Father's Day 2012: God, our Father

God is our Father. And like a father, he teaches us. Instruction is not always cheery, and discipline is often the means of his molding. Let us not be afraid to learn at the feet of the greatest Father. His words are wise and His purposes, holy. He, like any true father, loves His children and wants what is best for them. The means to a pure end is often wrought with challenges and obstacles to overcome. Let us run forward and grow in Him, to grow and mature as a child of God.

Kirk Cameron's Thoughts on Suffering

"A Christian's experience is like a rainbow, made up of drops of the grief of earth, and beams of the bliss of heaven." -Spurgeon

Kirk: I recently met a man with a rare mixture of physical ailments who asked me, "Does Satan afflict me with pain, suffering, and ailments, or do they come from God? Does God allow Satan to cause my pain or does God send pain to teach me lessons?" I explained that this was a question that has been the subject of many debates for centuries. I confessed that while I do not know everything about God, we can know what He reveals to us in His Word and through our experience. We know that God is not unaware of our pain or powerless to stop it. He is all seeing and all powerful. Aliments and every bad thing, God turns for good for those who love Him and are the called according to His purposes. We know that God understands suffering because He gave His one and only son to sweat great drops of blood and hang on a tree. God can move mountains, dry seas, cast out devils, send angels, heal the lame, give sight to the blind, heal the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and raise the dead. Job was afflicted by a devil on a leash under the supervision of God, resulting in God's glory, Job's good, and our instruction. Christ's death was our only hope for eternal life. God raised beauty from ashes and make old things new. Rainbows are a mysterious mixture of water and light, and our life on earth is a mysterious blending of our real choices, the effects of sin, and the power of God to make all things heavenly.

Roe v. Wade CAN be stopped

Since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, 56 million children have been shamelessly murdered in America. The legal jargon of the case put aside the question of when life begins to defer to the "right of privacy" to justify abortion. But with the Life at Conception Petition, Congress can bypass Roe v. Wade by legally defining life as beginning at conception and thereby protecting it via the 14th Amendment. Biologists have long known life begins at conception (even my college nutrition textbook states it is blunt terms like this). This petition would make legal what was already scientifically accepted.

Watch the video, sign the petition, and listen to this poignant quote by Mother Theresa:

I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.

The American Holocaust

Abortion today is truly the American Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands of pre-birth children were killed since Roe vs. Wade made such murder legal. Do your part to stop the madness. Don't be like the German civilians who just let the Jews be murdered and called inhuman.

But God Directs His Steps...

Too often we come up with the "perfect life plan" that will give us everything we want in the time and way we want. Even a Christian might come up with a tidy life goal that combines personal pleasures with Godly purposes (like I did with my career goals). But -- is all our blueprints really what God wants in our life? He doesn't speak out of the whirlwind anymore. So, we just need to listen to how He is moving our lives towards His chosen direction. We have to learn to discern His voice and be willing to shift our directions to where it seems He is leading us. We have to read His Word and use what He has already spoken to determine our paths and, most importantly, our values in life. "The mind of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps" (Proverbs 16:9). He knows more than we ever will about the tapestry of life. May we learn to trust Him when He shifts the path beneath our feet.

Freedom Is Not Free

"There is a black granite wall in Washington, D.C., that reads "FREEDOM IS NOT FREE." The cost of freedom--physical freedom and spiritual freedom--is blood, sweat, and tears. My grandfather Frank fought for me in WWII at the island of Iwo Jima and came back with scars, dead friends, and a bullet in his arm. But because of his sacrifice, and the sacrifice of others like him, our country is free. Jesus paid an even higher price for me as He shed His blood on the cross. He suffered abandonment, death, and divine wrath on my behalf. And because of His sacrifice, all who turn to Him are free. Freedom is ultimately a gift from God, and as His image bearers, we too can "purchase" freedom for others by bravely shedding blood, sweat, and tears."

-- Kirk Cameron

Death Swallowed Up in Life

Three years you spent living in His footsteps. You left your home and your life for Him. For three years, He did amazing things. He made the blind see, stilled the roaring seas, brought food to the hungry, forgave sins. The crowds loved Him, the high priests hated Him, He persisted in proclaiming that He was Someone different. He asked you, who do you say that I am? And you said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And He said, Blessed are you. (Matthew 16:15-17)

And, yet, all that changed one day. They went against Him, the crowds which so recently heralded His coming with palms -- they turned on Him and demanded His death. He wasn't the conquering Hero they wanted. The Jewish priests laughed and said, He saved others; He cannot save Himself (Matthew 27:42), and watched Him die on the day of the Cross.

And you too turned away, for like any ordinary man, you couldn't see how this -- God, the Creator, could die like this, could be like this, could supposedly reign like this. The cock crowed and suddenly you knew, all those things He said when He walked among you, there was something more to them, prophecy to them, trust and faith in them. You couldn't hold on to the truth He spoke, you couldn't take it. But now...

The curtain to the Temple rent in two, an earthquake rocked the land. You didn't know it yet, but God was telling you something -- that no more was God far away, no more was He distant, unapproachable like He was in the first dispensation of His love. No, He was close. As close as a prayer, as close as faith, as near as trust. Sin was breached, the chasm of your darkened heart was bridged forever by His blood.

On the third day, you knew. The women told you, you ran and looked. Behold, the tomb was empty. He was gone. Remember what He said? Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up (John 2:19). My kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). I am the Light of the World (John 9:5). All who believe in Me will have everlasting life, just as I have everlasting life (John 3:36). All who believe in Me will one day arise, as I have arisen, will one day live with Me with God, as I now live with Him, will one day love Him with a love that no man can quench, just as I have loved Him and have loved you from the depths of My heart. No one will be lost from my hand, for I am God.

You looked into His eyes and He was alive, looked into His wounds and they were real, looked into His heart and it was love. What man can kill, God can raise. What man will dishonor, God will glorify. The light shone out of heaven, the song of angels filled the air. He was lifted up into the heavens, to be with the Father.

You went back to the tomb, amazed. How was death so swallowed up in Life? How was pain so swallowed up in Love? How was sorrow so swallowed up in Joy? How did God become Man? How deep was His love? How amazing was His grace! You fell on your knees, in awe of the Savior who took His life for you, who then took life back from the grave to prove that He was all who He said He was, to prove that He was not lying when He said that day so long ago,

I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live (John 11:25).

The Day the Saviour Died

He was from a small town, born to a young mother, working in a woodshop, apprenticed to His father. For thirty years, He lived in relative obscurity. Then, everything changed. He gathered followers, alienated the religious authorities, worked miracles. By the time He was about 33 years old, He was killed through the most heinous executions known to man.

He was Jesus the Saviour, Christ the Messiah, God a very God -- and He died for us.

Pilate, the Roman authority officiating Jesus' execution, told the growing crowds that "No! This man has done no wrong! Don't let Him be crucified." But the people were insistent, they wanted Him dead. The Jewish authorities sneered in the background, knowing that for three years, they've wanted this man done away with. He was upturning their traditions, claiming fulfillment of their Scriptures, telling them they were arrogant and unworthy of the role of spiritual leaders. They now had gotten their way. Pilate gave in and ordered Jesus executed.

The suffering of death by crucifixion demanded a new word in the ancient vocabulary -- excruciating. The pain Jesus suffered was horrendous, but not more than the pain He suffered by allowing His Father, the third person of the Trinity who sent Him down to earth (John 5:23), to abandon Him to the fate of mankind's sin. All the pride, all the murder, all the selfishness, all the idolatry -- all this, He placed on Himself and paid the price of justice their actions demanded. The price was separation, separation from the love, care, and presence of God the Father. And so He cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). A hundred billion people, through the ages -- all their sin, He took upon Himself. And as the jeering crowds mocked Him, not knowing it was for this, their great evil He too was dying for, He said to them, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34).

He died that day, killed by the men whose sins He carried from God's eyes. Why did He do it? Because He was keeping to a promise, a promise of hope and salvation made long ago, to His special people Israel and also to the world. A promise that one day would come a Deliverer who will set at liberty those who were oppressed, to proclaim the year of Jubilee upon the land captured in its own sin. He died to set the captive free, to make righteous the sinner, to give joy to the ones who deserved only darkness for their deeds. Christ died to save souls who hated Him. He died for the people who didn't want Him interfering with their lives. He died for people who loved themselves more than God. He died for people who didn't love Him. He died for us.

How the first Palm Sunday was the real April fool’s

By Jonathan On March 31, 2012, original article at this address: http://uvbconline.com/index.php/palm-sunday-and-april-fools/


Palm Sunday commemorates the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem to shouts of hosannah on a road covered with palm branches and cloaks. April fools is a day of pranks–say something that’s not true to mislead someone and spring “April fools!” at the opportune moment. So what, other than landing on the same date this year, do Palm Sunday and April fools day have in common?

Jesus’ palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem is often called the triumphal entry. Jesus rode in on a colt, fulfilling Old Testament prophecy, to the shouts of an excited crowd. For a moment it looks like Jesus is coming into his city a triumphant king. But things are not as they seem. In the eleventh chapter of Mark’s gospel we read that after entering the city Jesus went to the temple. When Jesus comes to the temple, crowds shouting ‘hosannah’ and ‘blessed be the coming kingdom of our father Daivd’, we would expect them to enthrone Jesus as Lord and King and worship him. That would have been the appropriate thing to do, the thing that Marks gospel may leads us to expect. But that’s no what happens. There is a huge anticlimax once Jesus makes it to the temple–absolutely nothing happens! Jesus gets there, looks around, and heads back out of Jerusalem to Bethany (Mark 11:11).

You know what happens next in the story. Shouts of joy turn into shouts of opposition. Crowds that rejoiced in Jesus’ coming turn into crowds that shout crucify. If you look at Palm Sunday from the perspective of the crowd it is not a triumph, it is a tragedy. The worst April fools joke in history: a crowd shouting misleading praise only to reveal their disbelief and anger at the opportune moment. I think Mark is trying to teach us something in all of this. James Edwards, author of The Gospel According to Mark writes:

Mark’s account is noteworthy for what does not happen. The whole scene [the 'triumphal entry'] comes to nothing. Like the seed in the parable of the sower that receives the word with joy but has no root and lasts but a short time (4:6, 16–17), the crowd disperses as mysteriously as it assembled. Mark is warning against mistaking enthusiasm for faith and popularity for discipleship. Jesus is not confessed in pomp and circumstance but only at the cross (15:39).

James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark, The Pillar New Testament commentary (Grand Rapids, Mich; Leicester, England: Eerdmans; Apollos, 2002), 338.

Palm Sunday is vivid reminder of two great truths. On the one hand, Jesus is King and rightly deserves our shouts of worship. On the other hand, faith in Jesus and being a true disciple is not the same as a fleeting moment of enthusiasm or following a crowd. Oh, that our faith would not be a lifelong April fools joke! The real test of our faith, as with the crowd, is in our actions; not so much what we say about Jesus but what we do with Jesus.

Super Tuesday: A Prayer for Our Land

It's Super Tuesday, and Lord, may our nation make the right decision. May we seek the right principles and uphold the statues of justice and life. And if we do not, give us the strength to stem the tide of disaster which will threaten us. Ours is still a free nation, Lord, and we are grateful to have been born here. May we never spurn the gift of freedom or let it crumbled under the laws of a government that wants to control our children, our homes, and our conscience.

It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. --Galatians 5:1

"Born Yesterday" - A Reason to Watch Movies Again

Every once in a while comes a show that, like my sister says, makes movies wonderful again. Born Yesterday (1950) is one of them.

Summary: A criminal businessman (Broderick Crawford) tries to get his "dumb blonde" fiance (Judy Holliday) to wise up via the tutelage of a newspaperman (William Holden), but doesn't bargain for the results.

The great wonder of this is the theme, the all-American values and morals that rush out of its highly unique and entertaining plot. Selfishness is specifically decried and cited as the root of humanity's errors. Ah, sweet selflessness, how I delight in seeing you promoted in film! And then the lessons on the aristocratic and our nation -- so deftly done. Honestly, I near cried at times, just thinking of the ideals our nation was founded upon and watching the on-location shots of Washington, D.C., in the film. It makes one aspire all over again, and that's what the best films do.

Born Yesterday can boast of a stunningly unique protagonist in a stunningly unique plot made possible by a wonderfully thoughtful theme. It's comedy with depth, humor that doesn't force itself, but grows naturally out of who these characters are. Judy Holliday's role as the fiance is spot-on perfection -- the voice, the mannerism, the look. The conflict is one-of-a-kind, and the symbolism and allusions send this production soaring over the themeless mill of other romantic comedies. In it, we find the triumph of wisdom and values over tyranny.

It's, as Holden's character says, "a revolution"!

Judy Holliday and William Holden

Legalized Murder

We might not have concentration camps, gunpoint demands, and dark military themes, but there is something today that harkens back to the Nazi era in World War II: legalized murder -- in the form of abortion, which was sanctioned in January 1973. When we fight valiantly to save the life of a premature baby in one room, but happily end the life of an unborn child the same age in another room, something is woefully wrong.

Stop this mindless murder. Support the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

The "Final Solution": January 20, 1942

Today, on the 20th of January, 1942, Nazi Germany held the infamous Wannasee Conference. In this meeting, the “Final Solution” of the Jews was outlined.

May we use this sober anniversary to remind ourselves that murder was legalized in a land and time not so far from ours, that prejudice was carried out to its logical ends in a government that is not hard to imagine, that the climax had been reached in the outgrowth of anti-Semitism that had scorched through history: from they are not fit to live among us as Jews to they are not fit to live among us to, finally, they are not fit to live.

Nazi cruelty did not come out of a vacuum. It built upon evolutionary superiority, that all men are not created equal. It emerged from warped theology, that the Jews as a nation do not have a future, that they are a wretched race that God despises in favor of the Church.

This is blasphemy. Says Paul, “I say then, hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin” (Romans 11:1).

God has a future for His people, and He will not let them prevail in judgement forever. The Jews are special, they are people. Let not the Nazis terror spring up again by letting this nation of the Lord slip from our support.

The God of Love

Yes, God is certainly loving. The most loving Being in the universe, for He is the only One Who would give Himself for avowed enemies. No man was His friend, for no one seeks after Him: "There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth , there is none that seeketh after God" (Romans 3:10-11).

Yet by His sheer grace, He offered salvation. Now that is love. But His love has many facets, and like we know, His is not a condoning "love" -- the "love" that accepts everything, right and wrong, the "love" whose god is personal happiness (temporal, at that).

No, God's love is mature and holy. He hates sin with a passion: "The LORD tests the righteous and the wicked, And the one who loves violence His soul hates. Upon the wicked He will rain snares; Fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup. For the LORD is righteous, He loves righteousness; The upright will behold His face" (Psalm 11:5-7).

Thus, God will not tolerate sin. He cannot stand sin, and it is with great pain that He allows Himself to endure the sin of history, it is with grace He allows this. He could have -- should have! -- obliterated us first chance He got. We disgrace Him constantly: "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5).

We would never love Him, except by the grace He gave us to open our eyes to the glory that is His. Yet He cannot just let sin slide. And this was love: That He absorbed all our sin on Himself and paid the penalty required of disgracing the God of the universe.

He paid it Himself. The God of Heaven humbled Himself as a man to pay our debt so that we could find true happiness, the happiness that could only be achieved by filling our souls with His glory.

Praise the Lord.

Foreword

A first post requires a foreword, a statement of faith and purpose.

Mine is the glory of God.

I admit, I cannot do it all of the time. In fact, I fail most of the time. But it is the wish and the desire that counts, for it is that which spurs me on when I fail and keeps me strong when I am weak.

Lord, let my life be a testament to Your love and power. I am but a private in His mighty army, a cowardly one at that, but He is a great commander and I know He can use me for His purpose, whether small or large, in the world. May I understand the answer to my prayer when it comes, and may I be humble to accept it.

I want to learn many things in life. May I praise the Lord in all I do, be diligent with His blessings, and show others His love through my actions and faith.

So help me, God. Amen.