With USA banks defaulting it is assuring to know God’s Bank will never default.
“That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us.” (2 Timothy 1:14)
‘The good thing that Paul referred to surely involves God’s “gift” that young Timothy was given as he entered the ministry. All gifts include the gift of “power, and of love, and of a sound mind” that God has given to all of us (2 Timothy 1:7). The Holy Spirit deposited that gift in us, and we are expected to guard it through the same Holy Spirit.
The action and responsibility are ours. The means by which we obey is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, who entered our bodies at the time of our salvation (1 Corinthians 6:19). That unique down payment of the triune Godhead (Ephesians 1:14) made it possible for us to keep the good with which He entrusted us. The breadth of God’s gift to us is beyond imagining, but there are a few insights that may help us understand His bounty.
In the most broad perspective, we are given “to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 13:11). That gift requires that we be given “the mind of Christ” so that we may grasp these great spiritual truths (1 Corinthians 2:16). The deposit that God placed with us is not a leap in IQ or mental ability. It is truly a “new man” that God has empowered to be “renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Colossians 3:10).
But this great spiritual capacity must be guarded. There is no guarantee of spiritual wisdom this side of eternity. We must beware “lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8). God has made it possible for us to gain the wisdom of holiness so “that [we] might be filled with all the fulness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). HMM III’https://www.icr.org/article/13993/
‘In America, an after-school program sponsored by The Satanic Temple is popping up around the nation. What irresponsible parent would allow their child to attend such things? June Everett, national director of the After School Satan Club,1 said the following in a TV interview:
“To us, Satan is a symbol … like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy … A symbol for standing up to tyrannical authority … We don’t believe in a supernatural Satan … we don’t talk about Satanism… we don’t push it on the kids.”2
However, if they don’t talk about Satanism, then why the name? Everett stated Satan for her is a “symbol for standing up to tyrannical authority”. Ultimately, in her mind, this means the Creator of life (the arch nemesis of Satan) who is both concerned with children growing up (Matthew 18) with healthy boundaries, as well as children inside the womb (Psalm 139).’ Read the rest of the article @ https://creation.com/abortion-prayers-arrest
Life brings with it many problems. Some are easy and some hard to answer. I have found this little book helpful for myself and others. Perhaps it may be a help to you as well.
I think you will find the following interesting reading for this Easter season https://creationfactfile.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Easter-Eaggs-Bunnies-Bible.pdf
Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
I’m originally from Iowa and am glad the Iowa legislature has enough backbone to stand up to this murder of the unborn.
‘The Iowa legislature has officially approved an amendment declaring there is no right to kill babies in abortions. The state constitutional amendment needs to be approved by the legislature one more time and then be approved by the voters on the ballot to become a part of the Iowa Constitution.
The Iowa state House passed an amendment late Tuesday that would protect unborn babies and ensure Iowans are not forced to fund abortions with their tax dollars. it would declare that there is no right to kill babies in abortions. The Senate followed suit today and now it must be passed again by both chambers in the 2023-24 General Assembly to be placed on the ballot.
It reads: “To defend the dignity of all human life and protect unborn children from efforts to expand abortion even to the point of birth, we the people of the State of Iowa declare that this Constitution does not recognize, grant, or secure a right to abortion or require the public funding of abortion.”
Leading pro-life advocates told LifeNews.com they were delighted that the legislature took the first step to getting the amendment in the state constitution.
“Today marks the first step in restoring the proper voice of the people of Iowa,” says Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of The FAMiLY Leader, a Coalition member. “In 2018, five radical, unelected judges stripped that voice away, declaring that they and they alone get to set Iowa’s abortion laws. Without constitutional grounds or any input of the people, they invented a so-called ‘right’ to abortion and then paved the way for future courts to force late-term abortion and taxpayer-funded abortion on Iowa.
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“But the vast majority of Iowans don’t want to fund elective abortions nor live in a state where a baby’s life can be snuffed out just moments before her first breath,” Vander Plaats continues. “The judges were wrong to silence Iowa voters and seize for themselves the power to rewrite the people’s constitution. Today, the Iowa Legislature was right to give Iowans our voice back.”
“The Life Amendment represents everyday Iowans telling unelected judges, ‘You don’t get to just decide the abortion debate for us,’” added Maggie DeWitte, executive director of Iowans for LIFE and spokeswoman for the Coalition of Pro-Life Leaders. “‘Because there’s one argument in the debate you didn’t take into account, one truth you can’t argue away: That little girl in her mother’s womb, she’s a baby.’”
The Life Amendment does not require the governor’s signature to advance.
Rep. Steve Holt, R-Denison, led debate on House Joint Resolution 5.
“For those that oppose this language, nobody mentions, ever, the unborn child,” Holt said. “Nobody mentions the second heartbeat.”
“You don’t even have to be pro-life to support this amend,” said Rep. Sandy Salmon, R-Janesville. She called it a “separation of powers amendment (that) corrects a power grab by handful of judges.”
Pro-life leaders said the amendment is necessary after the Iowa Supreme Court found a so-called “right” to abort unborn babies in the state constitution in 2018.
“What these judges did was even more extreme than Roe v. Wade,” DeWitte said.
Unless Iowans pass the amendment, she said the state will not have any protections for women and children from abortion “even up to the point of birth.”
To be added to the Iowa Constitution, the amendment must pass the state legislature during two consecutive sessions and then be approved by voters on the ballot, likely in 2024.
Such amendments are important because the abortion industry often turns to the courts to overturn pro-life laws. Some judges, including the Iowa Supreme Court in 2018, have found a so-called “right” to abortion in their state constitutions, and these decisions have been used to force taxpayers to fund abortions and restrict state legislatures from passing even minor, common-sense abortion restrictions.
For years, Tennessee and West Virginia were prevented from enacting abortion restrictions because of activist judicial rulings. In 2018, West Virginia voters passed a pro-life state constitutional amendment after decades of being forced by a court ruling to fund elective abortions with their tax dollars. Tennessee voters approved a similar amendment in 2014.
Several other states, including Kansas, Kentucky and Montana, also are considering pro-life state constitutional amendments this year.’https://www.lifenews.com/2021/05/19/iowa-legislature-passes-amendment-declaring-theres-no-right-to-kill-babies-in-abortions/
‘Can you agree that life is seventy to a hundred years, sometime less and very seldom more, and it goes by fast? We know it goes by exactly sixty seconds a minute, but the point is what James wrote: life is a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. On the other hand, eternity is forever. Even in a lesser, albeit significant way, the kingdom of Jesus Christ is a thousand years.
The title brings two biblical metaphors and two secular ones. Let’s go through them. They relate to the first paragraph. Please think about it.
The first one says, you “strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel” (Matthew 23:24). It’s from Jesus. The gnat was the smallest unclean animal in the Old Testament dietary restrictions, and the largest was the camel (Leviticus 11:4, 42). Straining something was the use of a filter. When you went to drink something sweet that attracted gnats, you made sure you got your gnats out with a filter in order to eliminate the unclean thing. There’s obviously hyperbole here, because the filter should get a camel too, but in this metaphor, it doesn’t.
The gnat metaphor compares to Paul’s teaching to Timothy that bodily exercise profiteth little, but godliness is great gain. Everyone on earth has to focus on physical things, living in a physical world, but these physical things are temporal things, like bodily exercise is. I watch people, who call themselves Christians and they take care of the gnat, but they miss the camel. Their focus is on this life, on temporal things, even when it comes to the problems in this world. How do you see it?
You can see the wrong emphasis on social media. It’s all about this life, and it isn’t important. What are you eating? What car are you driving? What kind of fashion are you wearing? All of this is less than gnats. They are nothing. They are the dung, the Paul uses for a kind of temporal things in Philippians 3:8.
Let’s move on. The phrase, “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic,” describes a futile, meaningless activity in the face of doom or catastrophe. The Titanic compares to the real catastrophe, lost souls going to Hell. Most of mankind missing Paradise, the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and heaven. Greater than that, men please themselves and not God, because they do not receive His Word.
Rearranging deck chairs brings some temporal order and symmetry perhaps, better than what it might for the next cold few hours before the ship disappears in the icy ocean. Imagine while the ship is sinking, the person taking charge of deck chairs announces to signal his virtue, that “he’s going to rearrange the chairs” messed up maybe from the new tilt of the deck. This is the kind of virtue being signaled today. Look at me, I’m tithing of mint and cummin, my little garden herbs (Matthew 23:23), while souls all around are going to Hell, and not once is the gospel ever mentioned, let alone preached.
Nero apparently fiddled while Rome burned. Shame on Nero. It reminds me of Jesus’ allusion in the Sermon on the Mount, not casting pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6). Pigs can’t appreciate the beauty and significance of pearls. Appreciating pearls takes a minimal level of discernment. A particular brand of baseball cap or footwear supercedes eternal life for a lost soul. Is my hair in style? Did I purchase the appropriate brand name of trousers? Are they ripped enough? Can you see the right amount of skin? Rome is burning, and you’re talking about your play list of pop rock tunes, sensual and worldly. This is insane like Nero. There was a reason he was fiddling. You’re fiddling too. Think about it.
Esau famously in Genesis 25 sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, essentially some lentil stew. Sure, he was hungry. Sure, he wanted to tour Europe. Sure, he wanted to fill his bucket list. Sure, he wanted more instagram followers. What about God? What about his parents? Obedience to them? Honoring them? What about the Word of God? What about the work of the church? What about the things that God loves and He wants you to value? This is where the terminology arises, throwing your life away. Esau threw his life away. You are throwing your life away, but posing like your mess of pottage matters.
The Apostle Paul instructed (Ephesians 5:16), “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” What are you doing with your time? Are you just straining at gnats, rearranging deck chairs, fiddling while Rome burns, and trading your birthright for a mess of pottage? You don’t have to. Turn to the Lord now. Like Paul, count these other things as dung for the knowledge of Christ Jesus.’https://kentbrandenburg.com/2021/02/03/straining-at-gnats-rearranging-deck-chairs-fiddling-while-rome-burns-and-trading-your-birthright-for-a-mess-of-pottage/
whatyareckon 