| Recent Tidbits |
Other Revelations |
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| The Shack |  The Shack, by WM. Paul Young, was one of the most comforting books I’ve read in a long time. Our church committed at bible study to this book. The entire congregation was encouraged to purchase a copy and we discussed in weekly meetings during lent season. There is a lot to talk about in the book. I gave out some copies to see what my friends and family thought of it. I received mixed reactions from them. |
| Light vs Dark |  I’ve been noticing a lot of signs advertising events and even more merchandise devoted to Halloween this year. I’m going to be frank: I hate Halloween. I think it’s the worst holiday ever that trivializes and even glorifies things that are evil and sadistic. As I drove down the expressway the other day I saw a billboard advertising a "Spirit" Halloween superstore. On the poster there was a scary-looking skeleton/demon hooded in a black cape. I didn’t read the sign thoroughly because I was driving but the gist was that there was a huge store for all people’s Halloween needs — costumes, make-up, decorations, etc. When I drove to work the other day I saw someone’s yard littered with skeletons, and other Halloween paraphernalia. This person had even bothered to put up orange lights on his/her trees. |
| Foothold |  "’In your anger do not sin’:Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold," Ephesians 4:26-27 (NIV). A friend and I had a disagreement this past month about music. We work in a home care setting where there are two residents: my sister and an older woman with Down’s Syndrome. My sister and I like to listen to music because my sister is unable to focus on the TV and for me the TV is destructive. The woman with Down’s Syndrome likes to watch cartoons, all day, and my friend likes to have the TV on while she’s at work for background noise. My friend dislikes music; I dislike the television. One day we had a disagreement about what should be on while we were there and if it was fair for one of us to have the TV on all the time and one of us not to. When I left from work that day after the disagreement I was angry. Apparently my friend was also. |
| Praise Song |  Oh He died died died so you’d live live live in the truth truth truth of His love love love.
With nails and thorns in His lovely flesh, we are born again, by His wounds we are healed, His truth revealed in His love love love shining from above...we are bought by His blood, given to the Son.
As the days chip away we are refined by grace, like silver in the fire, our trials draw us higher.
His love makes us whole so that we may go on to do His will strengthening ever still.
His beauty emanates, His light radiates from our once cold hearts now reborn to start beating for him, shining through Him, glowing for Him, all for Him — callous trimmed, filled to the brim, thorns and thistles replaced with love sown with His own tears which replace our fears.
Knowing His grace, reveals His face — shining like the sun, a friendship won. |
| Spirit of Fear |  Recently, I was gripped with fear. My emotional paralysis came about when I started to entertain the idea that the end of the world was fast coming. Lately, I’ve been feeling the imminence of the end times. I would turn to the left and realize that there was no exit there then turning to the right, I would find the same blockade. My mind was basically frozen in a state of worry. Most people have undergone something similar but theirs might have stemmed from financial troubles or familial difficulties that seemed insurmountable. For some it escalates into a panic attack and lasts moments, while for others, living in a perpetual state of fear is commonplace. When the terrorist attacks of 2001 hit many people accepted fear into their way of life. |
| Mending Wounds |  It is easy to become distracted by day to day inconveniences. Sometimes it feels like the whole world is pushing against us. There is definitely a battle going on. We are surrounded by media and information. There is a lot to do and a lot of new things to learn and experience. At the same time, the pace of the current American culture is becoming increasingly hard to keep up with. As the Baby Boomer generation ages, they are coping with the grieving processes associated with losing parents and children moving out of the home. The youth culture is rapidly expanding and people are focusing more on images of physical beauty and wealth. With the population growing, many are turning inward to escape the outward pressure of conformity. Many are trying to increase their visibility, desiring a lifestyle glorified in the media of fame and instant gratification. |
| Differences |  People that know me know that when I go places, a lot of times, I have my younger sister with me. My younger sister is nineteen and is physically and mentally disabled. She has what is known as Rett Syndrome. She cannot talk or walk and she can’t make purposeful hand movements. She can, however, enjoy life. |
| Holy Spirit |  Are you right with God? Have you opened up your life to Him? I know some parts of my life God is slowly working His way through. I’ve heard a lot of people say that you need to give your life over to Christ and hand over all of your problems as if it were easy. It’s not! Something happens as we grow up from our youth to adulthood that makes us want to be in charge all of the time. It is impossible to hand every choice you will ever make over to God unless you have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our daily advisor. He goes with us from place to place telling us what is acceptable in God’s sight. Many people don’t want God to get that close. They don’t want Him in the bathroom with them. |
| Keep Watch |  When Christ is waiting in the Garden of Gethsemane at night (Matthew 26:36-46), praying to the Father about the crucifixion, His disciples are sleeping. In Jesus’ presence they were relaxed. They thought that He being the Son of God would protect them. Jesus, knowing the suffering He was about to endure prayed fervently all night asking that the cup be taken from Him if it was the Father’s will. Jesus probably wanted the only friends He had on earth to pray for Him. He had warned them before about His imminent death but apparently the disciples either didn’t believe Him or weren’t worried about it. They were able to sleep during the time when He warned them to pray and keep watch for Him. A couple of days later when Christ was tried they were no where to be found. It seems that they were then realizing that they were in danger, too. If Christ wasn’t going to save Himself from death, perhaps they thought that He wasn’t going to save them either. They couldn’t understand what was about to happen. Peter denied Jesus three times and for the last time, he called a curse on himself. |
| Spiritual Warfare |  I was watching the news the other day and they were interviewing a man from Miami that claims that there is no such thing as hell, evil or the devil. He also claims that he is the Christ. Apparently, there is some following to his movement but I don’t buy it.
There are a few tricks that work pretty well in deterring people from salvation. One is denying the existence of evil, hence denying the existence of sin and negating the good news of the gospel. Another way to deter people from seeking the Lord is by dramatizing evil and making it so blatantly extreme it is foreign and incomprehensible to most people, as in horror flicks and Hollywood dramas wherein people are taught to fear it if they don’t have a silver bullet or wooden stake. Another way to avert salvation is to familiarize people with sin and evil so that it appears to be commonplace and not so evil — just naughty, as in daytime soap opera naughty. All of these are pretty sneaky tricks and all examples of ways in which spiritual warfare is being waged daily in all of our lives. |
| Priority Spending |  Few people realize that their spending affects their relationship with God. What we do with our money indicates what is most valuable to us. It indicates what or who we worship.
Half of the world lives on less than two dollars a day.* It would cost 6 billion to solve education problems and to create literacy for the entire world, yet in America 8 billion is spent annually on cosmetic sales. This is why what we do with our money matters. |
| Religion and Faith |  There is a difference between being religious and being faithful. Sometimes when I bring up my faith to another person they back away assuming that I am about to preach to them or judge them. There are many reasons why people do this and each person has their own. I’ve heard many people say that they don’t like religion to be forced down their throat. This makes me wonder if they were brought up in a church that pressed the need for religion rather than faith. |
| Forgiveness |  It can be very difficult to forgive someone that hurts us. Oftentimes they continue to hurt us long after the incident because we allow them to. Their offenses will ruminate in our heads as we think of the clever responses we could have administered during the argument or what we could have done instead of what we did. It’s easy to fall down the slippery slope of revenge. Our minds seem to have an innate ability to focus narrowly when anger is involved. We think of their offense and all the multiple ways in which they wronged us. We try to justify their actions by labeling them or making judgments about their character. All these thoughts we have are destructive. They make us bitter, unhappy, and hot-headed. They keep our fires of anger burning. |
| Planetary Emergency |  "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well," (Psalm 139:14 NIV).
Creation has been carefully sewn and intertwined by our Creator. Nature as we know it has taken thousands of years to develop and evolve. The last time the world faced a climate change as drastic as what we are currently experiencing was during the period that immediately preceded the Ice Age. What are we going to do about it? As we are now seeing, global warming doesn’t just cause heightening of the atmospheric temperature in the southern hemisphere, it causes cooling in the northern hemisphere due to the change in planetary climate equilibrium (Gore 151). Global warming is a huge threat looming over the face of humanity and all of the life forms that occupy our planet. |
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| Self-Control |  "The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray," (1 Peter 4:7 NIV).
I am realizing the importance of this verse day by day. Christ has forgiven the sins of His followers. His blood paid the debt our cumulative, individual, past, present and future sin has incurred (Romans 5:9). Freedom in Christ, spoken of in Romans, is a gift offered to believers. This freedom is a freedom to choose whether or not we will sin. Before being saved, we couldn’t choose. Without the Holy Spirit, we were not motivated in faith to abstain from sin nor were we capable of living sin-free lives (Romans 7:14-20). Before God’s blessing on a person’s life offered through Christ’s sacrifice we were unable to please God. Without His Holy Spirit, we lived lives that were unsatisfactory to God because we didn’t understand the way of love which is fostered by the indwelling of His Spirit. We may have been religious, attending church regularly, tithing, or even going to confession, but our hearts were still hardened and focused on religious practices or a belief that by our own righteousness we were saved. In short, we did not know God and were slaves to our sinful nature (Romans 6:17). In contrast, God’s real presence in our lives causes us to have the consciousness of sin with the writing of the law upon our hearts (Romans 2:15). His Holy Spirit gives us the power to say no to sin and His love for us gives us the motivation to do right by His standards. With this freedom comes responsibility, however. |
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| Watch Out! |  Be careful. This is my advice to sincere Christians. Before I was saved I thought that by being a good person I would get into heaven. In fact, with my superior knowledge, I would ponder, who else is getting into heaven — as if it were Harvard or Yale or some other prestigious university. My superior ability in saving myself by being a good person (speaking sarcastically now) allowed me to judge other people who weren’t saved by works, like me. I spent my whole life believing that people were saved by their good deeds — basically, I believed that God would be forced to let me go to heaven because He would be so impressed with my self-righteousness. However, as we know, self-righteousness is likened to filthy rags in the bible and God is not impressed by it (Isaiah 64:6). God knows that the only man without sin was Christ Jesus and without Him, we have no passage into eternal life (Romans 3:23). Before I was saved for real, I knew nothing of the Holy Spirit. It was not in my life. Incidentally, there would be times when I would run into someone that did have the Holy Spirit and I would instinctively know that there was something different about them. 2 Corinthians 1:22 says about the Holy Spirit, "Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come." When one accepts Christ into their life, by repenting of his/her sin and asking Jesus for forgiveness, Christ endows them with the Holy Spirit (Ezekiel 11:19). Let me just tell you, this Spirit is much to be desired. |
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| Debates 2008 |  I have been following the election debates, trying to get a feel for which candidate would be representational of my vote in the past weeks. I’ve said casually in prayer, "God, who should I vote for?" In the back of my mind, however, I had already decided. This past weekend, a chain of events inspired me to change my mind. |
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| Election Time |  Recently, email forwards have been streaming into my inbox that are related to the election, most of them specifically targeted to Republicans. I’m not sure how I got on this mailing list. If I were associated with a party it’d be the Green party. However, I don’t know that the best candidate will come from one specific party. I must say, I was extremely displeased with the last two elections because the issues that I consider hugely relevant were seemingly made out to be non-issues by the commercialist media. As a Christian, it felt like I was obligated to vote for the Republican party because they stake claims to Christianity. Being an independent thinker, I had to reach into my experience with Christianity and form my own opinion as to which party representative seemed to meet enough criteria to be suitable as the right candidate. |
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| Christians Or Not? |  Normally, I find it best to avoid debates. I am a person with strong opinions and to stay out of conflict, for the most part, I avoid debate-prone topics. Recently, however, I found myself in a debate with an atheist. I’ve been in discussions with non-believers before and once with a Jewish man but this conversation was particularly disturbing. The conversation started with a conflict over media choice presentation to youth and later evolved into a conversation about belief systems. The person I spoke with apparently had a bad experience early in life with someone he identified as a Christian. |
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| Power in Positivity |  One day a few weeks ago, I had some free time and decided I would go out. At a restaurant I visited there was a jukebox. At first, I didn’t really notice the music in the background. I just remember it being country music. As I stayed longer I watched a younger man walk to the jukebox, put in a dollar, select a song, and then go sit back down with his three friends. When the song came on it forced an immediate impact on the room’s occupants. The waiters and waitresses expressions changed, people’s interactions changed, even people’s movements were different. I don’t know the artist but the music was heavy rock with screeching guitar, loud base and violent lyrics. The music was rhythmic, however, and the person who put the song in seemed to be pleased with it. My waitress was indubitably irritated, in any event, and people became noticibly either more aggressive or more anxious. |
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| Mary Versus Martha |  Today the church I attend had a sermon about Mary and Martha from the bible. If you remember from the New Testament the part where Mary and Martha come in is where Jesus and the disciples are reclining at the table, Martha is in the kitchen cleaning up and Mary is sitting at Jesus’ feet. Martha, Mary’s sister, says to Jesus, "Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!" (Luke 10:40 NIV) "Martha, Martha," Jesus replies, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her," (Luke 10:41-42 NIV). |
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| Lawlessness |  Recently, I spoke with someone who said that he believed as a Christian believes but not necessarily about Christ being the pivotal point of salvation. He said he believes this because he doesn’t understand "where that leaves the Jews." I’ve been studying the book of Matthew lately and it just so happens that that book explains very clearly where that leaves those under the law — in a predicament. |
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| Stay In Touch |  I’m reading a book right now called "The Power of Simple Prayer" by Joyce Meyer. Joyce is an excellent and inspiring author. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the prayer types she suggests in her book. One prayer type she advises people to pray is the prayer of consecration. In essence, the prayer of consecration is a prayer of devotion. It is a prayer, as she explains it, that cries out to the Lord, "Take me — I’m yours." She goes on to talk about the prayer of consecration as a powerful prayer that should be prayed with caution as its results can be astounding. |
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| Safe People |  The book "Safe People - How To Find Relationships That Are Good For You And Avoid Those That Aren’t" by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend is a definite must-read. In it, the authors illustrate means of developing relationships that encourage and foster spiritual and interpersonal growth. There are parts that define "safe" people and safe relationships and parts that define "unsafe" relationships. You will likely find yourself in one of the character categories listed as Drs. Cloud and Townsend are skilled at the art of enumeration. In fact, one of the most redeeming qualities of the book is the way in which it is structured, using plenty of examples and classifications for each character type. |
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| Witnessing |  There was a time in my life when I would cringe at the words "witness," "evangelize," or "sharing one’s faith" although I knew they were some of the most important words of Christianity. In Mark 16:15 Christ says, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation." The thought of this used to terrify me. Somehow early in my faith walk I was given the message that to be saved you have to save people. While this is not necessarily correct there is some truth to it. |
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| Church Hopping |  A friend of mine was recently considering moving to another church. I counseled him not to. His reasoning was not because of bad doctrine, hypocrisy or bad practices but because he wanted to try something new and meet new people. While I think that his motives were good he was not considering some of the things the church had supported him through. He was not treating them like family. |
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