I really like the TV show Extreme Makeover Home Edition. (You know the show where they come and tear somebody’s house down and rebuild it bigger and better.) Well, the families that get chosen for the Home Makeover are really excited and happy. They readily give them permission to re-do their house. But once they come and start tearing down the house, you wonder if the families ever start getting worried. I mean, come on! They at least had a house even though maybe it was in bad shape. And a house is better than no house! Even though at first they realized the finished house would be great, when they start bulldozing their house you wonder if they ever start doubting whether this was such a great idea.
It’s the same when God starts working on us. He starts tearing things down, re-doing, rebuilding, and rearranging. And sometimes that gets painful. It gets uncomfortable. But one day, the work He has begun in us will be completed. And the finished us will be so much better than anything we could have ever hoped for or even imagined! Just hang in there and trust God. Because you know what? He’s trustworthy!
...being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:6
"May God long preserve to you the blessings of peace and innocence! By which phrase, I mean comparative innocence; for in His sight, I am well aware, none are pure. What, to our human perceptions, looks spotless as we fancy angels, is to Him but frailty, needing the blood of His Son to cleanse, and the strength of His Spirit to sustain. Let us each and all cherish humility—I, as you, my young friends; and we may well do it when we look into our own hearts, and see there temptations, inconsistencies, propensities, even we blush to recognize. And it is not youth, nor good looks, nor grace, nor any gentle outside charm which makes either beauty or goodness in God’s eyes. Young ladies, when your mirror or men’s tongues flatter you, remember that, in the sight of her Maker, Mary Anne Ainley—a woman whom neither glass nor lips have ever panegyrized [which means praised]—is fairer and better than either of you. She is indeed,” he added, after a pause—“she is indeed. You young things—wrapt up in your selves and in earthly hopes—scarcely live as Christ lived: perhaps you cannot do it yet, while existence is so sweet and earth so smiling to you; it would be too much to expect: she, with meek heart and due reverence, treads close to her Redeemer’s steps.”
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte chapter 4 Mr. Donne's Exodus
It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
~Good Sayings by Albert Einstein
When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
~Franklin D. Roosevelt~Famous Perseverance Sayings
Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.
~William Feather~Great Perseverance Quotes
Don't be discouraged. It's often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock.
~Author Unknown~Famous Perseverance Sayings
Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.
~Newt Gingrich~Great Perseverance Quotes
The time is always right to do what is right.
~Martin Luther King Jr.
Nothing is more harmful to the service, than the neglect of discipline; for that discipline, more than numbers, gives one army superiority over another.
~George Washington
"In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first."
~Harry S. Truman
"First we form habits, then they form us. Conquer your bad habits or they will conquer you."
~Rob Gilbert"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments."
~Jim Rohn
Imagine that you are engaged to be married. You have met and fallen in love with the one who God has planned you for all along. You can hardly wait for the wedding day, but you have one problem. Your groom promised to bring the entire wedding party to your doorstep, but following old Jewish tradition, has refused to tell you the wedding date. It is a secret posessed only by him and his father. Every morning you wake up and question yourself, 'Is this the day of my marriage?' Each day you must prepare as though the wedding were just about to take place.
This may seem like a surreal situation, but it was reality for Jewish women during the time of Christ. After the initial betrothal, about twelve months would pass. Toward the end of the twelve months or soon after, the groom would arrive at the bride's home with the wedding party and the marriage ceremony could begin. The bride was never sure of the exact time that her husband-to-be was coming; she only knew that it was soon.
The correct answer is: Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe and close the door. This question tests whether you tend to do simple things in an overly complicated way.
2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator ?
Wrong Answer: Open the refrigerator, put in the elephant and close the refrigerator.
Correct Answer: Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door. This tests your ability to think through the repercussions of your actions.
3. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference, all the animals attend except one. Which animal does not attend?
Correct Answer: The Elephant. The Elephant is in the refrigerator. This tests your memory.
OK, even if you did not answer the first three questions, correctly you still have one more chance to show your abilities.
4. There is a river you must cross. But it is inhabited by crocodiles. How do you manage it?
Correct Answer: You swim across. All the crocodiles are attending the animal meeting. This tests whether you learn quickly from your mistakes.
Girls become anorexic and bulimic so that they will become thin, expose themselves to harmful light rays that can cause cancer in order to become tan, undergo plastic surgery to change some aspect of their body’s appearance, etc.
Why do girls go through all this?
Because the world lies to us and says that the only way to be happy and accepted is to be what the world defines as beautiful (whatever that is!). That is why girls are willing to harm themselves in order to attain that “perfect body.”
Maybe you haven’t gone to the extreme of harming yourself but have you ever complained about the way you look or wished you could change something in your appearance? Probably most girls at one time or the other have.
There is something we are all forgetting. What is it?
We are forgetting that God made us. He made us in His image. He made us the way He wanted to make us. In His eyes we are beautiful just the way we are!
But there is something else we must remember and realize. To God, outward appearance is not what matters. He looks at our heart. To Him, inward beauty is worth far more that outward beauty because outward beauty fades. Smooth skin is traded for wrinkles. Blonde hair is traded for gray. But Inward beauty lasts. Instead of fading with time, it becomes more beautiful with time.
Does this mean that we shouldn’t focus any time or attention at all to our outward appearance? No it doesn’t.
Nowhere in the Bible are women instructed to wish for, ask for, or strive for physical beauty. Neither does the Bible portray physical beauty as a blessing for those who have it.
This is why, in 1 Peter 3:3, we are exhorted: “Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair, the wearing of gold, or the putting on of clothing.” Now God is not saying that women shouldn’t style their hair or wear jewelry, for then He would also be barring clothing—and we know that is not the case.
However, what the 1 Peter verse is forbidding, says Matthew Henry, is the “inordinate love and excessive use (that is, the abuse) of them.” He goes on to say, “we must not set our hearts upon them, nor value ourselves by them, nor think the better of ourselves for them, nor pride ourselves in them, as if they added any real excellence to us.”From Girl Talk by Carolyn Mahaney & Nicole Mahaney Whitacre page:133 (Check our their blog!)
We need to find a balance between focusing on our outward beauty and focusing on our inward beauty, and not swing from one extreme to the other. Here is a quiz from SHE by Rebecca St. James and Lynda Hunter Bjorklund that may help you see how you are doing in this area. If you have to time, read through it and answer the questions.
Take this quiz to check out your beauty pulse internally, externally, and holistically:
Quick Beauty QuizAnswer yes or no to each of the following questions:
1. Do you feel comfortable enough in your own skin to be around close family and friends without always having to wear makeup?
2. Do you often feel pretty?
3. Can you eat a dessert without feeling any guilt?
4. Can you see an attractive girl or woman and not feel jealous or compare yourself to her?
5. Do you feel that you are doing a good job of balancing your focus on both inner and outer beauty?
6. Have you avoided laxative abuse and regularly skipping meals to lose weight?
7. Are you purge-free?
8. Can you view slim, seemingly flawless women on TV and in magazines without feeling an overwhelming sense of disappointment in yourself?
9. Would you say that for the most part you have a positive, healthy self-image?
10. Do you feel that you have a good understanding of holistic beauty?
Scoring: Count the number of “yes” responses that you made.
10 Wonderful! Your self-image and sense of holistic beauty in God is excellent.
7-9 You are doing quite well at keeping your beauty perspective balanced. This chapter will be a good reminder and challenge for you.
4-6 Your excessive outer-appearance focus is definitely crippling your inner growth and beauty. Give serious attention to this chapter and talk to a Christian mentor about how you can apply its truths.
0-3 Sister, we’ve gotta chat. You need healing in this area of your life. You’re due for some heart-to-heart time with a godly older woman who can help you accept yourself for how God made you.From SHE by Rebecca St. James and Lynda Hunter Bjorklund pages: 89-90
She recently has gone through extensive testing that shows she has a lot of infection going on in her right hip. This extends this illness into a much more dragged out ordeal.
Today I went over and visited Spunky Jr's blog. And in her post, she introduced Regenerate Our Culture. An organization who's goal is to bring our nation back to a biblical worldview. Something that is so desparetly needed.
Who's behind Regenerate Our Culture? Some really great bloggers! Kristin Braun (Spunky Jr.), Tim Sweetman (Agent Tim), Jake Smith (Mission 3:6teen), and Alex King (Smart Homeschool).
Be sure to visit Regenerate Our Culture to find out how you can get involved too!
Many people today are beginning to look at Christianity as an impediment to the continuation of their “freedom”—to sin. But they have transformed liberty into license, and in the worst form of licentiousness, they don’t want anybody speaking against that or in any way restraining them. Hence, the modern hedonist views Christianity as repressive and not liberating.
Setting out to set themselves free—to fulfill all of their lusts—the hedonists find themselves ultimately in bondage to tyranny. As Edmund Burke said, “There must be some restraining influence upon the wills and passions of men, and the less there is from within, the more there must be from without.
What If Jesus Had Never Been Born by D. James Kennedy, chapter 6, page 89
Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman who traveled throughout America in 1830, was astonished to see that though the American people were quite religious, they were also most free. He wrote: “The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.” And in another passage, he observed:
There is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation on earth.
What If Jesus Had Never Been Born by D. James Kennedy, chapter 6, pages 87-88
This country was built upon God as the foundation, upon His Word. But now that we have prospered, we say we don’t need God, we do not see the need for God. We have forgotten that He is the One who helped us to prosper. We have forgotten that He is the One who gave us freedom. So now we are removing our foundation piece by piece. The firm base of our freedom is crumbling.We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God.
We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.
We have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
American Government by William R. Bowen, George T. Thompson, Michael R. Lowman, and George C. Cochran, chapter 6, page 100
That book, sir, is the rock on which our republic rests.
-Andrew Jackson
Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet anchor of your liberties. Write its precepts in your hearts, and practice them in your lives. To the influence of this Book are we indebted for all the progress made in true civilization, and to this we must look as our guide in the future. “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.”
-Ulysses S. Grant
The more profoundly we study this wonderful book, and the more closely we observe its divine precepts, the better citizens we will become and the higher will be our destiny as a nation.
-William McKinley
Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes that the teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally—I do not mean figuratively, but literally—impossible for us to figure what that loss would be if these teachings were removed. We would lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards towards which we, with more or less resolution, strive to raise ourselves.
-Theodore Roosevelt
There is no other book so varied as the Bible, nor one so full of concentrated wisdom. Whether it be of law, business, morals, or that vision which leads the imagination in the creation of constructive enterprise for the happiness of mankind, he who seeks for guidance in any of these things may look inside its covers and find illumination. The study of this Book in your Bible classes is a post-graduate course in the richest library of human experience. As a nation we are indebted to the Book of books for our national ideas and representative institutions. Their preservation rests in
adhearing to its principles.
-Herbert Hoover
American Government by William R. Bowen, George T. Thompson, Michael R. Lowman, and George C. Cochran, chapter 6, page 111
The doctors discovered that Candace has "gram positive cocci infection" originating on the bone and spread throughout the soft tissue in her body.
Candace is only 7 years old. And she has had to have 12 surgeries in 15 days.
For updates on how she is doing, visit her website.
God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His
side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else—something it never entered your head to conceive—comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.
(Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis: page 65)
(3) It is undeniable that change and development within various species of living things occur. For example, some varieties of species are becoming extinct; on the other hand, we occasionally see new strains forming within a species. But there is no evidence, not even in the geologic record, which supports the theory that one “kind” of living thing ever evolved from another “kind.” Rather, existing evidence supports the Bible’s declaration that God created each living creature “after his kind” (Gen 1:21, 24-25).
(4) Bible-believing Christians must also reject the theory called theistic evolution. This theory adopts most of the conclusions of naturalistic evolution, adding only that God started the evolutionary process. Such a theory denies the Biblical revelation that ascribes to God an active role in all aspects of creation. For example, every main verb in Gen. 1 has God as its subject, except for Gen. 1:12 (which fulfills the command of God in v. 11) and the recurring phrase “there was evening and there was morning.” God is not a passive supervisor of an evolutionary process; rather, He is the active Creator of all things (cf. Col. 1:16).
Taken from Full Life Study Bible article written by Donald C. Stamps, pg. 7
As I have pointed out before, there are many such incredible “coincidences” in nature. There are so many that I find it impossible for anyone who really understands physics or chemistry to believe that all this we are studying just came about by chance! The universe is too perfectly designed for that. From the smallest atom to the largest galaxy, incredible design features abound in our universe. These design features are the fingerprints of God, making all who objectively study the universe aware of His existence.
Taken from Exploring Creation With Chemistry: 2nd edition by Dr. Jay Wile, module 7, pg. 240
CREATION AND EVOLUTION. Evolution is the predominant view regarding the origin of life and the universe proposed in the scientific and educational community of the contemporary world. Bible-believing Christians should consider these four observations about evlolution.
(1) Evolution is a naturalistic effort to account for the origin and development of the universe. This view begins with the assumption that there is no personal, divine Creator who made and fashioned the world; rather, everything came into existence by a series of chance happenings that occurred over billions of years. Proponents of evolution claim to have scientific data that support their hypothesis.
(2) The teaching of evolution is not truly scientific. According to the scientific method, all conclusions must be based on indisputable evidence gathered from experiments that can be duplicated in any laboratory. However, no experiments have been or can be devised to test and substantiate theories about the origin of matter from some supposed “big bang” beginning or about the gradual development of living beings from their simplest to their most complex form. Consequently, evolution is a hypothesis without scientific “evidence”; therefore, to accept it one must have faith in a human theory. The faith of God’s people, in contrast, is in the Lord and in His inspired revelation, which states that He is the one who made all things out of nothing (Heb. 11:3)
Full Life Study Bible article written by Donald C. Stamps, pg. 7
In modern times, we have drifted from a sanctity of life ethic to a quality of life ethic. The concept of sanctity of life is a spiritual concept; it is a religious concept. The word sanctity—which comes from the Latin word sanctitas from sanctus—means “holy or sacred unto God, inviolable, that which God has declared is of great value.” It is, therefore, a spiritual concept.
However, for a humanist or an atheist or an unbeliever of most any kind, there is no such thing as sanctity of life. Unless there is a God who has given us a spirit and who sanctifies us, there cannot be a sanctity-of-life ethic.
With such a low view of man as that introduced in the last century, should it surprise us that man has killed more of his own during the twentieth century than in all the other centuries combined? As the saying goes, “Ideas control the world.” Only by the resurgence of modern paganism, in a post-Christian culture, do we find the Nazi concentration camp, the Soviet gulag, the American abortion chamber.
Quality of life is a physical concept. No one can look at another and determine the quality of that person’s soul. If life is merely molecules in motion, then we can have a quality-of-life ethic. But if we are Christians and believe that here is an infinite, eternal, and unchangeable God who is Spirit, who has given us an eternal soul; and if we have an inalienable right to life, we cannot buy that kin of an ethic.
When Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun wrote Roe v. Wade he appealed to religion. However, he said, “If I were to appeal to religion, I would appeal to the religions of Rome and Greece”—which, of course, practiced and encouraged abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, suicide, and all the rest, including the Colosseum! He would appeal to pagan religion for support of Roe v. Wade! We are reverting, in the Western word, to heathen paganism, and most people don’t even know that it is happening!
What If Jesus Had Never Been Born by D. James Kennedy, chapter 2, pages 26-27
Due to the use of averages, and statistics estimated in part, the number itself is obviously not perfectly accurate, but is pretty close. There is some evidence also that the rate of induced abortions has dropped slightly in the U.S. since 1999, however, the U.S. (according to the same report) accounts for less than 5% of worldwide abortions (and therefore less than 23% of abortions in developed nations), and so the difference would be minimal to an already approximated number. There could be more abortions, there could be less. But basically, the counter is sadly roughly accurate.
We encounter this man, Jesus Christ, through four separate portraits—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Many have asked, “Why is it necessary to have four Gospels instead of just one? Why couldn’t one of these writers have gotten all the facts together and presented them for us in one book?” Well, that would be like trying to use one photograph of a building to adequately represent the entire structure. One picture could not possibly show all four sides of the building at once.
The same is true of Jesus. His life, His character, and His ministry are so rich and multifaceted that a single view could not tell the whole story. God deliberately planned for four Gospels so that each could present our Lord in a unique way. Each Gospel presents a distinct aspect of Christ, and our understanding of who He truly is would be incalculably poorer if even one of these Gospels was lost to us.
The Old Testament is filled with pictures of the coming Messiah, and these pictures correspond with the portraits of Jesus, “painted” for us in the four Gospels. First, He is pictured in many prophecies—particularly those of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zechariah—as the coming King of Isreal…
Second, Jesus the Messiah was portrayed in many parts of the Old Testament as the servant, the suffering one…
Third, we have frequent Old Testament picture of Christ’s coming as a man…
Finally, we have those Old Testament pictures that speak of the Messiah as God, as the Everlasting One…
So all the Old Testament prophecies and pictures of Christ can be placed under these four Gospel headings: king, servant, human being, and God…
In Matthew, the Gospel of the King, we see many evidences of his kingship: The book opens with Christ’s genealogy, tracing His royal line back to David, king of Israel, and to Abraham, father of the nation Israel…
Mark, the second Gospel, pictures Christ as the Servant, and as you would expect, Mark does not provide any genealogy for Christ. After all, who cares about the genealogy of a servant? Nobody. In Mark’s Gospel, our Lord simply appears on the scene…
Luke show us Christ as human. Here we see the perfection of His manhood—the glory, beauty, strength, and dignity of His humanity. As we would expect, Luke also contains a genealogy of Christ. If Jesus is to be presented as human, we want to know that He belongs to the human race…
John’s Gospel presents Christ as God. From the very first verse, this is John’s potent, unmistakable theme. Many people fail to realize that John’s Gospel, like Matthew’s and Luke’s, opens with a genealogy. The reason so many people miss the genealogy in John is that it is so short:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (1:1).
That’s it! That’s John’s entire genealogy of Christ—two people, the Father and Son.
Taken from Adventuring Through the Bible by Ray C. Stedman, chapter 48, pages 479-482
It's amazing what you can do with Coral Photo House! I could have made it look like a puzzle, a drawing, etc. But I decided to make the photo black and white and blurred.
