Death is not a new thing...

In the last few months, there has been no break from seeing new pictures and videos from around the world with death and destruction.  It is easy to capture the heartache felt by one who has lost everything.  To see the deep anguish etched on their faces touches one deep to the soul, but still they are just a picture.  It is easy to turn the page, click the screen or terminate the video and move on to something more pleasant.

Today I got the message.  An elderly guy in his late 80's called into the call center.  I don't even know why he called, but he was exceptionally articulate and we struck up a conversation.  I asked him what he credited for his longevity.  He left me with this advice and 4 letters.  A M T D.  Attitude Makes The Difference.  It was a simple thought, but he believed it summed up his life.  I suggested he could add one more letter, "G" at the  end for God.  He quickly replied, "You'd have to put "G" at the beginning." 

Some time later, a guy about my age called and asked if I would make note on his account that his wife had died.  I try hard to share in their experience when I get a call like this, because I don't want to sound flippant while "check marking a box" on the computer screen.  I stepped over the line in call center etiquette and asked him if his loss was a surprise.  He said, "Yes."  with a deep emotion to his tone.  His wife had a clogged carotid artery and they had surgically repaired the artery.  She had healed nicely and gone home.  

After some days with good reports, they were confident they had beat problem.  Then one night, she passed before the ambulance could get there. 

It seems so inadequate and sterile to say someone has passed.  The pain is deep and emotion raw.  The someone has passed.  There is nothing to say that will bring the person back.  They have passed.  It seems as we live our lives, attitude does make a difference, as we enjoy the short time we have those we love.

I hurt for this guy.  I teared up at work while chatting with him and i with incredible inadequacy promised to pray for him tonight.  I'd be honored if you would to.

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I remember hearing the screams through my window...

Aaron David 

May 22 at 10:47pm Report

Working on tact. I remember hearing screams through my window one night around 2 am. I was 11. I pulled on my pants and jumped out my window. I followed the screams around the corner. It was a boy, a few years older, in front of his burning home. He was in a state i'd never witnessed before. 

The house was smoking badly and I could feel the heat through the open front door. He said his father and sister were inside. He wanted to go in, but I knew he would die, so I stopped him. He agreed to wait for the fire dept. But when they got there they were so inept that it took them almost an hour to get the hose on and to suit a guy up with oxygen tanks, the house was blazing by then, and his father died because of it. 

I failed, they failed. Luckily his sister had gotten out and was hiding in the back yard, but the kid hated me forever. I was angry about it for many years. How careless the firemen were. They seemed untrained at all. That's the kind of anger I have, Archie, the frustrated kind. 

But now that house is the world and the inept firemen are the churches, and I know the smoke will burst into terrible flames soon..... but this time I'm running towards the smoke and I'm encouraging others, not stopping them. 

I can't fail this time, Archie. This is my second chance. Shalom

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"impotent love requires a stick."~archie

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"If you don't get it right... I will whack you!"~God

Carrot and the Stick

I have lived a life knowing of God's love and believing in God's wrath.  It is much like the carrot and stick in real life.  Some people will 

encourage others with a carrot or a promise of reward for performing some task in a manner meeting with their approval.  Others will threaten with a stick or some threat of retribution if one does not do as they demand.  

Both scenerios are performance based and how we live most of our life.  My impression of God likely  is much like the carrot and the stick.  If I do good, God rewards me.  If I do bad, God whacks me.  This performance based relationship of God is endorsed by most of mankind.  I have pleaded with friends for the possibility of an alternative view toward God, but no one really wants to listen.  My friends are comfortable with a reward and punishment relationship with the Father.  It makes me wonder if because this is there expectation, maybe that's what the Father gives them. 

Over the years, I have begun to appreciate the love of God more and fear His wrath less.  It would seem from the carrot and stick principle I would be falling on the side of leading a life based more on God's love than His wrath and that would be partially true, but it is more than just an enhanced appreciation of His love in exchange for me "doing" good according to His will.

It has occurred to me God did it all when Jesus died on the cross for my sins and your sins.  There is nothing you or I can do to be worthy of Christ's love.  As matter of fact, I don't think there is anything you or i can do to make God love us any less or any more.  God's love is without measure and withheld from no one.  His love for you and I was authenticated by what Jesus did on the cross.  

It is this gift of love God has given us that negates the carrot and stick  principle of God's performance in your life.  Consider if you might the largest thing imaginable and then realized God's love is bigger.  If God's love is so big, how big must the stick be to whack us.  I think the thought of a stick this big is ridiculous and yet mankind readily believes God whacks us to get our attention.  

One can not endorse the concept of God whacking without acknowledging He is whacking Jesus.  As a believer in "The Way", Jesus abides in you and you in Him.  I believe all the whacking was done on the cross and now God draws us to Him with His love.  His love is dimensionless, unmeasurable and uncontainable.  His love wraps around us and abides within us.  

His love is all we need to be drawn to Him and readily enthusiastically praise Him.  It is in our response to His love and He is Gloried.  It is not what we do for Christ, but who we are in Christ...

We are a child of the King, robed in His righteousness and fully loved beyond our imaginations.  It is with His love in our lives, He has no desire and no need to once again raise His stick in an expression of wrath.  Today we are the recepients of His love expressed on the cross through Jesus Christ who saved us from God's wrath.  

amen.

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There is a reality of Jesus abiding that changes life's very existence.~archie

Permanent Abiding 
by Hudson Taylor

The Spirit of God revealed to me the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before.

As I read, I saw it all! "If we believe not, he abideth faithful." I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed)! That He had said, "I will never leave thee."

"Ah, there is rest!" I thought. "I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I'll strive no more. For has not He promised to abide with me never to leave me, never to fail me?" And, . . . He never will.

...As I thought of the Vine and the branches, what light the blessed Spirit poured direct into my soul! How great seemed my mistake in wishing to get the sap, the fullness out of Him! I saw not only that Jesus will never leave me, but that I am a member of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. The vine is not the root merely, but all root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit. And Jesus is not that alone  He is soil and sunshine, air and showers, and ten thousand times more than we have ever dreamed, wished for or needed. Oh, the joy of seeing this truth! I do pray that the eyes of your understanding too may be enlightened, that you may know and enjoy the riches freely given us in Christ.

...It is a wonderful thing to be really one with a risen and exalted Savior, to be a member of Christ! Think what it involves. Can Christ be rich and I poor? Can your right hand be rich and your left poor? Or your head be well fed while your body starves? ...No more can your prayers or mine be discredited if offered in the name of Jesus (i.e., not for the sake of Jesus merely, but on the ground that we are His, His members) so long as we keep within the limits of Christ's credit a tolerably wide limit!

The sweetest part, ... is the rest which full identification with Christ brings. I am no longer anxious about anything, as I realize this; for He, I know, is able to carry out His will, and His will is mine. It makes no matter where He places me, or how. That is rather for Him to consider than for me; for in the easiest position He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult His grace is sufficient. ...So, if God should place me in serious perplexity, must He not give me much guidance; in positions of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trials, much strength? No fear that His resources will prove unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me.

And since Christ has thus dwelt in my heart by faith, how happy I have been! ...I am no better than before. In a sense, I do not wish to be, nor am I striving to be. But I am dead and buried with Christ ay, and risen too! And now Christ lives in me, and "the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."

...Do not let us consider Him as far off, when God has made us one with Him, members of His very body. Nor should we look upon this experience, these truths, as for the few. They are the birthright of every child of God, and no one can dispense with them without dishonoring our Lord. The only power for deliverance from sin or for true service is Christ. And it is all so simple and practical!

"But are you always conscious of this abiding in Christ?" Mr. Taylor was asked many years later. "While sleeping last night," he replied, "did I cease to abide in your home because I was unconscious of the fact? We should never be conscious of not abiding in Christ."

(Taylor, Dr. and Mrs. Howard, Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret. London: China Inland Mission. 1935. pgs. 114-116).

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Osama Bin Laden Made the News for the Last Time

Luis Rey 

My brothers and sisters, I understand emotions and feelings are high in the wake of this news. However, quite simply, Jeff you have taken great liberty in building an argument that was not even present, then accusing me to teach a "false do

ctrine." 

I made no appeal to "mourn a killer", nor in any way did I use Scripture for some "ethereal rant." Quite simply I stated that Jesus died for Osama Bin Laden and that God does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked...whether through execution or natural causes. If God does not take pleasure, why would we? Neither does He take pleasure in the loss of life of the righteous. 

This true message is a "heart check" for many people who have rejoiced at bin Laden's death claiming that he got what he deserved. Do not forget that you are not receiving what you deserve only because of the grace of Jesus, as He has taken what you deserve. Does it offend you that Jesus would have mercy on Bin Laden too?

God does not rejoice at his death even if it "supposedly" saves lives. What if his death incites his followers and they become more violent and kill more? Has God's wisdom now been found lacking? I tell you no, His wisdom is not man's logic. 

Zach, my brother, let us not try to pull our brothers into hypothetical traps that only ensnare men and insinuate men to be cowards. Peter said he would never deny Christ, but he did. Men don't always know how they will respond in a situation, even if they think they do. Let us not bless God then curse men with the same tongue.

My friends, the argument here is the difference in opinion of how the United States and any other government for that matter, would or should handle things compared to the Kingdom of God. Do not confuse the US government to be God's Kingdom. 

Why do some of you paint God as one who is out to "whack" people? You do not know what Spirit you are of, for the Son of man came to save men's lives not destroy them. 

Do you not remember those upon whom the tower fell in Siloam? Do you think their sin was greater than all the men of Jerusalem and that is why they died? I tell you no. 

Several of you comment on how Osama rejected Christ and must now face judgement and hell? How do you know, and are you the judge of that? 

I fear that the religious spirit will drive people to be more disappointed in who is not in Hell. 

What is the message that we send when we say as a Christian that we are proud of killing our enemy? We say the same thing the terrorists said on the day they flew into the towers. 

Quite simply, Jesus died for Osama bin Laden as He did for all mankind. We may be thankful that we "feel" safer tonight, but we know that to be an illusion, and in fact, the very opposite may be true. We ARE thankful that this man brings no more terror to anyone. But...I will not rejoice in the bloodshed of my enemy. 

If you want to comment further on this post, remember that the people you are writing to are not an enemy hidden away in some cave somewhere, that they are real people. Please don't assassinate each other's character with your words...

Shalom

11 minutes ago · Like

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