All posts filed under: z153

Should We Shun Other People?

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Years ago, when I was a younger and single man, I joined a singles group in my church. We were a friendly bunch, and one day a new member told us what was really bothering her. She had a terrible problem that would not go away, and her life was ruined. She was being shunned. Shunning means that someone is cut off from their community, and in extreme cases, all of their friends and neighbors refuse to speak to them or do business with them. If this sounds odd to you, we didn’t get it either. Being shallow city kids, we could find new friends, and we liked being free from rude and controlling people. And we could sleep in on Sunday. If we were shunned, we would need time to notice that someone had disappeared from our busy lives, and then we could decide if this was a problem or an opportunity. We were shallow. It took us some time to know that our friend was hurting. She had lived in a small town …

Getting a grip on our value to God

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For years, I have struggled with this verse in the Bible: “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’” Matthew 16:24 I interpreted this verse to mean that if you saw someone in need, you were to drop what you were doing and take care of their needs first, even if there was something important you were doing. In other words, that other person’s need was more important than my needs, or the needs of my family. I thought living this way would make me a happier and more joyful person because back in my day JOY meant — Jesus, Others and You — in that order!  But years of functioning this way did not produce joy in my life and in fact it became ugly. Between working my part-time job that included shift work, caring for my family and serious health issues, I continued to step over my needs, and the needs of my family, to encourage and help …

It is time to just start doing it

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The Apostle John makes an interesting statement in his first letter. He says it is time to grow up and take responsibility for your faith. Now you are probably scratching your head and trying to recall where he exactly said that. Well, he didn’t exactly say it in those terms, instead John wrote: 27 As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things … 1 John 2:27 NASV We live in the day of superstar Christianity. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not against the mega pastors, anointed prophets, teachers and healing evangelists. There are a few that I enjoy listening to, and in fact I believe we need more of them. And I think this is the point that the Apostle John was trying to make. As believers, we have relied too much on the professionals to build the Christian faith. In the early church, they had their superstars like the …

What if?

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If you study the size and diversity of the DNA of our current human population, scientists using computer modelling concluded that humans must have evolved from thousands of ancestral couples. However, Dennis Venema, a Biology professor, challenged this notion in his book Adam and the Genome where he discussed a study by developmental biologist Ann Gauger and Swedish mathematician Ola Hössjer. The two scientists wondered how long it would take, using the same computer models, to have the same genetic diversity today if you started with just one pair of humans. As Venema explained in his book that had never been done before, because in the minds of most evolutionists, that was not the way it happened, so why bother studying such an alternative. So using the same computer model and generally accepted presuppositions such as population growth rates, Gauger and Hössjer started with one original couple instead of thousands. The results show that if the original couple shared some genetic bio markers, (meaning they evolved from a common evolutionary ancestor), it would have taken …

Jezebel’s Nasty

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This article is based on an interview I did regarding the spirit of Jezebel. The show is called “The Sound of the Trumpet”. Do you remember Jezebel who was married to Ahab in the Old Testament? She tried to destroy the prophets of God and the culmination of that battle was the confrontation of Elijah and the hundreds of Baal prophets. God proved who He was and the false prophets were killed (1 Kings 18). While she was a real person, the spirit of Jezebel that controlled her is also a real entity. This spirit is at work even today and has infiltrated many churches. This spirit is hard to recognize. The Bible says to look at the fruit to determine the state of the tree so let’s look at the fruits of the Jezebel spirit and compare that to the spirit of God as represented in Elijah. The spirit of Jezebel is still around. Spirits live a lot longer than humans and it is not until Jesus gets rids of them all at the …

La mentira del suicidio

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English version: Suicide’s lie Esta es la primera de una serie de artículos sobre la depresión. La depresión tiene raíces profundas mentales y físicas, así como una dimensión espiritual de gran alcance. A menudo se manifiesta con una sensación de estar fuera de sincronía con nuestro mundo, nuestra familia, e incluso a nosotros mismos. Y cuando estamos fuera de sincronía con el mundo se siente como que simplemente no encajamos. Empezamos a retirarnos de un mundo que nos parece que no le importamos, es hostil, o no tiene nada que ver con nosotros. Cuanto más damos un paso atrás, más difícil es parar. Oímos esa voz constante que ofrece la paz en un mundo sin paz hasta que en un momento, un momento desesperado, en el que el dolor de la vida nos abruma y no encontramos una salida en ese instante terminamos con nuestra vida. Nuestro dolor, que es tan profundo se transfiere ahora a los que nos aman. Nuestra pérdida alimenta el fuego de la culpa y la ira. La culpa es rampante …

I Need a Job: Learn from the Blue Banana

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Do you need a job? Most of us feel the pressure to find a career and a good living, possibly with a house in the suburbs, and two cars in the driveway. There are many career counselors, and I’m sure they can give better advice than me, but I think we can all learn from the Blue Banana. This strange name comes from economics, and it is also called the backbone of Europe. On a map, it’s blob, maybe like the shape of a banana, and it gets colored blue on maps. Today it shows where the most people live and where the big cities are. From the north, it stretches from England, to Germany, and to the big cities in northern Italy. There are many important points between that I didn’t mention. RELATED: Blue Banana There is a spiritual lesson here. In history, this region is where the industrial revolution happened, and that explains why the big cities are there today. People live near the jobs. The industrial revolution taught the world how to …