A scripture for America...

Psalm 81:11-16 (New International Version)

11 "But my people would not listen to me;
Israel would not submit to me.

12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts
to follow their own devices.

13 "If my people would but listen to me,
if Israel would follow my ways,

14 how quickly would I subdue their enemies
and turn my hand against their foes!

15 Those who hate the LORD would cringe before him,
and their punishment would last forever.

16 But you would be fed with the finest of wheat;
with honey from the rock I would satisfy you."

I hope all of you can see where I am going with this. We as a nation refuse to listen to God, we want to listen to ourselves and therefore God has given our nations over to our own vices. Look at what the Bible says would happen if we would follow God; I believe God's words from Asaph in this Psalm are just as true for our nation today as they were more than 2000 years ago.

Oh God, turn our nation to You so that we might see the glorious works of Your hand in all that we do, that is my one cry.

http://www.masterpath.org/

So, I was doing some research for my sermon I am giving tomorrow and came across this website. Sri Gary Olsen is the "Current Living Master" of this new "faith". If you read the things on his website in comparison with what the Bible says it will become quite evident that this "system of pure spirituality that is flawless, universal, and easily understood, which will most certainly restore your faith and love, not only in your Self, but in the Supreme as well" is DEFINITELY out of whack.

Here are just a few examples:

"The MasterPath proclaims that it is impossible to find your true Self if one persists in searching outside the body. All great Saints of the past, present, and future unequivocally state that truth, soul, the true Master, and the Supreme Deity are all located within the human body, and to look for them anywhere else is an exercise in illusion and futility."
Ummm... obviously this flies in the face of what the Bible says...

There is much more I can say about this website, but I think that anyone with any common sense and any knowledge of the Bible whatsoever will read through this website and be able to point out the disrepencies between this and the Holy Word of God.

Final comment:
Matthew 7:14-16
14But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
15"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?

Would you take a chance of 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000?

Me neither.

In one of the best books I have ever read The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel this staggering figure is quoted as the probability of forming a short protein strand at random given the perfect environmental conditions.

I'll let the book speak for itself:
In summing up how random chance could not have been responsible for forming of DNA (the building blocks of all cells). Lee Strobel speaking with Stephen C. Meyer, Director and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, Graduate of Cambridge ,and Origin-of-life expert:
"I began with an observation. "I know that the idea of life forming by random chance is out of vogue right now among scientists," I said.
Meyer agreed. "Virtually all origin-of-life experts have utterly rejected that approach," he said with a wave of his hand.
"Even so, the idea is still very much alive at the popular level," I pointed out. "For many college students who speculate about these things, chance is still the hero. They think if you let amino acids randomly interact over millions of years, life is somehow going to emerge."
"Well, yes, it's true that this scenario is still alive among people who don't know all the facts, but there's no merit to it." Meyer replied.
“Imagine trying to generate even a simple book by throwing Scrabble letters onto the floor. Or imagine closing your eyes and picking Scrabble letters out of a bag. Are you going to produce Hamlet in anything like the time of the known universe? Even a simple protein molecule, or the gene to build that molecule, is so rich in information that the entire time since the Big Bang would not give you, as my colleague Bill Dembski likes to say, the “probabilistic resources” you would need to generate that molecule by chance.”
“Even,” I asked, “if the first molecule had been much simpler than those today?”
“There’s a minimal complexity threshold,” he replied. “There’s a certain level of folding that a protein has to have, called the tertiary structure, that is necessary for it to perform a function. You don’t get tertiary structure in a protein unless you have at least seventy-five amino acids or so. That may be conservative. Now consider what you’d need for a protein molecule to form by chance.
“First, you need the right bonds between amino acids. Second, amino acids come in right-handed and left-handed versions, and you’ve got to get only left-handed ones. Third, the amino acids must link up in a specified sequence, like letters in a sentence.
“Run the odds of these things falling into place on their own and you find that the probabilities of forming a rather short functional protein at random would be one chance in a hundred thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. That’s a ten with 125 zeroes after it!
“And that would only be one protein molecule- a minimally complex cell would need between three hundred and five hundred protein molecules. Plus, all of this would have to be accomplished in a mere 100 million years, which is the approximate window of time between the Earth cooling and the first microfossils we’ve found.
“To suggest chance against those odds is really to invoke a naturalistic miracle. It’s a confession of ignorance. It’s another way of saying, ‘We don’t know.’ And since the 1960’s, scientists, to their credit, have been very reluctant to say chance played any significant role in the origin of DNA or proteins- even though, as you say, it’s still unfortunately a live option in popular thinking.””
From “The Case for a Creator”, ©2004 by Lee Strobel

This book goes on to refute any standing argument against intelligent design in a one-two punch to the face of evolution. After reading this book there is no doubt in my mind that this universe was created by an intelligent designer. Everyone who has any feelings about the issues of creation should read this book, it will amaze you as it did me.

Luck? I think NOT!

I have been hesitant to say "Good Luck" to people, because I thought luck was defined as good things happening by coincidence and chance (which I don't believe in at all any more). The definition of luck in my dictionary reads as this, and I quote: "luck (luk) n. 1. the force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person's life, as in shaping events or opportunities..." (emphasis mine).

Why don't I believe in luck? Lamentations 3:37-38 (NIV) (speaking rhetorically of course) says "Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?"

I think we found our force behind that operates in a person's life! Yes, good and bad things happen to everyone (even Christians!), but there is undoubtedly a plan! Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV) "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future." I don't think the prophet Jeremiah was just speaking to the captives of Babylon in this verse. In this verse, like all verses in the Bible, God is speaking through Jeremiah, through the ages to us. Thank God that He has chosen to speak to us! Thank God it's not by chance, He PLANNED it before time! Wow, that's just amazing to me!

Lastly, one of the more famous verses in the entire Bible: Romans 8:28 (NKJV)- "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." If and when bad things do come, God promises that the end results will be good.

Pray and ask God for wisdom to see the good side to every "bad" thing that happens. Pray also that God will keep our perspectives of good and bad in line with His and we'll always be able to see that things could be worse and be thankful that they're not!

Transformed!

The posts below were written when this blog was in its old form.

By reading these new posts you will find something quite different about this blog now.

This blog has been transformed and will now only be used for the Glory of God. I have been transformed. NO LONGER will I seek to turn my eyes away from the Lord, but I will keep my eyes solely focused on Him and His purpose for my life. As in the rest of the world, you can see how my thoughts below are woven with thoughts of God despite my efforts to explain Him away.

I am convinced entirely that there is no explaining this world without looking first to God, the infallible maker of all things, to ask Him why this world is the way it is. I also believe there are some things that are unexplainable to us in our human state. Our minds are temporary and God's "mind" is infinite; it exists outside of time, therefore we cannot comprehend His thoughts. 1 Corinthians 2:11 (NIV) says " For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God."

Philosophers have been trying for centuries now to explain why we are here on earth and they are still arguing. I am done asking them for the answer, I want to ask someone who knows.

God tells us the answer in a very clear way.

The Bible says in Romans 11:36a "From Him and through Him and to Him are all things."

God made all things, so from Him all things came.

Everything that exists came through God. The Bible tells of God's all-knowingness (omnipotence). When God made things, He carefully thought through it all before He spoke it into existence, before time even existed. Everything in a sense was sifted through the thoughts of God, therefore everything that exists came through God, not only because He made it, but because He thought about it first.

Everything exists to God. This point is very interesting. Rick Warren in his book, The Purpose Driven Life explains it this way: "It's all for him. The ultimate goal of the universe is to show the glory of God. It is the reason everything exists, including you. God made it all for his glory. Without God's glory, there would be nothing." Everything is to God, that means we are created, and everything was created, to give glory to it's creator. Just like a designer puts his/her name on a pair of jeans, God made us in His image (Genesis 5:1) so that we could walk around and, in a sense, show Him off! Isn't that a cool thought!?

Think about this too, you never hear an advertisement talking bad about the product they are trying to sell you, right? In the same way we should not give God "bad advertisement", we should follow His commands written in scripture so that He might receive all the glory and more people might come to know Him.

Pray that God helps you show other people his logo of love because He made it all and He deserves more credit than we can give Him for it!

The regulated use of the tongue holds the key to true wisdom...

Rarely is a prudent person questioned.

Knowing when to speak and when not to speak is the mark of true wisdom. All of us could use better judgement as to when we say things and how we say them. Part of developing this sought-after wisdom (which I have certainly not attained as of yet) is forethought as to what one is saying, not only as to what is being said but as to how the auditors will receive the remark.

Also, while speaking, one must be careful not to become consumed with what one is saying or how it is being received by the listeners. This also can be handled by preparing what one says before one speaks. If one becomes preoccupied with what is being said whilst speaking there is little chance that the audience will comprehend the intended message.

Those who speak without much verbal pause ("um", "uh", etc.) are often seen as more articulate and in a way more intelligent. Once again, this is handled by forethought and rehearsal (whether mental or verbal).

"I have often regretted speaking, never remaining silent." If the mind is drawing a blank as to what to say, say nothing at all. "Better to be silent and seen as intelligent then to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

I'll follow my own advice now.

One problem with the world...

There is one problem with our world and the name of that one problem would be sin.

If we weren't so concerned with trying to make ourselves righteous in our own eyes (forgetting the eyes of those around us) then our lives would be filled with so much more joy and happiness. We're all having so many worries and concerns right now because we're all toying with what we want to be for the rest of our lives. I think the most important lesson we have ever been tought was shared with us in the grade school years: "Just say NO!" In the heat of the battle we all say yes to so many things that end up tying ourselves up in so many knots that we soon forget how we tied all of them to begin with. Religion seems to offer us a way out of tying ourselves up in knots but we're all at a stage in our lives where such a set standard of guidelines is looked down upon by the world; we're not sure if we want to be seen as "close-minded" or a "religious freak". Maybe it's because we're afraid of being proved wrong by someone else who feels differently and feels compelled to try to conform us to them.

Everyone should take the view that everyone is wrong and there is only one solution, but that's only my perspective, another part of which is we all should have the same view of deeper meaning and beliefs but, supposedly "that would make the world really boring." What I believe is conformity will happen in the end anyways, "EVERY knee will bow and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord," but that's another thing, how willing am I to conform to the rest of what my beliefs say? How willing am I to say that I am wrong and that I need to reconsider some of the things that I do? Somedays I am ready to say that at full voice and cast off my worldy coat. Some days I want to ignore that all together and keep all of the worldy things about myself; I am not strong enough as of yet to pull totally away from all of it and do what I believe God wants me to do. "Lord help me to be strong enough to say no to this world and yes to You and only You every single day throughout the day and until You return." I think it envolves taking one GIANT step of faith in believing in one thing whole-heartedly and then many more and trying each and every day to become closer to God (that which we believe in whole-heartedly).

That's the solution I've found, what's yours?