HOW DO WE WIN?!

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of 
witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so 
easily beset [us], and let us run with patience the race that is set 
before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of [our] faith; 
who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising 
the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. 
(Hebrews 12:1-2)

We have so many 'witnesses' that have gone on before us. So many men 
and women of faith (Hebrews 11) that are the examples the Lord has 
given us to follow. We are to lay aside every weight. Now, what are 
these weights? They are the things that bring about stress and worries. 
They are the things Jesus wants to carry for us! We also need to lay 
aside our sin. Sin is inevitable. Even the lives of the very witnesses 
spoken of in Hebrews 11 are fraught with sins and the remorse of sin! 
Even though we cannot be perfect of ourselves, we must lay aside our 
wants and desires and choose to follow the Lord (Romans 6:15). This is 
a hard thing to do, but we must run with patience. 

Jesus has given each of us a race to run. Each of our races are 
different, this means that we cannot compare our race with others. At 
times, our race is difficult. We become tired and worn out, but then 
God reminds us of how much we need Him! We are not running alone! We 
have the Creator of the world running beside us and He is willing to 
carry us when we cannot go on! In order to run and run well, we need to 
fix our eyes on Jesus. 

There are so many things that can take our gaze off Jesus! People. 
Circumstances. Difficult struggles. Self-pity. But as Peter learned, it 
is when you take you eyes off Jesus that you sink! In all that we do, 
no matter the circumstances, we need to keep our eyes focused on Him 
for He knows all things (Proverbs 4:25-27)! If we fix our eyes on 
Jesus, our paths are made straight. 

Jesus has endured the cross for us! We are the joy set before Him! He 
went through so much pain and shame, for us! Think about it, Jesus, the 
SON of GOD came to EARTH as a MAN and was crucified as a CRIMINAL!! 
What a humbling experience! We often do not recognize how much shame He 
went through for us! But now! Now He is seated at God's right hand! And 
He continually intercedes on our behalf!

LETTING GO

Sometimes it’s easy to surrender to Christ and other times it’s not. I love those easy days, but what about the ones where I don’t feel like surrendering? You know how it goes—where you’re like: “Yup, I know what’s the right thing to do, but to be honest, I just really don’t feel like doing it. Yeah, I know I’m in a bit of a mess making some wrong decisions and I know what I’m supposed to do, but I’m just kinda enjoying the mess I’m making at the moment.” 

In moments like these this is the worst time to run from God, because did you know that he’s looking upon you with the hugest smile and love even in the midst of your junky choices? He actually loves when you draw near to him during these times of craziness!!! But here’s the kicker--which I’m sure you’ve heard before--so let’s “cliché it” for a moment: God loves you exactly the way you are right now, but he loves you WAY TOO MUCH to let you stay the same. So when you start to notice the nudge of God wanting to re-arrange the inner house’s furniture a bit (you’re the house; your ways of doing things is the furniture) let him in! Yes, God is a redeeming God--but also know this--before he wants to be known as a God that wants to cleanse and redeem you he wants to be known as a loving father who madly and passionately loves you, pursues you, thinks about you, and is incredibly & wildly enraptured by you.

Let’s get back quick to the conversation mentioned above where we’re in a position of enjoying junky choices. Personally, if it wasn’t for me FIRST knowing and having the out-of-this-world revelation of God’s passionate love for me, I probably wouldn’t really care about a God who was ONLY concerned about how pure and holy I was acting. I mean seriously, can you imagine having a parent who didn’t love you at all, but only talked to you or noticed you when you were doing something wrong in order to fix you? 

Yeah, well God is not that parent. Is God a redeeming God who cleanses us of our sin by the power of the shed blood of Jesus? Yes and thank God. But just a sweet reminder that he’s looking at you with his love for you first and foremost before he is concerned with molding you into his image of beautiful righteousness. So, THIS is what helps me surrender to Christ and what he wants for me—knowing him, knowing his love. And when I deep down know this, it is all the more a pleasure to surrender to this almighty God who is beyond worthy of my love. If the greatest lover that ever existed wants my surrender, I’d be a fool not to give it to him. Yep, a love-sick, dearly beloved, child of God signing out now.   

Scripture of the Day: “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” –Romans 8: 37-39.

by: Maggie Shunk

ASK FIRST!

I believe that many of the issues we face have been because we failed to ASK God, FIRST!  Some of our challenges and struggles could have been avoided altogether.  Do any come to mind right now?!

In Joshua 9, the Israelites and Joshua made a decision where they failed to ASK FIRST. The Gibeonites, their enemies, heard the report that the Israelites were taking everyone down and they didn’t want to be next. So they devised a deceptive ploy to get the Israelites to be their allies. They pretended to be from a far away place (when in fact they only lived 3 days away), lowly and helpless. Not only did the Israelites respond by giving them some of their own bread and provisions, they entered into a full-blown peace treaty with them!! God sat by quietly and allowed them to do so because they didn’t follow His known order – ASK FIRST. The Israelites lives were not their own. They were God’s chosen people and every decision they made was to be approved by Him. Even though it seems like they were doing a good deed to help those in need, their decision cost them greatly! Once they found out that these “far away foreigners” were in fact their enemy neighbors, the covenant had already been made and could not be undone!

In the very next chapter, the drama unfolds big time. The Gibeonites’ enemies were now assembled against Israel because of their alliance and the Israelites had to fight a battle that would have otherwise not been theirs. However, this time, Joshua received God’s word of victory on the issue BEFORE he jumped into action. That made all the difference!

Years and generations later, Saul, the rebellious, lawless king, destroyed the Gibeonites and because of this, God’s judgment fell on the Israelites. Even though the Israelites were deceived by the Gibeonites, they were still required by God to honor the oath that they had made. David inquired of the Lord on how to rectify the situation and it required him to make some very difficult decisions. Undoing something is ALWAYS more complicated than doing it.  Don't believe me?

Well, on average, it takes about 1-2 hours to get a tattoo, but it can take 6 months to 1.5 years to completely remove it! It’s also about 10 times more costly and much, much more painful. The same can be said for retail transactions. It takes about 2 seconds for the clerk to swipe your credit card and the bank to put a hold on your money, but if you want a refund, it can take almost a week! Sometimes God has to allow the consequences of our actions to fall on our own shoulders so that we will learn the lesson and avoid repeating it.  ASK HIM FIRST!

The next time a decision is required of you, ask the Holy Spirit now to remind you to pause and ASK FIRST. Unnecessary battles and frustration can be avoided when we follow God’s divine order!

He is ruler of our lives, if in fact we have given Him our life, so let Him rule.  ASK THE KING FIRST. RECEIVE YOUR ORDERS.  ACT AND SEE VICTORY IN ALL YOU DO!

CRAZY US VS. CRAZY LOVE

I asked God today when He was going to fix the thing I've asked about for so long.  I  asked when He was going to give me the gift of my prayer request.  Then I realized something. He owes me nothing.  In actuality, I deserve Hell.  But, He's given me mercy.  Because He LOVES me.  Let's look at reality folks.

He gave us a garden and we invited snakes into it and now it's so infested we cannot live safely in it anymore.  That's the reality of this world, and our lives.  

We want, yet we don't give.  We ask questions, yet we never listen to the answers.  We make excuses for not doing what we are told time after time.  Then we're mad at God because we're unhappy because we essentially chose to be unhappy when we did that thing we knew not to do.  We do that 'thing' over and over and over. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and each time expecting a different result.   That 'thang' your doing WILL eventually make you INSANE!  Crazy!!!  YOUR choices are making YOU crazy, and sometimes they're even making those around you crazy.  Yet you choose that 'thang' you choose to do over God constantly.  And, how's it workin' out for you?!  

Seriously, who would anyone want to be friends with you.  You're a crazy person?  Especially, God.  Why would He choose to help, provide, protect and guide?  Why?

Why would He die for us?  

Why would He live with us?

Because He loves you.

Because He wants you to be happy.

Because making us happy truly makes Him happy.

You can't blame anybody but yourself for you lack of success, your failure, and your messed up day!  You are the result of your choices.  You can choose to sit at God's feet until He gets you right and delivers you from your desire for sin or you can sit down with your sinful choices and be mad at nobody but yourself when those choices make you....CRAZY!

When you know some guys are only about that 'thang' why do you do that 'thang?'  Because you thought this time that 'thang' would be different.  Same action over and over...same result.  Stop thinking and start listening to the word of GOD.  Fornication IS a sin!  DON"T DO IT!  If you sit at His feet long enough He will show you how desperately insecure you are and how your low self esteem and lack of Godly vision is killing you...making you CRAZY!

When you have been told in prayer to do something to achieve the results you want, why do you bring a list of excuses to God about why you cannot do what He told you repeatedly to do?  Your list of excuses is limiting Him from giving you what you keep asking Him for!  You are stopping your own blessing.  That's CRAZY!

Why do you say you believe in God, you have faith in Jesus, yet you live like the rest of the non-believers in the world?  You run around living for yourself without a thought of Him, without any need to submit your life to His authority.  You think you're the man and you're in control yet when the rug gets pulled out from underneath you, and believe me it will, you will look like what you are...CRAZY!

Being down, and angry, and disappointed in God not giving you what you want is CRAZY! 

But, if you read this and feel a little down, angry, and disappointed in yourself, that may be the first sane thing you do today!  

Especially, if it makes you stop the madness, sit at His feet, and refuse to move, until He has spoken to you about how crazy you are and how He wants to fix you.  Then do what He says.  

Constantly doing what God says, is the only time you can do something over and over, and get the result you really want.  

IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS

Our moral climate as it relates to this years election is really driving me crazy, like never before, because of such a widespread lack of education about what's really behind the agendas being advanced by Democrats or Republicans. It doesn't matter what you are, please KNOW who and what you're voting for. Obama is a staunch advocate of Planned Parenthood.  He recently promoted them to a group of...high school students. It's shocking to me for many reasons in light of the following easily attainable FACTS about Planned Parenthood. 

Planned Parenthood's legacy of racism and eugenics is firmly established through its founder Margaret Sanger. Google Margaret Sanger quotes. She started PP. She was a sick, twisted, racist, woman who wanted to kill the unborn babies of the less educated, ethnics, who were dirtying her country. Especially the blacks. She is akin to Hitler....and how ANY black person or person of color could support PP is an abomination of intelligence to me!

See some of Margaret Sanger's quotes for yourself:

"I accepted an invitation to talk to the women's branch of the Ku Klux Klan...I saw through the door dim figures parading with banners and illuminated crosses...I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak...In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered." (Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography, P.366)

On blacks, immigrants and indigents:
"...human weeds,' 'reckless breeders,' 'spawning... human beings who never should have been born." for the purpose of racial "purification," she believed that couples should be rewarded who chose sterilization.

"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." Ms. Sanger addressing a KKK Women's rally

On the right of married couples to bear children:
"Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child." she wrote in her "Plan for Peace." Birth Control Review, April 1932

On the purpose of birth control:
The purpose in promoting birth control was "to create a race of thoroughbreds," she wrote in the Birth Control Review, Nov. 1921 (p. 2)

On the rights of the handicapped and mentally ill, and racial minorities:
"More children from the fit, less from the unfit -- that is the chief aim of birth control." Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12

On respecting the rights of the mentally ill:
In her "Plan for Peace," Sanger outlined her strategy for eradication of those she deemed "feebleminded." Among the steps included in her evil scheme were immigration restrictions; compulsory sterilization; segregation to a lifetime of farm work; etc. Birth Control Review, April 1932, p. 107

On adultery:
A woman's physical satisfaction was more important than any marriage vow, Sanger believed. Birth Control in America, p. 11

On marital sex:
"The marriage bed is the most degenerating influence in the social order," Sanger said. (p. 23) [Quite the opposite of God's view on the matter: GOD SAYS: "Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled; but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." (Hebrews 13:4)

On the YMCA and YWCA:
"...brothels of the Spirit and morgues of Freedom!"), The Woman Rebel - No Gods, No Masters, May 1914, Vol. 1, No. 3.

On the Catholic Church's view of contraception:
"...enforce SUBJUGATION by TURNING WOMAN INTO A MERE INCUBATOR." The Woman Rebel - No Gods, No Masters, May 1914, Vol. 1, No. 3.

On motherhood:
"I cannot refrain from saying that women must come to recognize there is some function of womanhood other than being a child-bearing machine." What Every Girl Should Know, by Margaret Sanger (Max Maisel, Publisher, 1915) [Jesus said: "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep... for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed (happy) are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the breasts which never gave suck." (Luke 23:24)]

I could go on and on...This woman was against women, blacks, browns, jews, the handicapped, gays, and definitely against GOD! She is disgusting!!!  Yet, our first African American president stands in front of their billboards posing for photo-ops and recommending them to high school age kids?! 

Is this an oversight of historical knowledge, plain old ignorance, or what?  How does anyone support this organization?
You can get free birth control from some awesome agencies that are about protecting women....and yes, some want to protect unborn children too. They NEED protecting! 

WHY?


Because, life undisputedly begins at conception. Nobody argues this anymore on either side of this debate.  A scientific textbook called "Basics of Biology" gives five characteristics of living things; these five criteria are found in all modern elementary scientific textbooks:

1. Living things are highly organized.

2. All living things have an ability to acquire materials and energy.

3. All living things have an ability to respond to their environment.

4. All living things have an ability to reproduce.

5. All living things have an ability to adapt.

According to this elementary definition of life, life begins at fertilization, when a sperm unites with an oocyte. From this moment, the being is highly organized, has the ability to acquire materials and energy, has the ability to respond to his or her environment, has the ability to adapt, and has the ability to reproduce (the cells divide, then divide again, etc., and barring pathology and pending reproductive maturity has the potential to reproduce other members of the species). Non-living things do not do these things. Even before the mother is aware that she is pregnant, a distinct, unique life has begun his or her existence inside her. Furthermore, that life is unquestionably human.

Faye Wattleton, the longest reigning president of the largest abortion provider in the United States – Planned Parenthood – argued as far back as 1997 that "everyone already knows that abortion kills." She proclaims the following in an interview with Ms. Magazine:

"I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don't know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a fetus."

On the other side of the pond, Ann Furedi, the chief executive of the largest independent abortion provider in the UK, said this in a 2008 debate:

"We can accept that the embryo is a living thing in the fact that it has a beating heart, that it has its own genetic system within it. It’s clearly human in the sense that it’s not a gerbil, and we can recognize that it is human life… the point is not when does human life begin, but when does it really begin to matter?"

Naomi Wolf, a prominent feminist author and abortion supporter, makes a similar concession when she writes:

"Clinging to a rhetoric about abortion in which there is no life and no death, we entangle our beliefs in a series of self-delusions, fibs and evasions. And we risk becoming precisely what our critics charge us with being: callous, selfish and casually destructive men and women who share a cheapened view of human life...we need to contextualize the fight to defend abortion rights within a moral framework that admits that the death of a fetus is a real death."

David Boonin, in his book, A Defense of Abortion, makes this startling admission:

"In the top drawer of my desk, I keep [a picture of my son]. This picture was taken on September 7, 1993, 24 weeks before he was born. The sonogram image is murky, but it reveals clear enough a small head tilted back slightly, and an arm raised up and bent, with the hand pointing back toward the face and the thumb extended out toward the mouth. There is no doubt in my mind that this picture, too, shows [my son] at a very early stage in his physical development. And there is no question that the position I defend in this book entails that it would have been morally permissible to end his life at this point."

I find these people to be dangerous, disgusting, and evil...thankfully, they are also honest. To keep debating and playing ignorant about the fact that life begins at conception isn't even a position embraced by the biggest advocates of abortion.

Life begins at conception.

These people are simply acknowledging what millions of Americans will not...they don't value the life that has begun because it cannot vote, speak up, or defend itself. And, furthermore, they don't care about committing murder.

I ask this one question. When people say that all this focus on social moral issues doesn't matter but that our focus should be on the economy. Don't you see that our economy and our prosperity is directly tied to our morals?

Our economy will never be blessed as long as platforms that support murder and perversion are advanced by our country. 

We are being given over to sin.  Young people cannot even see how deluded and deceived they are by the illicit sexual drives they run after.  They seek companionship and they get abandonment at every turn.  They seek honesty yet they seek it in sinful unions.  It pains my soul to understand that the world they're inheriting is so much worse off morally than when I was their age that if they waste the time I did playing what I thought were just college kid games, they will likely end up broken spirited losers in a game they didn't know was playing them.  Especially, our young women who still just want to be loved, yet end up the victims of their own inability to live the way God set out so that they can win in the game, instead of constantly lose.

Ask yourself....what would Jesus do, think, or say? He would probably say 'my dear children this is why they have had to first take me completely out of the schools, the textbooks, and limit my name in the media. But, with less of me, less God, there will simply be....less. Less jobs. Less financial stability. Less freedom. Less love. Less U.S.  Less us.  LESS!

The United States of Less! Tragic. 

Soon we will be singing Blank....Bless America. Because God will be gone!

Passionately WRONG!

Have you ever felt so strongly about something and was so very passionate about it that at that time, no one could convince you that you were wrong?  I have.  Before I gave my life to Jesus Christ and even in the very beginning of my walk with God, I had adopted ideas on many subjects that were based on my opinions and my feelings.  Opinions and feelings are dangerous when they're not backed with Biblical knowledge.  Yet, the more that I read my Bible and listened to The Holy Spirit, the more I saw  that I was wrong about some of the passionate stances I was taking.  I quickly saw for myself, in The Word of God, what God thought about these areas.  And then when I understood what He said, I had a choice to make, either surrender what I thought to what God thought or continue to go against The One that I was now saying was My Lord.  I chose to submit to Jesus and His Ways and not my own.

As time passes, I saw how wrong I really was about so many things.  As time passes, I am convinced I will see how wrong I am about many more things.  Before Paul gave his own life to Jesus Christ, he was passionate about not only opposing Jesus, but he caused many Believers in Jesus to go to prison, voted for them to die, punished them and killed many of them.  Paul truly believed and was passionate that what he was doing was right, good, and the best thing for all.  But he was wrong.  And it wasn't until he totally surrendered his ways for The Ways of Jesus, that he saw how wrong he was.  

Is there some 'thing' or 'things' that The Holy Spirit has been bringing to your attention that you are believing, backing, saying, or doing, that is against what The Word says about it?  Are there opinions, views, or beliefs, that you have had that are against what God’s views and beliefs are?  Do you even KNOW what God's opinions, views, and beliefs are?  Or are you blindly and unknowingly living wrong?  

Let me encourage you as one, like Paul, who has been passionate, but wrong in the past.  ALLOW THE BIBLE TO BE YOUR SOURCE AND BASIS OF EVERYTHING IN YOUR LIFE, NO MATTER WHAT THE SUBJECT!   When someone asks you what you think of a certain issue or topic, go to The Word of God and tell them what God says about it.  My opinion doesn't matter.  My feelings don't matter...and neither do yours.  I didn't create this world and I certainly didn't create YOU!  "What God thinks is what I think and His opinion is my opinion.”  God wants to use each of us and He wants us to be passionate.  We just need to check ourselves to see if what we are passionate about, is right or wrong.  Be Passionate. But...Be Right.

Scripture of the Day:  “I used to believe that I ought to do everything I could to oppose the very name of Jesus the Nazarene. Indeed, I did just that in Jerusalem. Authorized by the leading priests, I caused many believers there to be sent to prison. And I cast my vote against them when they were condemned to death. Many times I had them punished in the synagogues to get them to curse Jesus. I was so violently opposed to them that I even chased them down in foreign cities.”  - Acts 26:9-11 

Needless to say, Paul went on from this passionate stance above to live a life completely opposite of these passionate beliefs.  He admitted how passionately wrong he was every day of his life and from him we have a multitude of instruction on living exactly the opposite of those prior beliefs of his.  

What is the Holy Spirit nagging you about in your heart?  What are the people who love you teasing, talking, and joking with you about that upsets you, in an effort to make you stop and examine God's word on what you're believing or doing?  Are you angry at people who love you because you believe how you're living is right and that they're just judging you?  Do you feel supported by others who have less knowledge of God's word than you?  Do you feel persecuted by others who don't?  

Here's my advice...Check yourself before you wreck yourself!  And, before your example causes many to turn from their Lord and Savior, or worse, never to see Him at all. Go to His word, not mine, not your friends, and ask Him what He feels and thinks and find His instruction.  Then you have a choice to make because He gives us the free will to choose whether we follow Him or not. 

Live like Him or die like you!  Your choice!

HE WANTS US!

God Almighty, The Ruler and Creator of the universe, of mankind, The Omnipresent, All Powerful, King of all kings, and Lord of all lords, LOVE Himself, chose you and He chose me!  

He actually “picked us out for Himself as His own . . . before the foundation of the world!”  HE WANTED US!  He “foreordained” (to decree before hand, to predestine) us.  He pre-planned us and spoke (decreed) about us before we ever were. 

So, if you have ever been told you were an accident, or that you were never planned or even if you were told that you were not wanted, let me NOW TELL YOU THE TRUTH . . . you were not an accident, you were vividly planned, and you were and are wanted by LOVE Himself, Father God and Jesus Christ of Nazareth!  

You my brother or sister, YOU ARE A GOOD IDEA, YOU ARE GOD’S IDEA!  YOU ARE A VERY IMPORTANT PART OF THE FAMILY OF GOD!  If you have trusted and given your life to Jesus, and living for Him, you have been adopted into the Family of God!  You are one of His Children!  Praise God, He WANTED us!  HE chose us!  HE picked us!  Choose Him today! 

It's that simple.  CHOOSE HIM!  Choose LOVE.  Choose Victory!  Choose real power.  Why else would so much come against you to keep you from making that CHOICE.  Don't listen to your conflicted and angry mind.  Don't listen to your broken heart. DOn't listen to the hypocrisy and confusion of men.  Listen to His word, His love, and His way.  He wants you!

Scripture of The Day:  “Even as [in His love] He chose us [actually picked us out for Himself as His own] in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy (consecrated and set apart for Him) and blameless in His sight, even above reproach, before Him in love. (5) For He foreordained us (destined us, planned in love for us) to be ADOPTED (revealed) AS HIS OWN CHILDREN through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the purpose of His will [because it pleased Him and was His kind intent]-” - Ephesians 1:4-5 (AMP