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Bible Contradictions? True or False

By Pastor Denny Smith

Dec 31, 2008 - If we believe the Bible is the word of God why do we often interpret it in a way that makes it contradict itself? Truth is harmonious or else it's not truth and cannot be. Jesus says of God's word, "your word is truth." (John 17:17) It does not oppose itself when properly interpreted.

Martin Luther was persuaded he had found contradiction in the Bible between what Paul wrote in Romans about salvation being by faith versus James saying it was by works. In an online article entitled, "Martin Luther's View of the Epistle of James" by Daniel Petty he says, "Once Luther remarked that he would give his doctor's beret to anyone who could reconcile James and Paul (Bainton 259)." (His source: Bainton, Roland H. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther. New York: New American Library, 1950; 1978.) Martin Luther's doctrine does indeed make Paul and James contradict one another. That fact alone ought to tell you he was wrong in his theology no matter how sincere.

Any time your doctrine makes the Bible contradict itself this tells you, if you will listen, that your doctrine is in error, incorrect, that you are wrong in your thinking, and need a new approach to understanding the scripture.

In the first place we error when we speak of the word of God as though it came from man even though I concede we generally know what is meant by such statements. But, the reality is it is not Paul's word, then James' word, and then Peter's, etc., for "all scripture is given by inspiration of God." (2 Tim. 3:16 NKJV) What Paul wrote he wrote by inspiration. What James wrote he wrote by inspiration.

Thus if Paul says we are saved by faith and James says we are saved by works then both are correct else you have God fighting against himself. Even worse you have God lying in one place or the other if either Paul or James is wrong. If both are correct truth is harmonious as it must be.

Everyone agrees the New Testament is full of passages that teach that a man is saved by faith so due to space considerations I will only list a couple. John 3:36 (NKJV), "He who believes in the Son has everlasting life." Rom. 5:1 (NKJV), "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

We all accept these passages and this teaching but too often people do not consider or give thought to what faith is. Do these passages define faith? Do they tell you whether this is a living faith or a dead faith as per James? Is it an obedient faith or a disobedient faith? Is faith just a matter of the mind alone, a belief held, or is it more than that? The texts do not tell us.

The assumption is we know what faith is and generally that is whatever we each individually want it to be. We define it as we desire. This creates a lot of problems in interpreting the Bible and the end result is we end up with doctrines that have the Bible contradicting itself.

Without preaching a sermon on faith to define it let me refer you to James 2:22 (ESV). "You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works." The scriptural biblical faith that saves is that faith which is a completed faith, not an incomplete faith. Other versions use the word "perfect" instead of the word "complete". It is the faith that is made perfect that saves rather than the faith not made perfect.

The New Living Translation of the Bible, which I consider a paraphrase, gets at the sense of what is being taught. (James 2:22 NLT), "You see, he was trusting God so much that he was willing to do whatever God told him to do. His faith was made complete by what he did - by his actions." This is saving faith, the faith that saves, the only kind of faith that makes a difference, the only concept of faith we should hold, the only concept of saving faith that is scriptural.

Only faith so strong that it obeys can save but this is the very concept of faith that is wanting among most believers, believers whose concept of faith is merely mental assent.

James then says by inspiration that we are saved by works. "You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only." (James 2:24 NKJV) A man can either believe that or say it is a lie. We can say no, justification is by faith alone. A man can say a lot of things. It is what the Bible says that matters.

Jesus has said we will be judged by his word in the last day. "He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him - the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day." (John 12:48 NKJV)
If a person's doctrine does not allow for salvation by both faith and works he is in error since the Bible states clearly that one is saved by both. The passages quoted above suffice to show that.

But, one will object. How about Eph. 2:8-9, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast." (NKJV) Since the Bible, and truth, cannot contradict itself it becomes immediately obvious that Paul is speaking of one kind of works while James speaks of another. One type of works saves; the other does not and cannot.

The type of works that cannot save are the works of the Law of Moses. Why could they not save? I quote Gal. 3:10 (TEV), "Those who depend on obeying the Law live under a curse. For the scripture says, 'whoever does not always obey everything that is written in the book of the Law is under God's curse!'" One act of disobedience during any point in the course of one's life would condemn him without remedy under the law. No man can live a perfect life without ever sinning. No man will ever be a perfect law keeper.

This being the case Paul writes in Gal. 3:21, "For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law." (NKJV) Since no such law could be given man could only be saved by Christ, by faith in him.

But, there are works other than the works of the Law of Moses. These are the works James speaks of which bring justification. What are those works?

Hear the writer of the book of Hebrews. The Hebrew writer says of Jesus, "And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him." (Heb. 5:9 NKJV) Paul who speaks so much of salvation by faith and grace says in Rom. 6:16, "Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness?" Note his phrase, "obedience to righteousness." This is the same as to say obedience to salvation for the righteous person will be saved, not the unrighteous.

It becomes readily clear then that the works James speaks of that bring justification are works of obedience to Christ. Too many are ready to say that obedience is more or less equivalent to law keeping. Since we are not saved by law they do not see obedience as being essential. True, for example, Christ commands baptism but one does not have to obey that to be saved. To require it would be law keeping or salvation by works.

The trouble with that way of thinking is that the idea is in conflict with passages such as those I have just quoted, Hebrews 5:9 for example. If one's doctrine does not harmonize with total Bible preaching on a subject it cannot be true.

The truth is Christ was also a law giver and has a law we are expected to keep as much as we humanly can. Listen to the following scriptures. "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." (Gal 6:2 NKJV) This is Paul writing, the very one who wrote of salvation by grace and faith. Paul says of himself, "not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ." (1 Cor. 9:21 NKJV)

The Hebrew writer says, "For the priesthood being changed, of necessity there is also a change of the law." (Heb. 7:12 NKJV) He doesn't say now there is no law but only that the law has changed. It is now the law of Christ, not the law of Moses. If there is no law today how does one commit sin? John says, depending on which version you use, that "sin is lawlessness" (NKJV, NAS), "sin is the transgression of the law." (KJV 1 John 3:4). Jesus himself says, "He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me." (John 14:21 NKJV) Is a God given commandment not law?

But, here is the difference. The law of Moses required perfect law keeping for salvation, an impossibility. The law of Christ, while still law, provides a grace element for sin. The person, however, who thinks he can forget all about the commandments of Jesus and just be saved by grace and faith apart from works of obedience makes the scriptures contradict themselves, invites lawlessness, and propagates error if he teaches such. The scriptures are harmonious.

This brings us to the place where so many want to kick and say it is not so, to baptism. The Bible teaches we are saved by baptism. "There is an antitype which now saves us, namely baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 3:21 NKJV)

"Then Peter said to them, 'Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins,'" while preaching the first gospel sermon ever heard after the resurrection of Jesus (Acts 2:38 NKJV). Saul was told, "Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins." (Acts 22:16 NKJV) Jesus says, "unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." (John 3:5 NKJV)

Paul, the very man who speaks of salvation by faith although never faith alone, says, "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ." (Gal. 3:26-27 NKJV) Many would have this read, "for as many of you as were not baptized into Christ have put on Christ." That will not work. That is not what Paul said or taught.

Paul says in Rom. 6:3, "as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus" so he says the same thing again that he had said in Gal. 3:26-27. One is baptized into Christ. Salvation is in Christ. Paul says (2 Tim. 2:10 NKJV), "Therefore I endure all things for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory."
Salvation is "in Christ Jesus". We are, Paul says, "baptized into Christ Jesus." Thus if there is no baptism, there is no being in Christ Jesus, and no salvation which is found only in Christ Jesus.

One can believe it or not but make no mistake about it, that is what God's word says and teaches. When God says something we ought to believe it and obey it. One's sins are forgiven at baptism which is the act where one contacts the blood of Christ.

Jesus shed his blood in his death. His side was pierced and the blood flowed forth after he was already dead. (John 19:33-34) Paul say's we are baptized into his death (Rom. 6:3) which is where Jesus' blood is located for the simple reason that is where God chose to locate it. No, there is no real blood in the water. No one ever literally comes into contact with material blood. But, figuratively or spiritually, that is the place God chose for us to come into contact with the blood of the cross for the remission of our sins.

In 2 Kings 5:11 (NKJV) we find a man by the name of Naaman who wanted to be healed of his leprosy and thus came to Elisha, God's prophet. He was told to go dip 7 times in the Jordan River. This did not satisfy him. He did not want water involved in his cleansing. "But Naaman became furious, and went away and said, 'Indeed, I said to myself, 'He will surely come out to me, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and wave his hand over the place, and heal the leprosy.'" (2 Kings 5:11 NKJV)

Naaman wanted to be cleansed of his leprosy but wanted it done his way and at first that did not include any water. It was only after he decided to go about it God's way that he was cleansed. We ought to learn from that. If God wants water involved in our cleansing from sin why should we object?

So far I have not mentioned even one item that conflicts with another in the teaching of God's word concerning those things that bring about our salvation the reason being that everything God has had to say on the matter works together in perfect harmony with everything else he has had to say about it. Faith is not in conflict with works, is not in conflict with obedience, is not in conflict with baptism.

But, the Bible teaches there are other things involved in our salvation and thus essential to it. When God says a thing that makes it true whether we like it or not or accept it or not. Here are a few other things that bring us to salvation. It is not an exhaustive list, only a partial one.

We are saved by the blood of Jesus. "Having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him." (Rom. 5:9 NKJV) Without Jesus and his shed blood for the remission of our sins there is nothing to have faith in and there is no such thing as grace. Thus again we see an interrelationship between factors that save.

The Bible also teaches that we are saved by repentance. Paul speaking to the people in Athens said, "Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent." (Acts 17:30 NKJV) He says in 2 Cor. 7:10, "For godly sorrow produces repentance to salvation." (NKJV) In Acts 11:18 we read, "When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, 'Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.'" (NKJV)

The Bible teaches that we are saved by confession with the mouth of the Lord Jesus. Paul says, "that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation." ( Rom. 10:9-10 NKJV) Is confession with the mouth of the Lord Jesus essential to salvation? Do you believe this passage?

We are saved by the love of the truth. "And with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved." (2 Thess. 2:10 NKJV) Thus the love of the truth is essential to salvation. Jesus says, "the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32 NKJV)

We are saved by fearing him and working righteousness. "But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him." (Acts 10:35 NKJV) Before you get in a hurry to dismiss this passage you need to consider. What about a man who does not fear him and is not working righteousness. Is he saved? I did not say he was and neither does God's word.

We are saved by grace. Peter says, "But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved in the same manner as they." (Acts 15:11 NKJV) Paul says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith." (Eph. 2:8 NKJV) So, we are also saved by grace. If we are saved at all it will be by grace. God was under no obligation to save us or give us a plan of salvation, a gospel, by which we can be saved. The very fact that he did is itself an act of grace. He was under no obligation to give us his word, his will for us telling us how to be saved, under no obligation to send Christ as a Savior into the world. All of these things were God's grace extended to us.

Cornelius was told to call for Peter who would "tell thee words, whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved." (Acts 11:14 NKJV) Without the word of God we would never know of Jesus as the Savior of the world, of his sacrifice on the cross, of even God himself, to say nothing of our sins. Who would dare say the word of God is not essential to salvation?

Enough has been said to make the point - the Bible does not teach that we are saved by any one thing alone exclusive of everything else but rather there are a number of things, or factors, that work together to bring about our salvation. Every one of them is essential. I emphasize the idea that these things work together, in harmony, and not against each other in bringing about our salvation.

The word of God does not contradict itself. Whatever the Bible says you are saved by, made righteous by, justified by, is truth and is essential to salvation. To say it is not is to reflect upon the word of God. It is to set God's word aside to keep one's own tradition, the tradition of men. Many have done that on the subject of how a man is saved.

Author Recommendations: For preaching a little different than what you are use to hearing try the audio sermons of Waymon Swain. Waymon is the preacher for the Central church of Christ in Bastrop, LA.

Article Source: Narrow is the Path

God’s Visual Reminder

By Peter D. Mallett

Dec 22, 2008 - It is still easy to recall. It was less than a week before Christmas of 2005. I worked in retail. After a long day, I’d taken the bus, and then was walking the last little bit home. It was approximately 4:45 and the sun was setting. As I came over the bridge I had a clear view of red clouds against a slowly darkening blue sky. Living in Military rich, Norfolk Virginia , and also living just a few minutes from the commercial airport it wasn’t unusual to see aircraft. I noticed a large one had left a smoke trail from its engine in the sky from north to south. A moment later a smaller, but lower flying plane moved from west to east. Its smoke cut across the first smoke path about a third of the way down. Of course, this smoke dissipates and spreads out after a few minutes. Yet, for just a few momets, right in front of me, these two planes had left a blazing red cross. It was just as I was marveling at this, I saw it. It was much lower and to the left hand side of the cross. A single very bright star was beginning to show in the approaching night sky. These two modern things caused me to think of the “Star of Bethlehem” and the“Cross of Calvary”. I pondered, thinking, like their biblical counterparts, this star was made by God, but the “cross” by man. I remembered Christmas is about Christ coming, and the Cross is the reason He came. While a few were denying what Christmas was about, and while many others passed by the same way and yet completely missed it, in a flash God helped me to focus on what’s important. Lord, I thank you for my visual Christmas reminder.

Have you done your Christmas Stopping?

By Peter Mallett

Dec 11, 2008 - No, that's not a mistake. That is what meant to say. I am as guilty as the person next to me, for counting down the days until Christmas. I can't be held faultless for rushing from here to there to find the gift, to see the play, to attend the party. Perhaps you too have a list, and you are checking off items, one by one. I don't know if it belongs on a list, but in your busyness have you stopped to consider Christ? Have you stopped to consider those around you, or have you had tunnel vision?

We are commanded to take time to "be still, and know that I am God. This must be included in all our celebration of "God with us". Jesus wants time with us, and He would also like to open our eyes to the needs around us, and the opportunities to serve in these last days of the year. Christ always had time for questions. He always stopped to meet a need, and He always made time to pray.

He started his ministry by stopping by a wedding; He stayed long enough to bless everyone in attendance with the first recorded miracle. He did this even though He said his time had not yet come. Consider the rich young ruler with his questions. Jesus didn't spend much time with him because he wasn't ready to make a commitment, yet Jesus was still patient and, stopped long enough to answer his questions. Think of the woman who touched the hem of His garment. He commended her faith. She wanted only to touch His clothing; The Savior stopped to touch her heart. Jesus had time to minister, heal, and teach, in the days and hours, before the cross. We also find that many times He took the necessary moments of solitude to pray. Let us not get so busy that we forget to take time to nurture our relationship with Christ, and to share that love with others who need His touch. Don't forget your Christmas stopping.

Dating an Unbeliever

By Peter Stone

Dec 4, 2008 - "Hey Barry, you did well tonight," I said after Discipleship Class had concluded. The others had adjourned to the kitchen.

The young man glowed. "Thanks Pastor. When Michael admitted that he doubted his salvation, I thought my testimony might reassure him."

"And so it did. We all saw your heart for Jesus shining through as you told us about your amazing conversion."

Barry fell silent for a moment, and then said, "Pastor John, I met this girl."

"Okay," I said, wondering where this was going.

"And I really like her, and she likes me too."

"I'm sensing a 'but' in there somewhere."

"But, she's not a Christian yet."

"Don't even think about it," I said.

"What? Why not?"

"The Bible says quite plainly that believers should not be joined or yoked together with unbelievers."

Barry fiddled with his iPhone. "Does that passage specifically mention marriage?"

"No, but it doesn't need to. The example is taken from yoking pairs of animals together to draw a farmer's plough. For the team to function properly they had to be the same type of animal, normally oxen. If an ox and donkey were yoked together, the result was disastrous. The passage refers to any joining together of believers and unbelievers, such as a business partnership, and of course, the ultimate example of two people living and working side by side: marriage."

"But Pastor, I've never met a girl like her before, I'm totally smitten."

"I don't doubt you feel a very strong physical, mental and emotional connection with her, but the most important part, the spiritual connection, is missing. Barry, you have a promising future in Christ, but take a moment to think what it means to date an unbeliever. Your life is founded on Christ and the Bible's teachingsher life is not. How can you approach an issue or problem from the same perspective? You want to make decisions that please God, but she'll make decisions in pursuit of her personal happiness. If you were to marry, think of your children. How can you raise them in the way of the Lord if she disagrees with you and teaches them otherwise?"

Barry smiled disarmingly. "Actually, I'm going to bring her to Youth Group and Church and witness to her. She'll get saved before you know it. That's one reason I decided to date her--I love her so much that I'm going to use our relationship to lead her to the Lord."

I sighed. How many times had I heard that before? "Have you asked her to church yet?"

"Ah, um, yes."

"And her answer was?"

"She wasn't interested--but it's just a matter of time."

"Barry, this is one of the oldest tricks in the book. On many occasions, I have seen Christians date unbelievers, expecting to lead them to the Lord. Now admittedly, sometimes it happens, but it's the exception, not the rule. Normally the believer becomes so busy trying to please their unbelieving partner that they take their eyes off Jesus. They stop attending church, skip the Bible and prayer, and soon find themselves sleeping with their partner outside of marriage."

"That'll never happen to me!" Barry declared.

"Really? You have no common ground upon which to convince her otherwise. Sleeping together outside of marriage is natural for unbelievers--they do not agree with or understand the Biblical reasons for abstinence. Even if you make a strong stance initially, arguments such as 'We're getting married one day, so why wait?' and manipulative physical contact will slowly erode your defences. Barry, believers need to build their relationships upon Christ, with Him at the centre. Reading the Bible with your partner, praying together, and serving Jesus side by side while complimenting each other's ministries is such a wonderful, fulfilling experience. You miss all of this by dating an unbeliever. Instead of focusing on Jesus, you'll find yourselves focusing on each other, romantic euphoria, and physical attraction."

Barry nodded thoughtfully. "Thanks, I'll pray about it and let you know how I go."

As the young man rose to his feet and headed for the door, I wondered what his future would be. Would he follow God's Word and reach his full potential in Christ, or would he do what I had seen so many do in this situation--leave the church and move in with his girlfriend?

About the Author: http://cornerstonethefoundation.blogspot.com/. Peter Stone, a Bible College Graduate, has an international marriage and two children. Suffers from epilepsy and otosclerosis. He teaches Sunday school and plays the piano in church.

Article Source: Christian Article Bank

Everybody’s a Critic!

By Patrick Odum

We should not test the Lord, as some of them did – and were killed by snakes. And do not grumble, as some of them did – and were killed by the destroying angel. These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come. (1 Corinthians 10:9-11)

Nov 20, 2008 - Everybody’s a critic.

Police in York , Pennsylvania say that they’ve made an arrest after an attempted bank robbery there. “Attempted,” because the would-be robber walked away with no money at all for his troubles. And his troubles were considerable, and they started the moment he approached a teller window and demanded that she empty her cash drawer.

The first teller fainted. But another teller showed the robbery hopeful that her drawer was completely empty. Then she showed him the other drawers; they were also completely empty. It was the beginning of the day, apparently, and the tellers were waiting for a manager to come from the vault with the cash. The 48-year-old robber showed up at maybe the worst possible time of day for a bank robbery.

What’s really funny, though, is what happened when the would-be robber saw the empty drawers. Upset that his robbery was going so badly, he threatened the teller.

Threatened to complain to the manager about the service he was receiving.

Police say that he didn’t get the chance to follow through on his threat because they rounded him up about two blocks away, after a drive-through customer identified him.

No word yet on how well he likes his jail cell.

Oh, we can be world-class complainers, can’t we? Gifted grumblers. Don’t you know people who can always find the gristle in every steak? Whose glasses are always half-empty? Don’t you know people who you can always count on to tell you why things aren’t nearly as good as you think they are? Maybe it’s not so much that you know someone like that, and more that you are someone like that.

When you answer the question, “How are you?” do the questioner’s eyes glaze over within the first ten minutes of your answer? You might be a complainer.

All kidding aside, God seems to take chronic complaining among his people pretty seriously. The Old Testament even talks about God punishing people who bad-mouthed him during the time of the Exodus with death. Seems harsh, I know, but when you think about the implications of chronic complaining it makes a certain amount of sense. Complaining led to Israel worshipping the golden calf. It led to low morale and reduced motivation. It brought about fear, suspicion, and jealousy, and ultimately compromised relationships.

Really, the problem with chronic complaining for people who believe in a powerful, loving God who has intentions for his people’s ultimate well-being is that complaining undermines faith. What does it say about my trust in God if nothing in my life is ever “right” enough? What does it say about my trust in him if all I ever do is complain and grumble about the load he’s placed on me, or the path he’s laid before me, or the gifts he hasn’t given me?

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you that I’ve never seen God strike anyone dead for complaining – even people who complain a lot. I suspect that’s largely because of his patience. It might also have something to do with his experience of being human through Jesus. But I can tell you pretty confidently that the habit of complaint will not serve your health well: spiritually, emotionally, or physically. That’s what it is, by the way – a habit. And, like most habits, it quickly becomes something that you do regularly, constantly, and – and maybe this is the worst part – unthinkingly. Finding reasons to complain becomes your default setting. Looking for the negative in every situation becomes a knee-jerk reflex. And it’ll make you bitter, angry, depressed, and harsh.

I think that’s why Paul urges the church in Corinth to take a lesson from the experience of their spiritual ancestors, the ones who got on God’s bad side by grumbling and complaining about the road he had them walking. He reminds them – and us – that as believers in Jesus we are those “on whom the culmination of the ages has come.” That means that God’s ages-old purpose for the redemption and repair of his creation have begun and are being brought to completion in our lives though Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit. His grace is being poured out on us like many of God’s people who came before us couldn’t begin to imagine.

What, exactly, do we have to complain about?

Oh, I know – you have reasons. It’s not as if your life is all roses. And, actually, there’s solid biblical ground to cry out to the Lord in distress. The Psalms are full of what might be taken at first glance to be complaining. The difference, I think, is that the “complaints” of the Psalms come in the context of prayers for deliverance. They show dependence on God, and trust in him, rather than lack of faith. When we come to God in humility and tell him of our pain and fear and confusion, believing that he can help, we will find him full of grace, compassion, and salvation. When we come in a self-important huff to stuff his complaint box and tell him how to be God – well, that may be something else again. And when we don’t come to him at all, content just to rail and whine and find fault, we wind up demonstrating to anyone who might be watching that our belief in a loving, kind, powerful God doesn’t go very deep or very far.

Let me suggest an antidote for complaining to you, if I may. Actually, it isn’t really my suggestion. I’ve borrowed it from someone else, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances. For this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18) It’s a matter of developing different habits to replace the impulse to complain. The habit of joy: finding reasons to celebrate the good things that God does and gives in your life. The habit of prayer: being a person who often turns your mind to communion with God, and for whom it’s easy to turn complaints into prayers for deliverance. And the habit of giving thanks: developing your ability to see all the reasons to praise God for what he has given you, instead of the comparatively few reasons to complain. If you’d like to feel happier, more optimistic, and closer to God, then try developing those habits. It might take a while. But give it a little time, and see if you don’t feel more comfortable in your own life and happier in your own skin.

At the very least, they’ll probably like you better at the bank.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

Jay Sekulow of the ACLJ Warns Believers to Act Now

By Rev. Michael Bresciani

Nov 14, 2008 - It is comforting to know the ACLJ is with us in today’s climate of Christianity bashing, but according to Jay Sekulow the head of ACLJ we shouldn’t get too comfortable. In the organizations recent radio and TV broadcasts Sekulow has urged Christians to act now on issues such as freedom for U.S. military chaplains and attacks against religious symbols and literature in schools and public places.

Sekulow has pointed out that to witness or share the gospel in the military is easier if you are just an enlisted servicemen or officer. The chaplains have been seriously curtailed which makes no sense because it is they who are expected to represent the gospel to soldiers who are either in harms way or may be in the near future.

At a time when schools are making concession for Muslim and Hindu students so they can wear jewelry or garb related to their faith, Christians are being told just the opposite. Tee shirts, stickers, or jewelry that reflects faith in Jesus Christ is being prohibited and singled out. The American Center for Law and Justice has undertaken representation in many of these cases. There are an alarming number of such cases pending in the courts and much support is necessary to keep these cases updated.

Sekulow is calling for financial support but that is not all. He always urges Christians to pray and is not afraid to say that without the prayers America would be sliding away faster than it is already.

The ACLJ website has some useful and easily accessed features that are not found on similar sites. Beside the usual, become a member, sign a petition and make donations are three additional tools that anyone can use. You can write an elected official, call a talk radio show and write letters to editors all with the click of the mouse. These tools can cause a shift in policy if used by enough believers and this has already been borne out many times to date.

The details of the much disputed “Hate Crimes” bill is clearly defined by the ACLJ and it is impossible to miss the fact that if this kind of law becomes the law of the land then we are not too far from the Orwellian “Big Brother” kind of society that no one will be able to endure.

The ACLJ is an offshoot of Regents University in Virginia Beach but stands now as an international influence due to recent recognition by the United Nations. The ACLJ already influences law in some 35 countries globally and now has been granted “consultative” status to the European Centre for Law and Justice.

“This special designation enhances our ability to shape the global debate on religious freedom and human rights and dignity,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ and ECLJ. “With the special consultative status, the ECLJ will now be in the unique position to file legal briefs and memorandums with UN governing bodies on a wide range of global issues. This designation is the next logical step in the development of our global outreach and will empower the ECLJ in the ongoing struggle to influence the world’s decision-makers to recognize the concept that freedom and liberty are universal, God-given and inalienable rights that must be protected.”

The reason this is particularly good news is because more than ever before international precedents are being cited in American jurisprudence. This is a dangerous sign only because it is seen as the erosion of our sovereignty as it pertains to our own laws and self determination. The enhanced positioning in the United Nations allows a better balance or at the very least a chance to offset present laws having to do with human rights issues on a global scale. If they’re gong to influence us why not try to influence them as well?

Sekulow is quick to note that Christians in America are all too happy just to stay involved with ecclesiastical affairs and they fluff off involvement with the law, civil matters or politics. The ACLU and similar organizations are attacking America’s religious freedoms with a new and heretofore unprecedented fervor. The call to action by the organization is by no means exaggerated in these times.

Jay Sekulow has a unique approach in all the cases the organization undertakes. He has repeatedly emphasized on the groups radio and TV broadcasts that his strategy is not singular. He says that if one strategy doesn’t work then they will simply try another one, but there is no quitting. It should not be hard for believers to get behind this kind of dogged persistence.

Pastor John Hagee has been heard to say that God gave man two ends. One is his head the other is his behind. He says that we can use our heads for the glory of God or sit on our behinds and do nothing. It is what makes true the saying “heads you win, tails you lose.” Jay Sekulow is calling for the church to go with “heads you win.”

Jay Sekulow’s call to the church to take action is no more than the words that Jesus spoke to all seven churches in the book of Revelation, regardless of what state they were in, each call was appendaged with these words, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.” Re 3: 22

About the Author: Rev Michael Bresciani is a Christian author and a columnist for several online sites and magazines. His articles are now read in every country in the world. For articles and news from around the world visit “The Website for Insight” www.americanprophet.org

Article Source: Narrow is the Path

Around the Throne

By Patrick Odum

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:“Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” (Revelation 2:10)

Nov 6, 2008 - Last Sunday afternoon I found myself in a crowd of around 1,300 people in downtown Chicago. I suppose you don’t have to look too hard to find a crowd that size in a major city. This was a little out of the ordinary, though, in my experience. The crowd was at a worship service, not a game or a show. Everyone was there for a gathering of churches from all over the Chicago metropolitan area called Chicago Celebration.

They weren’t there to make any important policy decisions; in Churches of Christ, there is no official organizational or legislative structure above local congregations. They weren’t there to rally for a particular cause or agenda. They braved Chicago traffic and a windy fall day for two reasons: they came to worship God, and they came to be together.

For some who are reading this, church with 1300 people or so isn’t that unusual. For some, it might even be a small crowd. It’s unusual for me, but it wasn’t just the numbers that made it such a cool event. It was more the variety of people than the number, the diversity that made such an impact on me. I saw black, white, Asian, and Hispanic faces. I heard English and Spanish spoken with fairly equal frequency. The worship leaders themselves were black, white, and Hispanic; every few minutes, you were pretty much sure to see somebody who looked like you or hear someone who spoke like you.

Of course, it wasn’t just a diversity of appearance, or of language. Worship styles differed, too. Maybe you’re aware, for instance, that African-American and Caucasian Christians tend to approach singing in worship in entirely different ways. (Once, when I was guest preaching at a black congregation, I mentioned that I thought the singing actually gave me a little rhythm. On the dais behind me, the song leader loudly said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me.”) Among the different groups there, there was variation both in song selection, and in the way the songs were sung. Same was true of the preaching, and of the way the audience responded to the preaching. Different people, from different places and cultures, with different histories and traditions, all celebrating the same thing.

There were other differences, too. Age differences: people full of the wisdom that comes with walking with Jesus for decades next to people full of the energy and idealism of youth. Economic differences: white-collar and blue-collar, well-off and struggling and everything in between. There were urban dwellers and suburban dwellers. Some healthy, some sick. Some with their lives ahead of them, some who might well have gone on to their greater Celebration when Chicago Celebration rolls around next year.

It struck me, gathered in that very diverse group for worship, all at once. It was a thought that just kicked open the front door of my mind, barged right in uninvited and put its feet up on the coffee table. “This is what all these people do, every Sunday,” it said to me. We worship the same God, and we thank him for the same salvation. Though we might do it differently in some ways, in a different language or style or place or neighborhood, what we have in common is much more important that what we don’t.

It made me think of that “great multitude…from every nation, tribe, people, and language” in Revelation, all gathered around God’s throne and the Lamb, celebrating the salvation that they all have in common: salvation that “belongs to [their] God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb. I suppose you could read that as a scene of what’s to come when “we all get to heaven.” Being at Celebration last Sunday, though, has made me wonder. How useful is it for the church to think of the unity in that text only as something to look forward to? Maybe it’s more constructive to learn to think of it, at least in part, as something that’s already accomplished.

I guess what I mean is that, even if I’m not together every Sunday with the people I was with at Celebration, in some way that’s every bit as real as what I can see and hear we’re all gathered around that throne together, all giving credit to God and the Lamb for the salvation we’ve received. That’s a thought, maybe, that can help us to take the unity we have in Christ more seriously and prize it more highly. We can always think of reasons to be apart, reasons that often have more to do with the different ways in which we do things that with what we’re actually doing. There’s only one reason to be together, to “make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” That one reason is a big one, though: we’re all standing around God’s throne, all celebrating what we’ve been given.

It just won’t do to stay in our little cliques and sub-groups based on race, or language, or social standing, or pet interpretations of whatever biblical text – not when we’re supposed to be worshipping the same God and celebrating the same salvation. Celebration was, at least for me, an antidote for the comfortable notion that my way – or my church’s way, at least – is the right way.

During the worship service at Celebration, another minister from another church made a presentation of the different mission efforts of many of the 61 churches represented there. It was exciting, even a little breathtaking, to see a map of the world on screen lighting up, country by country, continent by continent, to illustrate what our churches were doing. By the time the presentation was done, large portions of six continents were illuminated. “It can be a pretty dark world,” he finished, “but it’s a little brighter because of the work of Chicago Churches of Christ.”

I was a little proud, to tell you the truth, of what we were doing. So proud that it took a minute, in fact, for it to dawn on me that I was thinking in terms of “we.” That’s how it should be, I decided, because that’s the first step toward actually working together and being one in a meaningful sense. Thinking in terms of we.

So this Sunday, when you gather around God’s throne in worship, I hope you’ll think in terms of “we,” too. We’ll be there together, even if we’re across the city or across the country or around the world.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

The Story of Two Reaper’s

By Peter Mallett

Oct 23, 2008 - There was a stinging chill in the air. The hour was late. Any person out tonight would really have to bundle up, but this day the streets were pretty quiet.

Quiet, except for the two spirits who met at the crosswalk that day. Normally they would be about their own tasks but today, perhaps just so you could overhear the conversation, the two stopped to talk.

They remarked about how they both preferred to work with bold, passionate enthusiastic people. They both understood that their objectives would not be accomplished through lukewarm people with mediocre attitudes toward life. Interestingly enough both spirits even had the same last name: Reaper.

The first to speak spewed smoke as he spoke.

"My goal is to convince enthusiastic people to live only for themselves. At all cost, you must reach for the highest position you can. From there others will respect you." Grim paused.

"I get people to accumulate as much stuff as they can. To put it on credit and keep it all to themselves. My favorite phrase is: 'You've earned it'. I know people wrestle with thoughts that there must be more to life than things and money. I get them to ignore those thoughts."

Grim chuckled loudly. "Pride is a very useful tool. I tell people that life is long and that there will always be more time to do those important things."

Abundant Reaper, on the other hand, tried to find the enthusiastic people and let them know that life is but a vapor. A quiet peace and a soft glow showed as he spoke.

"I explain to them that they ought to think of others more highly than themselves."

"You see, God owns everything already. He will provide what you really need if you will ask Him to and allow Him to. I show people how they could make a lasting impact on their corner of the world. My objective is to show them their worth in God's eyes and not in things or position, or accumulated wealth."

Grim Reaper rocked back and forth on one foot not succeeding in hiding his disturbance.

"I desire them to see beauty in a sunset, and the abundant hope embedded in the promise of each new day. I want them to live life to the fullest by helping introduce them to Jesus, and assisting them to become children of God."
Visibly agitated Grim Reaper just could not understand the wisdom of Abundant Reaper, so he turned and quickly disappeared into the night.

Abundant Reaper prayed for limited success for his opponent and then asked God whom he was supposed to encourage next.

About the Author: Peter Mallett is the President of Tidewater Christian Writers Forum that meets the 4th Tuesday of each month!

Face the Mirror; Face the Music

By Patrick Odum

Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
“What should we do then?” the crowd asked. John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” (Luke 3:8-11)

Ever had one of those days that just seemed to go from bad to worse? For some folks in Kane County, Illinois, last Wednesday was a day like that.

Truth be told, though, their bad days were largely of their own making.

It started out as a day in traffic court for ten people who had been previously identified as having suspended or revoked licenses. They had company when they left the courthouse after their appearances – undercover police officers followed them to the parking lot and signaled other officers in unmarked cars. When these ten folks got into their cars and drove – drove – away from the courthouse, the police pulled them over, wrote them tickets, and had their vehicles towed.

Some of the red-handed complained. One guy said his sister was supposed to drive him to court, but hadn’t shown up. “If I didn't appear, there'd be a warrant out for my arrest. I'm in trouble either way.” Poor guy. When pressed, though, he did have to admit that he hadn’t possessed a valid driver’s license in 27 years.

Really, though, what do you say in a situation like that, watching your car being towed away and knowing you really have no defense? It’s not like these drivers didn’t know they were breaking the law. They had just gotten away with it long enough that they got comfortable. Complacent. It probably never occurred to them that they might get busted.

That’s the path of least resistance, to not give your habits and choices much thought until the consequences turn and take a bite out of you like a mongrel dog you’ve grown accustomed to scratching between the ears. Path of least resistance, which I guess explains why a husband doesn’t give his temper much thought until his wife takes the kids and leaves. Or why the stories and confidences you pass on regularly don’t seem like such a big deal until you’re face to face with a friend who’s angry and hurt. It’s why we can convince ourselves that an online “friendship” is no big deal – until a marriage implodes. It’s why we can throw our weight and attitude belligerently around a church and never really see ourselves until someone holds up a mirror and makes us look. Recovering addicts talk about needing to hit rock bottom before they decided to get some help, but rock bottom isn’t just for alcoholics or drug addicts or sexual compulsives.

God asks us, though, to not let things get that far out of hand. That’s what repentance is about.

Repentance isn’t for God, to let him know that we’re really sorry for our sins. He knows how sorry we really are – or really aren’t. And it isn’t to pay for our sins, to somehow right the balances. He did that for us, in Jesus. And besides, we couldn’t do it even if he asked us to. Repentance isn’t for God at all, actually. Repentance is for us. God knows our tendency to take the path of least resistance and not spend very much time at all in honest appraisal of our behavior, thoughts, values, and priorities. In asking us to repent, he asks us to look in the mirror to see if who we really are is anything at all like who we imagine ourselves to be.

“We’re children of Abraham,” said the religious people proudly in John the Baptist’s day. John dared to suggest that God wasn’t all that impressed with their professed pedigree. “God can find children of Abraham under any old rock,” he sniffed at them. “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”

Repentance is the place where we bring our walk in line with our talk. To be the “children of Abraham” that they imagined themselves to be, John said that the haves needed to share with the have-nots. The tax collectors needed to stop enriching themselves at the expense of their brothers and sisters. The soldiers needed to stop using their power to extort the people they were supposed to protect. Repentance is where practice is made to match profession.

Wonder what he’d say to us, church people, who strut around wearing labels like “New Testament Church” or “Evangelical” or even “Christian,” and forget to look at ourselves long and hard enough to make sure that who we really are matches the labels we wear? God, after all, can still raise up New Testament Churches or Evangelicals or Christians from the rocks, if need be. He doesn’t need our glowing self-characterizations and wordy professions of faith, which are more useful for hiding what we don’t want to face about ourselves than bringing about the lives of faith and devotion that he really wants.

I think he says the same thing now that he said then: “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” Sync your walk up with your talk. Look for the places in your life where conflict exists, and honestly ask yourself what you have to do with creating that conflict. Do you need to reconcile with someone? Change some relational habits? Make restitution for something you’ve done? Show more love, patience, and gentleness? Back off on the fault-finding?

Look for places in your own heart and conscience where there’s conflict – conflict between what you claim to be and what you often are? What habits do you need to change? What impulses do you need to say “no” to? What values and priorities need to change? What kind of help might you need?

Cultivate an attitude of repentance, and I’m convinced that the Holy Spirit will make the specific areas where you need it clear to you. Repentance isn’t something we only do at church on Sunday morning. It’s for the office on Tuesday morning and home on Thursday night and the basketball court on Saturday afternoon. It’s worked out in relationships and choices and habits that affect every part of your life.

“The axe is at the root of the tree,” warns John, not really to scare us, but to remind us of the urgency of repentance. God will call us to account. He’s not looking for completely pure hearts, but he is looking for penitent ones. He’s looking for people who are willing to look in the mirror and own up to what’s there without defense, pretense, or self-justification. He can work with people like that. He can shape them and mold them into the people he wants them to be.

So face the mirror, and face the music. And watch with joy the transformation he’ll bring about in you.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

Stand Therefore

By Dr. Michael Halleen

What do you people mean by quoting this proverb . . . : “The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge”? (Ezekiel 18:2)

Colonel Earl Blaik, for many years the football coach at West Point, tried to explain his team’s 48-14 loss to Michigan in 1956 as due entirely to the way the Army center handed the ball back to the quarterback. A sportswriter responded, “Colonel, that’s like blaming the Johnstown Flood on a leaky faucet in Altoona!”

We look for ways to lay blame. We avoid taking responsibility for the way things are, for the way we act. Something else is at the root of the problem. I can’t be expected to behave well, we tell ourselves, because . . . I had an unhappy childhood . . . my work is not fulfilling . . . opportunities don’t come my way . . . the planets are aligned wrong. We’re a society of victims, attributing our misfortunes to forces outside ourselves. When we succeed in school, we say, “I got an A.” When we fail, it’s someone else who did it. “She gave me an F.”

John Steinbeck told of visiting a prison where an old inmate said, “Kids come up here and they bawl how they were framed or how it was their mother’s fault or their father was a drunk. Us old boys try to tell them, ‘Kid, do your own time. Let us do ours.’” Ezekiel used the same approach with the people of his day. They were blaming their problems on their forebears. Yes, your fathers have eaten sour grapes, he admitted, but you can’t use that as an excuse. It’s your life now. Do your own time.

The ultimate irresponsibility is to shift blame for our situation onto God. But most of what occurs in life is just part of being human. It’s the way life has come to us, the way the world is. God does not seek to bend our backs or break our wills. Rather, God promises resources to endure and strength to grow through any set of circumstances. But they are our circumstances, our actions, our choices.

Kierkegaard once observed that people who succeed in living are those who take full responsibility for their lives. They are, he said, like nouns and verbs which can stand on their own to make a sentence. Those who blame others—fate, luck, timing, mother—for their lot in life, on the other hand, are like adjectives and adverbs which cannot stand by themselves. Their sentences—their lives—are never complete.

Stand, therefore. You were created to be a noun. This is your life.

Dr. Michael A. Halleen writes very insightful and inspirational messages known as "Monday Moments". If you would like to recieve these messages please contact Mike at mhalleen@att.net.

Calling

By Patrick Odum

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. (Colossians 3:23-24)

Sept 19, 2008 - I’ve been volunteering on occasion at my son’s school this school year. The school’s relocation has brought with it some traffic headaches during dismissal, so a lot of afternoons these days find me in a bright orange vest at the entrance to the alley that runs beside the school, telling anxious drivers looking to avoid traffic that they can’t take a shortcut through the alley.

As you can imagine, this has made me very popular among said drivers.

The other part of my job is to make sure that kids on the sidewalk can cross the alley safely, since traffic can come through the other way from the teachers’ parking lot and an apartment parking lot. What all this means is that I do a fair amount of arm-waving, gesturing, and occasionally shouting. I usually wear sunglasses, since everyone looks more intimidating in sunglasses, and I try to scowl most of the time, too.

I am Crossing Guard. Hear me roar.

One day this week my son’s fifth-grade teacher drove down the alley with her car top down and waved at me. She knows that I moonlight as a minister when I’m not a crossing guard, and as she pulled up beside me she took a look at my orange vest and smiled.

“Is this a second calling for you?” she asked.

I laughed as she drove away, but I’ve been thinking about what she said ever since. She meant it as a joke, of course, but what she said put words to something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. There are lots of ways to express it, I guess, but I think I’ll try it this way first:

For a believer, anything worth doing is a calling.

In case you’re not familiar with that term, “calling” – it’s not one we use terribly often – let me try to explain. A calling, in the broadest sense of the term, is any kind of work or occupation that a person has a special talent or ability for. In its narrower sense, though, and I think the way Josh’s teacher meant it, it describes a religious vocation. When we describe a person as having a calling, we usually mean that God has called him or her to a religious order, or to life as a minister, pastor, priest, or something along those lines.

And I mean it that way when I say that, for a believer, anything worth doing is a calling. It’s too bad, really, that if we use the word “calling” at all we usually mean a religious vocation of some sort. By reserving the term for “clergy,” we exempt ourselves from the responsibility of considering and fulfilling what God has called us to do in our world.

The Bible extends the idea of calling to “whatever you do.” Whatever tasks are ours in the day-to-day of our lives, Scripture asks that we consider the Lord Jesus as our taskmaster and do it with all our hearts, in order to please him. For believers, who accept the notion that God has entered our world in Jesus and sent his Spirit to live in us, no part of life can be held back from him. There is no “secular” part of our lives. The Lord we worship at church on Sundays is our Lord in the office on Monday morning, at school on Wednesday afternoon, at home with our families on Friday evening.

“Oh, but you don’t know what I do for a living,” you say. “My work is sheer, numbing drudgery.” Or, “You don’t know the people I work for, or the people I work with.” Or maybe what you’re doing right now is just to pay the bills, or just the first quick stop on a career path that tracks upward. Maybe you’re unemployed, or underemployed. Maybe your plans to make a living doing what you love got derailed years ago by just, well, making a living. Frankly, you haven’t done what you do “with all your heart” for a long, long time. And frankly, Jesus just doesn’t seem to come around your workplace all that often.

Keep in mind that Paul wrote those words in Colossians 3, not to upwardly-mobile professionals pulling down large paychecks, or to people courageously serving and protecting society, or to people saving lives or teaching the next generation or governing society. When Paul wrote, “whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord…”, he wrote it to slaves. Right, slaves. Not a lot of job satisfaction there. Not a lot of opportunities for promotion, benefits, or respect. Matter of fact, we’d probably prefer that Paul had written something to slaves that challenged the institution itself. Instead, he tells them to look at their slavery in a whole new light. They’re to look at it as a calling; they’re to serve the Lord by serving their masters, trusting that the God of everyone and everything will use their service for his purposes and glory.

What Josh’s teacher said to me made me see being a crossing guard in a little bit of a different light. Maybe it’s not just about doing something for my son and his classmates. Maybe it doesn’t much matter if someone yells at me because I won’t let him cut through the alley. Maybe it is a calling, and maybe God will use it to his glory and purposes. It’s not up to me to figure out how, of course, or to demand that he explain it to me. It’s enough that I do it with all my heart, in service to him.

And you? Can you begin to imagine the work you do in your office, or in your practice, or in your classroom or plant or workshop, as work done for the Lord? Oh, of course you need to please your boss or customers or clients. But you’re not only doing it to please them. Your work isn’t just a job that pays the bills. It’s not just a career that gives you satisfaction and success. Anything worth doing is a calling. The Lord is glorified when you do your work diligently, when you pour the talents and energy and education he has given you into it. He’s glorified whenever one of his creatures does what he or she is created and equipped to do.

When things get tough at work, or school, or at home – when deadlines loom and tempers are frayed, when things go wrong and blame ricochets around like bullets, when clashing personalities or expectations or visions make life miserable – remembering who you work for will make it easier for you to survive and thrive with your sanity intact. And when work threatens to become all-consuming, attempting to take over every part of your life, you’ll be more likely to recall that the God who called you to your job also called you to your family, your church, and your community – and that even he rested!

So whatever you find yourself doing this week, do it to please the Lord and with all your heart.

Just don’t try to cut through the alley beside Josh’s school. I’ll be watching.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

How To Have A "Personal" Revival

By Andrew Strom.

Sept 5, 2008 - For many years now I have studied the accounts of past Revivals and Revivalists. This is what I am known for - writing and speaking on the subject of 'Revival'. But when you study this topic, one of the things you see very quickly is that we in the church today are living well below the level of Christianity that should be considered ‘normal’. (-Even a lot of "Spirit-filled" believers today). When you see what kind of Gospel was preached and what kind of Christian life was lived in the Revival days of old, you start to hunger for that kind of Christianity again. And you start to see that there is a kind-of "Revived" life that is very attainable for us all today - but so few are walking in it - or are even told that it exists.

In many ways, what I am talking about is the ‘ Normal’ Christian life. It is nothing else but the "new creation" life found in Romans chapters 6 - 8. There is nothing "amazing" about it at all. Yet it is so far above the kind of Christianity that we have been led to expect, that many think it "unattainable". How very sad - because it is the free gift of God to us all.

Is it possible to walk before God in a constant state of being ‘clean’ before Him - and knowing it? Is it possible to walk with a totally pure heart and clean conscience as our "normal" state - every day? Is it possible to live in true victory over sin - at a practical level? Is it possible to have the strongholds of sin and pride in our fallen nature so dealt-with that they hardly bother us at all?

The answer to these questions is ‘Yes’. And one of the key things that I want this website to be about, is how to come into this kind of Christianity - how to literally have a "personal Revival".

THE STARTING PLACE - "REPENTANCE"

As all Scripture and Revival history shows - a true Revival begins with "Deep Repentance". And in our personal lives, it so often begins with making a "list" - literally - of ANY sin or compromise or "cloud" that is in our life - and confessing those sins to God with real sorrow and repentance. Any person who cannot make a 'LIST' like that - and spend time confessing their sins before God (-And forsaking them!) - is not really serious about becoming 'Revived'. This is the first place to start.

In fact, please stop reading this right now. Please find a piece of paper and write down a List of every sin or 'doubtful' thing in your life. Ask God to "shine His light" into your heart and show you everything that you need to repent of. Then simply get alone with Him and go through that List - repenting of each thing one by one - deeply confessing and forsaking them before the Lord.

I believe a lot of people will have a "Personal Revival" just through doing that! -In fact, I know of many people who have literally been 'revived' through this simple process. So please - DO IT NOW! This first step is so important that I do not believe there is any point reading further until you have gone through it.

THEN - "WALKING" IN IT

Now, after you have been through this Repentance process, what you are left with is a CLEAN CONSCIENCE. [-This is assuming that you have already been through the other basic steps found in Romans 6 - 8. ie. WATER-BAPTISM (-a "death" to the old life) and also RECEIVING THE HOLY SPIRIT (-without which we do not have the 'POWER' to walk in a truly 'Revived' state). Please see my other articles for more on these two steps if you need to].

Assuming that you have these basic things in place, and that you have now REPENTED DEEPLY by confessing your sins to God one by one, you should now sense a RENEWED COMMUNION with God through having a totally CLEAN CONSCIENCE before Him. Is that what you are sensing?

The Bible speaks many times of having a conscience that is "sprinkled clean" by God. -And what a precious thing that is! In fact, it is fair to say that the Christian life consists of- (1) Getting a clean conscience, and (2) Keeping it clean! -It is pretty much as simple as that!

So how do you "walk" in a 'Revived' state before God? -Simply by walking in a way that KEEPS YOUR CONSCIENCE CLEAN. That is what Romans 8 is all about! -That is what 1 John 3 is all about! -Keeping your heart PURE before God. -Getting a clean conscience and WALKING IN IT - by the power of the Holy Spirit.

To read the testimonies of those experiencing this kind of revival go to "Personal Revival" and scroll down to the testimonies section...

About the Author: Andrew Strom is the founder of RevivalSchool.com and hosts an online forum discussing the state of today’s church and your experiences in it. He encourages true relationship with Jesus and not one that follows man’s theology. To learn more about Andrew and his ministry, go to RevivalSchool.com or email him at astrom@revivalschool.com.

Seeing What You Cant See

By Patrick Odum

Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)

Aug 21, 2008 - Unless you’ve been out of the…well…off-planet for the last week or so, you’ve heard about American Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. The twenty-three-year-old is more than halfway to his goal of winning eight gold medals in the Beijing Olympics, which would break Mark Spitz’s record set way back in 1972 at the Munich Olympics. Tuesday night, Phelps won the 10th and 11th gold medals of his career (he had six golds in the 2004 Athens Olympics). The previous record for career gold medals was nine.

Phelps’ first medal Tuesday night, in the 200-meter butterfly, was actually kind of close – which has been unusual when Phelps races in these Olympics. After it was over, the cameras caught Phelps as he ripped off his cap and goggles and tossed them in disgust onto the pool deck. I assumed that Phelps just had a bad race and was a little disappointed in himself. Turns out I should have known better.

Apparently, Phelps’ goggles filled up with water when he dove into the pool to start the race. He had trouble, to the extent that he had trouble, because he essentially swam the race blind.

Then again, well, not really. He didn’t exactly swim blind, did he? I mean, he couldn’t see with the clarity he would have liked, that’s certainly true. It might have been a little easier for him if he could have seen his surroundings a little more distinctly and known with a little more certainty where his opponents were. And surely he would have liked to be able to see the wall he needed to touch first to win the race. But he wasn’t really blind.

For one thing, Phelps has prepared himself for this. There are very few things that can happen in a pool during a race that Phelps hasn’t seen or anticipated – and prepared extensively for. It’s hard to surprise him, and when something happens that isn’t exactly according to plan he knows how to react and what to do.

Then there’s Phelps’ discipline, and it’s discipline that keeps you on track when things go off the rails. He’s scripted his reflexes and honed his reaction times through hard work, repetition, and endurance. He’s made sacrifices and endured pain. When there’s no time to think that discipline kicks in and carries him forward.

But maybe, finally, it comes down to this: Michael Phelps has a purpose, and goggles are just a minor concern in the long view. Phelps gets into a pool for one reason and one reason only: to be the first one to touch the wall at the end of the race. He isn’t easily distracted from that purpose. Even when his goggles are leaking and he can’t see what’s happening around him, his internal vision is burned in like a laser.

He saw that wall. Even if he couldn’t actually see it.

If you can keep the eyes of your heart clear and focused, whatever may be going on around you, it will be difficult to ever distract you. If that’s true, then it sort of begs the question, doesn’t it, of why we can sometimes be so easily distracted in our walk with Jesus? I don’t mean to point fingers here. I stand with you. And when I’m honest I have to admit that I sometimes get distracted from my purpose and easily turned aside from my goal. The eyes of my heart get cloudy. My internal vision gets blurred. I get panicked by the swirl and chaos around me and afraid of what might come next. I stop thinking about touching the wall and start thinking about how far I still have to go.

In short, I stop swimming and start treading water.

You can relate, maybe. Again, let me stress that I understand. We’re used to being able to see where we’re going, to know where Point A is and where Point B is and to follow our carefully predetermined path to get from one to the other. That works for us, most of the time, and it allows us to maintain the illusion that we have complete control of our lives. That is, until something happens to keep us from seeing so clearly.

It can be a death, a divorce, a financial reversal. It can be trouble at work, or at home, or at school. Maybe it’s a diagnosis that you could never have imagined in your worst nightmares or a failure that you’ve feared all your life. All at once your eyes are blurred with tears and the path that you’ve laid out for your life is hard to see.

“Light and momentary troubles,” Paul calls them in that infuriating way of his. Light and momentary? Not my troubles. But Paul doesn’t say that to minimize our pain. His point is to remind us that we know where to look for direction, even when we can’t see where we’re going. “We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.” The end of our race, the wall we’re straining to touch, is an “eternal glory that far outweighs” anything we might have to endure on the way. This eternal glory is from God, not from our own efforts, secured for us when Jesus touched the wall before us. And when we can’t see and don’t know the way, he reminds us that the Holy Spirit living in us will keep our internal vision sharp and the goal toward which we’re racing clear and bright in our hearts.

It comes back, I guess, to a question of discipline, to spiritual reflexes conditioned and reaction times honed by training: prayer, immersion in the word of God, time with the church, sacrifices made, pain endured. The goal is not self-righteousness or super-piety, but the development of a guidance system that keeps us moving toward the glory God has prepared for us, undistracted and undeterred by whatever might be happening around us at any given time. All of that, whatever it is, is temporary. Just minor annoyances that we’ll barely even remember, if at all, when we share in God’s glory at the end of the race.

So the challenge for us, then, is to live disciplined lives as we walk with Jesus. We don’t like to think in those terms, maybe; discipline is for diets and exercise, not for our spiritual lives. But there’s no other way to develop that internal sense of direction that keeps us oriented toward our goal when life surprises us and renders us unable to guide ourselves. If we’ll persevere in prayer, if we’ll allow Scripture to form our minds and hearts, if we’ll pursue relationships with godly people, if we’ll endure some struggle and even some pain – if we’ll do these things now we’ll have the sense of direction and perspective we need when life surprises us and we’re left blind in the chaos.

We’ll celebrate when we touch the wall and a hand pierced for us helps us out of the pool.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

Relationships with Others!

By Michael Halleen

Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. (Philippians 2:4)

Aug 7, 2008 - Early morning at the gym . . . two women pedal side by side, talking quietly together as they do every day. Their tee shirts tell me they work together at our local fire department; their demeanor suggests they are close friends. They move to the treadmills, where the conversation continues. How do they find so much to talk about? Exercise for them is enjoyable when done together, in relationship.

Early morning at the gym . . . a half-dozen participants in a “boot camp” are going through strenuous training to develop endurance and strength. Men and women together, they do a series of cooperative exercises, sharing equipment, taking turns, helping and encouraging one another. Though strangers a few weeks ago, they are teammates now, working hard and laughing often. Progress for them is more likely when burdens are shared, in relationship.

Early morning at the gym . . . Scott, one of the trainers, moves around the room, greeting people and encouraging clients. His loud clapping can be heard in every corner as he sets the tempo for an exercise, wanting us to maximize the effect of our efforts. He is consistently teaching, advising, cheering, talking. He wants us to reach our goals, for he knows that he is successful in his work only when we are successful in ours. Effectiveness hinges on relationship.

Late morning at a mid-size construction office across town . . . four brothers, owners of a family business, are each holed up in their separate offices, doors closed. Two of them will fight like tigers in every interaction, defensive and distrustful at every point. The other two cower in silence, secretly taking sides when necessary just to preserve the income that comes with having their names on the door. Sharing the family name—or business—is clearly not the same as having a relationship.

Meanwhile, several employees in mid-level management positions meet regularly in informal sessions to hold the place together. Not related to the owners, they have learned to care for one another as well as for the interests of the company. It is they who keep the business going strong and the sanity of their coworkers intact. Everyone under that roof—even the brothers—benefit from that relationship.

We live best by building and maintaining relationships. We enjoy life more and reach significant goals when we consider the interests of others, not merely our own.

Dr. Michael A. Halleen writes very insightful and inspirational messages known as "Monday Moments". If you would like to recieve these messages please contact Mike at mhalleen@att.net.

Selling Your Soul

By Patrick Odum

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul? Or what can you give in exchange for your soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward everyone according to what they have done. (Jesus, Matthew 16:24-27)

July 17, 2008 - First there was the guy in Australia who auctioned off his life on eBay, including his house and its furnishings, his car, and even an introduction to his friends and a trial at his job, for nearly $400,000. That story was full of interesting insights into how we define ourselves and for what amount we think we’d be willing to trade our lives. Walter Scott, a twenty-four-year-old New Zealand man, is apparently going even farther.

Walter recently put his soul up for bid on the New Zealand auction site TradeMe.

He’s received over a hundred bids. As of Wednesday, the highest bid was $189.

Walter characterizes his soul on the site as “merry old” He says he had been thinking about selling his soul for some time: “I can't see it, touch it or feel it, but I can sell it, so I'm going to palm it off to the highest bidder.” Walter reassures potential bidders that his soul is in “pretty good nick” except for a rough patch six years ago when he reached the legal drinking age. The winning bidder, Walter is quick to point out, would only be entitled to his soul and would not be able to own or control him in any way. He also says that the successful bidder will receive a framed deed of “soul ownership.” So, there’s that.

So here’s what I’m wondering: Whatever happened to the days when a person would trade their soul to the Devil for knowledge or prosperity or a World Series or the ability to play guitar? A hundred and eighty-nine dollars. You can’t buy a Wii for that.

According to Jesus, of course, Walter is seriously undervaluing himself. According to him, there isn’t enough money, property, power, pleasure, or fame in the world to make it a good deal for Walter. A soul isn’t some part of us, some spiritual trinket that we can excise and hand out with a certificate of ownership like a Franklin Mint collectible. In fact, in Matthew 16 there’s no reason to use the word “life” in verse 25 and “soul” in verse 26: they’re the same word. Your life is your soul is your life, and whatever you call it there’s nothing worth giving it up for except Jesus.

And yet we do. Laugh or roll your eyes or shake your head at Walter Scott all you want, but he’s not doing anything that’s all that different than other people do every day. He’s a bit more blatant about it, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to get quite as much in the bargain as others, but every day people everywhere trade themselves for one thing or another. And that one thing or another is never worth the cost.

It’s subtle, and seductive, and here’s how it works. It begins, maybe, with a felt need: a certain standard of living, or a certain amount of respect, or a particular status in society. That need becomes a matter of life and death, the bare minimum I must have for happiness. And so I start working so many hours that my family starts to suffer, my kids start to miss me but eventually learn to get along without me, my spouse becomes a stranger. Maybe I cut some ethical corners. Maybe I take advantage of a colleague to vault up the corporate ladder. And maybe I do get what I want, and then one day I wake up and look in the mirror and wonder how I became who I am. I’ve gained the world, and yet to get it I’ve forfeited myself. My soul. My life.

For others, the price is love, or approval, or comfort, or escape. They all have at least two things in common. The first is that they can become so important to us that we will give up our true lives as God’s people, lives that by his grace will stretch on into eternity, to have them. We’ll give up a life shared with God for some piddley, paltry existence with the trinkets that we think we want.

The second thing they all have in common is that they never deliver on their promise. In the end, everything we think is so important will crumble away to dust and leave us with empty hands, empty hearts, and empty lives.

You remember Gollum, don’t you, from The Lord of the Rings? He wasn’t always so bad – wasn’t always Gollum, in fact. He was a creature named Smeagol until the glint of the Ring caught his eye and he gave up everything else to live alone, to live for nothing more than to have and to keep his Precious. It killed him in the end, of course – but he lost his life and himself long before he died. “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it.”

Things like that don’t just happen in books and movies, and the world is full of any number of things that quickly and easily become our Precious and turn us into creatures we wouldn’t recognize if we could look through time and see how things would turn out. That’s why Jesus says what he says; that’s why following him involves saying no to self in the same way he did. It isn’t that Jesus doesn’t want us to enjoy life or prefers that we be miserable. It’s that he knows how easily our efforts to “save our lives” – to have what we want – can wind up costing us our lives.

“Whoever loses their life for me will find it.” Just sounds wrong, doesn’t it? It would be, of course, except that Jesus knows what life really is, what it’s really about. It turns out that we aren’t made for spending our lives chasing all our ambitions and pursuing every whim. That isn’t who we really are, and when we live like that we eventually lose ourselves. “Our” lives aren’t really so much about us at all as they are about fulfilling God’s purposes for us. It’s on that criterion, and that one alone, that our lives will be judged “success” or “failure.”

When Jesus invites us to drop our attempts to create ideal lives and follow him instead, he invites us to live the lives God created us to live. And so it’s true; the only way to save our lives is to lose them, and the surest way to lose our lives is to be hung up on saving them.

So may we take him seriously. May we live lives of eternal significance and purpose. May we resist the temptation to sell ourselves out to the highest bidder. Or, if we do, may we always remember who the highest bidder really is – the one who offered himself to give us life.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

Have you thrown it away?

By Peter Mallet

July 8, 2008 - Have you ever lost something you desperately needed? Maybe you’ve even thrown away something and later regretted it. Perhaps, like me, you even threw away something given to you by someone dear to you. The thing that I threw out was from the "One" who is most precious to me, God. What did I throw away? Confidence. The God-kind He provides to accomplish God-sized tasks. God doesn't just give you and I things to do, He always provides everything needed. God's word says it this way.

"I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in Him, they will bear much fruit (John 15:5 NASB).”

Sometimes when God gives you or I a glimpse of His plan, we shy away. I often think, "I can't do that." Paul wrote, "I can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens (Philippians 4:13 NASB)." Good news! God knows I have this capacity to doubt. He also wrote through Paul something which has shook up my world over the last couple of years. "Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised (Heb. 10:35-36 NASB)."

The first thing this verse did was cause me to morn the times that I could look back over my life and see God calling. I saw Him providing the confidence I needed. I witness myself unwilling to believe, throwing God given confidence out. Yet, God still loved me. In fact, at the same time I was mourning, He was placing hope in my heart that it was not too late. It's likely at some point you've thrown away God's confidence. However, one thing is true for a child of God: There is still work to be done. You may think you’ve burned your bridges, but Jesus is a Master builder. He’s already rebuilt them. There's hope! How did I move from doubt to doing? Here is what God revealed to me.

1. "Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward."I must move from seeing the size of the task to seeing the size of God. I have heard people say, "I believe that God can do it, but I just don't believe He can do it through me. While all of us have doubt, clinging to this idea is illogical, and in truth sin. Either I believe that God is all knowing, knowing why He chose me, and all powerful, able to work through me, or I believe, with all my weakness I can foil the great plans of God. It cannot be both. The second part says it has great reward. If I don’t throw it away, the gift (God gives), if I step out and use it, has wrapped up in it, God’s rewards!

2. Prayer and praise are also powerful advocates. Prayer is seeking the wisdom of God, while praise is seeking to touch the heart of God. Seeking God through worship is the greatest reward. In this alone I gain His confidence. This does not mean I seek to know every detail of what He will do. In battle it is more important to know commander's character, heart, and how he responds in situations, than to know the exact plans of one particular battle.

3. "For you have need of endurance... "I must decide now that I am going to endure. Anything of worth will include time, effort, struggle, setbacks, suffering and rewards. I know some people who have been Christians for a long time are still, "Test driving" their faith. Thinking
things like, "I'll trust God as long as..." "If God asks me to...I'm out of here." I must solidify my commitment to Christ. God has my best interest at heart. Like the wonderful song says, "When you can't trace His hand, trust His heart.

4. "When you have done the will of God..." Do the next thing. I may not know the Master plan, but God doesn't leave me in the dark either. Seeking God through prayer, praise, and study, gives me what I need to do next. It may seem like a little step of faith. Just as it was for the man who shared Christ with Billy Graham.

5. "You may receive what was promised." God loves to give things to his Children. Many scriptures back this up. While His ultimate goal on my journey is holiness, not happiness, He will provide many times of great joy along the way. He rewards those who seek Him.

Every time the Christ confidence, rewards, and promises are greater than I imagined.

The New Evangelicals - Busy Sweeping Out Spider Webs

By Rev Michael Bresciani

July 1, 2008 - Evangelicals have until recently held the line on major moral issues like abortion and same sex marriages. Rev Lieth Anderson the new president of the National Association of Evangelicals says that he doesn’t see these two issues going away for the organization that now represents about 45,000 churches. But things are morphing at an alarming pace among younger Evangelicals.

The new causes now being considered for the front burner are global warming, poverty, especially in places like Darfur and the scourge of aids. From California, the state that has Christians already deeply concerned about SB 777 a bill that effectively wipes the traditional family off the map, Pastor Rick Warren of Orange County’s Saddleback Church has endorsed the battle effort against these social issues as worthy of the churches foremost attention.

New York Times and Washington post have signaled a heads up about the death of Jerry Falwell and craftily connected it to the death of the entire Evangelical legacy of actively embracing political conservatism in America. This is no surprise considering the source, but is it true?

The answer is both yes and no. On the yes side it is true as much as it pertains to the willingness of Evangelicals to bring the much touted global warming and aids issues into their agenda. According to recent Barna and Pew Forum research estimates the social justice and the traditional moralist camps are about equal in size. But concerns are rising that the Evangelical church sees itself left out of the loop and may be afraid of appearing indifferent to issues that the rest of the country takes so seriously.

On the no side of the answer is the fact that although the numbers of moralists and traditionalists are shrinking somewhat they are intensifying. The new concentrated version of the old standard bearers is also fully capable of holding the line and getting the job done. To the churches still guided by the Bible, God and one are still a majority with or without Rev Falwell.

To many conservative Christians, getting onboard the social justice train is the equivalent of joining a local church because it looks good to the neighbors and the business community. The causes are worthy but the motive is not.

After careful scrutiny, the science of global warming is still fraught with diametrically opposed findings and scientific opinion leaving it in a very suspect state at best. It will take more than a panicky documentary from former Vice President Al Gore to convince the conservatives. Global warming hype is for some the new magic bullet that bypassed the Food and Drug Administration’s usual scrutiny and is now being taken as the cure for everything that ails both America and the world. To many Americans global warming frenzy is only proof that the snake oil peddler is still alive and well in the USA.

To the conservative Christian, deep concern over the spread of aids is not without reason but it raises questions about liberalism’s blatant social hypocrisy. Government and the Evangelical church combined are wearing their own helplessness to stem the tide of immorality, Educators that welcome the new morality and choose to add it too their mission, and media that rakes in billions promoting overall licentiousness hardly seem worthy or qualified to be on the forefront of this issue much less to put it on the front burner for the church.

Unknown by many outside the church is the fact that it is plagued by the same forces and shifts that dog the American political scene. Evangelicals, Pentecostals and many historical denominations in America have both conservatives and liberals trying to drive or hinder the polity of the church.

The Bible is the document that is questioned in the church. In national politics the Constitution comes under fire because it was drawn up so long ago that there are those who wonder if it applies to the rapidly changing face of the country’s social fabric.

In the church there are those who wonder if such an ancient book has anything at all to do with the business of the present day. The Bible addresses holiness and the Constitution speaks to freedom, both documents are subjective so it is easy to wrangle and wrest either one with other highly subjective interpretation or extrapolation and thus leave them impotent and meaningless.

It is the Conservative believer that holds the Bible up to its plainest and original interpretation. Such people have largely been Evangelicals in America, until lately. Neophytes of the new social justice set are at their best misinformed and at their worst they are fear mongering purveyors of all that is nascent and innocuous. Liberalism could never be charged with having a war to which nobody came. It does produce a war whose soldiers may be fighting against an imaginary enemy or at best the wrong enemy.

Liberalism is the plague of the modern church in America and some would add ecumenicism and syncretism to that diagnoses. Ecumenicism is the idea that separate denominations should come under one roof and function as one, developing a centralist leadership and purpose. It’s a big church house where one size fits all.

The rub with ecumenicism is that by its very nature it leads to syncretism, the next step in the plague. Syncretism is the need to unify the doctrine of the newly joined divisions of the ecumenicised body. This requires throwing out or seriously altering disparate views and doctrines to make everyone amenable to the final statement of faith. In the process many traditional beliefs or core beliefs are shattered all the way up to and including the Bible itself.

Many churches elect to stay out of the fray and remain autonomous and independent. Fortunately when the Bible forewarns of an apostasy it also implies that some will do just that, stand alone. Like the statesmen, soldiers or pioneers of early America, those who stood alone carried the day and often made history in the process. The church will do the same and in the end only those independent and conservative churches that refuse to meld into the greater emerging body will not be part of the promised apostasy.

Conservative Christians don’t see issues, causes or opinions in their Bibles. What they see is a plan laid out by a living God to aid the living. If the plan is not followed it leads to trouble, sickness, calamity and death.

If global warming is a fact it is an outgrowth of human indulgence. Our clamoring for ever more consumer goods, gasoline and toys keeps the exhaust fumes and smokestacks bellowing out the hydrocarbons. They are a byproduct of a sinful and concupiscent society that is panicking at the result or the effect of their behavior and not once admitting that they are part and parcel to its cause.

Our push for complete unbridled sexual freedom has created its own side effects. Blaming any particular person, group or section of society for causing the spread of aids is a debate that has come and gone. Sadly, the collective behavior of this nation and the whole world never comes into debate. Will the whole world accuse itself? It surely will not and it will resist anyone or anything that does, including the constitution or the Bible message.

Conservative Christians hold to the message of the Bible as the bottom line. What is that message and does it directly address the latest social justice issues that are slipping into the apostate church of the day?

The Biblical message addresses the latest social justice issues by prioritizing all the issues that affect civilization. At the top of the list is “sin” that penchant to indulge the body and the mind with anything it should desire at any moment of the night or day. It is this penchant for indiscriminate sexual fulfillment and insatiability in the pursuit of material goods that are the cause. The effect is among other things global warming and the spread of aids.

Denying nothing to ourselves is called the “good life” and will never be recognized as the bad way of life that conservatives say it is. Getting liberals to admit to any mistakes is hard enough, getting them to admit that they are the cause of the very problems they seem bent on solving would be a miracle. Liberalism doesn’t allow for miracles!

Forty years of witnessing the church and the body politic in this country slipping headlong into apostasy is disconcerting. More disturbing is that the cause and the answer for this downward trek is very simple to find and easily understood. It is not an answer that is readily accepted and that is what creates such a dismal bottom line.

Simply put, the Bible says that replacing the God given Biblical view of our world with the secular view is what causes every problem not just the latest social issues. Sin is still at the top of the list. It is in our nature, it is in our past, it will be in our future and it alone is our final demise.

Sin is the spider weaving its web all over our private and national life. Dealing with the effects of sin such as global warming or the spread of aids is like constantly sweeping out the spider’s webs but never doing anything about the spider.

About the Author: Rev Bresciani is the author of two books. He also is a columnist for several online sites and magazines. His articles are read throughout the world. For more articles and news from around the globe visit "The Website for Insight" http://www.americanprophet.org

Source: Christian Article Bank

The Confession of the Cosmos

By Patrick Odum

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9)

June 13, 2008 - Grant Stubbs and Owen Wilson, from Blenheim, in New Zealand, know that they’re fortunate. But ask them about it, and they would probably attribute their good fortune to something more than luck.

Grant and Owen were flying their homemade ultralight aircraft last month when they ran out of fuel. A ridge loomed in front of them, behind which was the ocean. Knowing that they were running out of altitude and landing space at pretty much the same rate, they started to pray. “[We’re] both Christians, Grant explained, “so our immediate reaction in a life-threatening situation was to ask for God’s help.”

Owen and Grant prayed that they would make it over the ridge in front of them, and that they would find a safe and dry landing spot. The first prayer was answered as the plane glided over the ridge. And then so was the second prayer.

“We crossed the ridge and there was an airfield, said Owen. I didn't know it existed till then.”

The pair brought their plane in for a safe landing on a grassy strip beside a twenty-foot sign. No doubt they caught their breath, brought their heartbeats under control – and then one of them noticed the sign that they were parked beside. “When we saw that, we started laughing,” chuckles Grant.

The sign read “Jesus is Lord” in twenty-foot letters.

Ever feel like you need a twenty-foot reminder like that? Few of us will ever be in a situation like the one Owen and Grant found themselves in, but all of us have found ourselves facing unexpected crises and uttering desperate prayers. At times like those, it means something, doesn’t it, to believe and to remember that Jesus is Lord? After all, if Jesus is Lord then sickness isn’t. Neither is death. If Jesus is Lord, then neither heartbreak nor disappointment have ultimate power over me. If Jesus is Lord, then my own sin and the sins of others against me are petty tyrants near to overthrow. If Jesus is Lord, then what do we have to fear? If Jesus is Lord, then no matter what else may be true there is always reason for confidence, hope, and peace.

It’s easy to panic, though. It’s easy, in our fear and anxiety and desperation, to forget what we mean when we say that Jesus is Lord. When we panic, we try to seize control of our lives instead of living in submission to the Lord. When we’re afraid, we tend to fixate on our fears instead of his love and faithfulness. When we’re anxious, we fail to act in faith.

I have a suspicion that the reason we forget that Jesus is Lord when we’re suffering and hurting and afraid is that we don’t much live like Jesus is Lord when life is going well. We find ourselves giving obedience to the tyranny of the urgent. We bow our knees to our own ambition. We trust in our own strength and competence. We rush to offer tribute to our own impulses. It’s not that we wouldn’t say that Jesus is Lord, and mean it – it’s just that, practically speaking, there are so many other lords that clamor for the right to call the shots in our lives.

So I guess it’s no wonder that when trouble comes, we can get a little confused. We still look for answers and salvation in our strength and competence, and find that we come up short. We find ambition to be vanity and our impulses to be useless. And if we’re lucky, at that moment, when all our other hopes fail, we come to understand what we really mean when we say that Jesus is Lord.

And what we mean is simply this: Jesus is Master, and there is no other. To a Jewish person, Paul’s confession that “Jesus is Lord” means that he and God are one – “Lord” was the word Jews used to refer to God without speaking his name. To a non-Jew, to say “Jesus is Lord” was to repudiate the pagan gods and their claims to mastery over the lives of their devotees. “Jesus is Lord,” then, isn’t a pious religious platitude for the air-conditioned, carpeted, and padded sanctuary of a church building. It isn’t a slogan to be emblazoned on t-shirts, coffee mugs, and bumper stickers. It’s more a defiant shout, a declaration of war, an affirmation of trust, a call to hope:

“God raised him up to the heights of heaven,
and gave him a name that is above every other name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:9-10, New Living Translation)

To say “Jesus is Lord” is to say that we trust him with our lives. It’s to say that we believe in his faithfulness and hope in his protection. But it’s not just to say it; it’s also to live it out. To live as if Jesus is Lord is to stare down fear and timidity and walk into the world as he did, with our heads up, able to look evil in the face and even accept its hatred and violence if need be, knowing that our crucified and risen Lord won’t leave us alone or helpless.

To say “Jesus is Lord” is to say that we’ll obey him. It’s to let him call the shots in our lives. It’s to accept his gentle reproofs and rebukes, knowing that he has our best interest at heart. To say “Jesus is Lord” is to leave behind what he says to leave behind, even if it’s near and dear to us. It’s to take up what he says to take up, even if it’s hard, even if it hurts. To say Jesus is Lord is to be willing to carry our crosses in the footsteps of the Lord who carried his cross for us. It’s to love the people around us the way he did: by sharing in their lives, pointing out the many ways in which God is making himself known to them, and serving them in love.

To say “Jesus is Lord” is to say that, ultimately, we have nothing to fear and no reason to doubt. It’s a calm and unshakable confidence that one day every tongue in the universe will be compelled to share in the understanding that we have already been given. And when our own tombs are split open and empty, we’ll stand and hear – and join in -- the confession of the cosmos: “Jesus is Lord.”

On that day, a twenty-foot sign will be unnecessary. To say the least.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

Controlling the Affairs of Earth

By : Paul George

June 6, 2008 - Who is controlling the affairs on this earth today-God, or Satan? It is generally conceded that God reigns supreme in heaven; that He does so over this world, is almost universally denied, if not directly, then indirectly. More and more men in their philosophizing and theorizing are pushing God into the background. Take the material realm. Not only is it denied that God created everything by personal and direct action, but few believe that He has any immediate concern in regulating the works of His own hands. Everything is supposed to be regulated according to the impersonal and abstract “laws of nature.” From the pew to the pulpit, we hear references to “mother nature” or “mother earth.” Thus, the Creator is banished from His own creation. Therefore, we should not be surprised that men, in their degrading conceptions of the heavens and earth, exclude Him from the realm of human affairs. Throughout Christendom, with an almost negligible exception, the theory is held that man is in control of his fortunes and the determiner of his destiny. While there are those who claim Satan is behind much of the evil that is in the world little or nothing is said about the responsibility of man.

Who is responsible for much of the evil that is in the world, God, Satan, or man?

The task of placing responsibility is very difficult. Sin is rampant; lawlessness abounds; evil men and seducers are waxing “worse and worse” (2 Timothy 3:13). There is unrest, discontent, and lawlessness everywhere and no one can say how soon another great war will be set in motion. Men's hearts are “failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth” (Luke 21:26). Do these things look as though God has full control in the affairs of humanity?

After nineteen centuries of Gospel preaching, Christ is still “despised and rejected of men.” Worse still, the Christ of Scripture, in the majority of modern pulpits is dishonored and disowned. Despite frantic efforts to attract the crowds, the majority of the churches are being emptied rather than filled and the great masses of non-church goers, in the light of Scripture, are on the broad road that leads to destruction, and only a few are on the narrow way that leads to life. Many are declaring that Christianity is a failure, and despair is settling on many faces. Not a few of the Lord's own people are bewildered, and their faith is being severely tried. Moreover, what of God, does He see and hear? Is He impotent or indifferent? A number of those who are regarded as leaders of Christianity tell us that God cannot prevent the destruction coming upon the earth or end it. It is said openly, that world conditions are beyond God's control.

.When sinful men and women are fed the false viewpoints of men and women claiming to be the called ministers of the Lord what impression is made upon the minds of those who occasionally, attend a Gospel service? From what is heard from the average evangelist today, is not any serious hearer of the false viewpoints of God obligated to conclude that a God who is filled with benevolent intentions, yet unable to carry them out. What option does the average hearer of the false viewpoints of God have, except that Satan has gained the upper hand, and that God is to be pitied rather than blamed?

However, do the conditions in the world reveal that Satan has far more to do with the affairs of humanity than God has? Before we consider the response to this question, we need to be aware of what the Scriptures have to say about what we now see and hear. In Jude verse 8, we are told the false viewpoints of God are those of men who “defile the flesh, reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.”

Ours is an age of irreverence, and as the consequence, the spirit of lawlessness, which is rapidly engulfing the earth like some giant tidal wave. The members of the rising generation are the most flagrant offenders, and the disappearing of parental authority, we have the forerunners of the abolition of civic authority. Therefore, in view of the growing disrespect for human law and the refusal to render honor to whom honor is due, we should not be surprised that the majesty, authority, Sovereignty of the Almighty law-giver should recede more and more into the background, and the masses have less and less patience with those who insist upon them. Moreover, conditions will not improve; instead, the surer Word of Prophecy makes known to us that they will grow worse. Nor do we expect to be able to stem the tide, it has already risen much too high for that. All we can now hope to do is warn our fellow man of the consequences of the spirit of the age, and thus seek to counteract its influence upon them.

Who is controlling the affairs on this earth today-God, or the Devil? What says the Scriptures? If we believe their plain and positive declarations, no room is left for uncertainty. They affirm, repeatedly, that God is on the throne of the universe; that the scepter is in His hands; that He is directing “all things” after the counsel of His own will.” They affirm, not only that God created all things, but also that God is ruling and reigning over all the works of His hands. They affirm that God is the “Almighty,” that His will is irreversible, that He is absolute Sovereign in every realm of all His vast dominions.

Who is controlling the affairs on this earth today-God, or the Devil?

Present-day conditions call for a new examination and new presentation of God's omnipotence, God's sufficiency, God's Sovereignty. From every pulpit in the land, it needs to be proclaimed that God still lives, that God still reigns. What is needed now, as never before, is a full, positive, constructive setting forth of the Godhood of God.

Drastic diseases call for drastic remedies. People are weary of platitudes and mere generalizations; the need is for something definite and specific.

Without a doubt, a world-crisis is at hand, and everywhere men are alarmed. However, God is not. He is never taken by surprise. It is not an unexpected emergency which now confronts Him, for He is the One who “works all things after the counsel of His own will” (Ephesians 1:11). Although, the world is panic-stricken, the word to the believer is, fear not, all things are subject to His immediate control; all things are moving in accord with His eternal purpose, and therefore all things are working together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. Yet how little is this realized today even by the people of God. Many suppose that He is little more than a far-distant Spectator, taking no immediate hand in the affairs of earth. It is true that man is endowed with power, but God is all-powerful. It is true that, speaking generally, the material world is regulated by law, but behind that law is the lawgiver and law- Administrator. Man is but the creature. God is the Creator, and endless ages before man first saw the light the mighty God existed, and before the world was founded, made His plans; and being infinite in power and man only finite, His purpose and plan cannot be withstood or frustrated by the creatures of His own hands.

We readily admit that life is a mystery and is filled with problems. However, we are not like the beasts of the field that are ignorant of their origin, and unconscious of what is before them. Unlike the beasts of the field we have the sure Word of Prophecy, of which it is said you do well that you “take heed, as unto a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19). In these troubled times it is to this Word of Prophecy that had its origin in the mind of God and not in the mind of men. In the Word of Prophecy, we discover a fundamental principle that must be applied to every problem. Instead of beginning with man and his world and working back to God, we must begin with God and work down to man. If we begin with man and work back to God there seems to be no connection between God and the world. However, when we begin with God and work down to man much light, is cast on the problems existing in the world.

Because God is holy His anger burns against sin; because God is righteous His judgments fall upon those who rebel against Him. Because God is faithful, His solemn promises are fulfilled. Because God is omnipotent, no one can successfully resist Him, still less overthrow His counsel. Because God is omniscient, He can solve the problems existing in the world. It is just because God is who He is and what He is that we cannot expect anything other than what is now happening in the world.

However, it is important we understand that we can only enjoy the blessed truth of the absolute Sovereignty of God as our faith is exercised. Faith enables us to endure the disappointments, hardships, and heartaches of life by recognizing that all comes from the hand of Him who is too wise to err and too loving to be unkind. When we receive all that enters our lives as from God’s hand, then, no matter what may be our circumstances we shall be enabled to say, "The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places” (Psalm 16:6). However, if instead of walking by faith, we follow the evidence of our eyes, and reason, we shall fall into a quagmire of atheism. On the other hand, if we are controlled by the opinions and views of others, peace will be at an end. Granted that there is much in this world of sin and suffering that appalls and saddens us; granted that there is much in the providential dealings of God which startle and stagger us; that is no reason why we should unite with the unbelieving world who says, “If I were God, I would not allow this or tolerate that.” Better far, in the presence of our present situations to say with the psalmist, “I have become mute, I do not open my mouth, because it is You who have done it” (Psalm 39:9). Scripture tells us God's judgments are unsearchable and His ways “past finding out” (Romans 11:33). It must be so if faith is to be tested, confidence in His wisdom and righteousness strengthened, and submission to His holy will nurture.

There is a difference between the man of faith and the man of unbelief. The unbeliever is of the world and judges everything by worldly standards, views life from the standpoint of time and sense, and weighs everything in the balances of his own carnal making. However, the man of faith looks at everything from God’s standpoint, estimates values by spiritual standards, and views life in the light of eternity. Doing this, he receives whatever comes as from the hand of God. Doing this, his heart is calm in the midst of the storm. Doing this, he rejoices in hope of the glory of God.

Conclusion, because God is God He does as He pleases, His greatest concern is the accomplishment of His own pleasure and the promotion of His own glory; He is the Supreme Being, and therefore Sovereign of the universe.

God’s Sovereignty with all its effects contradicts the opinions and thoughts of the natural man. In his natural state man is unable to form a proper estimate of God's character and ways, and it is because of this that God has given us a revelation of His mind, and in that revelation He plainly declares, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8, 9). In view of this Scripture, it is only to be expected that much of the contents of the Bible contradict the sentiments of the carnal mind, which is enmity against God. Our appeal then is not to the popular beliefs of the day, nor to the creeds of the churches, but to the Law and Testimony of God.

In these troubled times, let us, “prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

About the Author: Retired pastor, Church of the Nazarene. Author of the web site Exploring God's Word Exploring God's Word

Source: Christian Article Bank

The God of Ps and Qs?

By Patrick Odum

“God…gives generously to all without finding fault….” (James 1:5)

May 29, 2008 - Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson are guys who like to dot their i’s and cross their t’s. Their own, and everyone else’s.

Jeff and Ben like it so much, in fact, that for the last three months they have circled the nation looking for i’s to dot and t’s to cross. The two friends from Dartmouth College have spent that time driving around the United States in a 1997 Nissan Sentra, crashing on the couches of friends, and going into shops and businesses to point out errors they see on signs, posters, labels, and such. As you can imagine, not everyone receives them warmly. But whatever reaction they receive, they press on undaunted.

They have brought, by their count, over 400 examples of misspelling, bad punctuation, and poor grammar to the attention of whatever powers-that-be seemed appropriate. They’ve even gone so far as to correct graffiti.

A typical example is a furniture store they encountered on Milwaukee Avenue when they were in Chicago. The store was presumably called Milwaukee Furniture, but the sign – again, hanging above Milwaukee Avenue – read “Milwuakee Furniture.”

“We couldn’t help but notice your sign,” Jeff said to the big guy behind the counter. “The name of the store is misspelled.” The guy promised that he would let the manager know. “He’ll change it?” they asked. “I’ll tell him,” the man promised again.

Leaving the store, Jeff looked again at the sign. “It’s bigger than my head,” he groaned. “And you know it’s not going to get fixed, either.”

Maybe it goes without saying that Jeff and Ben are, ummm, between jobs at present. Jeff was an administrator at MIT and Ben was working at Borders before they set out together on their crusade to right the country’s typographical wrongs. They’re hoping to parlay their experience into a book deal, but they’re geekily serious all the same about their expedition. They do what they do, Jeff says, because they are concerned that “someone is trying to say something and they won't be taken seriously because their sign is riddled with mistakes.” He goes on: “A grocery store that can't spell grocery” -- yes, they really found one – “makes you question the food they sell.”

It occurs to me that one of the chief theological mistakes made by even people who should know better is to begin to think that what Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson are to typographical errors, so is God to the sins, failings, and errors in our lives. We start to imagine that he has us under a microscope and finds joy in pointing out even our most minor flaws.

Here’s a little test. When you become conscious of sin in your life – you hurt someone you care about, or you’re feeling ashamed of something you’ve done, or someone brings some transgression to your attention – what images of God are in your mind? At that moment, at the very moment of conviction of sin, what does God look like in your imagination?

We have to be careful here, because there are at least two extremes in which we can get lost. The first is to imagine that God is a coddling grandfather who finds our sin cute and charming – or is at least willing to look the other way and let it go because he loves us so much. That understanding of God lets us basically do whatever we want on the grounds that a God who loves us would never think of coming down on us.

More common, I think, at least for church folks, is to imagine God as our Forensic Accountant in Heaven, meticulously looking for discrepancies in our lives. It’s easy for us to believe that, since God is perfect, he won’t tolerate anything less from us. It’s easy to believe because there’s a sense in which that’s true. God is morally and ethically perfect, always just and faithful and good. And he does expect that his people will try to live lives that reflect his perfection. All that’s true, as far as it goes. It just doesn’t go far enough.

The result of imagining God always looking for faults in our lives is that we inevitably become like the God we worship. If we imagine God always squinting and searching for faults in us, it shouldn’t be too surprising that we’d become that way with others. We become fault-finders, Pharisees, Junior Forensic Accountants anxious to nail our family and friends to the moral, ethical, and theological wall. The father who constantly berates his children, the preacher who wields the Bible like a blackjack, the super-pious, supercilious Church Ladies and Gentlemen with lips pursed and fingers wagging like the heads on bobble-head dolls – they all have the same God, and deep down none of them feel that they measure up. And it’s easier to concentrate on everyone else’s faults than to think too deeply about your own.

But you know what always cures that? Jesus.

Jesus ate with sinful people and his finger never wagged. He promised that prostitutes and tax collectors would enter the kingdom of God ahead of some of the religious people of his time. He saw himself as a physician called to heal the spiritually sick – not to euthanize them. He spoke so eloquently and convincingly of a party in heaven when the lost come back to God that you’d almost believe he had seen it first-hand. And when he died at the hands of sinful people, it wasn’t with a shout of anger or condemnation. He died crying out for forgiveness on behalf of his murderers.

And it’s through Jesus, I’m convinced, that we see God as he really is. He doesn’t compromise an inch of moral or ethical ground, and yet he knows that’s a bit beyond us. “He remembers that we are dust,” as the psalmist eloquently put it, and he offers us compassion, grace, forgiveness. He knows that, when we understand what that compassion, grace, and forgiveness cost him, we won’t take it for granted or use it as a license. We’ll answer him with love, gratitude, and holiness that comes from somewhere beyond us.

So your i’s aren’t dotted? Your t’s aren’t crossed? Mine either. But “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.” He loves us, uncrossed t’s, undotted i’s, and all. And while human beings can’t do much more for ourselves and for each other than point out flaws and failings, God fixes them. Through Jesus, he offers us forgiveness and hope. Through the Holy Spirit, he makes what’s wrong in us right again.

So while there will always be people like Jeff and Ben who make it their business to point out mistakes – and while maybe we even need those people, sometimes – that’s not who our God is.

Im glad. Arent yu?

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

Can These Bones Live?

By: Josprel

May 23, 2008 - [A study of prophecy relating to Israel, the Gentile nations, and the Biblical relationship these nations have to near-future events.]

“The hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; and it was full of bones. Then He caused me to pass by them all around, and behold, there were very many in the open valley; and indeed they were very dry. And He said unto me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ So I answered, ‘O Lord God, You know.’

“Again He said unto me, ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say unto them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! Thus says the Lord to these bones: ‘Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live . . .’

“‘So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and suddenly a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to bone . . . Also He said to me . . . ‘say to the breath‘ Thus says the Lord God ‘come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.’ So I prophesied . . . and breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. Then He said unto me, ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They indeed say, ‘Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!’
Therefore, prophesy and say to them, ‘O my people, I will open your graves and cause you to come forth from your graves, and bring you to the land of Israel . . . I will put My Spirit in you and you shall live . . .’” (Ezekiel 37:1-14; New King James Bible).

We are living in an era of the fast fulfillment of biblical prophecy. I recall being told as a young child by my father - a steadfast Christian who knew the scriptures – that Israel one day would become a nation again. He said this during a time when such an event appeared impossible of fulfillment; yet in our era Israel already has been resurrected for decades.

Since the scattering of Israel during the time of Jeremiah (who predicted both the captivity and the re-gathering of the nation) in approximately B.C 629, there were no lack of skeptics who doubted the nation would be resurrected. Even Israel itself voiced doubts about it. Israel’s estimate of its return from oblivion may be found in Ezekiel 37:11: “Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: We are cut off for our parts.” In our vernacular this may be rendered: “It’s all over for us. We have been totally dismembered.”

The condition of Israel’s bones as seen by Ezekiel:
1. They were completely open to the elements (verse 2).
2. They were long dead, very dry and beyond human hope of life (verse 2).
3. They were disassembled and in disarray. The Living Bible records that the bones were very old and dry. They were scattered everywhere across the ground (Read the entire account).
4. There were an enormous number of bones (verse 2).

What God said the dry bones symbolized:
”Son of man these bones are the whole house of Israel” (verse 11).

Those whom God blames for the dry bones of Israel:
“‘Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of My pasture!’ says the Lord, “Therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel against the shepherds who feed My people: ‘You have scattered My flock, driven them away, and not attended to them. Behold I will attend to you for the evils of your doing,’ says the Lord . . .”

By whose authority the dry bones live again:
“I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries where I have driven them and bring them back to their folds” [This already has been occurring in our era for several generations [Jeremiah 23: 1-4; NKJ].

God’s remedy for the dry bone of Israel:
“‘[ Israel] shall be fruitful and increase. I will set up shepherds over them who will feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed nor shall they be lacking,’ says the Lord” [The Lord Himself has been gathering Israel, and He continues to do so in our era (Jeremiah 23: 1-4; NKJ)].

God’s judgment upon those who did not believe the dry bones could live again:
“The word of the Lord came to me again, saying, ‘Son of man, prophecy and say, ‘Thus says the Lord God: ‘Wail, ‘Woe to the day!’ For the day is near, Even the day of the Lord is near; It will be a day of clouds, the time of the gentiles. The sword will come upon Egypt, And great anguish shall be upon Ethiopia, When the slain fall in Egypt, And they take away her wealth, And her foundations are broken down. Ethiopia, Libya, Lydia, all the mingled people. Chub, and the men of the lands who are allied, shall fall with them by the sword’” (Ezekiel 30: 1-5; NKJ).

Ethiopia did not believe the dry bones could live again: Rendered “ Cush” in Hebrew, Ethiopia corresponds to what today is called the Sudan. The Sudanese are a people of dark skin tone, and Moses was severely criticized by his sister, Miriam, and his brother, Aaron, for his marriage to an Ethiopian woman (Numbers 12:1-16; NKJ).

Both Miriam and Aaron were envious of the leadership position of their brother Moses. Miriam instigated an open rebellion against Moses and Aaron followed her lead. To justify the rebellion, they used the excuse that Moses had married an Ethiopian (Cushite) woman. The Lord punished Miriam by striking her with leprosy; however, Moses pleaded with Him, “Heal her now oh Lord, I beseech thee.”

God heard the prayer of Moses. He healed Miriam, though not without inflicting profound humiliation upon her; she was ostracized from the people and shut outside the camp for seven days.

The Nations and the Millennium:
Ethiopia: According to Psalm 68, verse 31, Ethiopia “will quickly stretch out her hands to God,” and shall enter into the Millennium.

Libya (Also called “Phut” in the Bible): Libya did not believe the dry bones could live again: Writings of the 13th and 12th centuries B.C. describe Libya (also referred to as Lubim) as being a hostile, warlike people. During the 12th through the 8th centuries B.C., Libyans raided Egypt, then enter as settlers, and also served as soldiers in the Egyptian armies. West of Egypt, Libya still exists as a nation in our time. The Bible is silent regarding the future of Libya during the millennial age.

Lydia (Also called “Lud” and “Ludim” in some versions of the Bible): Lydia did not believe the dry bones could live again: During the time of Homer, the Pelasgic Meonians - akin to the Trojans - occupied Lydia. From what race the Lydians originated is a mystery. The Greeks considered the Lydians and their language barbarous; nonetheless, the Lydians were a highly civilized people.

Assyria (Modern Iraq) did not believe the dry bones could live again: After of reign of Solomon, all the leaders of Israel approached his son, Rehoboam, who became king of Israel. “Your father made our yoke heavy,” they complained, referring to the endlessly soaring taxes and other burdens Solomon had imposed on the people to finance and facilitate his projects, “now, therefore, lighten the burdensome service of your father, and his heavy yoke on us, and we will serve you.”

“Return in three days and I shall give you my answer,” the king replied.

During that period, he consulted with the elders who had served his father. They advised him to do as Israel’s leaders requested, but Rehoboam rejected the advice. Instead, he consulted with the young men with whom he grew up. They advised him to tell the leaders of Israel, “My little finger shall be thicker than my father’s waist . . . my father put a heavy yoke on you. I will add to your yoke: my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scourges [literally: scourges with metal points or barbs] (1st Kings 12: 9-11; NKJ).”

When the leaders returned for the king’s answer, Rehoboam responded as recommended by his friends. The results were catastrophic. Ten of the nation’s tribes separated from the two that remained loyal to the king and formed their own nation. The king assembled an army of one hundred and eighty thousand warriors to do battle against the ten separated tribes, but was warned by Shemiah, a prophet sent to Rehoboam by God, to not do battle against the separating tribes. He obeyed. The ten tribes became known as the nation of Israel; the two remaining tribes – Judah and Benjamin – became known as Judah.

Over the centuries, the nation of Israel digressed into idolatry, intermixed with gentile races, and became known as the Samaritans [Recall the question asked to Jesus by the woman at the well, when He requested a drink of water? “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (John 4: 4).]

The verse adds this revealing comment by way of explanation for those unfamiliar with the centuries-long feud between Judah and Israel / Samaria): “For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans” (NKJ).

Judah, on the other hand, remained relatively true – with some lapses - to the worship of Jehovah. Ezekiel, chapter 23, characterizes Samaria/Israel and Jerusalem/Judah as two sisters. Both committed harlotry with other nations, Jehovah charged.

Of Samaria/Israel, the older sister, the Lord said, “I have delivered her into the hands of the Assyrians, for whom she lusted” (Ezekiel 23: 9).

Jerusalem/Judah, the younger sister, “became more corrupt in her lust then she [the older sister, Samaria/Israel] and in her harlotry more corrupt than her sister’s harlotry” (Ezekiel 23: 11).

“I will sir up . . . the Babylonians, All the Chaldeans [The Chaldeans were a warlike, aggressive people from the mountains of Kurdistan. They conquered and ruled the world of their era]

Pekod [Pekod was a powerful Armaenan tribe near the mouth of the Tigris River. During the time of the Prophet Ezekiel, Pekod was within the Chaldean Empire]

Shoa [The Shoa were a tribe of Semitic nomads who populated the Syrian desert during the 14th century B. C. They invaded the East Tigris region, migrated to the east of Baghdad and assimilated with the Armaenans. The Shoa never were conquered]

Koa [Koa was located east of the Tigris River in the upper Adaim and Diyala rivers region] all the Assyrians . . . and they shall Judge you according to their judgment . . .”

Egypt did not believe the dry bones could live again:
Nonetheless, incredible as it may appear to our generation, during the Millennial reign of Christ Jesus, Iraq [ancient Assyria] Israel and Egypt, shall join together in becoming a blessing: “In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria [Iraq], and the Assyrian [Iraq] will come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria [Iraq], and the Egyptians will serve with the Assyrians [Iraq]. In that day Israel will be one of three with Egypt and Assyria [Iraq] – a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, ‘Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria [Iraq] the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance” (Isaiah 19: 23-25; NKJ).

Since this author is making this study during a period of profound hatred and hostilities between Israel, Egypt and Iraq (Assyria) Isaiah’s prediction seems fantastic – impossible of fulfillment - if it were it not for the prophet’s assurance that Egypt “will cry to the Lord because of the oppressors, and He will send them a Savior and a Mighty One, and He will deliver them. Then the Lord will be known to Egypt, and the Egyptian will know the Lord in that day and will make sacrifices and offerings; yes, they will make a vow to the Lord and perform it” (Isaiah 19: 20-21).

It shall require a calamity that God permits to fall upon Egypt to bring the Egyptians to the Lord [“And the Lord will strike Egypt, He will strike Egypt and heal it; they will return to the Lord, and He will be entreated by them and heal them” (Isaiah 19: 22)]. Once they do so, Egypt shall be one of the three nations - the other two being Israel and Iraq [ Assyria] - especially blessed by God during the Millennium.

Many contemporary nations did not believe the dry bones could live again: Many of today’s nations did not believe the dry bones could live again. Several of them, including the Palestinian nations, Hitler’s Germany and even Great Britain actively endeavored to prevent the rebirth of Israel. But it was God’s time for the re-gathering of His ancient people from the four corners of the Earth. From almost every nation under the sun they came. After His people had been cast into the world’s “valley of dry bones” for untold centuries, God opened the graves and drew together the dry bones, put flesh on them, breathed life into the nation, and Israel lives!

From approximately 446 BC until the United Nation’s recognition of the modern State of Israel in our generation, Israel was under the control of Gentile world powers. Sadly, as recorded by the Apostle Paul in Romans 11: 25, Israel still rejects Jesus Christ as its Messiah; however, Paul added a joyful note, “. . . blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles [the time of Gentile world dominance] has come in [has been completed]. And so all Israel shall be saved, as it is written: ‘The Deliverer will come out of Zion, And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; For this is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins’” (Romans 11: 25-27; Paul’s partial quote is taken from Isaiah 59: 20-21).

According to Zechariah 12: 9-10, when the Gentile nations finally gather in a united, final attempt to destroy the nation of Israel, God will “seek to destroy all nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and supplication: then they will look on Me whom they have pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.” What a graphic prediction of the crucifixion of Jesus and Israel’s future recognition of Him as the true Messiah!

Yes, the bones live!

-30-© Josprel (Joseph Perrello)josprel@yahoo.com

About the Author: An Air Force veteran, Josprel is an ordained minister who resides in Western New York - just across the Niagara River from Canada. Brought up in a Christian family by devout parents, who knew the Scriptures, he heard from childhood that Israel one day would become a nation again. This was during a time when such an international development appeared impossible of occurring. “Can These Bones Live?” is a study of historical, prophetical and future events on the theme of God’s dealings with Israel and the nations involved with that land. Regrettably, at an early age, Josprel abandoned the Lord and the Church. However, among other factors, it was the rebirth of Israel, of which he had heard so much as a child, that kept him from going into deep sin. Josprel is authoring two novels: "Beloved Apostate" and "Kanfal."

Source: http://www.articles.narrowisthepath.com

Living Your Dreams!

Dr. Michael Halleen

I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free. Psalm 119:32

May 12, 2008 - I first noticed Jake when he was praying. We were traveling with a Russian singing group that was appearing in U.S. and Canadian churches. Jake handled the sound equipment, and I drove the van.

We often stayed in homes of church members to save money along the way, and on this occasion he and I were roommates. I awoke after some minutes asleep and noticed a bedside light still on. There, on the other side of his bed, Jake was kneeling on the floor praying silently, his face lifted up, eyes shut tight, back ramrod straight. I watched for some minutes and fell asleep again with the light still on, Jake still praying.

After that I began to notice more about how Jake lived. A quiet young man, he had done little until then to draw my attention. What I saw was someone who, with no more noise than his prayers had created, lived life with enthusiasm and joy. He was interested in things, concerned about people and eager to see and learn all he could. A Russian himself, he was visiting the West for the first time and was thrilled with every new road and town and name and restaurant. He threw himself into trying to learn our language, laughing at his failures and exulting in his successes. With a light in his eyes Jake loved life and his sample of it.

Since traveling with Jake I have observed that people who live successfully have that same kind of attitude. They participate in what is happening. They make an effort. They tackle opportunities with abandon. They focus mentally and spiritually on the many things that are good and right about life. They appreciate that a lifetime is not really a long time—here today, gone tomorrow. So they live it while they can, with hearts that are free.

At the end of our tour, Jake embraced me at the airport and said, “Thank you, Michael. Is like a dream.” His words—and way of living—came back to me when I saw the latest film adaptation of Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days.” In it there is a line that reads: I traveled the world looking for inspiration, and I found it in a man who lives what he dreams.

Jake inspired me. He was a man whose heart was free, and it freed him to live his dream.

Dr. Michael A. Halleen writes very insightful and inspirational messages known as "Monday Moments". If you would like to recieve these messages please contact Mike at mhalleen@att.net.

An Everyday Jesus

by Todd Dawalt

May 2, 2008 - When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch." Simon answered, "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets." When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. Luke 5:4-7

Think about where Jesus did some of His best work. Where did He perform a lot his miracles…or more appropriate to this devotional, where didn’t He perform the majority of His miracles? If you read about the few dozen specific miracles that were recorded (remember that John said there were too many to record), you will see that the majority of them took place during everyday activities of life.

His miracle working power showed up one morning to some guys in a fishing boat, He fed 5,000 men plus wives and kids on the sea shore and believe it or not, His first miracle occurred at a party. He healed people in town, in the country, in the graveyard, and on the side of the road. Jesus did some of His best work outside the walls of the church. In fact, the majority of Jesus’ miracles recorded in the Bible occurred out the secular world, in the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

Jesus spent plenty of time in the synagogue and did perform some miracles there. This is not to imply that God doesn’t move miraculously in churches, because He certainly does. The point is that God can, will and wants to do amazing things in our lives every day of the week, not just during church services. In fact, He may prefer to do the miraculous outside the church walls because lost people are more likely to be impacted there.

I encourage you to think about the boundaries you may be putting on God in your life and consider the areas of your life that you are not allowing or expecting God to move in; could be your job, marriage, children, finances, business, friendships, emotions, hurts from the past, or the mistakes you have made. Now invite God to get involved in those areas of your life, pray that He will take over and deliberately expect great things to happen.

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
(Mark 11:24)

About the Author: Todd Dawalt is a Bible teacher at Sherman Full Gospel Church.

Excavation

By Patrick Odum

“If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Genesis 4:7

April 24, 2008 - The brand-new Yankee Stadium currently under construction in the Bronx is a multi-million dollar project. With deadlines looming and costs mounting, you know that it would take a serious problem for workers to show up on a weekend to jackhammer newly-poured concrete. But that’s exactly what happened on April 13th. Workers showed up to break apart two-and-a-half feet of concrete on what will eventually be a concourse.

Structural problems? Not really. More like sabotage. By terrorists? Well, that would depend on who you ask, I suppose. The culprit, actually, is a construction worker from the Bronx named Gino Castignoli, who only worked one day on the project. But that one day could have had serious consequences for the Yankees franchise, its fans, and the entire city of New York. Yankees president Randy Levine called Castignoli’s offense a “bad, dastardly act,” and the Yankees are discussing with the District Attorney the possibility of bringing charges against him.

No, he didn’t use sub-standard material, or rig the part of the stadium he worked on to collapse.

He buried a David Ortiz Boston Red Sox jersey in the concrete he laid.

The Red Sox and Yankees are, of course, divisional rivals. Their animosity goes back at least as far as the 1918, when the Sox traded a young pitcher named Babe Ruth to the Yankees. The trade, so the legend goes, cursed the Red Sox, who didn’t win another World Series until 2004. The two teams’ – and their fans’ -- hatred of each other is arguably the most intense in sports. Rarely does a season go by in which at least one Yankees – Red Sox game isn’t interrupted by a brawl. Castignoli, a Red Sox fan who literally lives in the Yankees’ neighborhood, apparently hoped that burying the jersey in the stadium would “curse” the Yankees’ new home.

Two other workers – Yankee loyalists, I guess – ratted Castignoli out.

It’s a measure of how seriously the Yankees take the rivalry that they would take the time and expense to dig the jersey out. I mean, what, a couple of square feet of polyester and cotton twill? What harm could it possibly do to a gigantic concrete and steel stadium? Still, the Yankees preferred to take no chances, and out came the jackhammers. Best to dig it out now so there’s no chance of regretting it later.

Maybe that’s a good attitude for us all to adopt toward the stuff that we might have buried in our lives where it doesn’t belong.

“Sin” is the term that the Bible uses for that kind of thing. It really seems like sort of an old-fashioned word, doesn’t it – more appropriate for the black-and-white revival circuit than for life in today’s more complicated, shades-of-grey world? We prefer to speak of “mistakes” or “weaknesses” or “character flaws” or “addictions,” and those terms can all be helpful. The problem is that those are usually after-the-fact words that we use when the stuff that we might have had buried in our lives for a long, long time comes to light. I mean, we usually live with anger management problems for years before a broken marriage or family or friendship forces us to speak of the problem. Lust can lie buried beneath layers of respectability for a long time before adultery or other sexual immorality exposes it. Selfishness and greed can stay undisturbed for much of our lives, and leave us absolutely puzzled about why giving doesn’t bring us any joy or why what we attain is never enough to satisfy us.

Genesis says that, long before Cain raised his hand against his brother Abel, sin was “crouching at [his] door.” His jealousy, his anger, and his callous disregard for his flesh and blood lay buried and untouched deep in his heart long before it came spewing out in homicidal rage. Like most of us will do, left to ourselves, he tried to shift the blame for his actions; he wasn’t treated fairly, God didn’t appreciate him, and so on and so on. Not so different, really, from the layers of blame and bitterness that cover our own sins. If only my spouse appreciated me more. If only my boss wasn’t such a jerk. If only life would deal me a fair hand. If only my parents had been more loving or accepting. So we walk around angry, faces downcast, so focused on our hurt or anger or disappointment that we fail to deal with the real problem: down deep in our hearts lurks sin, waiting, biding its time, a curse waiting to happen.

The good news, of course, is that it doesn’t have to be that way.

The gospel proclaims that we have a Father in heaven who loves us, who sent his Son to die for our sins and raised him to pour out his Spirit into our lives and hearts. “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness;” that’s the overwhelming claim Peter makes in reflecting back on Jesus’ life and work. (2 Peter 1:3-4) He goes on to say that through Jesus, God “has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” In short, Peter reminds us that in Christ God has given us the awareness and the power to do some excavation: the integrity to be honest about what is buried in our hearts and the tools dig it out. “Make every effort to confirm your calling and election,” he exhorts us (2 Peter 1:10), reminding us that while God supplies the energy and the opportunity for us to confront the sin in our lives, it’s up to us to be willing to make the hard choices and do the difficult excavation that God’s calling demands of us.

Among other things, that means that we have to be honest about the sin that still lurks in our hearts and crouches at our doorstep. Our churches must be places where confession is encouraged and repentance truly celebrated. We must have relationships of mutual accountability in which hypocrisy is exposed and we call each other to godliness and righteousness. And we must always be willing to let the jackhammer of the gospel chip away at our pride, arrogance, and pretense so that God can get at the sin that still lies underneath. In Christ, the curse is counteracted. But it won’t make a bit of difference if we can’t let the sin buried in our hearts be exposed to his light and life and healing.

Take a deep breath. Time for some excavation.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

Are You Loyal to God, Country, and Your Family?

by Steven E Coffman

April 17, 2008 - Have you ever noticed that righteousness and loyalty go together? If you are not showing your true loyalty to God, country, and your family, then you are not going to experience God's best. You should also be loyal to your friends, and even your job. Proverbs 21:21 (NASB) states, "He who pursues righteousness and loyalty finds life." This is the Christian way!

Loyal people are truly very honorable people as well. When you're loyal, you will stick in there through thick and thin, and well as in the highs and lows of any relationship. When you're loyal, you will keep your word to God, country, and your family no matter what, even if you have to cross great hurdles. Loyal people are respectful of their country and their leaders, even if they do not agree with everything that they do or say. Loyal people also honor our God, country, and family to stand up and defend them when needed.

Proverbs 3:5-6 (ESV) says, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths."

The secret to staying strong in your faith is truly no secret at all. You just have to live in the strength that God provides, not your own! When you feel you are at your weakest, that is when you must exercise your faith the hardest. You know that when you physically grow there are growing pains, and the same is true spiritually. As you continue to stretch and work out your faith, it will become easier. 2 Corinthians 12:10 says, "I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become."

You should always refuse to be defeated by the things around you and stay loyal, even if the odds seem insurmountable. Perhaps one definition of courage might be to stay strong always moving forward, even when most would give up and surrender their ground out of fear, because Joshua 1:9 tells us; "Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go."

Are you always truly faithful in the things that you’re committed to? Can you truly be more loyal than you already are? Can you rise even higher than you already have? Do not let the distractions of every day life keep you from always pursuing and strengthening your loyalty, and, always look for ways to show your loyalty to those around you. You will also build respect and trust with others that come to know you, and keep the respect and trust of those that already know you.

When you stay truly loyal, you are the person of integrity that God intended for you to be, and truly wants you to be as one of His children. Be strong and courageous today for God, country and your family, and never allow yourself to be defeated. As you daily pursue your loyalty through the years, you will be blessed with the abundant life God has planned for you!

About the Author: Family-eStore will try to provide you with articles of interest to a Christian and patriotic way of life. The articles are written by Steven E Coffman (Owner) of Family-eStore.com (National Essay Contest) winner 1969. I am a person with strong Christian and patriotic beliefs. Tenacity, faith, and a belief in God, Country and Family are key components to success in life. The Christian articles are only intended to bring you closer in your relationship to our Father in heaven. I hope that you enjoy and are enlightened by them.

Resolutions

by Mark Baker

April 3, 2008 - 2 Timothy 3:14,16-17: But as for you, continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them,… All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Loose weight, exercise more, spend less, save more, keep the house cleaner, eat better. Do these sound familiar? They are examples of New Year’s resolutions. How many of us have decided to do one of these in the next year, loose weight, eat better, exercise more, or one of the others? I know I have so many times in the past. Somehow, each year many of us start out on the right track, but loose our resolve and end up not keeping a single resolution we made. Am I the only one this applies to?

I would suggest to you that this year, that you let God be your guide. Let Him show you how to improve your life in the upcoming year.

As Paul instructed Timothy in the verses above, “continue in the things which you have learned.”

2 Timothy 2:15: Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Review the things you have learned and use them as a starting place and get into the Word of God for yourself and apply it to your life. Verse 17 of our opening Scripture plainly tells us that by doing this God will equip us for what He has called us to do.

2Timothy 3:17: that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

God will not ask you to do something that He will not help you or prepare you to do, including studying His Word and drawing closer to God.

Paul wrote to the Ephesians:

Ephesians 1:16-21: 16: (I) do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: 17. that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, 18. the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, 19. and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power 20. which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, 21. far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.

Paul prayed this prayer for the Ephesians and it is something that applies to us today. It can also be a prayer that we pray for ourselves, so that we can grow in understanding of the things of God and show ourselves approved, “a worker who does not need to be ashamed.”

Let’s look at several of the specific things Paul prayed.

1. That God, would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. The Living Bible translates this verse as: Verses 16-17: I have never stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you wisdom to see clearly and really understand who Christ is and all that he has done for you.

Father God wants you to truly understand everything, all we have to do is ask and He will give us wisdom and revelation.

2. The eyes of our understanding be enlightened or opened to know what He has planned for you as a believer. Another translation says verse 18 in this way. Verse 18: the eyes of your heart will receive light. Then you will know the meaning of the hope of God's invitation. You will know the riches of His glorious inheritance among the holy people.

3. Paul goes on to say he prays that they will understand God’s true power to help us any time we need it.
The Living Bible puts it this way: Verses 19-21: I pray that you will begin to understand how incredibly great his power is to help those who believe him. It is that same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God's right hand in heaven, far, far above any other king or ruler or dictator or leader. Yes, his honor is far more glorious than that of anyone else either in this world or in the world to come.

So you see, when we learn what God has already prepared for us, by studying His Word and pray according to His Word, we will grow daily in the things of God. Don’t be afraid to ask God to help you in this way. God loves you and His main desire for you as a born again believer is for you to grow stronger in Him daily.

-- Living Bible
James 4:7-8: So give yourselves humbly to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. And when you draw close to God, God will draw close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and let your hearts be filled with God alone to make them pure and true to him.

Don’t waste time making New Year’s resolutions you can’t keep. Resolve to grow deeper in God and the things of God this year.
It is really very simple, we resist the devil and what ever he is trying to do in our lives and we draw near to God and He will in turn draw near to us. We take the first step by seeking Him with all our heart and He will answer by becoming so real to us. Isn’t that wonderful? God’s love for us is never ending and His mercy is everlasting, take advantage of those gifts, spend time with God and He will spend time with you. Develop a constant one on one relationship with the most important person in the universe and see the changes that will happen in your life over the next year. Then you will be able to say to people “Look what God has done”!!! Amen!

Have a blessed and Happy New Year Holiday in Christ,
Mark and Tinsley Baker.

The following is a copy of the Prayer in Ephesians, changed to the first person, in a more personal way. Pray it for yourself every day and see the changes in your life from the first moment you resolve to put God first in your life. Amen

Father God,
I ask that you, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ and the all glorious Father, give to me spiritual wisdom and the insight to know more of You. That I will receive that inner illumination of the spirit which will make me realize how great is the hope to which You have called me. That I will realize the magnificence and splendor of the inheritance promised to me as a Christian and how tremendous is the power available to me a believer in Christ Jesus. Help me to realize this is the same power that You, Heavenly Father, used to raise Jesus from the dead and seat Him at your right hand above all other powers, authority and rulers. And that gives Jesus the name above every name in Heaven and Earth. Help me to realize the position that I now have through Jesus. That I am seated in the heavenly places with Him. Give me the wisdom and knowledge to know that the enemy has no power over me and that now I have the mind of Christ and the wisdom of God to lead me.
Thank you Father.

Do you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Do you want to be a joint heir with Christ?
If so, I urge you to earnestly pray the following prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, I come to you in the name of Jesus. Your word says, “…and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.” (Jn.6:37),

So I know You won’t cast me out, but You take me in, And I thank you for it. You said in your Word, "whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.'' (Ro. 10:13).

I am calling on Your name, So I know You have saved me now, You also said, “…that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation.” (Ro.10:9,10).

I believe in my heart that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe He was raised from the dead for my justification. And I confess Him now as my Lord, Because Your Word says, “… with the heart one believes to righteousness…” and I do believe with my heart, I have now become the righteousness of God in Christ. (2 Cor. 5:21),

And I am saved! Thank You, Lord! I can now truthfully say, I see myself as a born again child of God! Glory to God!!!! Amen.

About the Author: Mark Baker is the webmaster of The Olive Branch http://www.olivebranchministries.us a site dedicated to helping all that are seeking to come into a deeper understanding of what God has done for us through Christ Jesus. Please visit his site for more free studies and resources to help you in your search.

Seventeen Years, Two Months

By Patrick Odum

Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality…then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-54, NIV)

March 27, 2008 - The Eighteen-Year Plan. That’s what he called it. That was Jamiel Shaw’s plan for his son, Jas. Eighteen meant college. Eighteen meant Jas wouldn’t wind up in prison or dead, a casualty of the Los Angeles neighborhood where he grew up. Eighteen meant that the fate that befalls so many minority kids in places like that neighborhood wouldn’t befall him.

Mr. Shaw had every reason to hope Jas would make it. By all accounts, Jas has done everything right. He has worked hard at school. Treated people with respect. Listened to his parents. Taken care of his little brother. And, not incidentally, averaged fourteen yards per carry every time he touched a football. He was being heavily recruited by schools like Arizona State and Stanford. He would turn eighteen, graduate, and get out of LA and into college. Whether he achieved his dream of playing in the NFL or not, he had a chance to make a life for himself that didn’t include gangs or drugs or prison or an early death. The Eighteen-Year Plan, that’s all it would take.

Ten months short. He nearly made it.

Jas was minding his own business, walking home on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, when a car rolled up behind him and two kids barely older than him got out. They were members of the 18th Street Gang, and one of them asked Jas, “Where you from?” That’s a loaded question – it has to do with turf and gang affiliation, and Jas, who wasn’t in a gang, decided to just not answer. He was forty yards from his front door. Might as well have been forty miles.

His dad heard the pops from inside the house, two of them. Called Jas to warn him of gunfire in the neighborhood, but when Jas didn’t answer his phone Jamiel ran outside. The kids who killed Jas were gone. Jas was too. Ten months short of eighteen.

Mr. Shaw spoke at the funeral, and a sentence in his speech especially caught my attention: “We shouldn’t have to cringe every time our kids go outside.” No, Mr. Shaw, we shouldn’t. A parent shouldn’t have to hope and pray and cross his fingers that his child lives to see eighteen. And he certainly shouldn’t be disappointed. Mr. Shaw should be watching his son next fall play college football, not speaking at his funeral. “Jas believed me when I told him that if he did everything right, it would be OK,” Mr. Shaw said in his eulogy. He should have had every reason to believe you, Mr. Shaw. What you promised him ought to be true.

Tragic stories like Jas’ remind us that in too many places in our world, there’s a lot of distance between what “ought to be” and what is. A young man ought to have his whole life to look forward to at 17 – not behind him. Other young men and women shouldn’t have to die in a foreign country fighting for the whims of leaders sitting at home pulling the strings. We ought to live together in peace and mutual respect, not in distrust and outright hatred. Hunger and treatable diseases ought not to kill thousands and thousands of adults and children each year.

For that matter, we don’t have to look far to see it. Our world is not what it ought to be, not what it was created to be, because God’s original concept didn’t include death. Death is the interloper, the intruder, and the primary reason that our world isn’t what it ought to be. Death wasn’t a part of God’s plan for us. It was never his intention that spouses would have to say goodbye to each other after 50 years of marriage, or that parents would have to say goodbye to their children after five years of life. It was never his intention that death should hang over our heads, or strike us down in our prime. It was never his intention that human life should be reduced to two carved dates on a grave marker.

Sunday was Easter, and for Christians that means more than new clothes and egg hunts. On Easter, we especially remind each other of what is probably, if it can be said, the most important doctrine of our faith. On Easter we celebrate what we have come to regard as the central truth that Jesus was raised from among the dead. For us, that’s more than just a historical note, though we believe that it happened within history. It’s not just a metaphor, either – his followers didn’t die for a metaphor. Jesus’ resurrection is the central doctrine of Christianity because it’s God’s way of bridging that gap in our experience between “ought to be” and “is”. Jesus promised his earliest followers that those who believed in him had already “crossed over from death to life.” He said that the time has come when “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and live.” (John 5:24-25) Hard words to believe, really. Especially after he was killed.

But then some of his friends came to his tomb to mourn, only to hear the news that they need never mourn again. They heard the good news that Jesus had been raised, and they saw him and spoke with him and were told to take that good news to the world. It didn’t take them long to put the pieces together, to figure out that Jesus’ resurrection was a sneak peek at our own. They began to say things like “the dead will be raised imperishable”. They remembered Jesus’ promises and saw his resurrection as the best testimony of all that they were true. Jesus could promise resurrection to his people because he had experienced it himself.

People ought to listen to the Son of God, not kill him, but kill him they did. By raising him, God announced his intention to close the distance between “ought to be” and “is” and make creation, and especially the people he loves so much exactly what it was always supposed to be. For that to happen, death had to go. In Jesus, death is gone.

What we celebrate at Easter, and every day if we but have the mind to do so, is that a tragedy like what happened to Jas Shaw is not the whole story. The sequel to all stories like that, even our own tragedies, is an empty tomb: Jesus’ tomb, and our own, and those of the people we love.

Parents ought not to have to cross their fingers and hope their children’s lives aren’t snuffed out before they even begin. The empty tomb we celebrate on Easter says that even those who have lived through that pain have reason to hope. What is mortal will be renewed in immortality.

I hope I happen to be within earshot when Jamiel Shaw greets his son again.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

Lazarus at the Gates

By Patrick Odum

Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us. (Luke 16:25-26)

March 20, 2008 - His name was James. We had been friends for a couple of years. We often ate lunch together at school, hung out at recess, sometimes went to each others’ homes. I don’t know if I would have called him my best friend, although I suspect he would have called me his. James didn’t have a lot of friends. He was bigger than the rest of us, and awkward. He kind of mumbled when he talked. He had a strange haircut and didn’t wear the same kinds of clothes as most of the other kids in our class, and we were beginning to care about things like that. He was pretty inept socially, likely to say or do the wrong thing at any given moment. But I didn’t care. I liked James, and underneath the unusual clothes and dumb jokes and awkwardness, I knew he was a nice guy. He was my friend, no matter what.

Or, at least, until some of my other friends took me aside one day to tell me that they didn’t want to hang out with James anymore.

I’ve thought since, many times, about what I should have said, what I should have done. I my mental replays of that moment, I tell my friends that James is my friend, and if they can’t be his friends then they can’t be mine. I stand up for him. I make them feel ashamed of themselves for even suggesting that we shut James out of our exclusive little circle. That’s what I do in my mind.

But then, I guess I was too afraid of being the outcast to stand up for my friend. So I said to those guys whose names I don’t even remember that yeah, I’d tell James he couldn’t hang out with us anymore. And I did. He just sort of dropped his head, nodded, and said OK. Just like he was used to that. I was afraid for a while that things would be awkward at school, but I needn’t have worried. He never said a word to me about it. Rarely said anything at all to me after that. Never tried to sit with us at lunch, never approached us at recess. I’ve wondered since just how he got so used to swallowing rejection at that tender an age. Too bad I didn’t care enough then to ask him.

We’re answerable for the people we shut out. The rich man in Jesus’ parable found himself after his death on the outside looking in – in the same place his disregard kept Lazarus in life. In life, a gate barricaded him from Lazarus’ poverty. In death, a chasm barricaded Lazarus from his. In life, Lazarus couldn’t get even the crumbs of food from the rich man’s table. In death, the rich man couldn’t get even a drop of water from Lazarus’ finger. Just retribution, wouldn’t you say?

Lazarus is the only character in any of Jesus’ parables to have a name – maybe to remind us that no one is nameless to God. In our world, a poor beggar with oozing sores is to be pitied, perhaps, but mainly to be avoided. Same goes for an old woman in a nursing home slipping farther and farther away because it’s easier to succumb to dementia than to face the reality of being alone. In our worlds of job and school and family and church and neighborhood don’t comfortable admit the presence of people who are dying of AIDS, who know prison, who are ravaged by mental illness, who are imprisoned by drug abuse. We’re grateful for the gates like education, or medical care, or family, or friends, or church, or money, or even just dumb luck and accidents of birth that allow us to keep them at arm’s length. They are our Jameses, our Lazaruses, nameless and faceless and shut out of our lives because we’d just rather not deal with them.

But God doesn’t see them as we do. He knows their names and knows their faces and it breaks his heart to see them suffering alone when you and I have so many resources that could help them. He calls us to open our gates and go outside to them. He calls us to welcome them inside; to offer them, not just charity, but love and acceptance and friendship. That can be messy. To get close to the Lazaruses of our world is to begin to see our lives in a completely different light. We’ll begin to see ourselves, and our wealth, and our excess, and our preoccupation with possessions and status a little more like God does.

We who wear the name of Jesus Christ ought to know, more than anyone, what it means to go outside the gates of comfort and luxury to bring help and healing and salvation to the poor and sick and suffering. That, after all, is what our Master did when he came to us as one of us. He touched the sick and unclean, loved those who no one seemingly could love, and put the darkness in them to flight by the light that radiated from his words and actions. And he not only lived for people like those; he drank deeply of rejection for them, suffered and died for them, to show that God knew their names and saw their faces and loved them passionately. If anyone ever had the right to sit behind his gates and ignore the suffering of the human race, it was him. But he didn’t.

He came for us. For you and I.

We’re called to remember the forgotten, to notice the ignored, not just because it’s right or holy or moral, but because that’s what our Lord did for us. We’ve all been Lazaruses, and if we can sit behind our gates and never hear the cries of the others then we’ve forgotten that the Lord did more than we dared to hope he would. We would have been happy, wouldn’t we, with scraps from his table?

He got up and gave us his seat.

The other day, my son was trying to decide whether or not to go to a birthday party for his classmate Kaitlyn. The party conflicted with something else, and Josh was having a difficult time making up his mind. He thought and thought, and finally he asked just one question: “Will other people go to Kaitlyn’s party?” He couldn’t stand the thought that she might spend her birthday alone.

Maybe he’s a little more sensitive than his old man.

Listen for the cries of the Lazaruses in your world. Let their groans and their suffering penetrate your heart. Then get up from the table, open your gates, and allow them in. Bandage their wounds. Offer them comfort. Invite them to feast with you and with your Lord.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

Vacancy

By Patrick Odum

But the truth is that Christ has been raised up, the first in a long legacy of those are going to leave the cemeteries… Everybody dies in Adam; everybody comes alive in Christ. But we have to wait our turn: Christ is first, then those with him at his coming…. (1 Corinthians 15:20, 22-23, The Message)

March 13, 2008 - Gerard Lalanne has a problem. And the ordinance he’s passed is not going to solve it.

Mr. Lalanne is the mayor of the village of Sapourenx, in the southwest of France. The problem he’s facing is a lack of space. Not in City Hall, or in the retail district of town – the lack of space he’s trying to deal with is a bit more problematic than that.

The cemetery of Sapourenx is full.

And apparently – wait for it – people are just dying to get in.

Mr. Lalanne has tried to be reasonable. He really has. But an administrative court ruled against his proposal to acquire private land adjoining the cemetery in order to increase its, uh, capacity. And so Mr. Lalanne took the only recourse open to a politician. In an ordinance posted in the city council offices, he informed the 260 residents of the town that they are no longer allowed to die. The ordinance reads, in part, “all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish.”

“Offenders will be severely punished,” it adds.

Something tells me that Mr. Lalanne’s ordinance isn’t likely to be enforced. It isn’t supposed to be, of course; it’s intended as a statement to those who the mayor feels have put him in an impossible situation. “Oh, I can’t expand the cemetery? Well, then, I’ll just pass a law against dying. That should solve the problem.”

Would that it were that easy, huh?

Odds are that some of the people reading these words right now would love to believe that passing a law could stop death. I know, in fact, of several families touched by death recently. A mother and grandmother. A husband, father, and son-in-law. A beloved uncle and friend. Funerals seem to occur in bunches in my life, and lately I’ve just been to too many. I know the families touched most deeply by those losses would agree, and wish with all their hearts that there could be, well, a moratorium on death.

And then there are those who haven’t been touched by death yet, but who are being stalked. A young man, younger than me, with cancer. An elderly lady, another mother and grandmother. All of us, eventually, feel death closing in on the people we love. And sooner or later, on us. Remember the story of the servant who came to his master, terrified because he had seen Death in the marketplace? “Death made a threatening gesture toward me,” the servant whimpers, and so the master makes arrangements to send the servant on an errand to another town, Samarra, so that Death won’t be able to get to him. Then the master goes to the marketplace and tracks down Death. “Why did you threaten my servant?” he asks.

Remember Death’s response? “I didn’t threaten him,” Death answers. “I was just surprised to see him here in the marketplace, because I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

The moral, even for a people with the best medical care in history and an extended life expectancy, is that Death catches up with all of us eventually.

“Everybody dies in Adam.” That’s Paul’s way of saying that we’re not immortal. It’s his recognition that the Fall was real and that God’s warning was true: by going our own way, human beings would be the midwives that brought death into the world. We thought we’d be like God, but now we have a problem: Death walks in our marketplaces and takes who he wants, whenever he chooses. To the extent that we share in the same human nature as Adam, we share in his death. And, sadly, there’s nothing we can do about it. Might as well pass a law against dying, for all the good it’ll do.

Happily, what we can do about it isn’t the end of the story.

In the same way that we look two weeks down the road toward Easter, we anticipate the fulfillment of the hope to which Jesus’ resurrection attests. “Everybody comes alive in Christ,” is the way Paul put it. In the same way that we all share in death because of Adam’s sin, we will all share in resurrection because of Jesus’ life. He identified with us by sharing in death, even though he was not guilty of the sin that brought it about it. And he did this so that we can share in the victory over death that his resurrection brought about. As surely as he was raised to life, so will everyone who has trusted in him. As surely as his tomb was empty, so will be the tombs of everyone who identifies with him.

In effect, Jesus did what we only wish we could do. He passed a decree against death; he prohibited death from exercising its power over human beings. “The trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable,” Scripture promises. “Then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’” (1 Corinthians 15: 53-54, NIV) We still have to die, and we still have to mourn, but because of Jesus there is hope. We grieve for those we love while celebrating their new, eternal lives. We face our eventual death with peace, not fear, trusting in the promise that “Everybody comes alive in Christ.”

So while there is no hope of a moratorium on death on this side of Jesus’ return, there is a solid guarantee that on the day he comes back, death will be dealt with forever. That guarantee is as solid as a rock rolled from the entrance of an empty tomb. It’s as sure as the hope of those disciples who first saw him alive again.

On that day the decree will come down from on high that no one who belongs to Jesus is ever allowed to die again. Space in cemeteries, you can be assured, will no longer be a problem.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

Irreplaceable

By Patrick Odum

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26)

March 6, 2008 - David Garrett has a claim to make with his insurance company. He’s hoping for full replacement value for his broken violin, if he can’t get it fixed. I really haven’t a clue how good his chances are, but I think he’s going to need to have a very good relationship with his agent. A little luck wouldn’t hurt, either.

David’s violin is worth in the neighborhood of $1 million dollars.

Garrett is a former model who in his current career is a violinist known as the “David Beckham of the classical scene.” Something tells me that title doesn’t get him dates with many former Spice Girls, but that’s beside the point, I guess.

David had his violin, a Guadagnini made in 1772, in its case over his shoulder back in December as he left Barbican Hall in London after a performance, when he tripped and fell backward down a flight of stairs. The million dollar violin was mostly crushed. As was David. “I hope and pray it can be fixed, but if it can’t I hope my insurance policy will let me buy another great violin,” the 26-year-old said. Insurance companies being what they are, he might want to include some prayer on that subject too.

“Bend it Like Beckham”? How about “Grind it Like Garrett”?

Sorry. The fact is that some things are easier to replace than others. The paper that what I’m writing will later be printed on is easily replaced for a few cents. The computer on which I’m working would be a little more expensive to replace, but still relatively simple. I’m not sure how you go about replacing a violin like David Garrett’s; even if he gets the money from his insurance company, is buying another one really the same as replacing it?

Then, of course, there are those things that just can’t be replaced at all.

If you’ve ever had to say goodbye to a parent, or a child, or a spouse, then I bet you can relate to that statement. Ditto if you’ve ever had a friendship destroyed by a careless word or thoughtless action. If you’ve had dreams shattered or hope taken away, you know how hard those commodities can be to replace.

What about self-respect? Pretty hard to get back after it’s gone, right? Innocence? Ditto. Once you’ve fallen under a load of guilt, a clean conscience seems impossible to restore, doesn’t it? Once a life is broken by sin, once evil has marked its territory in your daily existence, freedom seems lost forever.

And we know, don’t we, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that what is lost to the grave is gone forever?

Or do we? Notice what God said to his people through Ezekiel: “I’m going to give you a new heart.” Turns out that replacing an actual heart is easier than replacing that metaphorical one that Ezekiel meant. How many of us know that the problems in our lives, more often than not, have had something to do with what’s wrong with us down in the core of who we are. How many of us have wished that someone we love could have a different heart.

God says they can, and that he alone can give it.

Paul must have had something similar in mind when he said in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” In Jesus, he claimed, people are made truly new. He knew something about that first-hand, of course, having had his life totally repurposed and realigned by his faith in the risen Christ. When a person unites with Jesus, he would say in Romans, he dies with Jesus and is raised with him to live a new life.

Remember the last, soul-rattling image of the book of Revelation? John sees a city that he calls the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven to earth, and hears a declaration that God has come to live with people. And as that new city comes down and God moves in with his people, he announces his purpose triumphantly: “I am making everything new!" (Revelation 21:5) That’s what city planners have done as long as there have been cities, of course – tear down the old and rebuild the new. Rip out the SRO’s and adult bookstores and put in the schools and the Starbucks’ and the Borders’. Gentrification. But the fundamental problems just move elsewhere until they find their way back, because the fundamental problems are bigger than old buildings and the people who occupy them.

But God promises that he is in the process of making everything new, of repairing what we mistakenly thought would always be broken and replacing what we’ve wrongly believed could never be replaced. Hearts made new. Sin forgiven. Lives given new purpose. Lost hope restored. Lost relationships renewed. Lost love rediscovered. Even bodies ravaged by age and sickness made new.

God is so serious about making everything new that he won’t even leave graves untouched. Death is part of the old order of things that God is busy making new.

Can we believe that? Can we believe that God is hard at work renovating the universe, the world, and, maybe hardest to believe, even myself? Can we believe that the process is already underway and moving toward its inevitable conclusion, and that one day we can begin eternity celebrating everything made new?

Can you believe in Jesus? That’s what he was showing us by healing the sick – a new reality where sickness doesn’t exist. That’s what his teaching was all about – that the old wineskins of religion wouldn’t hold the new wine of the kingdom. And of course, that’s what his resurrection was about – moldy, dusty graves pulse with new life when God makes everything new.

So maybe it doesn’t seem like it now, but in Jesus you can trust that God is making everything new. Even what needs to be new in your life, and in you. Take him at his word. He is making everything new. Even what you doubt can ever be replaced.

And you won’t even need insurance.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

The University of Gethsemane

By Patrick Odum

February 28, 2008 - During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him... (Hebrews 5:7-9)

A thin, flimsy strand of silver moonlight connects heaven to earth and barely illuminates a Middle-Eastern garden. A man lies prostrate there, looking from a distance indistinguishable from the three other men sleeping nearby. But venture a little closer, quietly and respectfully. This solitary man isn't asleep at all. At first, you hear the groans and sobs. A few steps closer, and the prayer they punctuate becomes audible. Then you see the fingers digging into the dirt and you recognize that this man is in agony. Not physically, like he will be in just hours...minutes. Emotionally. Spiritually.

This man is a student, and this garden is his classroom. You've stumbled upon the last lessons before his final exam. Shocking thought, really, when you recognize just who this is. The Creator of the Universe, learning? The One Before Whom Every Knee Will Bow, being schooled? Hard to comprehend, isn't it? But that's exactly what's happening here in Gethsemane. God With Us is learning what it means for a human being to ignore his clamoring fears and stifle his screaming instincts and trust God instead. "The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." Those words don't just describe the disciple to which he spoke them. They describe him as well, tonight. His spirit knows what must be done and waits to walk obediently into what God has designated as his destiny. But his flesh hasn't caught up yet. And so as the moments tick by and the priests and temple police fall in line behind a treacherous friend, Jesus wrestles alone with his fears and impulses.

Make no mistake. The cross wasn't a done deal when Jesus walked into this garden. He could at any time have put a stop to the whole thing, could have listened to his fears and followed the impulses of his flesh right out of Jerusalem. What was that he said to Peter: "Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?" Think that was the first time it had crossed his mind to whistle for the cavalry?

It is as much a heresy to make Jesus less human than he was as it is to make him less God than he was. To rob him of humanity is to dismiss Gethsemane as just a bit of drama for the benefit of his followers. It was not just a bit of drama. It was a battle over whose will would carry the day, a war to bring flesh in line with spirit.

It was a preview of the war his followers still fight.

If you've felt the pull of sin, the encroaching, spirit-freezing cold of doubt, the sting of fear, the fires of anger, or the numbness of boredom, then you know the war Jesus fought in Gethsemane. You've fought that war before, haven't you, on a thousand different fronts? You've fought it when your children tax your patience. You've fought it when a lie looks so attractive and the truth so difficult. If you've ever been confronted with the allure of illicit sex, if you've ever been tempted to cheat on a test, if you've ever struggled with the desire to take what isn't yours or take credit for what you didn't do, you've been with Jesus in the garden. You're a veteran of the same war if you've ever wanted to stay quiet when God wanted you to speak out, or if you've ever wanted to stay comfortably at home when God was sending you out to serve. If you've ever wondered whether your ministry made a difference, if there was any reason to keep on, you've fought what Jesus fought in Gethsemane. In fact, you are the battleground. Your willing spirit versus your weak flesh.

Sometimes it makes you feel guilty, doesn't it? Well, don't. If Jesus had to fight that battle, if his spirit and flesh clashed, then why should you expect it to be any different with you? Why shouldn't you have to pray and sob and grieve and sweat blood sometimes to follow through with your Father's will? Jesus did it alone, but remember that you're in good company. The Son of God himself will stay awake and watch and pray and weep with you. He knows the struggle first-hand. He knows the horrible disconnect of flesh and spirit that don't line up.

So know that when you pray like he did, he hears and nods and smiles. He doesn't look with disdain on those struggles. He does not regard them as weakness, because he knows from experience that it's in those struggles that human beings find strength. Continue to fight, knowing that your Savior is sympathetic to your predicament.

But I can imagine that he doesn't appreciate it much when we don't fight at all, when we don't even bother to enter the garden. I can imagine it still frustrates and even angers him when we make the same mistake as countless other disciples and doze off when we should be watching and praying -- fighting the battle. Too often we never even fire a shot. We never kneel before the Father, confess our weakness, and announce our intention to do his will anyway. We never even ask him for the strength to want to do his will. And I imagine that it just drives the one who sweated blood in Gethsemane crazy when we lay back and allow our weak flesh to overcome our willing spirits without so much as a quick prayer.

So step a little closer, there in the garden of your mind. Get close enough to smell the fear and sweat, to hear even the whispered prayers. Lie down beside him, with your face to the ground, and join him in the battle. Acknowledge with him the weakness of human flesh, and announce with him your intention to follow him in the will of the Father. Just like his, your prayer will be heard, too.

Class is now in session.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

What Are Mere Mortals....?

By Patrick Odum

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers…
What are mere mortals that you are mindful of them,
Human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8:3-4)

Posted February 7, 2008 - So the word came Thursday. Maryland “genomics pioneer” Craig Venter and his research team announced that they have artificially assembled the genetic code of a living organism. This accomplishment, they hope, is an important step in the creation of an artificial life form.

The next step, they say, is to insert their synthetic chromosome into a cell and see if it will cause the cell to “boot up.”

And if it does, I guess, Dr. Venter will rub his hands together, cackle maniacally, and shout, “It’s alive! It’s alive!”

Actually, I’m not sure we have to worry yet about mad scientists and rampaging monsters. The organism for which Venter and his team have synthesized a chromosome is a bacterium, M. genitalium. Alas, it isn’t one that has much intrinsic value; it causes a sexually transmitted disease in humans, in fact. It was chosen because it has the simplest genetic code of any known living organism, and when you’re trying to do something like create life you walk before you try to run, I guess.

I’m not really sure how to react to this news, to tell you the truth. The media were all over the story, with headlines like “Scientists Poised to Create Life” that made you half expect to see a picture of Colin Clive flipping the switch on some enormous electrical gizmos that will bring Boris Karloff to life. I suppose that I thought that it was inevitable, on some level or another, that human beings would eventually poke around in the realm of creating life; actually, we’ve been doing that very thing biologically for our entire history as a race. But this feels different -- I guess because of the artificiality of it. And also because of the questions it raises.

It was because of some of those very questions that Dr. Venter consulted with an ethics panel at the University of Pennsylvania before he and his team proceeded. It would be interesting to read their report. It no longer seems beyond the realm of possibility that human beings could create life, even other human beings, in a lab. Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein and his creation seem suddenly possible, except that the hypothetical “creatures” we’re talking about now no longer need to be assembled from cadavers. They would be grown from artificially-created cells, even genetically engineered for good looks or whatever other characteristics their creators deemed desirable.

No, “Can it be done?” no longer seems a relevant question. But I’m not sure that the question of whether or not it should be done has been answered with as much certainty.

It turns out that creating life might not be the fantastic trick that Shelley and other science fiction writers used to envision. What do you do with it? How do you treat it? How do you see your creation in regard to yourself? Those are the trickier issues.

We human beings don’t exactly have an unspotted track record in matters of justice. Think of slavery. The Holocaust. The Civil rights struggles of the sixties and beyond. All of these episodes are potent cautionary tales that those who press their way into the frontiers of creation would do well to pay attention to. How often have those in power attempted to exterminate other ethnic groups, simply because they regarded those groups as inferior? Hutus and Tutsis. Serbs and Croats. The Kurds in Iraq. On and on the drumbeat goes.

So take it all the way to its extreme. What if we do create actual, living people artificially? What do we call them? How do we refer to them? Maybe those are the easiest questions to answer, because maybe their answers derive from the answers to other questions. What rights would such people have, if any? Would they be considered mere servants to their creators? Would they have the rights to education, or health care, or to choose a career path? Would they be developed as tools for the use of people in power: as soldiers, maybe? Genetically engineered for strength? And what happens when they outlive their usefulness? Would they be, I don’t know – “uncreated” – just as easily as they were created?

People who want to play God would be advised to take his treatment of his creation as a model for the treatment of our own.

In the Bible, God speaks every other aspect of creation into existence. But he’s pictured sculpting the first human beings from the clay. We were oddballs from the beginning, a custom job built with God’s own hands. In considering God’s creation, the psalmist wrote “what are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” He marveled that God “made them [only] a little lower than the heavenly beings” and “crowned them with glory and honor” and “made them rulers over the works of [God’s] hands.” In absolute amazement, he finishes, “you put everything under their feet.”

And of course, the psalmist wasn’t even aware of what God would do in Jesus: become one of those human beings and die to ensure their forgiveness and make it possible for them to share in his life. The Creator, entering into such close communion with his creation that he literally becomes one of them and gives his life for them.

If we’re not willing to go as far as that, then I put forth the suggestion that we have no business creating the first living cell, or even the first link of the first DNA chain. If we’re not willing to treat our creation with the love and grace and faithfulness with which our Creator treats his, then I put forth the suggestion that we have already overstepped our bounds.

I know, progress marches on. I’m not against progress, and I’m not against using the intelligence and skills given us by our creator to better understand both the world around us and the world within us. It’s just that in our rush toward that progress, we can too easily forget that our Creator has called human beings to be caretakers of his creation. Not little demigods of our own.

There IS a difference.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

With All Your Might

By Michael A. Halleen

"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might." Ecclesiastes 9:10

Posted January 30, 2008 - Clients in my leadership development work often hear me ask them to develop an action plan. It is basic planning, nothing original or profound. So, I ask, what is the goal? What steps are needed to get there? What will be the first step, and when will it be completed? Philip Yancey reminds us that we also need an action plan if we want to move toward being authentic, effective and content human beings. Consider some steps in that direction:

Allow what is good and encouraging to penetrate your spirit as deeply as the bad.

For some reason it takes a dozen encouragements to balance the impact of one negative encounter. The several successes we had yesterday still have not overcome the single failure of last week. A good plan might be to start each morning with a prayer (or even some self-talk) of gratitude for the events and relationships that await us and to fall asleep at night with thoughts of thankfulness — rather than self-criticism — for what has been. We move toward that upon which we dwell, so let those positive moments come often into focus. Give thanks with all your might.

Let satisfaction be a reward you accept without guilt.

Sometimes, because of messages received in childhood, we imagine that if we feel good we are somehow displeasing God. But it is actions, not feelings, which please or displease God. The Scottish athlete Eric Liddell ("Chariots of Fire") told his sister who wanted him to give up his running in order to be a missionary, "God made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure." Ask yourself what makes you sense God's pleasure. Identify that and do it with all your might.

Make forgiveness your primary response to those who wound you.

A friend told me of a massage therapist who can discern with his fingers which leg a patient usually crosses over the other while sitting. The continuing effect of tension in the muscles gives it away. So also do our bodies and souls store up unresolved tension when we carry resentments with us through the day. They keep us from full health and real contentment. Let them go. When I get a dent in my car I have it pounded out and repainted. For heaven's sake, why would I not do the same for my heart? Forgive with all your might.

So, what's your goal? What steps are needed to get there? What will be the first step, and when will you take it?

You can contact Mike at mhalleen@att.net. Also check out Mike's book "You Are Rich: Discovering Faith in Everyday Moments": http://snipurl.com/mHalleen (Amazon).

Abortion & The Church in America

By David Crowe

Posted January 22, 2008 - On January 22nd, 1973 a handful of men on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a woman had a right to kill the child in her womb for any reason whatsoever. Since that time nearly 50 million Americans have had their lives taken from them.

Reasons Women Choose to have an abortion

25% Wanted to postpone pregnancy
21% Said they could not afford a child
14% Said it would interfere with their career plans
12% Said they were too young to have a child
10% Said it would disrupt their education
8% Said they didn't want more children
3% Said it was a risk to their health

By age 45, 43% of women in America will have had at least one abortion

18% of the 1.2 million abortions performed in America each year are performed on Evangelical Christians
50% of adult Americans say abortion is a 'major problem' in America
67% of America's 'born again' Christians consider it a major problem
94% of America's 'evangelical' Christians consider it a major problem
52% of America's Catholics consider abortion to be a major problem
56% of America's Protestants consider abortion to be a major problem
80% of America's 'born again' Republicans are most concerned about abortion (3 out of every 5 Republicans are 'born again' voters)
58% of America's 'born again' Democrats are most concerned about abortion (2 out of every 5 Democrats are 'born again' voters)

What the Bible says about life

"Know that the LORD Himself is God; It is He who has made us , and not we ourselves." Psalm 100:3

"Thus saith the LORD, they redeemer, and He that formed thee from the womb; I am the LORD that maketh all things ." Isaiah 44:24

"But now, O LORD, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we are all the work of thy hand ." Isaiah 64:8

"Before I formed thee in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you..." Jeremiah 1:5

"And God spoke all these words, saying...thou shalt not kill." Exodus 20:1,13

"I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life , that both thou and thy seed may live." Deuteronomy 30:19

LORD God, maker of heaven and earth, forgive us for saying you are LORD and denying it by our actions. Penetrate our darkened and deceived minds, that we might see we have believed the lies of the world and Satan himself. Open our minds and hearts to see the horror we have created by participating in such evil. Convict us and work within our seared conscience to a deep and abiding repentance lest you abandon us and our children permanently to a nation of perversity and evil beyond comprehension. In the only Name in which we might be saved, Jesus of Nazareth , our Redeemer, Amen.

Tuesday is the 25th anniversary of Roe. v. Wade.

Pray for those who are contemplating an abortion, that they might be moved to seek counsel from other sources than Planned Parenthood; for those who are engaged in performing abortions, that they might have a 'Damascus Road' experience with the living God; for our elected state and federal officials, that those who affirm abortion might become convicted of their errors before God, repent and stand firm in support of life; and for Christians throughout America, that they might be encouraged, emboldened, and engaged, with every tool in their possession to influence their peers and the political system around them; and to VOTE PRO LIFE.

Pray also for the 43 % of all women under the age of 45 who have had abortions, that they might find solace, forgiveness and new life in Christ, and that they may become the great force in America to speak out as victims of a culture that has lied to them through the deception of Satan and his emissaries on the earth.

And finally, please pray for the February 22-23 Restore America Conference. It is unique to the Northwest in preparing us to all be 'salt and light' , to "Know the Truth. . . And Change the Culture."

For more information about David Crowe, please visit his web site at RestoreAmerica.org.

Hiding Place

By Patrick Odum

You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. Psalm 32:7

Posted January 17, 2008 - Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire....

Police in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, responded to an alarm at the Speedway restaurant early Monday morning. When they arrived at the scene they surrounded the building, then went inside. They noticed broken ceiling tile which looked as if someone had tried to hide in the ceiling but had fallen through. They began a thorough search of the restaurant, betting that the burglar was still hiding somewhere on the premises.

It didn’t take them long to find him hiding. In the oven.

I don’t know about you, but I find that plan a little – here it comes – half-baked.

But not all that surprising. Or unusual. Honestly, human nature seems to be so that when we’re caught red-handed doing wrong, our first impulse is to hide what we’ve done. It doesn’t matter if the evidence of our wrongdoing is overwhelming or the only available hiding places are precarious, at best. We’ll crawl into them, curl up, close our eyes, and cross our fingers. The burglar at that Speedway probably tried to convince the police that he had just fallen asleep cleaning the oven.

It’s a drive as primal as the Garden of Eden. Remember what Adam and Eve did when they took their bites of that fruit and realized what they had done? First they made clothes for themselves, because for the first time they had to hide from each other. Usually, when they heard God in the garden they ran to meet him, like children rushing to greet a parent home from work. But on that day, for the first time they didn’t go to meet him. They found a bush or a tree or something, and they hid. They hid from God.

The impulse is still there, still the same. Avoid getting caught. Avoid disgrace, elude penance. Whatever you have to do, at all costs, stay a step ahead of the consequences of your sins. Defend. Deny. Justify. Lie.

Hide.

Hide behind self-righteousness. Hide behind sympathy. Hide behind deception. Hide behind hypocrisy. Hide behind religion. Admit to nothing, if you don’t have to. If you have to, say you’re a victim. Say your guilt is really to be placed on the heads of your parents, or your friends, or your circumstances.

It’s such a part of us that we do it on a societal scale. As a nation we blame our problems on other countries, other people, other governments. Certainly America, the shining city on a hill, has no burden of guilt. Systemic evils like racism and poverty abound and increase because we blame them on factors beyond our control and fail to shoulder our share of responsibility for either the problems or the solutions. And the church….well, the church ignores and hides its sin and guilt behind worship and good works and an atmosphere which allows us to have lives that are largely walled-off from one another.

Isaiah saw the problem in his day, when he took the leaders of his own nation to task. “You boast… ‘When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by, it cannot touch us, for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.’” (Isaiah 28:15) They were another nation, another people of God, who thought that they could get away with their wrongdoing by hiding.

They were half-baked, too.

At bottom, the problem with hiding our guilt is a matter of faith. Like most of the pathology in our lives, we do it because we don’t understand the first thing about who God is. Despite all he’s tried to tell us and show us about himself, despite the lengths to which he’s gone to assure of his love, we doubt him. We doubt he exists, or that he forgives, or that he understands us.

The psalmist knew: “You are my hiding place.” When trouble encroaches on us, when evil is overwhelming, and even when that trouble and evil come from our own hearts and are created by our own sin, God is our hiding place. In God is refuge. In God is safety. In God is mercy. In God is forgiveness. In God is hope, a new life, a new start.

Maybe you doubt that. I can understand why. Sometimes God’s people don’t represent him very well. We focus on his wrath to the exclusion of his forgiveness. We picture him as stern and inflexible, unbending, unyielding. We describe him in our sermons, represent him in our attitudes and lifestyles, as a God of judgment and punishment: an obsessive, compulsive, micro-managing God who loves to find fault with his people and punishes each sin with awful glee and enthusiasm.

You don’t have to look to Christ to find God’s mercy and love, but it’s a good place to start. In Jesus you see God eating with sinners, enjoying their food and their company, and leaving them with a word of mercy and hope and new purpose. You see God stepping in to counteract the evil that we human beings had invited into our lives. You see God raising the dead, cheating our sin out of its rightful wages. You see God hanging on a cross, suffering some of the worst evil that human beings can concoct so that as he participates with us in our suffering and death we can participate with him in righteousness and new life.

When the psalmist called God his hiding place, he didn’t know the half of it.

If you’re busy hiding, then maybe it’s because you don’t know the half of it either. The life and death of Jesus says that God will be your hiding place, if you’ll allow him. You’ll have to crawl out of the little niches into which you’ve crammed yourself. You’ll have to step away from some of the cover behind which you’ve kept your guilt hidden. You’ll have to drop the fig leaves and face up to your nakedness, but when you do God will clothe you. It hurts, to have to face who we are. But Christ will caress your cheek with a pierced hand and invite you to come and rest in his love.

The hiding places we choose for ourselves never work any better than the oven did for that Minnesota thief. If you stay there long enough, eventually things will get too hot. But God can be trusted; he is faithful and he will protect you and leave you humming songs of deliverance.

I know you’re there. Come on out. There’s no reason to hide anymore.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

Dust and Ashes

By Patrick Odum

"I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes..." (Genesis 18:27)

Posted January 10, 2008 - I wasn't eavesdropping. Not really. But she wasn't really making an effort to guard what she was saying. She had to talk over fairly loud music and humming exercise machines in the gym I belong to, and she was right behind me. So I heard her clearly as she spoke to the woman next to her.

She was young. Attractive. Her voice was cultured, her vocabulary educated. Her workout clothes looked expensive. On the surface, she looked as if she had it all together. And it was clear from her conversation that she wanted to sell exactly that image of herself. She was talking with her workout partner about a third woman, a woman for whom she had a thinly-disguised contempt. She put it something like this: " I can't take her for very long. See, I know what I want, and I do what it takes to get it. I don't let anyone tell me what to do. I'm my own person." She went on to say that this unnamed woman was unclear about her goals and unsure of herself, that she gave a husband or a boyfriend too much say in her life. She was not independent, decisive, or driven. And the implication was that this clearly made her an inferior person.

Should I judge someone I don't know by one conversation I wasn't intended to hear? No, of course not. That's not really my point, though. Hearing what she said set me thinking. Many, many people that you and I know consider the traits of independence and determination to get what we want some of the most admirable traits a person can have. I consider them so, that for that matter. But this woman I overheard talked about them in such stark, uncompromising terms that I started to wonder. Is there no conceivable situation in which we should sacrifice what we want? Should we never allow the wishes of another person to influence us? Are being unclear about our goals or unsure about ourselves really the mortal sins that she made them out to be?

Well, I came to a conclusion somewhere between the bench-press and bicep-curl machines. In our world, there's one orthodox truth that must be embraced. It's not tolerance, though tolerance is its corollary. It's not individual rights, though individual rights spring out of it. The one truth that everyone in our society must accept or risk being marginalized is this: "I am the center of the universe." What matters is me. My goals must be attained. My rights must be respected. My wishes must be fulfilled. I must express myself. I will set the direction of my life, and woe to anyone who gets in my way. I will not apologize, I will not equivocate, and I will not change.

Oh, we can serve others. But often we do it more from a desire to feel better about ourselves than a desire to help someone else. Oh, we sacrifice, but often only to attain something we value more highly. We can give up our goals, but often we only do it when they are eclipsed by loftier ones. I don't mean to be harsh here, but it's the atmosphere we breathe. Most of the time we don't even consciously choose it. It even infiltrates our churches as we rate worship based on how it meets our expectations and demand that the preacher make us feel good about where we are and send us home with 3 simple steps to getting further down the road we've decided beforehand to travel.

In that atmosphere, the greatest heresy of all is "I am nothing but dust and ashes." But realizing that is the only thing that'll save us. I am not God, and God is certainly not indebted to me. I'm a scraped-together clump of dust and ashes that lives only because God breathed life into me and sustains me each day. It took guts for Abraham to barter with God for Sodom and Gomorrah because he knew who he was and who God is. "My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you," said Job. "Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:5-6) When he finally got a good glimpse of God, he remembered who he was, gave up trying to play God, and sat down among the rest of the dust and ashes.

It's vivid, isn't it, to think of yourself as dust and ashes. Dust is what we walk on every day. We either ignore it or try to sweep it up. And ashes are what even the voracious fire doesn't want. Dust and ashes we are: common, ignored, unwanted, valueless.

Uplifted yet?

When we meet God, when we really get to know him outside of all the religious trappings we spruce him up with and the theological boxes we keep him in, there's no other conclusion about ourselves that we can draw. Compared to him, we're dust and ashes. He scraped us together out of the elements he already had lying around. In and of ourselves, we're not worth a lot. The dreams we dream and the things we accomplish don't raise our value a great deal. And what we want, or think we want, is in the grand scheme of things pretty inconsequential. And often downright ungodly.

But that's not the end of the story. Once you understand who God is and who you are, the way is clear for you to understand how much you matter. Because the hands that scraped together the dust and ashes that became us were God's hands. The breath that gives us life, that makes a part of us eternal, is God's breath. We matter, even more than we knew. But not because of our independence or ambition or talent or drive or determination. We matter for the simple reason that we matter to God. He loves us, dust and ashes though we are.

He loves us. He made us the crowning achievement of his creation, however unspectacular our origins were. He continually reveals himself to us, shows us that he wants a relationship with us by making himself known to us in ways too innumerable to catalog. And he even allowed himself to become one of us, to take on the nature of dust and ashes in Jesus. And then he spent that human life that he took on himself for us, going to the overlooked and forgotten and sick and grieving and sinful. "The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn...to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes..." (Isaiah 61:1-3)

A crown of beauty instead of ashes -- but only placed on your head by his hands. Trust me, you don't want to waste your time with any lesser crowns. Trust that your value comes from God. Put him in his rightful place in the center of your universe, and be content with your place in orbit around him, enjoying his warmth and light.

You won't want to be your own person very much longer.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

Spitting in the Wind of Tragedy

By Patrick Odum

While he was still speaking to her, messengers arrived from Jairus' home with the message, "Your daughter is dead. There's no use troubling the teacher now."
But Jesus ignored their comments and said to Jairus, "Don't be afraid. Just trust me." (Mark 5:35-36, New Living Translation)

Posted January 4, 2008 - When volunteer fireman David Varnedore got a call about a car accident on a rural road near Douglas, Georgia, Saturday night, he found a tragic scene of carnage. A drunk driver had wandered onto the wrong side of the road and hit an ATV loaded with six children ranging in age from 10-14. None were wearing helmets. Hats, shoes, and candy from the kids' pockets were scattered for 75 yards along the roadside. Five of the six were dead at the scene. It doesn't get any worse than that.

Actually, it does. David discovered that two of the fatalities were his own kids.

When David arrived, he came first to his son. One look told him all he needed to know. "There was no hope for him," David sobbed afterward. He did CPR on his daughter, but couldn't save her, either. Returning to the scene a couple of days later, he pointed to the road for reporters. "See that spot of blood?" he asked. "That was my son. You see this spot of orange paint?" he asked, indicating a mark made by investigators. "That was my daughter.

After the accident, David could do nothing but go back home to his wife and remaining child. In a sense, of course, he'll never go back home. How do you survive a tragedy like that? How do you ever fall asleep again? How do you get up the next morning, or the one after that? How does life ever return to some semblance of normal: eating dinner, doing your job, going to church, celebrating holidays? How do you live in a house filled with toys that will never be played with again, clothes that will never be worn again, pictures of children who will not appear in future pictures? Home is forever off the map, I imagine, after a loss of that magnitude.

I'm not sure I can think of anything worse than losing a child, anything that would bring your world down around you quite like that. It hurts to think about it, to even read David Varnedore's story, doesn't it? Truth be told, the pain attached to the death of a child is so great that I'm not even entirely comfortable writing this. I'm very aware that someone may be reading this with eyes that shed tears at his own child's funeral. We would do anything, up to and including taking their place, to preserve the lives of our children. In a heartbeat. And to be unable to save your child from death; that has to be a helpless, desperate feeling.

Two of the Gospels, Mark and Luke, tell of a father who knew that helplessness and desperation first-hand. He was a local synagogue leader; respected and admired, no doubt, for his piety and decorum. He was an insider in the religious system of the day; not exactly the kind of guy who usually followed Jesus around. But one day he showed up. Not as a religious leader. Not to debate theology. Not even really to hear what Jesus had to say. He came as a father, desperate to save his little girl who he could see slipping away. Death was stalking her, and Jairus couldn't hold him off any longer. He probably reasoned like this: "If the rumors about his power aren't true, then she'll be no worse off. And if they are true, then she'll be saved." The upside is too great, so Jairus ignores the disapproval of his peers, leaves his wife at the girl's bedside, and dives into the ragtag mob around Jesus. He fights his way through and comes face to face with him.

"My little girl is dying," he says through tears. "Please come and put your hands on her so that she'll live."

En route to Jairus' house they meet a messenger, probably a family friend. He leans close to Jairus, puts an arm on his shoulders. "She's gone," he says gently. "No sense in bothering this teacher any more."

His stomach twists. His world spins around him. He clutches his friend for support. He turns to Jesus to thank him, to dismiss him, so he can go home -- though he knows he can never go home -- and console his wife. But instead of sympathy, he sees serene determination in Jesus' eyes. Maybe he didn't hear. Jarius opens his mouth to repeat the message, but Jesus cuts him off. "Don't be afraid. Trust me."

It's a ridiculous and even rude thing to say, but if it seemed so to Jarius at that moment it didn't seem so a few minutes later. It didn't seem so after he said "Get up, little girl," and she sat up and stretched like she was waking up from a nap. It didn't seem so as he and his wife watched her eat a dish of strawberry ice cream like nothing had happened. "Don't be afraid. Trust me." Words like that at a moment like that seem like spitting in the wind. But a person who can back those words up is a person to put your faith in.

In our moments of tragedy, doubt, fear, and hopelessness, he leans close and says those same words to us. "Don't be afraid. Trust me." He doesn't promise to make your problems go away. Very few funerals are interupted by the resurrection of the guest of honor. But his calm voice whispers in your ear that you don't have to be afraid if you'll believe in him. You can trust that he's got everything taken care of, that all is still well, that the beaten and fearful human beings around you just don't know the whole story. He sees clearly a world in which whatever evil has driven you to your knees is vanquished, in which tragedy is beaten, in which tears and pain and grief and anger and hate and jealousy are nothing more than distant, hazy memories -- if that. In that world, loved ones who should never have died meet us at the front gates. In that world, God himself wipes the tears from our faces, wipes our noses, and welcomes us home.

I pray that David Varnadore knows about that world. If not, I pray someone tells him.

To read more from Patrick Odum, please visit his website at Faithnet.Faithsite.com.

Missed Calamities

By Michael Halleen

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me... (Psalm 23:4)

Posted January 2, 2007 - College choir members on tour and accompanying staff (I was among the latter) stayed in homes to save money on lodging, and so I found myself in the back seat of a big Buick sedan one evening following a concert in a church in the central valley of California. My driver and host was a cheerful, elderly man who loved to talk about the new golf clubs — putters, mostly — he had invented.

We stopped at a railroad crossing. The red lights were flashing, but guard rails had not been lowered. My host was prattling on about his latest invention when he realized there was no train in sight. "Guess we can go," he said, gunning the engine and moving the big Buick across the tracks. We had not gone three hundred feet down the road when a freight train roared through the intersection. I stared at it out the back window, scarcely able to breathe. My host, however, seemed not to notice as he and his wife wondered aloud what to serve for breakfast the next day.

Arnold Hutschnecker, a physician and psychologist, told the story of how he, as a young soldier cut off from his German army unit, had been trapped behind enemy lines in Ukraine toward the end of World War II. Hidden in deserted barracks, he and six comrades were found by Russian soldiers and lined up to face a firing squad. Fourteen rifles were pointed at them — no escape, no place to run.

The Russian captain prolonged his prisoners' agony by casually smoking a cigarette before giving the order to fire. Finally he tossed it to the ground, slowly twisting it with his boot. Then a faint sound...the purring of a small engine...and a military motorbike raced into the yard. The rider shouted to the captain words that even the German prisoners understood meant "Move out!" Polish troops were approaching and they had time only to hide. In later years Hutschnecker reflected on the small miracle of circumstance that caused that captain to take those last few drags on his cigarette, giving time for the sound of the motorbike to be heard and the warning of an advancing army to save him from an apparently hopeless situation.

We walk daily through dangerous and difficult valleys. Most often, however, calamity misses us. Mark Twain said, "I'm an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened." We move on down the road and plan tomorrow's breakfast. It is a mercy from the hand of God, who walks with us.

You can contact Mike at mhalleen@att.net. Also check out Mike's book "You Are Rich: Discovering Faith in Everyday Moments": http://snipurl.com/mHalleen (Amazon).

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