Forgiveness v. reconcilliation II

— Posted inSpiritual Growth — 3 min read

Via HotAir.com, here’s an update on the Jenny Sanford story. She just announced she is divorcing her adulterous husband. In Forgiveness vs. Reconciliation, I used her example to illustrate the critical Biblical difference between these two concepts. While we must forgive, reconciliation depends on repentance.

Sanford’s statement today, and the video interview, illustrates grace and class once again. She tried repeatedly to reconcile – true reconciliation does not violate moral principles. She delayed going public with the divorce news so that it wouldn’t influence the impeachment proceedings active against her husband. She admits the pain she experienced, but she draws a line between being a victim and rooting her identity in victimhood, the latter being satan’s enfeebling trap (see Jeremiah’s Complaint). Root your identity in God, and life’s blows will not keep you down.

“Life is pain, princess; anyone who says differently is trying to sell you something”. That nugget is from the classic The Princess Bride. While it is true that we should expect pain, we have the option to respond to life’s challenges and overcome with truth and grace. When we do, we are free. God is glorified in and through us, His purposes for us are restored and we know the joy of His presence. And once our attitudes are out of the way, if any wrong was done to us, God is more free to work repentance into the wrongdoer (Job 42.7; Mat 16.19).

Jenny’s statement and video follow.

(more…)

The religious American (updated 12/11)

— Posted inChurch, Culture and Society — 2 min read

Pew has an interesting new survey out today on religious beliefs and practices. Like it or not, post-modernism is here. Structures are meaning less and less, and function more and more.

Americans are more likely to attend church outside their denominations than before. One-fifth of Catholics now do so, and about a fourth of Prots. It seems a grassroots ecumenicism is well underway.

But beliefs too have become amalgamated, with Christianity being blended with things like Eastern meditation and astrology. (If you’re one of the 22%(!) of American Christians who believe in reincarnation, you might want to chew on this for a while.)

(more…)

Jeremiah’s complaint

— Posted inBible, Spiritual Growth — 9 min read

Woe is me, my mother, that you have borne me, a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have not loaned, nor have men loaned to me; yet every one curses me. – Jer 15:10

The time has come for me to wrestle with a passage that to a large extent defined my life for far too many a year. Though I’m still in process, I’ve seen major victory over it now and would like to shed some light on it. And in doing so I want to nail this thing down for good, and grab the final victory over it.

Jeremiah was called as a youth to be a prophet of the Lord. His path was not to be easy. Israel was in severe decline, and had indeed stepped so far away from the Lord that it became Jeremiah’s task to proclaim God’s judgment on her: she was to be conquered and taken away by the fierce Babylonians. As you can imagine, this was an unpopular task. While there were plenty of false prophets about, telling the people they could live ungodly lives and still enjoy God’s favor, and making Jeremiah’s life quite unbearable, the job-application line for faithful prophets, who would proclaim the true message of God, wasn’t long at all.

That’s quite a burden to place on a young man. Jeremiah seems to have had no collegial, idyllic “school of the prophets” experience, or any honeymoon period. He just got right into it, and soon began mixing it up with the false prophets whose prestige and perqs he threatened. Jeremiah must have been cut from some very extraordinary spiritual stock for the Lord to entrust this heavy burden to him. He has always been an inspiration to me.

(more…)
Pages: 1 2

Batteries and misplaced religion

— Posted inCulture and Society, Persecution links — 7 min read

Make no mistake, we are watching the spectacular implosion of our society. Because the pace of life is accelerated, we are inured to change. Distracted by the latest celebrity newsmaker, we no longer take notice, but our institutions are crashing down around us just as surely and obscenely as the Twin Towers toppled, each collapsing floor adding to the energy and inevitability of the destruction.

Waiting patiently

— Posted inBible, Faith, Spiritual Growth — 4 min read

I waited patiently for the Lord;  he inclined to me and heard my cry.  

He drew me up from the pit of destruction,  out of the miry bog,  and set my feet upon a rock,  making my steps secure.  

He put a new song in my mouth,  a song of praise to our God.  Many will see and fear,  and put their trust in the Lord. 

Blessed is the man who makes  the Lord his trust,  who does not turn to the proud,  to those who go astray after a lie!   – Ps 40:1-4

I’m posting this passage because it has become so meaningful to me. Just recently I was feeling anxiety about the Lord working out my circumstances. We need to get used to the biblical dynamic whereby things usually get worse before they get better. Whether it’s the history of Israel or the healings and deliverances of Jesus in the Gospels, the protagonists usually must pass through a crisis stage before they see God’s mighty power come through for them. (more…)

Choosing to believe the promises

— Posted inBible, Faith, Spiritual Growth — 4 min read

I’ve been in the midst of moving, and not under the best of circumstances. I’ve had to downsize, and there is a huge question mark where I’d like my future plans to be filled in. Because of the changes, the last year and a half have been very challenging indeed.

There have been plenty of good times, and the Lord has progressively strengthened me as He brought me through. I’ve seen His faithfulness proven time and again.

But I’m not out of the woods yet, and some days are more difficult than others. Yesterday everything seemed to go wrong, and today I was exhausted from dealing with it all.

So I was in the garage today straightening up, when I discovered that a garbage bag had leaked fluid onto the floor, over to where some tools were lying. As I bent over, picking up the tools, I saw a small poster I had kept for years in my office back home, soaking wet in the mess. It read

God always gives His best

To those who leave the choice to Him

Being in a rather negative frame of mind, I cynically thought how symbolic it was that this promise was mired in garbage effluent. It seemed that that was where God’s promises to me were as well. Might as well throw the poster out with the garbage at this point, and come down to earth and begin to face reality in my own strength. (more…)

A reverence for God

— Posted inBible, Faith, Spiritual Growth — 5 min read

I  recently was drawn to the “strange fire” episode in Leviticus, in which two of Aaron’s sons offered an unauthorized sacrifice to the Lord, and lost their lives for their presumption.

And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it, and put incense on it, and offered strange fire before the LORD, which He had not commanded them.

And there went out fire from the LORD and devoured them, and they died before the LORD.

As dramatic as that initial event was, it was the aftermath that caught my interest, how God dealt with Aaron in his grieving.

Then Moses said to Aaron, It [is] that which the LORD spoke, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come near me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace.

And Moses called Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Uzziel, the uncle of Aaron, and said to them, Come near, carry your brothers from before the sanctuary out of the camp.

And they came near and carried them in their coats out of the camp, as Moses had said.

And Moses said to Aaron and to Eleazar and Ithamar his sons, Do not uncover your heads nor tear your clothes, lest you die, and lest He be angry on all the people. But let your brothers, the whole of Israel, mourn the burning which the LORD has kindled.

And you shall not go out of the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, lest you die. For the anointing oil of the LORD is on you. And they did according to the word of Moses. – Lev 10:1-7

It may seem strange, but Aaron and his remaining sons, priests all, were not allowed to mourn the sudden loss of family. The nation of Israel was to mourn for them, but the priests were to “hold their peace”. And the reason for that? The anointing oil of the Lord was on them.

The underlying truth here is that God’s holiness trumps whatever we are experiencing in life. Our difficulties, our tests, our emotions, all must be submitted to God if we are to stay in right relationship with Him and not lose the anointing. (more…)

Startling evidence of how far we have fallen

— Posted inCulture and Society, Persecution links — 2 min read

If you want to get a taste for how far we’ve fallen, for how deeply our culture has embraced a suicidal level of political correctness that prevents us from defending ourselves from evil, give http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2QxNWFlZDM5MDQ0NzM4MDg3ZjA3MDE5ZjNmYzBjYzU a read.

The Army has learned nothing at all from the Ft. Hood massacre, and indeed seems to have stepped up efforts to insure that no Muslim will be offended by our response to that atrocity – even to the point of inviting representatives of terrorist organizations in to lecture our troops and to care for them as chaplains.

Can you see that the West is doomed unless it returns to the Lord? All our freedoms, all our accomplishments, were not due to our brilliance or natural resources, they came because we ordered ourselves according to the revealed truth of God’s Word. We are seeing dramatic and horrible proof of that assertion, as we now witness our downfall even in the midst of the greatest prosperity the world has ever seen, because we have functionally abandoned our God, the one true God, the only God.

I’m torn with how best to fight this battle. I know it needs to be fought spiritually, through prayer and the Word. I know the Kingdom and the church need to be built up. But at the same time I believe that getting the warning out regarding political developments can be used of the Lord to wake people up to our dire condition.

Between the globalist humanists on one hand and the radical Muslims on the other, we are living in critical times.

Share

Islam’s true nature: making sense of the Koran

— Posted inCulture and Society — 4 min read

Give this article a quick read: http://www.citizenwarrior.com/2007/11/modern-revelations-about-islamic.html. It very neatly puts the nature Islam in perspective.

Understanding Islam is very simple when you put the Koran in chronological order. The Koran, which was written by one man, and which blatantly contradicts itself, theologically mirrors Muhammad’s changing circumstances. When he was in the minority, his revelations were peaceful, winsome. After the flight to Medina, however, they began to turn aggressive and finally violent. It was at this time that Muhammad and his followers began raiding caravans – killing, raping and plundering. Later would come full-fledged blood persecution of the “infidels”.

Several years ago, when America chose a president who promised to fix the economy, but who was of low morals and ethics and who supported unrestricted legal abortion, Ralph Martin admonished the U.S. with the Bible proverb, “Do not accept a bribe for the perversion of justice”. Violating that principle will bring a curse whether the violator is an individual or a nation. And that is exactly what we have done to ourselves. Looking around at our society and culture, is it not obvious? (more…)

Questions regarding the Ft. Hood massacre

— Posted inChristianity, Culture and Society, Faith, Persecution links — 8 min read

Questions have arisen concerning whether the Obama administration’s worldview and self-interest are impeding the pursuit of truth concerning the Ft. Hood massacre.

A handy online Bible utility

— Posted inBible, Prayer, Software — 2 min read

EDIT: As of 4/2016, this site seems down. Too bad, was a nice service.

I just came across on Twitter a very neat Bible utility that you might find handy. If you want to link to any Bible passage, you can quickly write it in the format: http://scrip.ly/bk:vss. Here’s an example:

http://scrip.ly/jer29:11-13

This saves looking up a URL from an online Bible and then perhaps shortening it. It’s a pretty intelligent engine, recognizing split passages such as:

http://scrip.ly/jer29.11;13

And note that my preferred use of the period rather than colon is recognized as well (this is easier on the Dvorak keyboard layout).

One drawback at this time is that one cannot browse the Bible at the scrip.ly site, except by writing in an enlarged passage (which really isn’t too hard):

www.scrip.ly/jer29

Maybe some day scrip.ly will make the Chapter tab clickable. That will be a good way to encourage visitors to hang around and do further Bible reading. The URL above also shows the shorter “www.” syntax, which works because it is redirected to the default. The “www” arrangement is easier to type, but Twitterers be aware that many third party Twitter clients that I have used, including the popular TweetDeck and HootSuite (my favorite), do not mark up this syntax into a clickable link.

Scrip.ly is a clever idea and a great service for spreading the Word!

Hint: click on this blog’s ‘bible software” tag in the sidebar for more articles relating to Bible programs and modules.


 

Separately, I came across a great brief exhortation to prayer. I’ve been devoting more time to prayer, and have been seeing amazing breakthroughs, but opposition comes, and this piece came at a good time. See who is praying three hours a day and what it will do.

Be blessed,
Paul

Share

Berlin Wall +20

— Posted inCulture and Society — 1 min read

In honor of the 20th anniversary of the demise of the Berlin Wall, infamous symbol of repression, here is the clip of President Reagan challenging Gorbachev to tear it down.

This was a real president, who understood America’s soul and purpose. Reagan was excoriated in the liberal media at the time for being too provocative toward the Communist empire. Today, the anti-American media hasn’t changed, but now they have little to complain about.

Today we’re still fighting for freedom, but the battle has dramatically moved within our own borders.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtYdjbpBk6A]


Share to your social media:

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Furl | Newsvine