Overcoming the Fear of Loneliness (1)

“The Lord…will never leave you nor forsake you.”               Dt 31:6 NIV

To overcome the fear of loneliness you must: (1) Understand who you are. Let scientists argue about whether or not there was a “big bang.” If there was, you were not the result of it! Nor did you descend from an amoeba in a pond. You are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139:14-15). Made “in his own image” (Ge 1:27). God didn’t assign your creation to His most powerful angels. You’re a hands-on, made-to-order, one-of-a-kind product. As a redeemed child of God you are His “workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works” (Eph 2:10 NIV). Believe that and stand on it—regardless of your feelings or your social status. (2) Understand who God is. He calls Himself your “Heavenly Father,” not just your creator and designer. Your creator and designer refer to what He does; your Father refers to who He is. “He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:6 NIV). These aren’t His roles, they’re His proper names. They are capitalized in Scripture because they are what you are to call Him! When Jesus taught us to pray He didn’t begin with “O, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God.” Yes, He’s all of those, but when it comes to us He wants to be recognized and called “Father” (Mt 6:9). That’s how He thinks about us, and wants us to think and to feel about Him. “Father” is meant to convey warmth, security, acceptance, concern, compassion, protection, assurance, provision, etc. He’s your Father—when you grasp the truth of that you will begin to overcome the fear of loneliness.

http://theencouragingword.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/overcoming-the-fear-of-loneliness-1/

You Belong to God by Mark D. Roberts

Psalm 100:1-5

Know that the LORD is God— he made us; we belong to him. We are his people, the sheep of his own pasture.

Psalm 100:3 CEB

I’ll never forget my first baseball uniform. As a member of the Athletics, a T-ball team in Glendale, California, I was privileged to wear a magenta uniform with a white number 8 emblazoned upon it. I can vividly remember gathering for the first time with my team as we paraded into Stengel Field for the grand opening of the T-ball season. As I walked alongside my magenta-clad teammates, I felt as if I belonged. It was a marvelous feeling.

Psalm 100:3 reminds us that we belong to God. The Common English Bible states: “Know that the LORD is God—he made us; we belong to him.” The Hebrew original of the last phrase can be literally translated, “we are his.” The next part of the verse reinforces this truth by adding, “We are his people, the sheep of his own pasture.” Thus, we belong to God because he made us to be his very own people. He continues to watch over us as our good shepherd.

What difference does it make that we belong to God? This simple truth can transform our lives. It can give us profound reassurance of our self-worth. We matter because we belong to the Creator of the universe. The fact that we belong to God also gives order to our lives. We are first and foremost God’s people. Thus, all of our other roles in life must be seen in the light of this primary reality. You may be a lawyer or manager or teacher, but you are first of all one of God’s people. You may be a father or a mother or a friend, but you are first of all one of God’s people. How you live in each of these other roles will be shaped by your primary relationship to God as someone who belongs to him.

Sometimes, when life is hard, or when we’ve turned away from God for an extended season, we can wonder if we still belong to him. The good news of the Gospel is that nothing can ultimately keep us away from God and his love. As it says in Romans 8:38-39, “I’m convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created.” This means that nothing, NOTHING, can erase the fact that you belong to God through Jesus Christ. What great news!

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER REFLECTION: When have you experienced the joy of belonging? Do you feel as if you belong to God? Why or why not? If you were confident that you belonged to God for eternity, how might this affect your life today?

PRAYER: Dear Lord, how good to remember that I belong to you. It’s so easy for me to think of myself primarily in terms of other kinds of belonging: I belong in my family; I belong among my colleagues at work; I belong to my church. All of these are true, of course. Yet, today I’m reminded that the primary, defining, transformational belonging of my life is simply this: I belong to you!

Thank you, dear Lord, for this truth. Thank you for claiming me in your grace. Thank you for reaching out to me in Jesus Christ. Thank you for the fact that nothing in all creation can separate me from your love.

May I live today as if I belong to you. May I live in the freedom of your grace, seeking to give delight to you in all that I do. Amen.

http://www.thehighcalling.org/reflection/you-belong-god

Tozer Devotional-Living as Light in the World

Living as Light in the World

Whether or not the Christian should separate himself from the world is not open to debate. The question has been settled for him by the Sacred Scriptures, an authority from which there can be no appeal. The New Testament is very plain: “They are not of the world,” said our Lord, “even as I am not of the world.” James wrote, “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” John said, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” Such teaching as this would appear to be plain enough, and there should be no doubt about what is intended. But we must never underestimate the ability of the human mind to get itself lost on a paved highway in broad daylight. Some well-intentioned souls have managed to get themselves confused about their relation to the world and have sought to escape it by hiding from it. They read into the biblical command to separate from the world the idea of complete withdrawal from all human activities and seek peace of heart by cutting themselves off, as far as possible, from the great stream of human life and thought. And that is not good.

http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=422

He Was God-man · Max Lucado

He Was God-man · Max Lucado.

Birthday Giveaway

Birthday Giveaway.

Is+My+Sacrifice+Living%3F

Is+My+Sacrifice+Living%3F.

When Ignorance Is Not Bliss

On December 13, 2011, Michael Gerson posted “Gingrich’s Embrace of Shallow Ideas” on TownHall.com. In this column, he blasted former Speaker Gingrich for his honest assessment of Sharia law, its implications in the West, in general, and the United States, in particular.

The sad thing about Mr. Gerson is that he was President George W. Bush’s speech writer.  Though President Bush is a good man who is respected by so many,including me, his confused and incoherent policies regarding Islamic fundamentalism landed us in two wars – one of which was totally unnecessary. I am referring to the Iraq War, a war that directly gave rise to the current Iranian threat and rise to power.

Mr. Gerson’s incoherent policies were inflicted upon us in conflicting statements made by Mr. Bush regarding Islam when he was president. He once referred to Islam as a “religion of peace,” but soon began calling it Islamofascism. Which one is it Mr. Gerson? He also inaccurately stated that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.

Speaker Gingrich has had the courage to call Sharia what it is: “…inherently brutal — defined by oppression, stonings and beheadings…” For his courage, Speaker Gingrich needs to be praised, not criticized. The evidence of stoning and beheading women for the mere accusation of adultery fills the Saudi landscape. Only a person who decides to deliberately and meditatively place blinders on their eyes can ignore these realities. In fact, the harsh realities of Sharia are not limited to Islamic countries. As I recounted in my recent book, When the Crosses are Gone, Sharia law was upheld in New Jersey family court in 2009 when a woman was denied a restraining order against her Moroccan ex-husband who had repeatedly entered her home and forced her to have sex against her will. The ex-husband and his imam argued that Sharia law did not give her the right to deny him. She lived in fear of being raped by him for a year before the decision was overturned on appeal.

In Mr. Gerson’s most recent column, he bases his assessment regarding Sharia on the writings of a beleaguered, tiny minority of secular Muslims who, to their credit, are trying very hard to reinterpret Islam in the light of the 21st century. This beleaguered, threatened, tiny minority of secular Muslims is not only living under a constant threat by the Muslim majority, but are not even considered to be true Muslims by that same majority.

Had President Bush and his speech writer, Mr. Gerson, understood the realities on the ground in the Middle East, they would have called upon the King of Saudi Arabia to move into the 21st Century and abandon Sharia rather than hold hands with him on Mr. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, TX.

Because I am neither a politician nor affiliated with a political party, it matters very little to me whether it is a Democrat or a Republican muddling the truth. Therefore, I call upon both Democrats and Republicans to face the facts of the danger of Sharia.

Tags:                 Shariah Law            ,                                    Radical Islam

Michael Youssef

Michael Youssef, PhD is an Egyptian-born American and founding rector of The Church of The Apostles. His messages are broadcast 3800 times a week into 200 countries through Leading The Way Ministries. He holds a PhD from Emory University in Social Anthropology. His blog: www.michaelyoussef.com  Follow on Twitter: @MichaelAYoussef

http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelyoussef/2012/01/08/when_ignorance_is_not_bliss/page/full/

Good Girl with Gun Lives, Bad Guy with Knife Dies

In my world, if a violent altercation occurs between two humans, the innocent assaulted party should live, and if anybody has to die or get critically wounded, it should be the sadistic perpetrator. Call me freaky.

To make certain this occurs, the innocent party has to be able to do one or two things when the crap hits the fan:

1. Open up a can of whup ass and immobilize the foul weed, thus sending him to the hospital.

2. Double-lung the loser with a hot dose of lead, thus sending him to hell.

Yes, the one being preyed upon has to be able to do the abovementioned because the quickest cop on the planet cannot respond fast enough to save your backside should things go violently south. You dig? Oh, I know … it will never happen to you.

Of the aforementioned, an 18-year-old Oklahoma teen mom, Sarah McKinley, selected option #2 this past week. McKinley, who had just lost her husband to lung cancer on Christmas Day, was home with her 3-month-old baby boy on New Year’s Eve when two dillweeds decided they were going to break into her casa. Good Sarah was having none of it. Are you paying attention, ladies? You are? Excellent.

McKinley, upon hearing and spotting one of the Darwinian holdovers wielding a 12-inch hunting knife, cordoned off her door with a couch, put a bottle in her kid’s mouth to keep him calm and then proceeded to the sweet place where her 12-gauge shotgun and handgun reside. Smart chick. I bet Jesus really likes her.

Upon arming herself, she called 911 to get a green light from dispatch to dispatch the two dipsticks of bad intent. Sarah is both polite and deadly—a two-fer, boys. Upon getting the nod from Nine One One, McKinley then dusted the knife wielder, and the other bandit fled the scene and was later arrested when Goofy called emergency to report his dead buddy.

This is the kind of story that we should read about more often; namely, the evil SOB is dead, and the innocent girl and her baby are alive, and all of this occurred because the femme fatale had the wherewithal and the knowledge to defend herself with a lethal weapon—also known as my friend, the gun.

Check it out, mamas: I guarantee that as she was sitting there alone with her tiny bambino on New Year’s Eve, Sarah probably thought that things couldn’t get any worse after losing her husband on Christmas Day. And yet things did get worse. But, thankfully, she was trained and had a gun. This dire situation ended well for her and hers all because of her wood and metal amigo … the gun.

How would you fare, my dear reader, if you were tossed in that same situation? Would the headline read the same as dear Sarah’s does, or would the perpetrator gain the upper hand because you can’t or won’t protect yourself, your brood and your castle?

Tags:                 Guns            ,                                    Crime            ,                                    Self Defense

Doug Giles

Doug Giles is the author of Raising Righteous & Rowdy Girls. Follow him on Twitter @Doug_Giles and on Facebook. You can see and hear Doug’s video blog and talk show at ClashRadio.com.

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http://townhall.com/columnists/douggiles/2012/01/08/good_girl_with_gun_lives_bad_guy_with_knife_dies/page/full/