom
His Strength
My Identity
His Blessings
The Desires of My Heart
Doing God's Work
Appendix A Exodus 20---The Ten Commandments
References
To my sons, Kai and Mitchell,
the secret to life and to eternity is in this book.
You must read it and understand it, and mostly you must live it.
Special thanks to Mom and Dad ... and Tina for their love and support.
CHAPTER 1
The Rise and Fall of an Ordinary Man
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
---PROVERBS 14:12
THE RISE
I was born in the heartland of America in the small town of Lincoln, Illinois, in 1961. My father, Tom, was a barber, and my mother, Judy, was a schoolteacher. They were fantastic parents and did a great job raising my brother, sister, and me.
Dad was a hardworking man. He eventually got into food service and managing cafeterias to make more money to support and provide for the family. He was good at it and was frequently transferred to new accounts, so we moved around a lot. This was good, as we got to experience different people, different places, and different cultures and learn new things. He later started his own very successful racehorse equipment business all through determination, hard work, and treating his customers well.
Dad worked hard and taught us kids to work hard. He taught me things a man needs to know---how to shoot a gun, catch a fish, ride a horse, change a tire and change the oil, build a fence, and negotiate a deal, and mostly he taught me how to work hard.
Mom took care of us, provided a wonderful and loving home environment, loved us, nurtured us, taught us, fed us, and gave us the greatest foundation anyone could have in life. She gave us a foundation on the Rock of Jesus Christ. She took us to church, took us to Sunday school, sent us to vacation Bible school and church camp in the summers, and taught us about faith through her strong, unwavering example. By the way, I didn't like any of that stuff, but it turned out to be the most important thing in my life. At the age of fifteen I was born again and accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and my Savior.
So as a result of this wonderful upbringing and my own personality, I worked very hard. I worked hard at everything I did---school, track, racing horses, working in the watermelon fields of South Alabama, and later as a framing carpenter. I went to college at East Tennessee State University to study physics and math, and with a lot of hard work, I graduated with a 3.99 GPA. I then went on to graduate school and worked harder to earn my doctorate in optics (the physics of light) at the Institute of Optics at University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. After that I took a job at my professor's company, Gradient Lens Corporation, in Rochester, where I worked even harder. I eventually became president of this small company, and we grew from employing about six people when I started to about thirty people.
I met a nice girl named Sue while I was in graduate school. She became my wife, and we had two wonderful sons, Kai and Mitch. Life was good, and we were living the middle-class American dream.
THE FALL---DRIFTING AWAY
But a bad thing happened. During all this time I eventually started drifting away from God. You see, when I was younger, I had a fantastic foundation given to me by my mother. That foundation carried me through college and graduate school pretty well, but as time went on, I spent less and less time in prayer, less and less time reading the Bible, and almost no time attending church. I was too busy, working. I eventually forgot about God, about my need for God and having a relationship with Him, and completely neglected to put Him first in my life. Instead, I was striving to do it all on my own, in my own strength, and through my own efforts.
In his book The Danger of Drifting,¹ Dr. David Jeremiah says, It is so easy to fall prey to the busyness of life and lose our perspective on Christ. When we become preoccupied with life to the extent that we have little time to develop our spiritual core, drifting is inevitable.
Yes, that is exactly what I did.
Throughout my life I have generally been a positive, happy guy, always loved other people, helped others, and enjoyed life. But for about the last twenty years I became so overwhelmed with work and life that I was very stressed. I didn't even realize that it was all because I had drifted away from God, lost my focus, and lost my priorities. I was not living the life God intended for me, but instead I was trying to be independent of Him and make my own way. The result was eventually devastating.
I put my work ahead of everything, including my wife, and I ended up separated after twelve years of marriage and two kids. We eventually got divorced. It was hard on everyone---me, my wife, and the boys. As Billy Graham² says, Every divorce represents a broken dream, a shattered hope, a ruined expectation.
I am saddened to see anyone go through a divorce.
Still in spite of this, I remained positive and generally happy, and I thought life was pretty good. I still had my job, so I kept on working, kept on striving. I had a nice little house on Lake Ontario, did some fishing, dated a couple nice young ladies, enjoyed a lot of quality time with my kids, taking them to Boy Scouts, hockey, lacrosse, swimming, etc. I must say I was a bit oblivious to my own failure. Though I was saddened by it, I didn't let it change me. I kept on working, striving actually, and still ignoring God. In other words, this tremendous loss in my life still didn't wake me up.
After that God tried to nudge me awake a couple more times, having two car accidents at sixty miles per hour within a year, both on the same road. In both cases someone ran a stop sign in front of me before I even had time to hit the brakes. I survived, and I was not seriously injured. That should've woken me up, but it didn't.
The First Sign
God gave me two signs that something was going to happen, but once again I was too clueless, too oblivious to understand. The first sign came in the spring of 2010 I kept repeatedly hearing a voice, God's voice saying, Give away everything you own and be ready.
I could not get this voice out of my head. It was there all day every day for months. Yet I ignored it. I mean really--- It sounds crazy, right? Why would I want to give away all my possessions? I have never been considered a materialistic man. I do enjoy nice things, but I have never been one for expensive cars, houses, boats, etc. Just normal sort of suburban American possessions--- a Ford Taurus, a Ford F-150, some clothes, nice furniture, some art, books, lots of tools in the garage, some sporting goods, a small boat, and a canoe. It was all nice but nothing extravagant by any means. Yet I liked my stuff, especially my books, tools, sporting goods, and of course the nice leather couch and TV. So I ignored this pesky voice in my head---God's voice. That really was not a smart thing to do.
The Second Sign
One morning before work I received a call from Mom. She was very upset, crying and sobbing. It was difficult to understand her. She told me that I had to get out of my house and that I had to get out now! She had a dream, a vision, that she saw God raining fire down on my house.