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Friday, January 07, 2011

‘Emerging Church’: Should You Really Worship Jesus in a Bar? | The Blaze

Before you jump to answer this question, let me ask you another question: "Is there any place where it is improper to share/worship Jesus? Is there any place where it is improper to exalt His name? Is there any place where Jesus should not be shared with sinners?"

‘Emerging Church’: Should You Really Worship Jesus in a Bar? | The Blaze

Grace for the Journey,
Greg

Sarkozy: Mideast Christians victims of 'cleansing'

When the French President comes out and admits that Mideast Christians are the victims of an organized campaign of "Religious Cleansing"; then it's a sure sign that no one is even trying to cover this up anymore... ... ... That is no one except the American Media!

Sarkozy: Mideast Christians victims of 'cleansing'

Thursday, January 06, 2011

Apple now calls Christian belief "objectionable and potentially harmful"

Dear Christian Friends, It is time to put your money where your mouth is!!!

Please read the following article and consider sending Steve Jobs an email expressing your shock and displeasure with Apple... I have made the personal decision that I will never buy one thing that is made by Apple. There are plenty of other technology companies around that make very good products that do not have the same Anti-Christian prejudice as Apple, and they will get my business from now on.

Pressing on, Apple now calls Christian belief "objectionable and potentially harmful"

Tuesday, January 04, 2011

The Cross in Our Bodies

A friend sent me this amazing story today... I don't know who it is originally from, and I don't know anything about Louie Giglio, but when I read it I knew I had to share it with you.


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This is a pretty neat story and an interesting thing that few of us know. It's brief, so please read. (FROM A DOCTOR)

A couple of days ago I was running (I use that term very loosely) on my treadmill, watching a DVD sermon by Louie Giglio... And I was BLOWN AWAY! I want to share what I learned....

He (Louie) was talking about how inconceivably BIG our God is... How He spoke the universe into being... How He breathes stars out of His mouth that are huge raging balls of fire.. Etc. Etc. Then He went on to speak of how this star-breathing, universe creating God ALSO knitted our human bodies together with amazing detail and wonder. At this point I am LOVING it (fascinating from a medical standpoint, you know.) . And I was remembering how I was constantly amazed during medical school as I learned more and more about God's handiwork. I remember so many times thinking..'How can ANYONE deny that a Creator did all of this???'

Louie went on to talk about how we can trust that the God who created all this, also has the power to hold it all together when things seem to be falling apart..how our loving Creator is also our sustainer.

And then I lost my breath. And it wasn't because I was running my treadmill, either!!!

It was because he started talking about laminin . I knew about laminin . Here is how Wikipedia describes them: ' Laminins are a family of proteins that are an integral part of the structural scaffolding of basement membranes in almost every animal tissue' You see.... Laminins
are what hold us together.. LITERALLY
.
They are cell adhesion molecules. They are what holds one cell of our bodies to the next cell. Without them, we would literally fall apart. And I knew all this already. But what I didn't know is what they LOOKED LIKE..

But now I do. And I have thought about it a thousand times since (already)....Here is what the structure of laminin looks like... AND THIS IS NOT a 'Christian portrayal' of it.... If you look up laminin in any scientific/medical piece of literature, this is what you will see....








































Now tell me that our God is not the coolest!!! Amazing. The glue that holds us together.... ALL of us..... Is in the shape of the cross. Immediately Colossians 1:15-17 comes to mind.

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible And invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or A uthorities; All things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him All things HOLD TOGETHER." (Colossians 1:15-17)

Call me crazy. I just think that is very, very, very cool. Thousands of years before the world knew anything about laminin, Paul penned those words. And now we see that from a very LITERAL standpoint, we are held together... One cell to another.... By the cross.

You would never in a quadrillion years convince me that is anything o ther than the mark of a Creator who knew EXACTLY what laminin 'glue' would look like long before Adam breathed his first breath!!

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Now for the prof test... Google the word "Laminin" and see what you find.

Grace for the Journey,
Greg

Monday, January 03, 2011

Bombing opens vein of Christian anger in Egypt - FoxNews.com






Bombing opens vein of Christian anger in Egypt - FoxNews.com

Islam will never live in peace with Christianity. Regardless of their great lie that Islam is the religion of peace, throughout history it has brought nothing but bloodshed to every land it has spread to.

As you read this report please remember to pray for our Christian brothers in Egypt, and all those who have been enslaved under the yoke of Muslim domination.

(***SEE THE COMMENTS BELOW FOR AN UPDATE TO THIS POST***)

Grace Always,

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell… “Your Christian Values!”

USA-Today is reporting that; 'Don't Ask' repeal raises concerns for chaplains.

The first flush of speed-dialed and pre-composed e-mail reactions to the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell came from gay clergy applauding the vote. Now, Sunday morning brings the conservative evangelical voices with dire predictions for its impact on military chaplains.

While some fret over the stress to those chaplains whose religion teaches homosexual behavior is unbiblical, others worry that members of our religiously diverse armed forces could be treated like a captive audience for evangelism.

The Alliance Defense Fund's Daniel Blomberg argues that by bowing to activists, the Senate is placing thereligious liberty of troops and chaplains in "unprecedented jeopardy.

... No Americans, and especially not our troops, should be forced to abandon their religious beliefs. We hope that our nation's leaders will work to ensure that none of our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines are ever made to choose between serving their country or obeying their God as result of this damaging policy decision.

A Pentagon study concluded that open service would not affect military readiness but it also included some concerns about military "prayerfulness." Some of the military's 3,000 chaplains voiced fears that they would not be able to preach the truth of a religious belief that homosexual behavior is unbiblical.

The Pentagon study summary said,

A large number of military chaplains (and their followers) believe that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination, and that they are required by God to condemn it as such.

…

Terry Mattingly, founder of the religion media critique site Get Religion, writes in October that thepotential chaplain problem wasn't being fully addressed in the media.

He wondered,

What happens if the conservatives are right and that any advocacy of traditional doctrines by chaplains is labeled "hate speech," with offenders either being punished or simply denied the ability to advance in rank? If you read the views of theological liberals, there will be no problems after repeal, unless there are problems. No one is talking about "hate speech," except for those who believe that conservatives are already guilty of "hate speech."

A few years ago a Military Chaplain shared his concern with me that in the near future it would be the Christians in the Military who would be ordered to “Don’t ask, Don’t Tell… Your Christian Values!”

At the time I did not take his prediction very serious… However, driving to work today I heard the Marine Commandant on the radio saying "the Marine Corps will step out smartly to faithfully implement this new policy. I, and the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, will personally lead this effort, thus ensuring the respect and dignity due all Marines." In other words… there will be “Zero Tolerance” for any Marine who does not fully accept Homosexuality as normal behavior. This is a very sad day for all Christians serving in the military.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Cotton Picking Days

My father was in the Cotton business in the late 1940’s to early 1950's in Arkansas where he provided gangs of pickers to the farmers. The first order of business in hiring a gang of cotton pickers was to negotiate with the “Community Elder”, without whom you could not hire a single picker. After the negotiations were over, and the number pickers and cost per pound of cotton picked were settled on, my father would go around and pick up all the cotton pickers in a covered flat bed truck with benches on both sides and take them to the fields before daybreak, then drive them back home again in the evening. My father told me that most good pickers could earn enough money in the four months of cotton picking season that they did not have to work very much the rest of the year. It was hard work for sure, and nothing I would like to even attempt to do in order to put food on my family’s table. However, unknown to most people today, it paid good money for the 1950’s.


My father and I have a very close relationship that began when I was in diapers and (I am told) he would take me quail hunting on his shoulders. On one occasion my father, who is now 83 years old, and I were returning home from a deer hunting trip to Camden Alabama, where I spent many a weekend and holiday as a young boy following my father through the oak and pine wooded hills of Wilcox County. Being a little tired we stopped for gas and a cup of coffee at a filling station out by the Interstate highway in Evergreen Alabama. My father, who has never met a stranger, struck up a conversation with the store clerk, a black man, and somehow the clerk caught my father's last name and asked him if he ever lived in Arkansas. My father said, yes but that was back in the 1950's and we have now lived in Florida for the past 50 years. The man then smiled and said your Mr. Alford... the same Mr. Alford that used to come pick me and my brother up each morning to pick cotton.

As someone who grew up in the Old South where calling someone a “Cotton Picker” was a racial insult, I was not sure just where this conversation was headed. I needn’t have worried; for it was like both men had stepped back in time. These were two different men from two very different worlds, one black and one white, whose lives had intersected but briefly in the cotton fields of Arkansas many years ago… yet it became clear very quickly as they embraced that this brief intersection of two different worlds during the “Cotton Picking Days”, now long past, had left loving memories that both men cherished for a lifetime. They sat and talked like old friends for over half an hour, as I tried to absorb as much as I could.

As we were leaving, the clerk (I wish I knew this man’s name) embraced my father once more and ask him to stop by and see him again the next time we came that way. A few weeks later we stopped for gas and coffee on our way back from Camden again, but he no longer worked there and the new clerk did not know him. Over the years we stopped at the same filling station many times, but we never saw him again. Life is like that I suppose, our lives intersect but for a brief moment in time and then moves on.

I am reminded by this story that as I travel through this life of the importance to take time to make friends along the way. "A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." (Proverbs 18:24 NIV)

Grace Always,

Monday, December 06, 2010

The Christian Faith is a Journey… Not a Destination!

In so much of our religious vocabulary today we here people speak of their faith as if they had already arrived. They say things like; “I got saved back in 2001”, or “I became a Christian when I was in collage”, or “Pastor Jim came to my home and shared the plan of salvation with me and I accepted Christ as my Savior”. Now there is nothing wrong with any of these statements, but I want you to notice that they are all in the past tense.

The apostle Paul spoke of his faith much differently… in Philippians chapter 3 he writes;

“Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus…”

“…Brethren, be followers together of (with) me”


It is important as we interact with one another in our daily lives, on Facebook, Tweeter, and the Blogs that we understand that we are “all” on a Journey of faith… And that we also make allowances for, and are patient with, those who are not where we are in our understanding of Scriptures and obedience thereunto. Maturity of faith is not a fruit that we ourselves can produce, but is instead a work of the Holy Spirit produced in us by the slow and patient process of conviction and learning to yield to His leading.


So let us learn to be patient, even longsuffering, with one another… For if the apostle Paul would say of himself; “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect” how much more must we say this of ourselves… and how much more must we give allowance unto others for their Journey.


Grace Always,

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

AVATAR - "I See You..."

In the movie Avatar the blue natives of Pandora use the phrase "I see you" as a way of saying; "I see who you really are... behind the mask... beneath the surface... I see your heart!".


This is the way God sees us. He does not see the brave face we put on for the world, or the happy smile that hides our pain. He does not see the spotless image we put forth out of fear that we would be rejected if others knew the depths of our sins... No my friends, God sees us! Let that sink deep into your soul... ... ... God sees us, and the truly incredible part is that he loves us anyway, and he always will!

"Father, may I learn to see others like you see them... and love them like you love them! --- in Jesus name I pray, AMEN"