Isaiah 40:31

Florida Tragedy

This was written by Ben Watson who plays for the Baltimore Ravens.  Another voice of light in the darkness – praise God for this man who isn't afraid to speak the truth..........

‪The horrific attack this week that took the lives of seventeen Americans is sickening. Across this land these images grip our hearts as we burn the midnight oil asking “Why” and searching for the correct action to combat such evil.


‪Over this week while we have been driven to our knees as countless voices invoke prayer, I am haunted by the fact that this very exercise is forbidden in this school and thousands of others across our nation. I ask myself, “If He is God in crisis is He not also God in peace?! If he is worthy of our desperate cries in distress is he not worthy for us to seek Him and submit our lives to Him daily?”


‪God is not a cosmic vending machine to be used at our disposal only when the problem or pain is greater than our ability to control it. And while because of His love and mercy He is compelled to hear our pleas and meet us in these times, by forcing him out of the public arena it is only us who will collectively suffer.


‪In times like this, we loudly reiterate the charge to each citizen to RESPECT LIFE yet we sanction the disintegration of our families bonds, the murder of our unborn children and the excessive incarceration of our young men. Even now, the climate in this country is tense and toxic, with accusations and conspiracy reaching the highest levels of our government. Insults without contrition are spewed, creating ripples of animosity vengeance and strife among the populace. Instead of staunch fundamental yet respectful disagreement with the other side, we hate the other side and have no qualms about expressing it in the most descriptive and vile ways in written and spoken word. We are too proud to apologize and too angry too forgive. We lie and omit truth, cleverly selecting words and phrases to fit our narratives and support our agendas. We encourage a lifestyle of relativism, free expression, and a capricious standard of morality that is based on whims rather than wisdom. We condone and sometimes celebrate violence and abuse in various forms.


‪While justice demands this young man in Parkland Florida be held accountable for the heinous plan he carried out by his own volition, we must have the courage to take an honest assessment of our culture in its totality and how it relates to this tragedy and others like it.


‪I pray. For comfort strength healing justice and peace in what has proven to be an increasingly recurring saga. These acts of violence indict the criminal as well as the society he emerged from. While we must address the individual incident, the perpetrator and the circumstances we must have the willingness to unveil the myriad
‪contributing factors to the crisis we are in. Fire arms legislation, security, parenting, family, rights, relativism, morality, media, conflict, violence and the wicked human heart all play a role and all must be boldly addressed.


‪I mourn. For the Parkland community and all those directly impacted by these actions of evil. In truth we are all affected by these events because while one community suffers another is still healing and another waits in fear of what tomorrow could possibly bring. No family should have to face such an unconscionable reality.

A Nation of Moral Geldings

By Everett Piper - - Sunday, November 19, 2017

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Question: If the woman in the photo of Al Franken (where he’s groping her while she sleeps) would have given “consent,” then would this be right and good? If morality is really nothing more than mutual “consent” and Sen. Franken could prove that she said this was okay to do while she lay sleeping, he would have nothing — absolutely nothing — to be “ashamed” of. Right?

Today’s culture of “consent” places all responsibility for moral judgment on women and completely exonerates men to live as cads (as long as they can find women to say they don’t care). “Consent” assumes that men are no longer capable of governing themselves by an immutable standard of what is right and what is wrong.

Morality is no longer fixed but always in flux. Right behavior is not a constant but rather simply a mater of approval. If the woman consents to being groped then it’s right. If she doesn’t then it’s wrong. If she wants to have sex then a man can have at it with fury. All a man needs to do is find a woman — any woman — who will “consent” to his libidinous appetites and what was wrong five minutes ago, now becomes right.

This is a world of no self-evident truths — a world of the created rather than the Creator. It is a world where the exact same actions of Al Franken, Donald Trump and Bill Clinton are deemed moral, if consented to by their prey, but yet abhorrent if not.

Personal culpability for doing the “right thing” regardless of what someone else believes and/or consents to, is never considered. Men are not expected to demonstrate character but rather to just go about the business finding a willing accomplice. Just get her to “consent” and rut about at will. No worries. No guilt. No responsibility. Mutual agreement is the final measure of what is right and what is wrong.

“Being good” is no longer an objective reality but rather a subjective construct that is totally dependent on what someone else says you can or can’t do. Groping a woman is okay if she says it is okay but wrong if she says it’s not.

Staring voyeuristically at her in magazines or on websites is considered harmless recreation but doing the exact same thing through a window blind is deviant and criminal. Celebrating women as objects of recreation on the cover of Sports Illustrated is good, but actually treating them like objects of recreation is bad. Good has become evil and evil has become good.

We have created a nation of moral geldings rather than a nation of gentlemen. No conscience. No internal restraining force. Constantly looking for the next conquest under the cover of “consent,” today’s man seeks only to satiate his libido. After all, there is no reason not to other than the woman who says “no” and it never occurs to him that he might have the human responsibility to not ask her to say “yes” in the first place.

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful” — C.S. Lewis


• Everett Piper is president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University.

the gift

I love Lindsey Stirling - the gifts God has given her and her obedience to use these gifts and talents for His Kingdom. Enjoy this beautiful piece and be sure to watch her message to you at the end. It's priceless.

Merry Christmas!

Oceans

You call me out upon the waters
The great unknown where feet may fail
And there I find You in the mystery
In oceans deep
My faith will stand
And I will call upon Your name
And keep my eyes above the waves
When oceans rise, my soul will rest in Your embrace
For I am Yours and You are mine
Your grace abounds in deepest waters
Your sovereign hand
Will be my guide
Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me
You've never failed and You won't start now
So I will call upon Your name
And keep my eyes above the waves
When oceans rise, my soul will rest in Your embrace
For I am Yours and You are mine
Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Savior
Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Savior
Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Savior
I will call upon Your name
Keep my eyes above the waves
My soul will rest in Your embrace
I am Yours and You are mine
Songwriters: Joel Houston / Matt Crocker / Salomon Lighthelm
Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) lyrics © Capitol CMG Genesis

Young Minds

Train up a child in the way he should go;

 even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led

astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.  2 Cor 11:3

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and 

have it abundantly.  John 10:10

And give no opportunity to the devil.  Eph 4:27

Oswald Chambers

For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. 2 Corinthians 4:16

God has allowed the finger of decay to come to your body and lay you completely aside, and you begin to see what a slight hold you have on life, and the thought comes -- "Well, I expect I will have to cave in. I have not the strength I once had; I can never do the things I thought I would for God."

It may come in a hundred and one ways and you realize that the outward man is wasting, that you have not the might you once had, and this is where the cowardly surrender is apt to come in - only we give it another name. The great craze today is to be healthy - "a sound mind in a sound body." Very often the soundest minds have not been in sound bodies, but in very shaky tabernacles, and the word comes "though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

Paul faces the possibility of old age, decay, and death with no rebellion and no sadness. Paul never hid from himself the effect which his work had upon him; he knew it was killing him, and, like his Master, he was old before his time; but there was no whining and no retiring from the work. Paul was not a fool; he did not waste his energy ridiculously, neither did he ignore the fact that it was his genuine apostolic work and nothing else that was wearing him out. Every wasting of nerve and brain in work for God brings a corresponding uplifting and strengthening to spiritual muscle and fiber. 

If the outward man is perishing because of an injudicious waste of physical strength or because of wrong habits, then it will always make us faint, or cave in; and if we give up prayer and communion with God, then the decay goes on to a terrible extent; there is no corresponding inward weight of glory, no inner winging.

The apostle Paul continually had external depression, he had agonies and distresses, terrible persecution and tumults in his life, but he never had the "blues," simply because he had learned the secret that the measure of the inner glory is the wasting of the outward man. The outer man was being wasted. Paul knew it and felt it but the inner man was being renewed. Every wasting meant a corresponding winging on the inside. Some of us are so amazingly lazy, so comfortably placed in life, that we get no inner winging. The natural life, apart altogether from sin, must be sacrificed to the will and the word of God, otherwise there is no spiritual glory for the individual. With some of us the body is not wearing away. Our souls are stagnant and the vision spiritually is not getting brighter. But once we get into the heavenlies, live there, and work from that standpoint, we find we have the glorious opportunity of spending all our bodily energies in God's service and corresponding weight of moral and spiritual glory remains all the time. No matter how wearied or expended the body may be in God's work, there is the winging of the inner man into a higher grasp of God.

We have to beware of the pagan notion that our spirit develops in spite of our body; it develops with our body, and the way that spiritual insight develops in the worker is, as Paul states here, in the wasting of energy for God, because in this way the inner man is renewed. It is not a question of saying "Oh, my body is so lazy, I must drag it up to do something," but a question of working on God's line to the last lap, spending and being spent for one purpose only, and that purpose God's. If we put the body and the concerns of the body before the eternal weight of glory, we will never have any inner winging at all. We will always be asking God to patch up this old tabernacle and keep it in repair. But when the heart sees what God wants, and knows that the body must be willing to spend and be spent for that cause and that cause alone, then the inner man gets wings.

Oswald Chambers, The Love of God