Making a Difference in your Life, in the Parts that are for Keeps!
All children need a father and a mother.
We do well to not ignore or intentionally try to alter that fact.
All children have a father and a mother.
We cannot change that fact.
Any attempt to change what God did and what God said, doesn’t work and brings pain and destruction and disaster.
God had the first Word.
God has the last Word.
Don’t get caught in the middle against His Word.
Truth may be disputed, but it cannot be refuted.
The Roman Governor, Pilate, asked Jesus, “What is truth?”
Good question.
Pilate did not have the answer.
The answer was standing in front of him.
Jesus had already said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
Not only did Jesus create everything.
Not only does Jesus own everything.
Jesus is everything—the Way, the Truth, the Life.
Then He said, “No one comes to the Father except by Me.”
And that is how we get everything, including the Truth.
JESUS = TRUTH
Don’t try to refute it.
Don’t try to debate it.
Don’t try to invent it.
Don’t ignore it.
Accept it.
Accept Him.
Parents?
Siblings?
Elders?
Peers?
Posterity?
Employers?
Spouse?
Church Leaders?
Readers?
God?
Yourself?
In my lifetime I’ve tried to impress all of the above. I suppose each has its time and place for us to please. Then, we find that pleasing others is not as fulfilling as expected. Even pleasing ourselves does not satisfy.
Surely trying to impress God is right. Well, the truth is that we can’t impress Him—at least not favorably. People through all history have tried, doing every imaginable thing to please the gods of their imagination. It doesn’t do a bit of good.
The brightest spot in all human history is that the true God did something about this for us. He did the pleasing—He did the impressing—so we don’t have to. Now we can be free to please Him because we want to, not because we have to.
We weren’t fit to please God, so Jesus pleased Him for us while He was here on earth. When the job of pleasing God for us was done, He said, “It is finished.” He defeated death for us, came back to life, and went back to heaven.
He gives us power—He gives us His Spirit—He gives us the choice to accept His finished work—He gives us abundant life—and He is pleased with us. And that is how we impress God. And that is how we are free to serve others, not impress them.
This weekend, starting today, and the next three days, will you remember what Jesus did for you, and accept it, and invite Jesus into your heart and in charge of your life?
Wouldn’t it be great to please God for the first time?
Now that would be impressive!
I’m sharing a letter here that I sent today to the pastor of a solid Bible church where I went for nineteen years.
Today, as the Supreme Court reviews DOMA and PROP 8, I think of your message about 4 1/2 years ago on persecution. You spoke of people you ministered to around the world who lived with severe, direct persecution and who lost loved ones. You made it very real, at least to me.
You also said we did not have persecution in our country. Yes, we had a lot to be thankful for. But while you were speaking that Sunday morning, I was thinking of Jim Garlow and many others in California who were experiencing persecution first-hand, because they were publicly defending Biblical marriage (PROP 8). I cannot see God calling Christian leaders to anything less.
I do not know what is happening next, but one of my greatest concerns is that pastors are not preparing Christians for persecution. If we are not wrestling with the issues that burdened Bonhoeffer, we may have people asking us questions we can’t answer.
If you will, turn to AWordforThought.com and read 3-9-13, then do a search for all articles on “persecution.” I just re-read them myself, for the first time.
In case you get involved reading, there are two articles on the “remnant.”
It is my goal that something I say or write may save one or two of the remnant from falling away when persecution comes.
God Bless You. Stand.
Larry Michalk
What if there was one ingredient that could make the difference in turning this country around and saving America?
What if there was one group of people that held the secret for success in returning the U.S. to her former glory?
What if there was one thing this group of people could change, to change the direction of the country?
What if God had something to say about this?
What if God already wrote down this one ingredient, specifically?
What if no one is telling what it is?
What if that one group doesn’t want to hear it?
What if that one group won’t change?
What if history shows this article is correct?
What if it is too late very soon?
What is the “WHAT IF?”
God said, to His people (and He wrote it down, word for word):
“You shall have no other gods before Me.”
“You cannot serve God and mammon.”
“Do not lay up treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break in and steal.”
“Do lay up treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not corrupt, and where thieves do not break in and steal.”
“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
“Seek first (seek only) the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things will be added unto you.”
“Therefore, take no thought for tomorrow, for tomorrow will take thought for the things of itself. Each day’s troubles are sufficient for that day.”
“You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.”
Because America’s church people have their money stashed in this world, they cannot lead the culture out of decay (salt) and darkness (light).
America will change if God’s people change. If they take their money out of the world’s kingdom and put it into God’s Kingdom—only then will their hearts be in the right place to influence change.
Related articles 3-17-13, 3-4-13, 2-6-13
When Newton observed gravity, he did not invent gravity or create it. He “thought of” gravity, not “thought up” gravity.
When science describes the world, it cannot explain everything it describes. Science discovers new stuff in this phenomenal world all the time, and science explains how some of it works. But one thing is constant about scientific advancement—ever-increasing complexity observed, ever-increasingly unexplainable.
Science describes. Science cannot explain.
spiritual
moral
thought
God
origin
As knowledge and technology multiply by leaps and bounds, we vainly imagine that we can come up with answers to everything. And we have seven billion different answers.
Something is missing. But no, it is not missing. It is just ignored.
Instead of continuing the futile search for the missing link to prove evolution (biggest failure of “science”), we have the Missing Link clearly written in three places for all to see, regardless of intelligence, fame, or fortune.
God explained everything we need to know—written in the grandeur of the universe, written in the heart of every human, and written in the Bible.
First, God is thrilled when man discovers all kinds of amazing new stuff, with more guaranteed to be found. He put it all together with just enough secrecy to keep us searching—from the gold prospector to the psychiatrist to the physicist.
To put the second in human terms, God has a clear conscience because He put into our conscience a clear awareness of right and wrong and His sovereignty.
Third, the Bible explains very clearly how this whole world got made, how it got messed up, how it gets fixed, and how it ends.
Check it out—now, while you have time.
I want to encourage you to look at my friend’s site StrongStableLives.com
You will be glad you did.
Solid encouragement, commitment, and truth, from a life of sacrifice, testing, and miracles.
Plenty to say—Plenty to write.
I’ll start with this:
“What God ordains is always good;
His Will abideth holy.
As He directs my life for me,
I follow meek and lowly.
My God, indeed,
In ev’ry need
Does well know how to shield me;
To Him then I will yield me.”
I want to encourage you to look at my friend’s site StrongStableLives.com
You will be glad you did. Solid encouragement, commitment, and truth, from a life of sacrifice, testing, and miracles.
The militant homosexual agenda is not about health, happiness, love, and equality, because it never stops there. It is about power and control, and it destroys anyone and anything that is not supportive.
But the individual who is sincerely struggling with same-sex attraction, needs people who care enough to make a meaningful difference in his/her life, outside of sex. That is the ingredient in success stories—identity as a person, not as gay.
Feelings—emotions—are not a stable basis for actions that endanger life and health and true love and blessed marriage with children.
Facts—truth—are clearly the foundation for stable families and cultures.
The benefit of any movement is whether it can stand up to reason and history and the well-being of righteous people.
I choose to believe that humor is part of the image of God that we were made in before the fall, rather than part of the consequences we were cursed with after the fall.
“A merry heart does good like medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.” (you can take that to the bank, and skip the doctor most of the time)
“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” Reflection on growing up on the farm—“Whatever your dad’s hand finds for you to do, do it with all your might.”
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother-in-law, and shall cleave unto his wife, and the two shall become one.” (I added the “-in-law” part—true, true, true)
Now, the risky one about an ox falling into a ditch on the Sabbath, and of course you pull it out even if it means working on the Sabbath. I take it to the edge when I work on Sunday on rare occasions, and say that someone has to make the ditch for the ox to fall into. (I drive a bobcat loader that can dig ditches among other things) No theology here, please, just humor.
And what about the animals, like giraffes, and ostriches, and platypuses—you can’t tell me God didn’t have some extracurricular fun coming up with those.
And for the fairy tale believers in unicorns—they were real, in the Bible.
And for the dinosaur lovers (those who are sincere and those who think dinosaurs were gone before man—that is, believers in the invention of the evolution religion)—dinosaurs were real, in the Bible, with man. Check out the leviathan and behemoth in the book of Job.
It’s real fun to discover and believe the accuracy of the Bible, especially when you know the Author, personally.
Fools say there is no God—obvious when they substitute evolution for God. I just discovered that Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 repeat this truth nearly word for word verse after verse. That tells us something, twice, underlined, exclamation point.
Let me end with some ‘serious laughter’—just one more of the divine oxymorons that show we’re not God.
“He who sits in the heavens will laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision.” (check the context of that one—Psalm 2)
“A time to weep, and a time to laugh.”
Indeed.
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