Some interesting reading and watching from today…
“I call love to God the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for His own sake, and the enjoyment of one’s self and of one’s neighbor for the sake of God.” —Augustine
Thom Rainer shares 6 symptoms of a dysfunctional church.
This research says that married people are healthier people.
[VIDEO] Greg Koukl addresses the “God of the Gaps” argument.
Some great reading from today…
“The reason fraudulent religious leaders are such a sensation is because the religion they profess has taught millions of people not to steal or kill or commit adultery or lie or covet, but to love others as they love themselves. They make news because they don’t make sense. Ten thousand honest, self-sacrificing, care-giving pastors are not news, precisely because it is simply expected that they will be that way. Why? Because we take for granted that their faith produces good behavior. The justified media outrage is an indirect testimony to long patterns of uprightness that Christianity has produced.” —John Piper
The Hobby Lobby case that the Supreme Court ruled on continues to have positive outcomes for other businesses as well. “A religious person should not be forced to choose between their faith and their ability to participate in the private sector. Operating a business does not mean that someone’s religious beliefs cease to matter, and thankfully, the Supreme Court is acknowledging that truth as well.” Read more in Supreme Court rules in favor of another corporation challenging the HHS mandate just one day after the Hobby Lobby ruling.
This post—Planets In Chaos—is a fascinating piece of astronomy. But the overall conclusion is even a more amazing admission from scientists: “The discovery of thousands of star systems wildly different from our own has demolished ideas about how planets form. Astronomers are searching for a whole new theory.” Perhaps a theory they might consider is one that has a Creator at the center.
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has already spent $3 billion (yes, billion) trying to find medical benefits for embryonic stem cells. Now they are poised to ask for another $5 billion in funding. For this expenditure, how many medical processes are now in place using embryonic stem cells: None! The CEO of CIRM made this astounding claim, “We have to protect science’s access to the full range of cellular types now. And in doing that, we will protect the freedom of science to ethically pursue knowledge in this country outside of religious ideology” (emphasis mine). Meanwhile, research facilities using adult stem cells (which do not destroy life) have actual life-saving procedures in place for far less money. So I guess there’s something to be said for those religious ideologies guiding scientific research.
The Overview Bible Project has a cool [INFOGRAPHIC] on all the songs in the Bible.
Some good reading from today…
“Therefore it is the duty of a brave man not to shut his eyes when anything threatens, but to put it before him and to search it out as it were in the mirror of his mind, and to meet the future with foreseeing thought, for fear he might afterwards have to say: This has come to me because I thought it could not come about. If misfortunes are not looked for beforehand, they quickly get a hold of us.” —Ambrose
Sad: The Presbyterian Church (USA) votes to NOT denounce infanticide. Seriously?!?
Turn off the tube: “The study involved more than 13,200 adults in Spain who were all college graduates, and were around 37 years old at the study’s start. Participants were followed for about eight years, over which there were 97 deaths. Those who watched three or more hours of TV a day were twice as likely to die over the study period, compared with those whose watched TV for one hour or less daily, the study found. And, oddly, even compared to other activities that are sedentary—like driving a car or using a computer—watching TV still appears to be deadlier.”
A good overview of ISIS in Iraq.
A challenging thought from Dr. Tim Elmore for anyone who works with students: Addictions: One Reason Not To Take The Easy Road.
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” —William James
“Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned.” —Peter Marshall
Some great reading from today…
“Ask yourself—Is God justified in my justification? Do I prove by the way I live and talk and do my work that God has made me holy?” —Oswald Chambers
Keep praying and speaking out for Meriam Ibrahim’s freedom. Sudan has imprisoned her and sentenced her to death because she is a (gasp!) Christian.
“The economy shrank for the first time in 58 years! Many of you, this has never happened in your life. The Drive-By Media, of course, is going to ignore this. Or, as the AP does here, say, “The setback is expected to be temporary with growth rebounding solidly since spring.’ Really? Well, every Drive-By news report I’ve read on the economy for the past six years has had the word ‘unexpected’ or ‘surprised’ in it, meaning everything they’ve reported has been a shock. They haven’t expected it. So it’s no big deal. Yeah, it shrank 3%. But that’s just expected to be temporary. … And so, for I don’t know what—the umpteenth or gazillionth time in the last six years—we are being told that prosperity is just around the corner. How long has AP been spreading this sunshine now? How long have ABC, NBC, CBS, the Washington Post, the New York Times been spreading this BS that prosperity is just around the corner—we’re poised for growth, waiting to break out—while the day-to-day reality is it’s worsening?” —Rush Limbaugh
Do you take vitamin supplements? This latest report says you should, and it says you shouldn’t.
Lower courts make a ruling on redefining marriage that is just flat-out wrong.
“Joy is increased by spreading it to others.” —Robert Murray McCheyne
“satan will try to bring upon you the most dreadful temptation or trial you have ever faced. He wants you to get bogged down in guilt, condemnation and self-examination. Dear saint, you have to arise in the Spirit and get your eyes off your circumstances and bondage. Do not try to figure it all out. Start praising, singing and trusting God—and He will take care of your deliverance.” —David Wilkerson
Alexander Solzhenitsyn tells us why countries fail: “Men have forgotten God.” Read more here.
When you read a title like I Like Giving you might immediately think, “This is a book telling me to tithe, or give bigger offerings to my church, or support my local charity.” And you would be dead wrong. Brad Formsma’s book isn’t really about giving money away, it’s about giving yourself away.
Brad writes, “When we choose to give, we change, and the people around us change. When we move from awareness to action, miracles happen. When we allow giving to be our idea, a world of possibilities opens up before us, and we discover new levels of joy.”
Indeed, Brad weaves together his own personal stories, with stories from other givers, and even a healthy dose of medical and psychological research data to show us just how life-transforming and joy-producing it is when we are giving people. Not only are the gift receivers benefitted, but so are the gift givers.
Let me state it again: this book isn’t about giving your money to a charitable organization or a church; it’s about you seeing a need and finding a way to take care of that need. If everyone took on this mindset, just imagine how our communities would change!
One final thought from author Brad Formsma—“I don’t think we can ever overestimate just how profound the effects of giving can be. You can give without loving, but you can’t love without giving. The reality is that other people are watching how we live our lives, and what we do can have extraordinary effects in our communities. Generosity is for all of us. It is available to all of us, even when the cultural tide is moving in the opposite direction. Why not be brave and live differently?” (emphasis added)
Let I Like Giving be a springboard for you to live differently and to make a difference where you live!
I am a Waterbrook book reviewer.
Some good reading from today…
“There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire.” —John Witherspoon
Religious persecution alert: ISIS is eliminating Christians in Iraq.
“It is a serious fault if a believer is in want, and thou knowest it, or if thou knowest that he is without means, that he is hungry, that he suffer distress, especially if he is ashamed of his need…. If he is in prison, and—upright though he is—has to suffer pain and punishment for some debt (for though we ought to show mercy to all, yet we ought to show it especially to an upright man); if in the time of his trouble he obtains nothing from thee; if in time of danger, when he is carried off to die, thy money seems more to thee than the life of a dying man; what a sin is that to thee!” —Ambrose
[VIDEO] Detroit Tigers radio announcer Ernie Harwell broadcasting his last game.
Interesting: Why The First Hospital To Do Sex-Reassignment Surgeries No Longer Do Them.
“When the Middle East is fragmented in this horrible war, this savage, savage war between militant Shiites and militant Sunnis … the only place where you have freedom, tolerance, protection of minorities, protection of gays, protection of Christians and all other faiths is Israel,” said Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister. Read more about the wrong-headed decision of the Presbyterian (USA) Church to divest in Israel.
More young adults are having kids outside of marriage, and that is creating a dangerous environment for the kids.
“Kind words are the music of the world. They have a power which seems to be beyond natural causes, as if they were some angel’s song which had lost its way and come on earth. It seems as if they could almost do what in reality God alone can do—soften the hard and angry hearts of men. No one was ever corrected by a sarcasm—crushed, perhaps, if the sarcasm was clever enough, but drawn nearer to God, never.” —Frederick William Faber
Some interesting reading from this weekend…
Assemblies of God missionaries were addressing the issue of sex slaves and sex trafficking as far back as 1917.
Chilly Chilton challenges us to view worship as serving: Serving Up Some Worship!
This infuriates me … a Planned Parenthood staffer recommends abusive sex to a 15-year-old! And guess what? Our tax dollars are paying for this garbage.
More medical evidence that stress is bad for your heart.
“It will take an infinite number of ages for God to be done glorifying the wealth of His grace to us—which is to say He will never be done. And our joy will increase forever and ever. Boredom is absolutely excluded in the presence of an infinitely glorious God.” —John Piper
Don’t just study; study well. Here are some important questions to ask yourself.
The Overview Bible Project has a cool look at the Psalms.
“How can we ever hope that our kids will become moral, ethical, committed people when we can’t keep our word, can’t keep our pants on, and can’t seem to hold our tongue or liquor? To all three groups of leaders, I simply say: We don’t expect you to be perfect, but we do expect you to embody integrity.” Read more from Tim Elmore’s post The Only Way To Turn Students Into Ethical Leaders.
“As Christians we are called upon to exhibit the character of God, and this means the simultaneous exhibition of His holiness and His love.” —Francis Schaeffer
I recently re-read C.S. Lewis’ book Miracles (you can read my full book review by clicking here). As you may have noticed, after reading and reviewing books on this blog, I also like to share some quotes that caught my attention. Doing this with Lewis is difficult, because in order to get the context of a particular quote, I think I would have to cite almost a full page or more. So I have been slowly sharing some quotes from Miracles that require not as much context, or I will provide a bit of background to set the stage.
For other quotes from this book see Miracle Or “Cheating”?, Miracles And Nature, Christianity And Pantheism, Correcting The Pantheist, Absolute Fact, The Central Miracle, The Miracle of Freewill, and Checkmate.
“There is a sense in which no doctor ever heals. The doctors themselves would be the first to admit this. The magic is not in the medicine but in the patient’s body—in the vis medicatrix naturæ, the recuperative or self-corrective energy of Nature. What the treatment does is to stimulate Natural functions or to remove what hinders them. We speak for convenience of the doctor, or the dressing, healing a cut. But in another sense every cut heals itself: no cut can be healed in a corpse.” —C.S. Lewis
God says He will not share His glory with anyone or anything.
So it is not medicine that heals, but God Who heals by giving scientists the insight to make medicines. It is not doctors who heal, but God Who gives doctors wisdom to create the environment in which healing can occur.
All healing of the body is a miracle, but all healing comes from God.
Some interesting reading (and watching and listening) from the last couple of days.
Great D-Day history! You can listen to CBS Radio as they reported the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944.
Parents: kids can download apps to hide pictures and videos on their electronic devices. Check out the latest news from uknowkids.com.
The Congressional Budget Office now reports that ObamaCare costs are so outrageous that it is impossible for them to calculate the total economic impact.
“It is delightful to worship God, but it is also a humbling thing; and the man who has not been humbled in the presence of God will never be a worshiper of God at all. He may be a church member who keeps the rules and obeys the discipline, and who tithes and goes to conference, but he’ll never be a worshiper unless he is deeply humbled. … There’s an awesomeness about God which is missing in our day altogether; there’s little sense of admiring awe in the Church of Christ these days.” —A.W. Tozer
[VIDEO] Clay Christensen on the importance of religious freedom to democracy.
“The most paralyzing thing we can do for our relationship is to define our spouse by their past, rather than by who they are in the present.” Read more from this post Top 10 Relationship Killers.
Fasting is beneficial spiritually and physically: Fasting can regenerate immune system.
Great reading (and watching) today.
[VIDEO] John Maxwell reminds us of the value of delays.
Dr. James Dobson defends his comments at the National Day of Prayer address.
[VIDEO] Dr. Brian Mattson discusses the place of the Apocrypha.
[INFOGRAPHIC] Exercise helps your memory.
“The surprise comes for many people that such a tiny little brain is able to form such a rich memory described as a cognitive map,” says co-author Randolf Menzel. Actually, the surprise for me is that many people refuse to believe this amazing little brain was created by an amazing Creator. See how bees build mental maps to get back home.
Craig T. Owens 