What If Starbucks Marketed Like A Church?

Another video today........it's been seen alot but I thought I'd share...........Interesting.......





What did YOU think?

A Little Used Weapon

It's so important to memorize scripture. We as a body of believers seem to know the Scriptures, have an idea where something is, or can say part of a verse. Listen to this word from John Piper-




Just a small reminder................

Anticipation

I sat at the stoplight Saturday, a beautiful and hot spring Saturday. I watched the cars go by, looking at the individuals in each car. One small truck had a dad and his son in it, all suited up for a Little League game. They take baseball seriously here, where we've had several boys drafted and playing in both the Major and Minor leagues.

I remember twelve years ago being in the same place as that dad and son. There was nothing like playing ball on Saturdays. Both my sons did the Little League and traveling league thing, and I coached. The sights and sounds, of spring in the air, fresh cut grass and the smell of leather. One of my sons said that "a bad day between the white lines was better than a good day anywhere else".

I saw the expression on the face of the boy in the truck. It was the same expression I saw on my boys' face. That sweet anticipation of playing in a big game, and knowing you'd spend the day at the ballpark. A smile, twinkling eyes and some butterflies. The kind of day a boy is made for.

And I have to admit, Dad had that anticipation too.

While I sat at the light and thought about those things, I thought of something else. Do we have the same anticipation when we go to meet the Lord in prayer or worship? Or do we do it out of duty or guilt? Do we await the Lord's coming and spending eternity with Him with the same anticipation a boy has for a Saturday ball game? We should be running to meet Him when we go to worship or prayer.

That's part of what the Word is speaking to when it says we need to come as little children. Isn't that what we are made for?

Saturday Song- Still Small Voice- Randy Stonehill

STILL SMALL VOICE

I have heard a Still, Small Voice
That's whispering, "I Am, I Am, I Am"
Have you heard a Still, Small Voice
Whispering, "I can, I can, I can"
"If you'd only believe"
"If you'd only believe"
"If you'd only believe that there is love"

I have heard a Still, Small Voice
That's whispering, "tonight, tonight, tonight"
Oh oh oh oh
And if you hear that Still, Small Voice
Whispering, "It's right, oh it's right, it's right"
"If you'd only believe"
"If you'd only believe"
"If you'd only believe that there is love"

Oh you can tell Him all of your sorrows
Come and tell Him your dreams
Tell Him your dreams
He could give you your dreams

I have heard a Still, Small Voice
That's whispering "I am, I am, I am"
Oh oh and if you hear that Still, Small Voice
Whispering, "Oh, He can, yes He can, He can"
"If you'd only believe"
"Ooh only believe"
"If you'd only believe that there is love"
There is love, oh yeah, there is love
And it's waiting for you

And I really believe, oh yes I do
Really believe oh I, I really believe
That there is love
Really believe that there is love
Hey, yeah, really believe there is love
I really believe, oh oh
Yes I, I really believe that there is love
Really believe there is love

God Calling Devotional- You WIll Conquer

God Calling

April 21 - You Will Conquer

I am with you. My Presence is a sign of My forgiveness. I uphold you

You will conquer. Do not fear changes. You can never fear changes when I, your Lord, change not. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. I am beside you. Steadfastness, unchangingness, come to you, too, as you dwell with Me. Rest in Me.

As breathing rightly, from being a matter of careful practice, becomes a habit, unconsciously, yet rightly performed, so if you regularly practice this getting back into My Presence, when the slightest feeling of unrest disturbs your perfect calm and harmony, so this, too, will become a habit, and you will grow to live in that perfect consciousness of My Presence, and perfect calm and harmony will be yours.

Life is a training school. Remember, only the pupil giving great promise of future good work would be so singled out by the Master for strenuous and unwearied discipline, teaching and training,

You are asking both of you to be not as hundreds of My followers, nay as many, many thousands, but to be even as those who reflect Me in all they say and do and are. So, My dear children, take this training, not as harsh, but as the tender loving answer to your petition.

Life can never be the same again for either of you. Once you have drunk of the wine of My giving, the Life Eternal, all earth's attempts to quench your thirst will fail.

"I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the
children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." Exodus 3:14

www.twolisteners.org

Saturday Song- Homesick- Mercy Me

You're in a better place, I've heard a thousand times
And at least a thousand times I've rejoiced for you
But the reason why I'm broken, the reason why I cry
Is how long must I wait to be with you

I close my eyes and I see your face
If home's where my heart is then I'm out of place
Lord, won't you give me strength to make it through somehow
I've never been more homesick than now

Help me Lord cause I don't understand your ways
The reason why I wonder if I'll ever know
But, even if you showed me, the hurt would be the same
Cause I'm still here so far away from home

I close my eyes and I see your face
If home's where my heart is then I'm out of place
Lord, won't you give me strength to make it through somehow
I've never been more homesick than now

In Christ, there are no goodbye
And in Christ, there is no end
So I'll hold onto Jesus with all that I have
To see you again
To see you again

And I close my eyes and I see your face
If home's where my heart is then I'm out of place
Lord, won't you give me strength to make it through somehow
Won't you give me strength to make it through somehow
Won't you give me strength to make it through somehow

I've never been more homesick than now

The End of Christian America, Part 2

This is a continuation from the Newsweek article from yesterday.

Part 2

What, then, does it mean to talk of "Christian America"? Evangelical Christians have long believed that the United States should be a nation whose political life is based upon and governed by their interpretation of biblical and theological principles. If the church believes drinking to be a sin, for instance, then the laws of the state should ban the consumption of alcohol. If the church believes the theory of evolution conflicts with a literal reading of the Book of Genesis, then the public schools should tailor their lessons accordingly. If the church believes abortion should be outlawed, then the legislatures and courts of the land should follow suit. The intensity of feeling about how Christian the nation should be has ebbed and flowed since Jamestown; there is, as the Bible says, no thing new under the sun. For more than 40 years, the debate that began with the Supreme Court's decision to end mandatory school prayer in 1962 (and accelerated with the Roe v. Wade ruling 11 years later) may not have been novel, but it has been ferocious. Fearing the coming of a Europe-like secular state, the right longed to engineer a return to what it believed was a Christian America of yore.

But that project has failed, at least for now. In Texas, authorities have decided to side with science, not theology, in a dispute over the teaching of evolution. The terrible economic times have not led to an increase in church attendance. In Iowa last Friday, the state Supreme Court ruled against a ban on same-sex marriage, a defeat for religious conservatives. Such evidence is what has believers fretting about the possibility of an age dominated by a newly muscular secularism. "The moral teachings of Christianity have exerted an incalculable influence on Western civilization," Mohler says. "As those moral teachings fade into cultural memory, a secularized morality takes their place. Once Christianity is abandoned by a significant portion of the population, the moral landscape necessarily changes. For the better part of the 20th century, the nations of Western Europe led the way in the abandonment of Christian commitments. Christian moral reflexes and moral principles gave way to the loosening grip of a Christian memory. Now even that Christian memory is absent from the lives of millions."

Religious doubt and diversity have, however, always been quintessentially American. Alexis de Tocqueville said that "the religious atmosphere of the country was the first thing that struck me on arrival in the United States," but he also discovered a "great depth of doubt and indifference" to faith. Jefferson had earlier captured the essence of the American spirit about religion when he observed that his statute for religious freedom in Virginia was "meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination"—and those of no faith whatever. The American culture of religious liberty helped create a busy free market of faith: by disestablishing churches, the nation made religion more popular, not less.

America, then, is not a post-religious society—and cannot be as long as there are people in it, for faith is an intrinsic human impulse. The belief in an order or a reality beyond time and space is ancient and enduring. "All men," said Homer, "need the gods." The essential political and cultural question is to what extent those gods—or, more accurately, a particular generation's understanding of those gods—should determine the nature of life in a given time and place.

If we apply an Augustinian test of nationhood to ourselves, we find that liberty, not religion, is what holds us together. In "The City of God," Augustine —converted sinner and bishop of Hippo—said that a nation should be defined as "a multitude of rational beings in common agreement as to the objects of their love." What we value most highly—what we collectively love most—is thus the central test of the social contract.

Judging from the broad shape of American life in the first decade of the 21st century, we value individual freedom and free (or largely free) enterprise, and tend to lean toward libertarianism on issues of personal morality. The foundational documents are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, not the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament (though there are undeniable connections between them). This way of life is far different from what many overtly conservative Christians would like. But that is the power of the republican system engineered by James Madison at the end of the 18th century: that America would survive in direct relation to its ability to check extremism and preserve maximum personal liberty. Religious believers should welcome this; freedom for one sect means freedom for all sects. As John F. Kennedy said in his address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960: "For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist … Today I may be the victim—but tomorrow it may be you—until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped."

Religion has been a factor in American life and politics from the beginning. Anglican observance was compulsory at Jamestown, and the Puritans of New England were explicitly hoping to found a New Jerusalem. But coerced belief is no belief at all; it is tyranny. "I commend that man, whether Jew, or Turk, or Papist, or whoever, that steers no otherwise than his conscience dares," said Roger Williams.

By the time of the American founding, men like Jefferson and Madison saw the virtue in guaranteeing liberty of conscience, and one of the young republic's signal achievements was to create a context in which religion and politics mixed but church and state did not. The Founders' insight was that one might as well try to build a wall between economics and politics as between religion and politics, since both are about what people feel and how they see the world. Let the religious take their stand in the arena of politics and ideas on their own, and fight for their views on equal footing with all other interests. American public life is neither wholly secular nor wholly religious but an ever-fluid mix of the two. History suggests that trouble tends to come when one of these forces grows too powerful in proportion to the other.

Political victories are therefore intrinsically transitory. In the middle of the 19th century, the evangelist Charles Grandison Finney argued that "the great business of the church is to reform the world—to put away every kind of sin"; Christians, he said, are "bound to exert their influence to secure a legislation that is in accordance with the law of God."

Worldly success tends to mark the beginning of the end for the overtly religious in politics. Prohibition was initially seen as a great moral victory, but its failure and ultimate repeal show that a movement should always be careful what it wishes for: in America, the will of the broad whole tends to win out over even the most devoted of narrower interests.

As the 20th century wore on, Christians found themselves in the relatively uncontroversial position of opposing "godless communism," and the fervor of the Prohibition and Scopes-trial era seemed to fade a bit. Issues of personal morality, not international politics, would lay the foundations for the campaign for Christian America that we know as the rise of the religious right. The phenomenon of divorce in the 1960s and the Roe decision in 1973 were critical, and Jimmy Carter's born-again faith brought evangelical Christianity to the mainstream in 1976.

Growing up in Atlanta in the '60s and '70s, Joe Scarborough, the commentator and former Republican congressman, felt the fears of his evangelical parents and their friends—fears that helped build support for the politically conservative Christian America movement. "The great anxiety in Middle America was that we were under siege—my parents would see kids walking down the street who were Boy Scouts three years earlier suddenly looking like hippies, and they were scared," Scarborough says. "Culturally, it was October 2001 for a decade. For a decade. And once our parents realized we weren't going to disappear into dope and radicalism, the pressure came off. That's the world we're in now—parents of boomers who would not drink a glass of wine 30 years ago are now kicking back with vodka. In a way, they've been liberated."

And they have learned that politics does not hold all the answers—a lesson that, along with a certain relief from the anxieties of the cultural upheavals of the '60s and '70s, has tended to curb religiously inspired political zeal. "The worst fault of evangelicals in terms of politics over the last 30 years has been an incredible naiveté about politics and politicians and parties," says Mohler. "They invested far too much hope in a political solution to what are transpolitical issues and problems. If we were in a situation that were more European, where the parties differed mostly on traditional political issues rather than moral ones, or if there were more parties, then we would probably have a very different picture. But when abortion and a moral understanding of the human good became associated with one party, Christians had few options politically."

When that party failed to deliver—and it did fail—some in the movement responded by retreating into radicalism, convinced of the wickedness and venality of the political universe that dealt them defeat after defeat. (The same thing happened to many liberals after 1968: infuriated by the conservative mood of the country, the left reacted angrily and moved ever leftward.)

The columnist Cal Thomas was an early figure in the Moral Majority who came to see the Christian American movement as fatally flawed in theological terms. "No country can be truly 'Christian'," Thomas says. "Only people can. God is above all nations, and, in fact, Isaiah says that 'All nations are to him a drop in the bucket and less than nothing'." Thinking back across the decades, Thomas recalls the hope—and the failure. "We were going through organizing like-minded people to 'return' America to a time of greater morality. Of course, this was to be done through politicians who had a difficult time imposing morality on themselves!"

Experience shows that religious authorities can themselves be corrupted by proximity to political power. A quarter century ago, three scholars who are also evangelical Christians—Mark A. Noll, Nathan O. Hatch and George M. Marsden—published an important but too-little-known book, "The Search for Christian America." In it they argued that Christianity's claims transcend any political order. Christians, they wrote, "should not have illusions about the nature of human governments. Ultimately they belong to what Augustine calls 'the city of the world,' in which self-interest rules … all governments can be brutal killers."

Their view tracks with that of the Psalmist, who said, "Put not thy trust in princes," and there is much New Testament evidence to support a vision of faith and politics in which the church is truest to its core mission when it is the farthest from the entanglements of power. The Jesus of the Gospels resolutely refuses to use the means of this world—either the clash of arms or the passions of politics—to further his ends. After the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the dazzled throng thought they had found their earthly messiah. "When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone." When one of his followers slices off the ear of one of the arresting party in Gethsemane, Jesus says, "Put up thy sword." Later, before Pilate, he says, "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight." The preponderance of lessons from the Gospels and from the rest of the New Testament suggests that earthly power is transitory and corrupting, and that the followers of Jesus should be more attentive to matters spiritual than political.

As always with the Bible, however, there are passages that complicate the picture. The author of Hebrews says believers are "strangers and exiles on the earth" and that "For here we have no lasting city, but seek the city which is to come." In Romans the apostle Paul advises: "Do not be conformed to this world." The Second Vatican Council cited these words of Pius XII: the Catholic Church's "divine Founder, Jesus Christ, has not given it any mandate or fixed any end of the cultural order. The goal which Christ assigns to it is strictly religious … The Church can never lose sight of the strictly religious, supernatural goal."

As an archbishop of Canterbury once said, though, it is a mistake to think that God is chiefly or even largely concerned with religion. "I hate the sound of your solemn assemblies," the Lord says in Amos. Religion is not only about worshipping your God but about doing godly things, and a central message of the Gospels is the duty of the Christian to transform, as best one can, reality through works of love. "Being in the world and not of it remains our charge," says Mohler. "The church is an eternal presence in a fallen, temporal world—but we are to have influence. The Sermon on the Mount is about what we are to do—but it does not come with a political handbook."

How to balance concern for the garden of the church with the moral imperatives to make gentle the life of the world is one of the most perplexing questions facing the church. "We have important obligations to do whatever we can, including through the use of political means, to help our neighbors—promoting just laws, good order, peace, education and opportunity," wrote Noll, Hatch and Marsden. "Nonetheless we should recognize that as we work for the relatively better in 'the city of the world,' our successes will be just that—relative. In the last analysis the church declares that the solutions offered by the nations of the world are always transitory solutions, themselves in need of reform."

Back in Louisville, preparing for Easter, Al Mohler keeps vigil over the culture. Last week he posted a column titled "Does Your Pastor Believe in God?," one on abortion and assisted suicide and another on the coming wave of pastors. "Jesus Christ promised that the very gates of Hell would not prevail against his church," Mohler wrote. "This new generation of young pastors intends to push back against hell in bold and visionary ministry. Expect to see the sparks fly." On the telephone with me, he added: "What we are seeing now is the evidence of a pattern that began a very long time ago of intellectual and cultural and political changes in thought and mind. The conditions have changed. Hard to pinpoint where, but whatever came after the Enlightenment was going to be very different than what came before." And what comes next here, with the ranks of professing Christians in decline, is going to be different, too.

Read more about NEWSWEEK's poll on religion in America here .

With Eliza Gray
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583
© 2009

The End of Christian America, Part 1

Taken from Newsweek magazine. Apathy, prophesy and persecution. Any other words you can think of? Part 1 today, part 2 tomorrow.

The End of Christian America

The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become.
Jon Meacham
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Apr 13, 2009

It was a small detail, a point of comparison buried in the fifth paragraph on the 17th page of a 24-page summary of the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey. But as R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest on earth—read over the document after its release in March, he was struck by a single sentence. For a believer like Mohler—a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life—the central news of the survey was troubling enough: the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, "this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified." As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America's religious culture was cracking.

"That really hit me hard," he told me last week. "The Northwest was never as religious, never as congregationalized, as the Northeast, which was the foundation, the home base, of American religion. To lose New England struck me as momentous." Turning the report over in his mind, Mohler posted a despairing online column on the eve of Holy Week lamenting the decline—and, by implication, the imminent fall—of an America shaped and suffused by Christianity. "A remarkable culture-shift has taken place around us," Mohler wrote. "The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture." When Mohler and I spoke in the days after he wrote this, he had grown even gloomier. "Clearly, there is a new narrative, a post-Christian narrative, that is animating large portions of this society," he said from his office on campus in Louisville, Ky.

There it was, an old term with new urgency: post-Christian. This is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory. To the surprise of liberals who fear the advent of an evangelical theocracy and to the dismay of religious conservatives who long to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population.

According to the American Religious Identification Survey that got Mohler's attention, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. The Jewish population is 1.2 percent; the Muslim, 0.6 percent. A separate Pew Forum poll echoed the ARIS finding, reporting that the percentage of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent; in terms of voting, this group grew from 5 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008—roughly the same percentage of the electorate as African-Americans. (Seventy-five percent of unaffiliated voters chose Barack Obama, a Christian.) Meanwhile, the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million. (That is about double the number of, say, Episcopalians in the United States.)

While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing—good for our political culture, which, as the American Founders saw, is complex and charged enough without attempting to compel or coerce religious belief or observance. It is good for Christianity, too, in that many Christians are rediscovering the virtues of a separation of church and state that protects what Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island as a haven for religious dissenters, called "the garden of the church" from "the wilderness of the world." As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America's unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom—not least freedom of conscience. At our best, we single religion out for neither particular help nor particular harm; we have historically treated faith-based arguments as one element among many in the republican sphere of debate and decision. The decline and fall of the modern religious right's notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.

Let's be clear: while the percentage of Christians may be shrinking, rumors of the death of Christianity are greatly exaggerated. Being less Christian does not necessarily mean that America is post-Christian. A third of Americans say they are born again; this figure, along with the decline of politically moderate-to liberal mainline Protestants, led the ARIS authors to note that "these trends … suggest a movement towards more conservative beliefs and particularly to a more 'evangelical' outlook among Christians." With rising numbers of Hispanic immigrants bolstering the Roman Catholic Church in America, and given the popularity of Pentecostalism, a rapidly growing Christian milieu in the United States and globally, there is no doubt that the nation remains vibrantly religious—far more so, for instance, than Europe.

Still, in the new NEWSWEEK Poll, fewer people now think of the United States as a "Christian nation" than did so when George W. Bush was president (62 percent in 2009 versus 69 percent in 2008). Two thirds of the public (68 percent) now say religion is "losing influence" in American society, while just 19 percent say religion's influence is on the rise. The proportion of Americans who think religion "can answer all or most of today's problems" is now at a historic low of 48 percent. During the Bush 43 and Clinton years, that figure never dropped below 58 percent.

Many conservative Christians believe they have lost the battles over issues such as abortion, school prayer and even same-sex marriage, and that the country has now entered a post-Christian phase. Christopher Hitchens —a friend and possibly the most charming provocateur you will ever meet—wrote a hugely popular atheist tract a few years ago, "God Is Not Great." As an observant (if deeply flawed) Episcopalian, I disagree with many of Hitchens's arguments—I do not think it is productive to dismiss religious belief as superstitious and wrong—but he is a man of rigorous intellectual honesty who, on a recent journey to Texas, reported hearing evangelical mutterings about the advent of a "post-Christian" America.

To be post-Christian has meant different things at different times. In 1886, The Atlantic Monthly described George Eliot as "post-Christian," using the term as a synonym for atheist or agnostic. The broader—and, for our purposes, most relevant—definition is that "post-Christian" characterizes a period of time that follows the decline of the importance of Christianity in a region or society. This use of the phrase first appeared in the 1929 book "America Set Free" by the German philosopher Hermann Keyserling.

The term was popularized during what scholars call the "death of God" movement of the mid-1960s—a movement that is, in its way, still in motion. Drawing from Nietzsche's 19th-century declaration that "God is dead," a group of Protestant theologians held that, essentially, Christianity would have to survive without an orthodox understanding of God. Tom Altizer, a religion professor at Emory University, was a key member of the Godless Christianity movement, and he traces its intellectual roots first to Kierkegaard and then to Nietzsche. For Altizer, a post-Christian era is one in which "both Christianity and religion itself are unshackled from their previous historical grounds." In 1992 the critic Harold Bloom published a book titled "The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation." In it he cites William James's definition of religion in "The Varieties of Religious Experience": "Religion … shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they consider the divine."

Which is precisely what most troubles Mohler. "The post-Christian narrative is radically different; it offers spirituality, however defined, without binding authority," he told me. "It is based on an understanding of history that presumes a less tolerant past and a more tolerant future, with the present as an important transitional step." The present, in this sense, is less about the death of God and more about the birth of many gods. The rising numbers of religiously unaffiliated Americans are people more apt to call themselves "spiritual" rather than "religious." (In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 30 percent describe themselves this way, up from 24 percent in 2005.)

Roughly put, the Christian narrative is the story of humankind as chronicled in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament—the drama of creation, fall and redemption. The orthodox tend to try to live their lives in accordance with the general behavioral principles of the Bible (or at least the principles they find there of which they approve) and anticipate the ultimate judgment of God—a judgment that could well determine whether they spend eternity in heaven or in hell.

Part 2 tomorrow.

Home

I been thinking alot about home lately. I detailed on Thursday last week that my cousin's home burned down. His wife, who told doctors while battling cancer that she just wanted to heal at home, cried because she no longer had a home. I know that for me, after a long day on the road and at work, long to be home. My parents have lived in their home for 48 years, and my wife's parents for 40 years.

There's nothing like home. A favorite place, a favorite chair or room.

Yet these are only temporary trappings.

We are aliens and strangers here. Home is where we will spend the rest of eternity with our Lord, if we've spent our lives here with Him everyday.

I much as I love to be home, I can't wait to be Home.

Saturday Song- El Shaddai- Amy Grant

El shaddai, el shaddai,
El-elyon na adonia,
Age to age youre still the same,
By the power of the name.
El shaddai, el shaddai,
Erkamka na adonai,
We will praise and lift you high,
El shaddai.

Through your love and through the ram,
You saved the son of abraham;
Through the power of your hand,
Turned the sea into dry land.
To the outcast on her knees,
You were the God who really sees,
And by your might,
You set your children free.

El shaddai, el shaddai,
El-elyon na adonia,
Age to age youre still the same,
By the power of the name.
El shaddai, el shaddai,
Erkamka na adonai,
We will praise and lift you high,
El shaddai.

Through the years youve made it clear,
That the time of christ was near,
Though the people couldnt see
What messiah ought to be.
Though your word contained the plan,
They just could not understand
Your most awesome work was done
Through the frailty of your son.

El shaddai, el shaddai,
El-elyon na adonai,
Age to age youre still the same,
By the power of the name.
El shaddai, el shaddai,
Erkamka na adonai,
I will praise yo till I die,
El shaddai.

El shaddai, el shaddai,
El-elyon na adonai,
Age to age youre still the same,
By the power of the name.
El shaddai, el shaddai,
Erkamka na adonai,
I will praise you till I die.
El shaddai.

Good Friday

House Burned Down

My cousin's house burned down yesterday. All the way to the ground. They didn't have time to get one item out. No one was hurt.

I can't imagine having the security of my home denied me. My home is, like any other's, a place to decompress and find solitude when I need it. A retreat from life.

He had built his home 30 years ago with the help of others. It was built behind his parent's house, where he had lived all his life. He purchased the land from our aunt. Ten years ago his parents, my aunt and uncle, got divorced after 50 years of marriage. They were in their late 70s. They sold that house in front, the one he had been raised in. When my uncle died a few years ago, some of his kids didn't speak to each other or their mom at the funeral. Now, after all that, his home is gone.

Oh, and by the way, his wife has been fighting cancer for the last two years. Talk about a Job-like story.

We are so spoiled to be devastated when our perfect lives don't go our way. Our 401k tanks, we don't get a promotion, and we may even be off work for a while. Most of us have blinders on to other people and their problems. How can we ever start to minister when we don't know what empathy even means?

But what do you say when someone is hurting like this? If someone has lost a child or spouse, or been told they have cancer. Or had their family destroyed, and their house burned down. Do they want to hear how much God loves them? Should then be the time to remind them that God has a plan for their life?

Now is the time only to love and to act. Talk can come later, when it can be soaked in. All those things should be shared, but only when they are ready to receive.

Many Christians feel that the only witness they need to be is how they live their lives. I disagree most of the time, feeling that they need to share the story of why they live like that and Whom they are living for. But I do think this is a time or situation for no talk, and more action. And more prayer. Prayer is the least used weapon in a Christian's arsenal, even though it's the most powerful.

Sorry for a little rambling today.

Please pray for my cousin.

And remember, Christian is a verb.

God Lives Under the Bed

I'm not one for forwarding emails. I don't know why, but I don't. I did get one that I wanted to pass along though. Like little children we should come to Him.

GOD LIVES UNDER THE BED

"I envy Bill. My brother, Bill, thinks God lives under his bed. At least that's what I heard him say one night.

He was praying out loud in his dark bedroom, and I stopped to listen, 'Are you there, God?' he said. 'Where are you? Oh, I see. Under the bed...'

I giggled softly and tiptoed off to my own room. Bill's unique perspectives are often a source of amusement. But that night something else lingered long after the humor. I realized for the first time the very different world Bill lives in.

He was born 30 years ago, mentally disabled as a result of difficulties during labor. Apart from his size (he's 6-foot-2), there are few ways in which he is an adult.

He reasons and communicates with the capabilities of a 7-year-old, and he always will. He will probably always believe that God lives under his bed, that Santa Claus is the one who fills the space under our tree every Christmas and that airplanes stay up in the sky because angels carry them.

I remember wondering if Bill realizes he is different. Is he ever dissatisfied with his monotonous life?

Up before dawn each day, off to work at a workshop for the disabled, home to walk our cocker spaniel, return to eat his favorite macaroni-and-cheese for dinner, and later to bed.

The only variation in the entire scheme is laundry, when he hovers excitedly over the washing machine like a mother with her newborn child.

He does not seem dissatisfied.
He lopes out to the bus every morning at 7:05, eager for a day of simple work.

He wrings his hands excitedly while the water boils on the stove before dinner, and he stays up late twice a week to gather our dirty laundry for his next day's laundry chores.

And Saturdays - oh, the bliss of Saturdays! That's the day my Dad takes Bill to the airport to have a soft drink, watch the planes land, and speculate loudly on the destination of each passenger inside. 'That one's goin' to Chi-car-go! ' Bill shouts as he claps his hands.

His anticipation is so great he can hardly sleep on Friday nights.

And so goes his world of daily rituals and weekend field trips.
He doesn't know what it means to be discontent.

His life is simple.

He will never know the entanglements of wealth of power, and he does not care what brand of clothing he wears or what kind of food he eats. His needs have always been met, and he never worries that one day they may not be.

His hands are diligent. Bill is never so happy as when he is working. When he unloads the dishwasher or vacuums the carpet, his heart is completely in it.

He does not shrink from a job when it is begun, and he does not leave a job until it is finished. But when his tasks are done, Bill knows how to relax.

He is not obsessed with his work or the work of others. His heart is pure.

He still believes everyone tells the truth, promises must be kept, and when you are wrong, you apologize instead of argue.

Free from pride and unconcerned with appearances, Bill is not afraid to cry when he is hurt, angry or sorry. He is always transparent, always sincere. And he trusts God.

Not confined by intellectual reasoning, when he comes to Christ, he comes as a child.. Bill seems to know God - to really be friends with Him in a way that is difficult for an 'educated' person to grasp. God seems like his closest companion.

In my moments of doubt and frustrations with my Christianity, I envy the security Bill has in his simple faith.

It is then that I am most willing to admit that he has some divine knowledge that rises above my mortal questions.

It is then I realize that perhaps he is not the one with the handicap. I am. My obligations, my fear, my pride, my circumstances - they all become disabilities when I do not trust them to God's care.

Who knows if Bill comprehends things I can never learn? After all, he has spent his whole life in that kind of innocence, praying after dark and soaking up the goodness and love of God.

And one day, when the mysteries of heaven are opened, and we are all amazed at how close God really is to our hearts, I'll realize that God heard the simple prayers of a boy who believed that God lived under his bed.

Bill won't be surprised at all!"

Abide

Fear seems to be the word of the day. Fear of the automaker's bailout. Fear of the banks and the stock market. Fear of the new president. Fear of war in the Middle East, or between India and Pakistan, or a new cold war with Russia.

Fear and worry means that we don't think God is big enough or powerful enough to take care of our situations. When things look grim, or an international scale or in your own home, we need to rest in Him.

One of my favorite King James words is abide. Abide in me, and I in you. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

To me, abide not only feels like a place to live, but talks of a place of rest. No fear, just laying close to the Lord, surrounded by His wings of protection.

Don't be afraid. Abide.

Saturday Song- Jesus Freak- DC Talk

What will people think
When they hear that I'm a Jesus freak?
What will people do
When they find that its true?

Separated, I cut myself clean
From a past that comes back in my darkest of dreams
Been apprehended by a spiritual force
And a grace that replaced all of me I've divorced

I saw a man with tat on his big fat belly
It wiggled around like marmalade jelly
It took me a while to catch what it said
Cause I had to match the rhythm
Of his belly with my head
Jesus saves is what it raved in a typical tattoo green
He stood on a box in the middle of the city
And claimed he had a dream

What will people think
When they hear that I'm a Jesus freak
What will people do when they find that its true
I don't really care if they label me a Jesus freak
There ain't no disguising the truth

Kamikaze, my death is gain
Ive been marked by my maker
A peculiar display
The high and lofty, they see me as weak
Cause I wont live and die for the power they seek

There was a man from the desert with naps in his head
The sand that he walked was also his bed
The words that he spoke made the people assume
There wasn't too much left in the upper room
With skins on his back and hair on his face
They thought he was strange by the locusts he ate
The pharisees tripped when they heard him speak
Until the king took the head of this Jesus freak

What will people think
When they hear that I'm a Jesus freak
What will people do when they find that its true
I don't really care if they label me a Jesus freak
There ain't no disguising the truth


People say I'm strange, does it make me a stranger
That my best friend was born in a manger
People say I'm strange, does it make me a stranger
That my best friend was born in a manger