Being Thankful

 I just wanted to share a quick post on a great family devotional for the weeks before Thanksgiving.  This year Mary made a construction paper pumpkin with a pocket.  I had her take note cards and write something she was thankful for on the front and then write a verse from the Bible on the back.  We bought her, her first full Bible for her birthday this year.  So, I am teaching her how to look up verses and read them.  So we look up the verse, she reads it and then she puts it in her pumpkin.  Another fun thing we have been doing is making flash cards of the books of the Bible and she has been scrambling them up and then putting them in order.  She has learned the New Testament books already!  There are so many wonderful things you can do with your kids to teach them about thankfulness and learning about the Bible.  If you have any ideas to share, leave us a comment and I will publish it for others to enjoy.  It is wonderful to share ideas. 

 Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving

What Would Jesus Do?

For the last few days we have been seeing on facebook all kinds of comments about Starbucks holiday cups being solid red and not saying Merry Christmas on them. A friend posted an article that was written by a person that was upset at Christians for being upset about the cups.  Here is the link to this article: https://nathanielscottlake.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/why-merrychristmasstarbucks-is-everything-wrong-with-american-christianity/

After reading the article some thoughts came to mind that I wanted to share:

I could count the times on one hand that I have even been in a Starbucks none the less even bought something there. Not that I care what they say about Christmas, it is so very expensive and I just can't see it. What about Jesus saying blessed are the poor in spirit (those who willingly embrace poverty) for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. In reading both the  yea and nay of this subject it seems both sides are painting their version of Christ. The guy that was promoting meekness was saying that Jesus would invite the gal (a worker at Starbucks) to church instead of being upset about the cup logos. I thought to myself would Jesus be doing that? I don't think so, when the  organized churches are ignoring Christ's words and not following His words especially in moral issues and materialism. Also he said nothing about the need of repenting to the girl when presenting to her God's plan of salvation. He just talks about God's grace and mercy. The fact that we are able to repent and turn from our sin and Christ forgives us, is his grace and mercy. They seem to leave that part out of their presentation.

Jesus would not care about a holiday or how it is celebrated, he would care more about rescuing this girl, ie Starbuck's employee, from her sin if she were an unbeliever. He would know every detail about her and lay it out to her what she needed to do. Just like the women at the well. Jesus walked in super natural power, just like we should be able to but most cannot because we are ignoring Christ's words and not being true disciples of Christ. Jesus says in Luke 12:29 And do not seek what you will eat and what you will drink, and do not keep worrying. 30 For all these things the nations of the world eagerly seek; but your Father knows that you need these things. 31 But seek His kingdom, and these things will be added to you. 32 Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom. 33 “Sell your possessions and give to charity; make yourselves money belts which do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near nor moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

I had a person respond to my statement on facebook saying that it was OK to be wealthy and wasn't a sin because David, Job, Solomon and Abraham were wealthy and had great faith.  They also said that poor in spirit did not mean willingly be poor.  My answer was this:

Well I disagree with you on your interpretation of poor in spirit. Jesus was our highest example that is greater than all those that you listed. When he was born in a stable and born to poor parents without great education and position, it was for our example. The apostle Paul was wealthy, he had to be to be highly educated and on the Sanhedrin and he counted all that as loss. He gave it all up for the gospel. As you know he was persecuting the believers because they were saying to give up having the land and their position (Zionism). That is why the Jews plotted to kill Jesus, because he was telling them that they were to give it up and they didn't want to. Paul told believers to follow him as he followed Christ.




 Solomon said:
"There is one who makes himself rich, yet has nothing; and one who makes himself poor, yet has great riches." Proverbs 13:7

And James says:
"Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?" James 2:5

And John says:
"He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked."
1John 2:6

And the Lord Jesus Himself says:
"So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple." Luke 14:33


I did not hear back from this person. It is hard for people to see the truth of what Jesus Christ taught.  It is tough being a missionary here as we live in such an effluent society and culture.  Our family lives on an income that is considered below the poverty line but in no way do we feel poor.  We continue to work at letting go of things, sharing, and enjoying the simple things of life.  We pray each day for the Lord to help us make the right choices and most of all we want to see Him glorified, we want to be a part of His kingdom, we want to follow Him and walk as He walked.  

The Law of the Lord is Perfect

This morning we had Mary get her Bible that she got for her birthday just recently.  She had children's Bibles with collections of stories but this is her first complete Bible.  She was so excited to get it and we have been teaching her how to look up scripture verses in it.  We will also be working with her to memorize the books in the Bible so she can find verses even quicker.  Anyways when we were thinking about what passage to read she opened her Bible and on the title page a verse was posted and it read:

"If you accept my words and store up my commands within you...and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God."  Proverbs 2:1, 4-5

After reading it we had Mary turn to Proverbs chapter 2 and we read the whole chapter.  After talking about that and what it would be like to go mine silver and the patience and work it would be to do that, it gave us a reminder and insight in what it is to search out God's truth and find wisdom.  We then went to the internet and found this wonder scripture song of Psalm 19.  It has great illustrations and we were all lifted up and encouraged as we sang it all together.  We liked it so well that we sang it twice through.  Here is the song if you would like to sing it too.

Here is the link:  https://youtu.be/oHde_AqJHtI

Count Your Blessings

And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.  The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.     Philippians 4:7-9

Here is the link: https://youtu.be/IJb-DSKAuMA

Here is the link: https://youtu.be/9fMjgS4vu4o

For our family devotions we felt led to concentrate on remembering the good things that God has done.  For us not to be distracted or to despair over the dark things around us that are happening. Always remember those who obey Christ have a bright future in Him and have wealth beyond anything in this world.   

Candidate Musing, Could a Revival be Coming?

Just sayin' out of something interesting ...Has anyone noticed how much Donald Trump looks like Caesar Augustus and Trump's daughter, Ivanka, looks like Augustus' daughter, Julia?  Here are a few images I pulled off the internet the other day to compare.  To me, Trump and his daughter, Invanka look Claudian.

  

I found some more statues of Cesar Augustus that reminded me of Trump. Granted, politicians and leaders do a lot of pointing but the bottom 2 are pretty interesting in that the finger held up is very Trump and Cesar Augustus was commemorated in a statue with the same pointing hand. 









Comparing Trump's similarities to Augustus is not me saying that I think he is going to be a king, but that he is demonstrating strong leadership qualities. All I thought of Trump before this campaign was that he was a rich playboy that had a funny hairdo. When I saw the statue of Augustus standing with the little cupid, which is the Roman god Venus' son, at his feet, I read that his patron God was Venus. His great uncle, Julius Caesar claimed to be descendant of her. When I read about Venus, this is what she stood for in the Roman culture: love, beauty, sex, fertility, prosperity and desire. Hmmm, that sounds a lot like Trump too. Could be what some people may find distasteful about him, 3 marriages with "trophy wives", cheated on his wives, super wealthy etc. Well Augustus had 3 wives, cheated on them and was very wealthy but he was a great leader and made Rome very powerful. He used his vast wealth to help the people and he forgave a lot of taxes so they could build their farms and business again. He was extremely popular with the people and was a military genius. He made Rome's armies very strong and was the first to give their soldiers the benefit of retirement.  He really didn't want the position, but the people made him the first Emperor of Rome.  


Rome had been a republic for about 500 years and it was failing and their was lots of crime and financial troubles.  Under his rule he brought peace and prosperity to the nation.  I realized you don't have to be sexually moral to be noble and care for a country.  He did see that the extreme sexual immorality of the ruling class was destroying the people.  He did try to legislate a moral reform, but was unsuccessful.     I found this article very interesting and informative:


http://www.challies.com/…/the-history-of-christianity-in-25…




After reading this article I realized what Augustus did for Rome, aided in the early spread of the Gospel. He united the empire, calmed the civil unrest and made Rome great. Our country is in a lot of civil unrest and disillusionment with how the government is being run.  

Family Devotions - Backyard Camping

Have you ever done backyard camping with your kids?  We never had until this last weekend and had a blast.  Rich wanted to get Mary and our little dog used to camping out in a tent and he figured it would be easiest and most reasonable to do it in our back yard.  We are having glorious weather here.  We always have Indian summers here with cool nights and warm days.  This weekend weather was true to form!  After we had made the plans, I noticed it would be one week before the Feast of Tabernacles would be celebrated and we decided that we would do a family devotion teaching Mary about the Feast and what it symbolizes.  No, we do not keep the Feasts of Israel or any Jewish Holidays.  We just love the symbolism and wanted to share it with Mary and bring out some wonderful scriptures in the Old and New Testament.  I have included some still shots and a slide show that gives more explanation of the Feast.  It is a fun holiday where people live outside in booths or tents and remember the wandering of the Israelites in the wilderness before coming into the Promise Land.  The Feast is very Messianic and it was when the Jews of Christ day had the highest hopes of the Messiah coming to physically rule and reign on the Earth from Jerusalem.  One of the practices of the Feast is to wave palm branches and say, Hosana!  Also you decorated your tent with the fruit harvested from your land and light your area with beautiful lights.  Also on the last day of the Feast water was fetched from the Pool of Siloam and brought to the temple and poured out.  This was a symbol of the rain to come but more importantly the out pouring of the Holy Spirit.  So we had all of these elements in our camp out and had a time in the evening where had Mary poured water out into a bowl, wave branches and sing, light candles and talk about how living in a tent is like our earthly bodies that will fail and one day we will have a new body and be with the Lord.  Also sleeping in a tent makes you more appreciative of your house and all the luxuries we have become so used to.

Flowers and herbs from our yard.

Jesus said, I am the Light of the World

Here is the slideshow

Free picture slideshow customized with Smilebox

Here are some scripture references we read during the different activities:

The Feast of Tabernacles established: Lev. 23:39-44

The Water being poured out: John 7: 37-38, John 4:13-14 and Isaiah 55

God is our Shelter: Luke 12:22-34 and Isaiah 25:4

Jesus is the Light: John 8:12 and John 1:1-9

Waving the Palm branches: Lev.23:40 and Psalm 27

We hope to some day be with other believers on a simple camp out this time of year, remembering what God has done for us and sharing in the produce of our gardens and hands and looking forward to our Messiah coming again and being with Him forever!  God bless you all and if you have any questions about our celebration please leave us a comment or e-mail us.  We would love to hear from you! 

Creational Perception Ratio

Prov. 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter. 

Mankind loves to explore, to seek the truth about everything, and there are many things to discover.

When we are seeking the truths of the universe, whether it be Physics, Philosophy, Religion, or any of the specific sciences, we need to understand that these things are discovered through our personal perception of the facts of the matter, whatever it may be. They are unlocked so to speak with logic, complete logic.

A mans logic is only as good as the accuracy of his perception.  So lets have a look at perception and see how it can be influenced.

Lets say that I am looking at a beautifully hand crafted table that is approximately five hundred years old.  To me the table is beautiful, it has the appearance of age, and I have been told that it is five hundred years old.  These are the obvious facts of this situation.  I am not a highly skilled master craftsman, nor am I a expert dealer of antiques,  so I readily accept the information that I have been given as being true.

The real truth of the matter in this situation is that the table was created by a highly skilled master craftsman just one week ago, a master craftsman who is highly skilled in creating replicas.  To me the table looks old, and I had no specific reason to doubt the information that I was given.

Also in this situation there are other factors that can influence my perception, like maybe I am looking to buy a old table, or maybe this table matches some chairs that were handed down to me by my family, whatever the reason is, it creates an agenda that can adversely affect my perception because it creates a need, so that I am more apt to believe that the table is old because I want to believe it, because it fits my agenda.

This example was of an inanimate object, but what about a living example? How can our perception be altered, or manipulated by a living thing?  Let us use a human example, actually the first human example which would be Adam.

The Bible says that the first man was formed out of the dust of the earth, and God breathed life into him, and he became a living soul.  Although we have never seen this actually happen, we can certainly understand this explanation, essentially God made him, and then animated him, so that he was a living man, he was not a baby, he was a fully formed grown man.  He may have looked like he was twenty five years old, I don't know, in any case he was an adult male.

So knowing this information, if we had been standing there two minutes after Adam was created, we would be looking at an adult man, and if we say that perhaps he looked twenty five years old to us, that would mean that in our perception we would think that he looked twenty five years old, but in reality he was only two minutes old.  So we see that time is relative to perception.

In other words, in this situation, because Adam appeared to be twenty five, but he was only two minutes old, we could say that he appeared to be 6,570,000 times older than he actually was, because there are 30 two minute increments in one hour, times twenty four hours in a day, times 365 days in a year, times 25.

So we can see that if our logic does not contain the essential ingredient, which in this case would be the actual Biblical account, we would naturally think that Adam was a lot older than he actually was, and this fact uncovers a ratio, a perception ratio that helps us understand that something (that is a created thing) can have the appearance of great age.

The Bible says that the universe is a created thing, in all its beauty, wonder, and vastness, it is still just a created thing.  The Bible also says that the entire universe exists inside God, and that He maintains it from moment to moment.  It also says that He created the Heavens and the Earth quite literally 6000 years ago, if we apply the same ratio that was demonstrated with Adam, we could say that the earth and the universe appear to be 39.4 billion years old, but in reality it is just 6000.

Also if we add the fact that the original world was destroyed by water, tectonic action, upheaval, and mass volcanic action, we see that these things can affect the logic of those that are trying to sort out the facts of the matter, without having all the pieces to the puzzle, and actually leaving out essential portions of the equation.

So we see that if perception is lacking essential factors, then it is flawed, and can never achieve the correct answer, or in this case the ultimate truths of the universe.

What are some of the other aspects that can affect someones perception that is trying to see the truth in this situation? What are some of the negative aspects that could adversely affect a persons perception causing their logic to be distorted?

If a person did not want to believe that God created the Universe, this would definitely create an agenda that would adversely affect their perception, and damage their logic, considering the fact that it is very obvious that the universe and everything in it was wonderfully engineered and created intentionally.

  

Romans 1:20  For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

An agenda that purposely excludes God is completely ridiculous, and yet men continue to resist accountability to God, or even acknowledge that fact that there is a God that is actively involved in every single persons life on the entire planet in the sense that He is graciously drawing all people to Himself despite their resistance.

We can see that if a man tries to use the creation to disprove the Creator then that man has become completely foolish in his logic, and has adopted a science of failure, because his calculations can never achieve truth, being twisted and skewed by agenda, and lacking the primary portion of all equations.

Considering the facts of creation, to believe that the Universe was somehow brought into existence by some kind of mindless organizing constructive explosion could only be formulated by someone that is one click above a drooling fool, and yet the most prestigious colleges have professors that practice this kind of false knowledge because of their agenda.

Speaking about Mankind in general, the Apostle Paul said:   

Romans 1:21-22  For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  Professing to be wise, they became fools.

So we see that it is possible for men to be extremely intelligent, and knowledgeable, and yet be extremely mistaken and foolish because of adherence to an agenda.  Even though a man may be very sincere in his beliefs, at the same time he can also be sincerely mistaken, and this is what Paul experienced on the road to Damascus, and it is the same lesson that all men must discover in order to see the light of the truth, and find their way out of confusion.

In order to discover the truth one must never leave out the main ingredient to the equation of the universe, and that main ingredient is Jesus Christ, He is God, and always has been.