15 And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.
I am convinced that about 15 years ago there was a shift in the Church. Some of the older shepherds retired, and a new generation of trained shepherds replaced them. Now these new shepherds have new skills that differ from the shepherds they were replacing. This new generation of leaders knew how to shift the church into doing social justice, and how to market the church. Both of these skills are important to build a church around action and practical application, however you can't forget what the previous generation brought to the church. This older generation talked about the issues of the heart and how easy the heart can be lead astray. They taught the church about the necessity of a heart change, and without the changing of the heart, nothing will ever change. They talked about the need for repentance, and the surrendering to God without reservation. They taught the church about getting ready for the second coming of the Lord Jesus, and keeping ourselves pure in mind and body. Now I am not saying that the new leaders don't talk about these issues, but they don't drive these new leaders. I heard a true story about a young disciple who came to Christ about four years ago and still had ouija boards and tarot cards in her home. When asked about them she saw nothing wrong with them, and no one in the church had ever talked to her about the dangers of these occult practices. Where were her shepherds? Good question.
The danger I see with the new generation of shepherds is that they do not teach at the same level nor do they teach on same kind of themes that the previous generation did, and the result? God's people suffer by not knowing God nor understand His ways.
Keeping it honest and truthful...K
The Grammies were just held over the weekend, and I wasn't impressed. It's music's biggest night, with everyone looking their best. I hate it because it speaks about how proud everyone is of how their industry has done, and people are impressed if you win a "Grammy."
Most of the music is trash talk in my opinion, it means nothing, says nothing, and in light of eternity means absolutely nothing. I am sorry, but I am not impressed with all these award ceremonies that elevate these recording people as "stars." Not in my book.
22 Stop regarding man
in whose nostrils is breath,
for of what account is he?
I look at Lady Gaga and cringe, her creativity is used only to market her product, and her lifestyle is a continuation of her strange and bizarre appearance. No one likes to criticize the pop stars, but as the scripture states, "who are they anyway?" In five or ten years the industry has moved it's markers beyond anyone who is popular today, and they go into obscurity, no longer anyone follows or listens to. So why are we so impressed? What makes culture so caught up with movie stars and recording artists anyway? It's because they have the limelight everyone wishes they had. The pride of man is stimulated because of all the attention they receive, along with all the benefits that frame brings with it.
Now am I anti-culture? No, culture is a tool that has to be used to gain the attention of a society, however, I am not impressed with culture. Culture is controlled by our spiritual enemy Satan, and he is continually trying to use culture to inadvertently get people to worship him. He understands how people are tempted and simulated, and he uses all the tricks of sex, money, fame, and power to get people hooked into his system of keeping us connected to him rather than to God. Satan is a master marketer and knows how to peak interest in things that will addict us to self importance, or substance abuse, which includes both drugs and materialism.
So why are we so impressed? Do any of the things I mentioned so far that this world offers mean anything in the long run? No, no , and no. The only source that has meaning for this life and the life to come is God, His messiah, and His Word. These are the treasures Jesus said would lay up treasures in heaven, where nothing can destroy or take away. All of the things in this world are temporary and meaningless at the end of life.
LL Cool J the host of this years Grammies gave us a glimpse into it all when he started the evening out with a prayer for Whitney Houston and her family. Life is short, it is temporary, and death is final for this world. It was a reality check for everyone around the country, death will happen to every person someday, so how have we prepared for it?
Friends, Jesus Christ is the only hope we have when this life ends. Whitney Houston brings nothing with her such as her fame, or her 100 million records sales, nor her bank account when she stands before a Holy God and has to give an account for how she lived her life.
If she knows Jesus as her Savior, she has gained all of eternity and all of this life is forgotten and forgiven. What a treasure our God is.
Don't be mistaken by all the glitch of Hollywood, they have nothing to offer anyone, and if you know Jesus as your Savior, you have it all when you believe in Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior...Rejoice....
Keeping it honest and truthful....K
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| 2I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. And I will enter into judgment with them there, on behalf of my people and my heritage Israel, because they have scattered them among the nations and have divided up my land, 3and have cast lots for my people, and have traded a boy for a prostitute, and have sold a girl for wine and have drunk it. |
This is what God is doing in the preliminary stages in Syria, Egypt, Libya, and other Middle Eastern countries. The Arab Spring is about this final judgment that is recorded in Joel. He is preparing the world to bring the nations to judgment. Why? Because Israel was punished for her unbelief and her unwillingness to serve the living God. The God of her father Abraham, and He allowed them to be scattered to the nations. The time is coming and is now, that God will judge the nations for how the nations have treated His people the Jews. Many Hebraic Root theologians interpret Matthew 25 to reflect this judgment through the words of Jesus when He said, "when you did do this to the least of my brethren, you didn't do it to me."
Now how does this fit into your future? When you study the prophetic scriptures you discover the truth about how this world will end, and how God is setting the stage for this final hour today. This has been my biggest criticism of our modern church. We aren't preparing people for what is to come. Leaders are ignoring the signs, and are silent on the themes of scripture that are being presented everyday in our news, yet without comment and without concern. Jesus said the last days would be like the days of Noah, when everyone was unaware of the pending dangers to come. Only Noah and his family were saved because they heard the voice of the Lord and prepared.
Today is an hour to hear His voice and prepare.
Keeping it honest and truthful...K
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3 Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction. And from 2 Peter 2
This is happening right before our eyes in today's church. Heresies that keep people from the truth of the gospel which prepares us for His return by not talking about it. That is the beginning of this great rebellion. The prophet Jeremiah tells us that the problem of rebellion comes from people who do not know the Lord. Jeremiah said it was rooted in the leadership who was suppose to represent the Lord, but didn't.
This is where we are today. Leaders who don't know the Lord, and refuse to talk about Him, and His return. So how do we prepare for the future? We don't let leaders lead us away from the scriptures by ignoring a major part of what the scriptures teach. If I was attending your church, and I heard nothing about the second coming of Jesus Christ I would be questioning the leadership on why not? And that's what you should be doing. Remember those statistics that I opened up with? Don't forget them, they demonstrate our need to honest about the truth. Keeping it honest and truthful?....K
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3The pride of your heart has deceived you, Obadiah was speaking to the descendants of Esau, the Edomites, and instead of helping Israel against their enemies, they turned them over to them. It was a bad decision, but pride plays a great deception in the human heart. Eve was the first to discover it's overpowering influence and fell prey to it's deception. I know that I have made some foolish decisions, including lying, and cheating because of my pride. I have harbored secrets, and gossiped about people because of pride, and all the time I justified it because of the circumstances. All because of the deception brought about because of my pride. Pride is an ugly, self serving human characteristic that needs to be managed. Pride has to be recognized, confessed, and forsaken if you want to stay away from deception. Many Christian leaders operate in pride, and it is this pride that keeps the body of Christ segregated by thought and deed. Races are segregated, genders are segregated, theological differences segregate us, and I would bet that at the core of most of these divisions you will find pride. The cross is the cure for pride, it has the ability to forgive, and restore people with a perspective that supports a Biblical world view. That world view is one that is bases it's understanding of life and how it is to be lived on the Bible. In the future when you think about your pride, or the pride of life all around you, remember that the outcome of pride is always deception. Keeping it honest and truthful.....K
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"This isn't even a social issue. This is a constitutional issue," Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said onstage. "What (the Constitution) says is that the federal government does not have the power to force religious organizations to pay for things that that organization thinks is wrong."
Government is in gridlock all over the land, because the of the clash of ideologies. Big government won't solve our problems, but people keep thinking it can. All those Catholic Democrats who have been voting for bigger government just got a taste of how ugly government can get when it pushes an ideology that is contrary to their own beliefs. Society has been doing the same thing. It has been pushing lifestyles that the government thinks it can solve with condoms. How stupid. The problem is in the heart of our nation, not in the pants of its citizens. The heart of Americans have been turning toward idols for decades, and abandoning the principles of their Judeo-Christian heritage. President Obama promised change, and he got elected. Now that change was what everyone wanted and it has been haunting our country ever since.
No government has the right to legislate morality, and now it is trying to tell religious health organizations that it has to adopt it's policy on providing contraceptives. This is the kind of change we Americans voted for in 2008, I hope it was a lesson well learned for 2012.
Keeping things honest and truthful....K
Jeremiah 17:55 Thus says the LORD:“Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD. |
That’s right: Muslim-friendly Bibles.
Included in the controversial development is the removal of any references to God as “Father,” to Jesus as the “Son” or “the Son of God.” One example of such a change can be seen in an Arabic version of the Gospel of Matthew produced and promoted by Frontiers and SIL. It changes Matthew 28:19 from this:
“baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”
to this: “cleanse them by water in the name of Allah, his Messiah and his Holy Spirit.”
A large number of such Muslim-sensitive translations already are published and well-circulated in several Muslim-majority nations such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Doesn't that change the intention of the communication? So are we so today to disregard the original translation of the words Father and Son, and arbitrarily decide to change these words so it does not offend Muslims? The publisher and the Wycliffe organization are over the top on this one, and every donor, and subscriber to Wycliffe should be up in arms.
If you don't think we are in a culture war about these things, how about this headline that refers to the Army restricting Catholic Chapains from reading a letter from their churches leaders on the Obama's policy that forces coverage on birth control.
The letter called on Catholics to resist the policy the Obama Administration’s policy that would force institutions affiliated with religious groups to provide coverage for birth control, sterilization and “abortifacients.” The Catholic Church believes the mandate represents an unconstitutional violation of freedom of religion.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum told Fox News Sunday the Army violated its chaplains’ constitutional rights by barring them from reading the letter – calling for resistance to the contraceptive coverage mandate.
The war on ideas, beliefs and world views is heating up, and is the Church prepared? Have we been preparing people for what the Bible says will come about on this earth? Have we preached and taught Christians what to expect, and how to prepare? It seems to me when I go to church most of the messages, and Bible studies are about minor issues, with the major issues being ignored because they are too controversial. Once again, we have Christian leaders who are totally clue less about the nature of Christianity. Christianity has always been counter cultural, because by design it's from above and not from beneath, here on earth. It's values, it's teaching, it's promises are all counter to what the world stands for, so why should we change our message so the world can be friends with us? Any organization, pastor, Christian leader, church, denomination, or ministry agency who presents this kind of thinking, you need to distance yourself from. We can not give in to the politically correct or those who want peace with our enemies at the expense of changing the Bible. We can not give in to the immoral killing of babies, and at all costs it should bring us to civil disobedience. Are you ready and prepared for this kind of stand? Does your faith bring you to a point of standing your ground in defending truth in the face of culture that wants to do away with your Christ, and your church? Wake up Christians, read the scriptures, get a clue, pull your head out of the sand and realize these are the last days, and you are the target of the evil one. Did you get that? You, your faith, your values are all in a war with the one who out to destroy you, and most of you aren't even aware of it. The church is living in the most exciting times in it's history, and most of us are asleep...Shame on us.
Keeping it honest and truthful...K
In keeping with my words above read Revelation 12, and you will understand why we will be persecuted and all the more as we approach the coming of our Lord.
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2 Yet they seek me daily You see how the religious people can get sideways in how they relate to God. They have an appearance of doing what is right and noble, but from God's perspective, it's all about them. They appear to have a righteousness that draws near to God, but only because they want God to do something for them. Even in their religious service to God such as fasting they do so only as a way to get God to pay more attention to them. They use their religious talk to make their case of being right, because God is on their side. It is almost like a snobbish reaction to the rest of the world, as if to say, "see God is on our side." Jesus told us that God is fair, He allows the rain to fall upon the just and the unjust, always distributing His invitation to everyone that He is a loving creator/savior. Religious people can get so catch up with the wrong kind of thinking, that it even makes their religious observances seem so judgmental and condescending. When you continue to read Isaiah 58 you get the better idea on how God wants His people to respond to the world as ambassadors of heaven. Note these words.
Religious people must speak to the world in acts of kindness and care, or their message is lost and goes unheard among those in need. God expects His people to be bound to doing the right things for people, it is the one way people will hear what you have to say. In verse 9 is the reward for those religious people who are living examples of God's love, that when they call, God says, "Here am I." In other words, in the same way you have lived your life out for others, I will be there for you. Religion can be so restrictive in the way it's lived out with rules and regulations of do's and don'ts, yet, God is asking us to be helpers of others, and thus become messengers for Him. I think the Apostle James must have read Isaiah 58 a lot, because his Epistle to the church is based upon this standard way to live out our faith in God. Religion is more about what you do for others, than what you can get for yourself..... Keeping it honest and truthful...K |
“There are people on campus who are very threatened by the idea of religious freedom and they would like to create an environment where no one hurts anyone else’s feelings – unless it’s Christians,” said Carol Swain, a Vanderbilt law professor and the advisor to the Christian Legal Society.
The Christian Legal Society is one of four campus groups – including the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Beta Upsilon Chi and Graduate Student Fellowship – that are currently in violation of the policy.
Swain told Fox News & Commentary that all four groups could lose their standing as registered student organizations.
“This political correctness is running amuck on campus and its constraining one group – and that group tends to be conservatives,” Swain said. “They will be forced to either accept the university’s policy or leave campus by the end of the academic year. They are in limbo.”
Vanderbilt University launched a review of the charters and constitutions of all student organizations last year after a complaint was filed against a Christian fraternity, said Beth Fortune, Vanderbilt’s vice chancellor of public affairs.
Fortune said the university determined the Christian fraternity had discriminated against a student based on sexual orientation.
Okay, right or wrong, shouldn't a religious group require some kind of requirement to attend the group? What if a group of atheists decided to crash a meeting held by a religious group because they knew they could, why should that be allowed? Is it wrong to restrict people who would be disruptive or argumentative about your world view? The left leaning politicians want all conservative talk shows to provide equal time on their broadcasts for the opposite point of view. Now if that is allowed, then every liberal newspaper, including left leaning TV programs would also have to provide time for an opposite point of view. Can you imagine Bill Maher providing time for Sean Hannity to dispute Bill's insane left mindedness? I don't think so! So why does a Christian group meeting on the campus of Vanderbilt University have to do it? They shouldn't have to, and if the University persists, then these students should take the University to court. The university would not restrict a Muslim meeting from requiring that only Muslims attend their religious gatherings, and the the University would be embarrassed and cited for even trying. Come on, Christians get picked on because they won't fight back, they maintain that a lower profile is better for their image. I always have to remind Christians that Jesus was very firm when it came to those selling in the temple, and he had nothing kind to say about the Pharisees in Matthew 23. He made His point, and one day, there will be no more mister nice guy to all evil doers, the Devil, and those who follow him.
So what am I saying? I am saying that Christians on a campus that tries to shut you down because of your standards and principles, should take a stand and fight them in court. Make them feel the bigotry of their actions, and let a jury make the decision if this is the right course of action to take as a leading University in the United States. I doubt seriously if Vanderbilt really wants to die on a hill like this.
Keeping it honest and truthful....K
Acts 25:11-1211 If then I am a wrongdoer and have committed anything for which I deserve to die, I do not seek to escape death. But if there is nothing to their charges against me, no one can give me up to them. I appeal to Caesar.” 12Then Festus, when he had conferred with his council, answered, “To Caesar you have appealed; to Caesar you shall go.” |
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqraZawCWsY
The preacher yesterday made more of an emphasis on how we are called to take care of the earth, than we are to take of the souls of those who dwell upon the earth. She also concluded her sermon with a promotional emphasis to come back next week to continue with the series. Now, I may be old school, but I think anytime you have an audience the need is not only to prove there is a creator, as she did yesterday, but you need to conclude on the note that the same creator is our redeemer. As I told my wife following the sermon that D.L. Moody was preaching a series of messages in Chicago and concluded his remarks for the evening on "come back tomorrow night to hear more on this theme." He never mentioned the need for a savior and that night the 1871 Chicago fire destroyed the city. Moody never again ended a sermon without giving an invitation to his hearers that you need a savior.
Am I being too tough on this young preacher? No, I don't think so, it is important not to let your personal bias enter into your preaching or theology. Culture has a way to push us into into being politically correct on issues that are secondary to the gospel. I remember the controversy over using the term mankind in church, and how everyone wanted preachers to use human kind, because "mankind" was too gender specific. Now, how stupid, and Biblically ignorant people are who try to make the language of the Bible fit into their cultural bias. Man is described in the scriptures as both male and female, but because our modern society doesn't like it, it wants us to change the term to a different word that is less problematic and less gender sounding. This is how we end up on the slippery slope of being politically correct, and culture then sets the pace for how we present our case. I for one refuse to be swindled into this kind of thinking.
As I started out, finding a church home is a difficult process because no church is perfect. I know this, but all I want is someone to tell me the truth as the Bible declares it, and don't leave anything out.
I conclude with a short video that I think illustrates my need in finding a church home.
Keeping it honest and truthful...K
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