“Often, kids who follow their dreams first have parents who follow theirs”
Wow, that one is hard to swallow today. I try to set a great example for my kids in every way I can, but do they know what I am aspiring to? Do they see me being successful at pursuing it?
Some guys just know how to say it. Peter Kreeft, a professor of philosophy at Boston College and King’s College, is one of them. I loved The Lord of the Rings, and here is a insight from Kreeft that I hope you will enjoy. The top link is to the audio, and I have included the time stamps for the different sections.
| Section |
Time
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Size
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10 Uncommon Insights Into Evil |
47:47
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14MB
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| Introduction (0:00) | |||
| 1. Evil is Real (6:37) | |||
| 2. Evil is Immortal (12:03) | |||
| 3. Evil is Obvious (17:09) | |||
| 4. Knowledge is Not Always Good (18:53) | |||
| 5. Evil Defeats Itself (21:59) | |||
| 6. Evil is Used for Good (25:28) | |||
| 7. The Weapon of Sacrifice (29:01) | |||
| 8. The Weapon of Humility (35:05) | |||
| 9. The Weapon of Friendship (35:55) | |||
| 10. The Weapon of Words (38:50) | |||
| Questions (43:11) |
Last night, there was a massacre of people, including women in the Philippines. The LA Times picked up the story and are reporting at least 30 people dead. One of the men where I work is close friends with a missionary family there, and here is the email . Please PLEASE pray for God’s protection for them! Please pray for the families of those who died, and please pray for those Muslim families to come to the knowledge and belief in Christ so His glory will be known!
Dear praying friends,
We are used to sporadic and senseless violence in the areas where we work. Last week when I drove to spend time with our underground believers I found out about a looming, politically related conflict between two warring clans in the same Muslim people group. This morning the unthinkable happened. To lessen a potentially violent reaction to a candidacy registration, some delegates from one clan sent their women representatives with the hope that the other side wouldn’t harm the ladies. This morning at approximately 9:30 am, one clan ambushed and kidnapped a contingent of over 40 people on their way to the capitol of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. No one survived. The women were raped and beheaded and were members of a prominent and powerful family. Lawyers, family members, body guards and media personnel were also massacred.
This is only a few kilometers from where we have our oldest and most established ministry! Presently our staff are hunkered down at our school with my orders to evacuate as soon as possible. The problem is that it is night and no one can travel safely after dark. Hopefully there will be public transportation available tomorrow or one of our staff in a nearby city will try to run the gauntlet and pick them up.
For those of you who don’t live here it may be hard to understand the gravity of this situation. In the culture where this happened revenge is considered a virtue. Everyone expects an indiscriminate and unprecedented blood bath. This is worse than the wars and kidnap threats we have endured in the past. Much, Much worse.
This effects everything. Our school will probably have to shut down for the rest of the school year. No parents will send their children to school when by virtue of them being a distant relative of one of the clans become targets of a blood feud.
PLEASE PRAY FOR THE SAFETY OF THE PGC STAFF AND THE BELIEVERS FROM THIS CULTURE!
PLEASE PRAY FOR WISDOM TO MAKE WISE DECISIONS THAT ARE MOST EFFECTIVE FOR THE SAFETY OF THE PEOPLE AND MINISTRIES WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR.
PLEASE PRAY THAT JUSTICE WILL BE DELIVERED TO THE GUILTY (EVERYONE KNOWS WHO IS BEHIND IT) AND THAT THE INNOCENT WILL BE PROTECTED.
Thank you for standing with us,
Tom
Deep down, when I pray for God’s will in my life, am I really asking, “God, call me to something great that doesn’t really require anything of me?”
©2008-2009 ~the-psycrothic
When I was a kid, our family went to Watercountry USA in Willamsburg, VA as part of our vacation. It was an amazing place full of incredible water rides. One in particular really got my attention, the wave pool. It looked like a football field of yellow donuts with people popping out where the jelly should have been. People were screaming as the waves threw them around and people were being tossed in every direction.
I had to get in on the fun, so I hijacked an empty tube. Well, by hijacked, I mean I jumped as far as I could to try and reach one. I missed. What had before appeared to be an awesome time turned into terror as the field of happy faced yellow donuts morphed into a suffocating yellow blanket filled with angry, thrashing legs.
Panic set in as I tried to reach the surface, but I could not escape my prison, and my lungs began to burn. It’s crazy, but everything became peaceful, and I felt OK. At that moment, someone pulled me out of the water. I don’t know who, and I don’t know how, but he did.
And I was safe. I was saved. I was coughing a bit, and my lungs still burned, but I was no longer in my desperate, life-threatening situation. And it felt wonderful. I still smile, because I never saw the guy who helped me.
Now I think about the world we live in, and how it too is in a desperate place. It is lost, and searching for some sign of hope; a hand to reach and pull it out of the sea it is drowning in. They are trying to scream for help, but the water muffles their cries and fills their lungs. And I look at my life and see that God wants me to be the hand, He wants me to pull as many out water as I can. And it hurts, because I’m standing at the edge of the pool with my hands in my pockets, thinking of what a great time I am having just being alive.
Church, we need to reach out. There is a world drowning, and we are to be His hands. God, that I would be like C.T. Studd and “…run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.”
(sorry mom and dad, should have told you when it happened, instead of 23 years after the fact)
How can I claim to love God, whom I can’t see, when I don’t love some people I can see? According to God, I can’t.
Love & Respect - by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs (Thomas Nelson)
The core of Love & Respect by Dr.Eggerichs is to address the means by which couples can stay out of the “Crazy Cycle,” and enter the “Energizing Cycle.” It is based on Ephesians 5:33, Husbands love your wives… and wives respect your husbands.”
Eggerichs maintains that the key here is that women are built to love naturally, so they need to work on respecting their husbands unconditionally, and conversely that men are built to respect naturally, so their focus should be in loving unconditionally.
Being a man, and married for ten years, I can say it is not my first inclination to buy self-help books on marriage. However, I am very glad I chose this book to review. What helped me most is Eggerichs’s point that the person I am married to loves me, and though I oft misinterpret her, or fail to understand her viewpoint, she does mean well.
Also the appendices in the book are helpful with ideas that you can use to reinforce the lessons from the book.
One thing I didn’t care for is the amount of testimonials in the book. It felt almost like an infomercial at times, and I found myself skimming through them.
Thank you Thomas Nelson for allowing me to blog-review this.
This is a recent story from the Barna Group, which does extensive studies on Christianity. My reaction is , “What are we doing wrong that professing Christians do not believe Satan or the Holy Spirit are REAL?”
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (Hosea 4:6)
Click on the heading to go to the article…
April 10, 2009
A new nationwide survey of adults’ spiritual beliefs, conducted by The Barna Group, suggests that Americans who consider themselves to be Christian have a diverse set of beliefs – but many of those beliefs are contradictory or, at least, inconsistent.
The survey explored beliefs about spiritual beings, the influence of faith on their life, views of the Bible, and reactions to faiths other than their own.
Views on Spiritual BeingsThe Barna survey asked questions about God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, Satan, and demons.
All 1,871 self-described Christians were asked about their perception of God. In total, three-quarters (78%) said he is the “all-powerful, all-knowing Creator of the universe who rules the world today.” The remaining one-quarter chose other descriptions of God – depictions that are not consistent with biblical teaching (e.g., everyone is god, god refers to the realization of human potential, etc.).
For the other survey items a four-point opinion scale was used to measure people’s reactions to statements about each spiritual entity.
Four out of ten Christians (40%) strongly agreed that Satan “is not a living being but is a symbol of evil.” An additional two out of ten Christians (19%) said they “agree somewhat” with that perspective. A minority of Christians indicated that they believe Satan is real by disagreeing with the statement: one-quarter (26%) disagreed strongly and about one-tenth (9%) disagreed somewhat. The remaining 8% were not sure what they believe about the existence of Satan.
A great Fantasy by a couple of great authors! (Batson/Hopper)
It's by Watchman Nee, enough said, right?
- A story of what a man who was dead for 9 minutes saw on the other side. (George Ritchie)
A great story of a boy reared in a graveyard by dead people (Niel Gaiman).
