Thursday, June 17, 2010

God Is In Control

God could have shown us how great He is. He could have displayed how powerful and above us He is. Instead, He became as small as we are. What did Jesus know that enabled Him to do what He did? Here's part of the answer. He knew the value of people (His sheeple). He knew that each human being is a treasure. And because He did, people were not a source of stress, but a source of joy. Jesus knows how you feel. You are precious to Him. So precious that He became like you, so that you would come to Him. It is outrageous for the Christ whose rightful place is at the right hand of His Father to step out of timelessness into our world to live as one of us. For people with bodies, important things like love have to be embodied, or else people with bodies would never in a trillion years understand about love. It was not necessary to nail Him to His cross. His unfailing love, arms opened wide for us, would have held Him there. That I should such a life destroy yet live by Him I killed! He lived for us, then He died for us, and then He rose for us. His death atoned for our sins, and His resurrection opens the door to everlasting life. How much easier it would have been for Him to not give us a choice. But to remove the choice would be to remove the love. The one who chose to love created one who could love in return… Now …. it's our choice. Jesus is fishing for us, not to kill us but to give us life. God woos us with kindness. He changes our character with the passion of His love.

God is looking down on this earth, half angry because His beloved mankind has cheated on Him, has committed adultery, and yet He is hopelessly in love with her.  God's goodness is spurred by His nature, not by our worthiness. We are wanted by God, pursued by God. He is wanting to preserve us, to guide us through the darkness of the shadow of death up into eternal life in His presence. We are temporarily in these shells on this earth. Paul had no questions. That is how he could be beaten one day, imprisoned the next, and released only to be beaten again and never ask God why. He understood the earth is fallen. He understood the rules of Rome could not save mankind, that mankind could not save itself; rather it must be rescued. He knew he was not in the promised land, but still in the desert. We seem to forget - perhaps more truthfully, we refuse to remember - that we are the ones who betrayed Him, not vice versa. We are the ones who listened to the lies of the evil one in the Garden; we chose to mistrust the heart of God. Why, oh why do we have difficulty believing in the God who created the entire universe? Why do we have trouble believing in the One who sent His only Son to save us from ourselves? In the same way God delivered the Israelites from Egypt, so he has delivered us from eternal death to eternal life through His beloved son. He's delivered us from bondage to sin, bondage to narcissism, into fullness of life lived with and for Him. 

True, God is in control of the universe. True, He can prevent suffering whenever He sees fit. However, that doesn't mean that everything that happens is His doing.  Wherever free will exists, by the very nature of things, consequences of choice must exist. These consequences will be either good or bad, depending on the decisions that are made. We are all being tempted by satan. Pain, suffering and death are the result of man's abuse of free will. God does not prevent man's disobedience, even though He knows the consequences will be devastating. He allows a man to reap what he sows. Selfishness grows from the anarchy seed, the seed of the evil one. satan lashes out on the earth like a madman, setting tribes against each other in Rwanda. satan devastates many lives through starvation, alcoholism, substance abuse and pornography. satan is at work in economic chaos around the world, and the corporate-driven greed of American executives. satan is at work in the holocaust of violent, non-loving, disrespecting aborting of babies in the U.S. of A., the narcissism, materialism and intellectualism in America, social class snobbery, and the self-absorption we wallow in when we do not ensure our next generation is brought up in a culture with enriching, wholesome values. What a great responsibility it is to be human. We are human because God made us. If you are not living in touch with God, it is easy to blame Him or pass judgment on Him. We experience suffering and temptation because mankind chose to follow satan. God is reaching out to rescue us … God made nature to sing His praises, to declare His glory and to love Him. He made humans with the ability to choose. He could have ordered our obedience; instead He calls for our heart.

Hannah Rose's Name and Quilt

Praying like Hannah did in I Samuel 1:11, “O Lord Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant‘s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life,” I also asked God to bless me with children, believing as Psalm 127:3 says, “Children are a gift from the Lord.” Experiencing infertility as a young married woman, I believed He would bless me with such treasures, as told to Hannah in I Samuel 1: 17 “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of Him.” Song of Solomon 2:1, “I am a rose of Sharon,” was the other verse fraught with meaning for me when naming my much prayed for daughter, the rose of Sharon symbolizing fertility. Believing one day I would birth a daughter, I chose her lovely name and stitched, for her in faith, a handmade quilt seven years before her birth. Gracing her hand wrought work of love are Hannah Rose’s name, the scripture verses from I Samuel and Song of Solomon and the year I created it.

God Is In Control

God could have shown us how great He is. He could have displayed how powerful and above us He is. Instead, He became as small as we are. What did Jesus know that enabled Him to do what He did? Here's part of the answer. He knew the value of people (His sheeple). He knew that each human being is a treasure. And because He did, people were not a source of stress, but a source of joy. Jesus knows how you feel. You are precious to Him. So precious that He became like you, so that you would come to Him. It is outrageous for the Christ whose rightful place is at the right hand of His Father to step out of timelessness into our world to live as one of us. For people with bodies, important things like love have to be embodied, or else people with bodies would never in a trillion years understand about love. It was not necessary to nail Him to His cross. His unfailing love, arms opened wide for us, would have held Him there. That I should such a life destroy yet live by Him I killed! He lived for us, then He died for us, and then He rose for us. His death atoned for our sins, and His resurrection opens the door to everlasting life. How much easier it would have been for Him to not give us a choice. But to remove the choice would be to remove the love. The one who chose to love created one who could love in return… Now …. it's our choice. Jesus is fishing for us, not to kill us but to give us life. God woos us with kindness. He changes our character with the passion of His love.

God is looking down on this earth, half angry because His beloved mankind has cheated on Him, has committed adultery, and yet He is hopelessly in love with her. God's goodness is spurred by His nature, not by our worthiness. We are wanted by God, pursued by God. He is wanting to preserve us, to guide us through the darkness of the shadow of death up into eternal life in His presence. We are temporarily in these shells on this earth. Paul had no questions. That is how he could be beaten one day, imprisoned the next, and released only to be beaten again and never ask God why. He understood the earth is fallen. He understood the rules of Rome could not save mankind, that mankind could not save itself; rather it must be rescued. He knew he was not in the promised land, but still in the desert. We seem to forget - perhaps more truthfully, we refuse to remember - that we are the ones who betrayed Him, not vice versa. We are the ones who listened to the lies of the evil one in the Garden; we chose to mistrust the heart of God. Why, oh why do we have difficulty believing in the God who created the entire universe? Why do we have trouble believing in the One who sent His only Son to save us from ourselves? In the same way God delivered the Israelites from Egypt, so he has delivered us from eternal death to eternal life through His beloved son. He's delivered us from bondage to sin, bondage to narcissism, into fullness of life lived with and for Him.

True, God is in control of the universe. True, He can prevent suffering whenever He sees fit. However, that doesn't mean that everything that happens is His doing. Wherever free will exists, by the very nature of things, consequences of choice must exist. These consequences will be either good or bad, depending on the decisions that are made. We are all being tempted by satan. Pain, suffering and death are the result of man's abuse of free will. God does not prevent man's disobedience, even though He knows the consequences will be devastating. He allows a man to reap what he sows. Selfishness grows from the anarchy seed, the seed of the evil one. satan lashes out on the earth like a madman, setting tribes against each other in Rwanda. satan devastates many lives through starvation, alcoholism, substance abuse and pornography. satan is at work in economic chaos around the world, and the corporate-driven greed of American executives. satan is at work in the holocaust of violent, non-loving, disrespecting aborting of babies in the U.S. of A., the narcissism, materialism and intellectualism in America, social class snobbery, and the self-absorption we wallow in when we do not ensure our next generation is brought up in a culture with enriching, wholesome values. What a great responsibility it is to be human. We are human because God made us. If you are not living in touch with God, it is easy to blame Him or pass judgment on Him. We experience suffering and temptation because mankind chose to follow satan. God is reaching out to rescue us … God made nature to sing His praises, to declare His glory and to love Him. He made humans with the ability to choose. He could have ordered our obedience; instead He calls for our heart.


Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Right to Prayer

Andy Rooney says:
I don't believe in Santa Claus, but I'm not going to sue somebody for singing a Ho-Ho-Ho song in December. I don't agree with Darwin , but I didn't go out and hire a lawyer when my high school teacher taught his Theory of Evolution.

Life, liberty or your pursuit of happiness will not be endangered because someone says a 30-second prayer before a
football game. So what's the big deal? It's not like somebody is up there reading the entire Book of Acts. They're just talking to a God they believe in and asking him to grant safety to the players on the field and the fans going home from the game.

But it's a
Christian prayer, some will argue.

Yes, and this is the United States of America and Canada , countries founded on Christian principles. According to our very own phone book,
Christian churches outnumber all others better than 200-to-1. So what would you expect -- somebody chanting Hare Krishna?

If I went to a football game in
Jerusalem ,
I would expect to hear a Jewish prayer.

If I went to a soccer game in Baghdad , I would expect to hear a Muslim prayer.

If I went to a ping pong match in
China , I would expect to hear someone pray to Buddha.


And I wouldn't be offended. It wouldn't bother me one bit.

When in Rome .....

But....what about the atheists, is another argument.

What about them? Nobody is asking them to be baptized. We're not going to pass the collection plate. Just humor us for 30 seconds. If that's asking too much, bring a Walkman or a pair of ear plugs. Go to the bathroom. Visit the concession stand. Call your lawyer!

Unfortunately, one or two will make that call. One or two will tell thousands what they can and cannot do. I don't think a short prayer at a football game is going to shake the world's foundations.

Christians are just sick and tired of turning the other cheek while our courts strip us of all our rights. Our parents and grandparents taught us to pray before eating, to pray before we go to sleep.
Our Bible tells us to pray without ceasing. Now a handful of people and their lawyers are telling us to cease praying.

God, help us. And if that last sentence offends you, well, just sue me.

The
silent majority has been silent too long. It's time we tell that one or two who scream loud enough to be heard that the vast majority doesn't care what they want. It is time that the majority rules! It's time we tell them, "You don't have to pray; you don't have to say the Pledge of Allegiance; you don't have to believe in God or attend services that honor Him. That is your right, and we will honor your right; but by golly, you are no longer going to take our
rights away. We are fighting back, and we WILL WIN!"

God bless us one and all...Especially those who denounce Him.
God bless America and Canada, despite all our faults We are still the greatest nations of all. God bless our servicemen who are fighting to protect our right to pray and worship God.


Let's make 2010 the year the silent majority is heard and we put God back as the foundation of our families and institutions. And our military forces come home from all the wars.

Keep looking up.

Killing Life and Liveliness

Why are more and more people being diagnosed with mental illness? Laziness and narcissism are symptoms of mental illness, and they are at the root of all human evil.  Most of us would prefer to follow rather than lead, because it requires more thinking to lead.  When we give up our right to think for ourselves, we have entered a dangerous state of laziness, a condition ripe for others to control us.  Why are there more and more psychopaths? Could it possibly be due to the stench in our society? Is it just so much harder to cope while living surrounded by so much filth? Consider the mobility of our society and the fewer meaningful connections we are making with each other? Could there be any correlation between mental illness, psychopathy and tossing God out of the public square? Can it have to do at all with how the cultural and intellectual elite want the common folk to be managed, kept quiet, under wraps, controlled and manipulated so we will not display passion about Jesus or about the corruption permeating our culture? I believe they want us drugged into submission, complacency, mediocrity and tolerance so their evil fog of progressivism can freely infiltrate this land and its people. They want us drugged so we won't display all of the emotions with which God created us, so we won't engage our brains to think for ourselves. They want us drugged so we will remain silently tucked away in our homes, not caring about the ever deepening pit of evil into which our country is wallowing. They want us to believe all is well. They want us to be a nation of cookie cutter people, unable to display our original creativity, for that scares them.  It makes us unpredictable, and, therefore, harder to control. They want us to mind our own business, and to swallow the lie that the choices other people make for themselves won't affect us. As Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1963, "Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly ... I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be." Progressives will stop at nothing to acquire and maintain their covert agenda. Like Lazarus in John 12:10-11, "So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in Him." they want to kill me too. There are ways to kill life and liveliness without committing murder, and with their control, they want to destroy my liveliness. We may "break" a horse or even a child without harming a hair on it's head. Erich Fromm was acutely sensitive to this fact when he broadened the definition of necrophilia to include the desire of certain people to control others - to make them controllable, to foster their dependency, to discourage their capacity to think for themselves, to diminish their unpredictability and originality, to keep them in line. Distinguishing it from a "biophilic" person, one who appreciates and fosters the variety of life forms and the uniqueness of the individual, he demonstrated a "necrophilia character type," whose aim it is to avoid the inconvenience of life by transforming others into obedient automatons, robbing them of their humanity. Evil, then, is that force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness.

We are all born knowing God, with a conscience to divide between right and wrong.  The truth, which is Jesus, leads us to right thinking, wisdom and robust mental health.  Sadly, the seduction of this corrupt world begins its relentless assault on our minds and souls as soon as we are born into it.  The mental WILLness begins as we freely reject Him.  Robbed of righteous, clear thinking, the more we choose to follow the wide path to destruction, by making choices that lead us in the direction of death, instead of life, the more our minds are rendered incapacitated and we become ever more mentally ill, deficient or diseased.  The only answer to mental illness is for one to be transformed by the renewing of one's mind in Jesus.  Personal purification is required not only for the salvation of our individual souls, but for also for the salvation of our world.


Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Talk About Layin' Down Your Life for a Friend!

This is a true story, folks. An eight year old boy had a younger sister who was dying of leukemia, and he was told that without a blood transfusion she would die. His parents explained to him that his blood was probably compatible with hers, and if so, he could be the blood donor. They asked him if they could test his blood. He said sure. So they did and it was a good match. Then they asked if he would give his sister a pint of blood, that it could be her only chance of living. He said he would have to think about it overnight.

The next day he went to his parents and said he was willing to donate the blood. So they took him to the hospital where he was put on a gurney beside his six year old sister. Both of them were hooked up to IVs. A nurse withdrew a pint of blood from the boy, which was then put in his sister's IV. The boy lay on his gurney in silence while the blood dripped into his sister, until the doctor came over to see how he was doing. Then the boy opened his eyes and asked, "How soon until I start to die?"