The 20 Best Quotes From Romney and Ryan In The 2012 Debates

20) I can tell you that if you were to elect President Obama, you know what you’re going to get. You’re going to get a repeat of the last four years. We just can’t afford four more years like the last four years. — Mitt Romney

 

19) We don’t have to settle for what we’re going through. We don’t have to settle for gasoline at four bucks. We don’t have to settle for unemployment at a chronically high level. We don’t have to settle for 47 million people on food stamps. We don’t have to settle for 50 percent of kids coming out of college not able to get work. We don’t have to settle for 23 million people struggling to find a good job. — Mitt Romney 

If I become president, I’ll get America working again. I will get us on track to a balanced budget. The president hasn’t. I will. I’ll make sure we can reform Medicare and Social Security to preserve them for coming generations. The president said he would. He didn’t. — Mitt Romney

 

18) Well, (China) sells us about this much stuff every year (Big). And we sell them about this much stuff every year (Small). So it’s pretty clear who doesn’t want a trade war. And there’s one going on right now that we don’t know about. It’s a silent one and they’re winning. — Mitt Romney

 

17) I will not reduce the share paid by high-income individuals. I know that you and your running mate keep saying that, and I know it’s a popular thing to say with a lot of people, but it’s just not the case. Look, I got five boys. I’m used to people saying something that’s not always true, but just keep on repeating it and ultimately hoping I’ll believe it — (scattered laughter) — but that is not the case, all right? I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans. — Mitt Romney

 

16) Was it a good idea to spend taxpayer dollars on electric cars in Finland, or on windmills in China? Was it a good idea to borrow all this money from countries like China and spend it on all these various different interest groups? — Paul Ryan

 

15) The president’s policies throughout the Middle East began with an apology tour and pursuing a strategy of leading from behind and this strategy is unraveling before our very eyes. — Mitt Romney

 

14) The greatest failure we’ve had with regards to gun violence in some respects is what is known as Fast and Furious. Which was a program under this administration, and how it worked exactly I think we don’t know precisely, where thousands of automatic, and AK-47 type weapons were given to people that ultimately gave them to drug lords. 

They used those weapons against their own citizens and killed Americans with them. And this was a program of the government. For what purpose it was put in place, I can’t imagine. But it’s one of the great tragedies related to violence in our society which has occurred during this administration. Which I think the American people would like to understand fully. It has been investigated to a degree, but the administration has carried out executive privilege to prevent all of the information from coming out.

I’d like to understand who it was that did this, what the idea was behind it and why it led to the violence and thousands of guns going to Mexican drug lords. — Mitt Romney

 

13) I couldn’t agree more about going forward, but I certainly don’t want to go back to the policies of the last four years. — Mitt Romney

 

12) Mr. President, you’re entitled, as the president, to your own airplane and to your own house, but not to your own facts — (laughter) — all right? — Mitt Romney

 

11) I’d just as soon not have the government telling me what kind of health care I get. I’d rather be able to have an insurance company. If I don’t like them, I can get rid of them and find a different insurance company. But people will make their own choice. — Mitt Romney

 

10) Attacking me is not an agenda. — Mitt Romney

 

9) Mr. President, the reason I call it an apology tour is because you went to the Middle East and you flew to Egypt and to Saudi Arabia and to Turkey and Iraq. And by the way, you skipped Israel, our closest friend in the region, but you went to the other nations. And by the way, they noticed that you skipped Israel. And then in those nations and on Arabic TV you said that America had been dismissive and derisive. You said that on occasion America had dictated to other nations. Mr. President, America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other nations from dictators. — Mitt Romney

 

8) Look, did they come in and inherit a tough situation? Absolutely. But we’re going in the wrong direction. Look at where we are. The economy is barely limping along. It’s growing at 1.3 percent. That’s slower than it grew last year and last year was slower than the year before. Job growth in September was slower than it was in August, and August was slower than it was in July. We’re heading in the wrong direction; 23 million Americans are struggling for work today; 15 percent of Americans are living in poverty today. This is not what a real recovery looks like. — Paul Ryan

 

7) Mr. President, have you looked at your pension? …Let me give you some advice. Look at your pension. You also have investments in Chinese companies. You also have investments outside the United States. You also have investments through a Cayman’s trust. — Mitt Romney

 

6) What things would I cut from spending? Well, first of all, I will eliminate all programs by this test — if they don’t pass it: Is the program so critical it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it? And if not, I’ll get rid of it. “Obamacare” is on my list. — Mitt Romney

 

5) We’ve got to tackle this debt crisis before it tackles us. The president likes to say he has a plan. He gave a speech. We asked his budget office, “Can we see the plan?” They sent us to the press secretary. He gave us a copy of the speech. We asked the Congressional Budget Office, “Tell us what President Obama’s plan is to prevent a debt crisis.” They said, “It’s a speech, we can’t estimate speeches.” You see, that’s what we get in this administration — speeches — but we’re not getting leadership. — Paul Ryan

 

4) Barack Obama:…And part of the way to do it is to not give tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas. Right now you can actually take a deduction for moving a plant overseas. I think most Americans would say that doesn’t make sense. 

Mitt Romney: The second topic, which is you said you get a deduction for getting a plant overseas. Look, I’ve been in business for 25 years. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Maybe I need to get a new accountant.

 

3) Mr. Romney:  We also believe in maintaining for individuals the right to pursue their dreams, and not to have the government substitute itself for the rights of free individuals. And what we’re seeing right now is, in my view is a trickle-down government approach which has government thinking it can do a better job than free people pursuing their dreams. And it’s not working. And the proof of that is 23 million people out of work. The proof of that is one out of six people in poverty. The proof of that is we’ve gone from 32 million on food stamps to 47 million on food stamps. The proof of that is that 50 percent of college graduates this year can’t find work. 

President Obama: (Inaudible)

Mr. Romney: We know that the path we’re taking is not working. It’s time for a new path.

 

2) We can’t expect entrepreneurs and businesses large and small to take their life savings or their companies’ money and invest in America if they think we’re headed to the road to Greece. And that’s where we’re going right now unless we finally get off this spending and borrowing binge. — Mitt Romney

 

1) I’m not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia or Mr. Putin, and I’m certainly not going to say to him, “I’ll give you more flexibility after the election.” After the election he’ll get more backbone. — Mitt Romney

John Hawkins

John Hawkins is a professional writer who runs Right Wing News, Linkiest, and PicaQuote. He’s also the co-owner of the The Looking Spoon. You can read more from John Hawkins on Facebook, Twitter, G+, Pinterest, and at Pajamas Media.

http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2012/10/26/the_20_best_quotes_from_romney_and_ryan_in_the_2012_debates/page/full/

The Worst President Ever

While Obama remains a great curiosity outside of the U.S., it’s largely his American-ness that draws the crowds, rather than some innate ability of his own.

A man comes from low beginnings and ascends to the White House.

That tale quintessentially remains the American strive-and-succeed story since Washington was first born poor and lowly in a kind-of log cabin.

While Washington is represented as a rich, privileged, white guy, the success Washington enjoyed and the wealth he built — yes, built — he earned by working hard on the dangerous and brutal, American frontier, going places often were few men traveled.

Obama was not quite born in a log cabin, but a straw hut or a condo in Hawaii will do as well.

The Obama story also is another measurement of how far a free society– through its own efforts– can go toward healing centuries-old wrongs, without resorting to interminable blood-lettings that still feature so large in ethnic conflicts around the world.

That is not to say that ethic blood wasn’t spilled in America as atonement for much sin, but at least we learn.

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See Ransom’s weekly repsonses to his “Comrades” at:

You Just Lost the Presidency: What are you Going to Do?

In this, Obama is also a measure of the eagerness with which Americans are anxious to redress old wrongs.

But there are two things that Obama’s story certainly are not.

And it is here that tale differs from the Washington story: It’s not a measure of the capacity of Barack Hussein Obama, nor yet his devotion to liberty.

First, forget Jimmy Carter as the mean of failure for Democrat presidents.

You’d have to hearken back to James Buchanan to graph the order of magnitude of the disaster Obama has left, not just for the United States, but for the world.

Buchanan, like Obama, was more interested in theoretical freedom than he was in freedom that might apply to any actual, living persons.

Buchanan’s presidency, it will be recalled, helped lead America to its great civil war, as Mr. Lincoln said, testing whether our nation, or any nation, conceived in liberty, can long endure.

Today we are still met on a battlefield of that war.

The Obama presidency is testing new concepts of “liberty.” There’s a new type of freedom, Democrats promise, but really, it is just slavery in disguise.

If Obama’s presidency has one unifying theme, it’s that freedom is represented as slavery and slavery is represented as freedom.

Slavery now comes with a free cell phone and texting. What’s more freedom-loving than a free cell phone with unlimited texting?

And while the most prominent feature Obama’s thematic presidency is the general growth of government control here in the United States, Obama has also exported this theory overseas.

In the Middle East, Obama has fostered, nurtured and enabled an Arab Spring as a kind of freedom rally for the old Ottoman Empire. But it really is just the first steps in starting country-specific dictatorships of the Caliphate– again, in the name of freedom.

And because these would-be dictators in North Africa get elected with turnout of only 15 percent of the electorate, it doesn’t mean that they represent freedom and democracy, any more than when dictators get 99.9 percent of the vote with 100 percent turnout.

It’s still a swindle. That it’s being sold as liberty in the Middle East by the administration is as much of an indictment upon Obama as his concept that debt makes you free.

The Fire Eaters in the pre-civil war era South– allies of Buchanan– argued for slavery as a positive good, because the slave was never in want.

So, too, today the Democrats argue that keeping everyone on the government plantation is the great freedom that we have all been waiting for, because someday soon the government will be so powerful that no one individual will ever be burdened by having to make decisions for themselves.

We are the ones, they argue, that we have been waiting for.

Of course, the “we” they mention doesn’t include “you” or “me.”

And they care not a whit about liberty.

But they have a great texting plan and they come in a variety of colors.

John Ransom

John Ransom is the Finance Editor for Townhall Finance. You can follow him on twitter @bamransom and on Facebook: bamransom.

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2012/10/17/the_worst_president_ever/page/full/

A few questions for ABC-NBC-CBS-NYT-NPR-CNN-WASHPO-LAT

You’re the elite, the cream of the national press corps (That’s pronounced “core” rather than “corpse,” which the president botched recently, but which you all found far less important than the “e” that’s not at the end of potato when a Republican VP stumbled). Thanks for coming. I invited you here to ask when’s the last time any of you fearless pros asked the president as direct and challenging a question as these two hardballs he faced last week at Univision, the Spanish language network:

“I think up to 100 Mexicans might have died (in Operation Fast and Furious) and also American agent Brian Terry. There’s a report that 14 agents were responsible for the operation, but shouldn’t the attorney general, Eric Holder…have known about that and if he didn’t, should you fire him?”

“You promised [immigration reform] and a promise is a promise. And with all due respect, you didn’t keep that promise.”

Those are some respectful zingers doing just what the press is supposed to: holding political leaders accountable for their words and actions. So, can you think of any tough question you’ve put to him lately? As in, sometime this term?

You don’t really want to look like lap dog sycophants, do you?  Good. Then here are a few suggestions:

Ask him if his policies toward the Middle East may have contributed to current violence there.

Specifically, did his decision to pressure Mubarak out of Egypt and to forcibly remove Qaddafi from Libya enable radical elements hostile to the US to rise to power?

Ask him if his overall approach to engaging the Muslim world has produced positive results.

Ask him why, after the attacks on Egyptian, Libyan, and other embassies, his administration immediately asserted the fiction they were spontaneous demonstrations of religious grievance at an obscure internet clip critical of Mohammed.

Ask why for over a week it denied there was a deliberate targeting of America by terrorist groups on the anniversary of September 11^th.  Ask him if it’s true the State Department had warnings of likely attacks in the Middle East at least 48 hours before they occurred.

Ask him, with or without warnings, why are American embassies in some of the most dangerous places on earth essentially unguarded? Will secretary of State Clinton be held accountable for this failure to protect American personnel?

Speaking of Obama team players, will any of you professional skeptics ask Harry Reid if he plans to apologize to Mitt Romney for falsely accusing him of paying no taxes for 10 years? And if he doesn’t, then why not?

Will any of you ask the president how he can serve all Americans, as he pointedly told David Letterman is his job, if he doesn’t even know what the national debt is or what he has added to it?

When the president declares he “saved the auto industry,” will you ask him if he thinks Ford Motor Company and the American plants of Toyota, Honda, and Nissan aren’t also part of the American auto industry?

Ask him—if Chrysler and GM couldn’t pay their bills–what he thinks would have happened if bankruptcy law had been allowed to operate in a normal way?  Would Americans’ demand for cars have been less? Wouldn’t Chrysler’s and GM’s assets have been sold in an orderly way to leaner competitors or start up companies, who would have created new jobs and joined other suppliers to serve the American market?

Will you ask if it isn’t it more accurate to say he saved the ruinous pay, benefits, and pensions of the United Auto Workers that GM and Chrysler employed, and did it by lawlessly ripping equity out of the hands of secured creditors and bondholders and gifting it to the labor unions?

And, isn’t it true that the happy talk a while back about GM paying back its loans was highly misleading, as in essentially false? That wasn’t income from auto sales, was it, just federal stimulus grants that GM turned around and handed back to the government? And don’t taxpayers still hold a major chunk of GM ownership in billions of devalued stock? And isn’t the company’s survival still very much in doubt?

Will you ask him if this is really a success story, or likely a terribly costly, vote-buying boondoggle that just hasn’t played out yet?

Those are just a few starters. If you all think about it, there are a lot of fastballs you could throw over the left edge of the plate—if your peripheral vision reaches there.

Shawn Mitchell

Shawn Mitchell was elected to Senate District 23 in the Colorado General Assembly in November of 2004. Shawn is an attorney at private practice in Denver and Adams County.

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/shawnmitchell/2012/09/24/a_few_questions_for_abcnbccbsnytnprcnnwashpolat/page/full/

Losing Our Religion

“Deepening crisis”: This phrase was used at a conference on international religious liberty at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 12. The timing of the gathering, which included activists, diplomats and prominent religious leaders, took on a heightened significance, as it was held just hours after attacks against U.S. consulates and embassies in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere, violent incidents that were ostensibly sparked by religious outrage.

In the midst of these attacks, which resulted in the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, among others, the mindset of the Obama administration was more fully revealed on the world stage. The initial reaction came in the form of a statement: “The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions … Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”

This would later be amended by the White House, which was not consulted on the release — but in the clarification, we actually saw a reinforcement. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: “I know it is hard for some people to understand why the United States cannot or does not just prevent these kinds of reprehensible videos from ever seeing the light of day … But even if it were possible, our country does have a long tradition of free expression, which is enshrined in our Constitution and our law. And we do not stop individual citizens from expressing their views, no matter how distasteful they may be.”

“The evidence points to a crisis — one that is not simply ‘out there’ in the Third World, but one whose symptoms are appearing close to home,” Thomas F. Farr, a diplomat by training and director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University, said at the CUA conference. “70 percent of the world lives in countries that have severe restrictions on religious freedom,” Farr noted. It’s a problem that is “particularly acute in Muslim-majority countries, but also countries such as China, India and Russia.” It is “getting worse” and that is “having an impact on Western countries, including the United States; worldwide, Christians are the most vulnerable to persecution.”

Farr focused on a 14-year-old girl with Down syndrome, Rimsha Masih, a Pakistani Christian. She was reportedly searching the trash for items to help her poor family and happened upon pages of the Quran, which were either already burnt, or would be because of where she unknowingly put them. “Then this child, utterly incapable of discerning what she had done, if anything, was arrested, charged with blasphemy and put in prison,” Farr explained. “In Pakistan, and elsewhere in the Middle East, blasphemy is a crime which can bring many years in prison, torture and even execution.”

She’s been released on bail and is being held at an undisclosed location on account of concerns that mobs similar to the type that attacked U.S. embassies might attack her and her family.

This is a “humanitarian outrage,” Farr said, and it’s also a dangerous trend. “No one should insult the sacred beliefs of another. It is an assault on human dignity and respect for others. But the malevolent idea that the proper response to defamation of religion is criminal prosecution, let alone violence or murder, is a dangerous problem in the Muslim-majority world,” he continued.

“My religion is insulted regularly by The New York Times and The Washington Post,” Farr, a Catholic, said. “I frequently am outraged. But I try to respond with my voice or my pen. That is the only way people with deep differences can live together in a civilized society.”

It is imperative, Farr believes, that the United States “become more effective at supporting in these countries those Muslims who know that Islam can be defended without violence, and that embracing religious freedom is in their vital interests.” Which brings us back home.

At a speech at Georgetown, Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl pointed to a “gathering storm” that “has not been created by religious influence on policy, which has been a part of the American experience since the very beginning,” but by an “increasingly bold ideologically driven and progressively intolerant secular humanism” that insists that it is the only legitimate voice in the public square. Religious faith has always acted as a “conscience” in our nation. In marginalizing that voice, we lose our grip on traditional norms.It will become increasingly difficult for Americans to articulate these values, as we saw in that initial U.S. embassy statement and Secretary Clinton’s near-apology for the freedom of speech, if we don’t understand this. Each man and woman has an innate dignity granted by God. Once we’ve relegated that to just another opinion, we’ve lost the civic religion upon which we were founded. Once we’ve surrendered our moral voice, Rimsha’s best advocate will be lost to history.

Kathryn Lopez

Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of National Review Online, writes a weekly column of conservative political and social commentary for Newspaper Enterprise Association.

http://townhall.com/columnists/kathrynlopez/2012/09/15/losing_our_religion/page/full/

Libya Commemorates 9/11

When President Obama intervened in Libya last year, he claimed that “it’s in our national interest to act” to remove a tyrant who — in response to Bush’s invasion of Iraq — had just given up his weapons of mass destruction and pledged to be America’s BFF.

Apparently Gadhafi neglected to also tell Obama, “I’ve got your back.”

Obama said: “We must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us through many storms … our support for a set of universal rights, including the freedom for people to express themselves and choose their leaders; our support for the governments that are ultimately responsive to the aspirations of the people.”

The Libyan mob was the equivalent of our founding fathers! (If you overlook the part about it being a murderous Islamic mob.)

Meanwhile, Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, said: “The people we are fighting for in Libya, the backbone of that movement, are former mujahedeen from around the world.” We are “enabling people who may not be formally aligned with al-Qaida but who want the same things to grasp ever closer to power.”

Scheuer said the media had taken “a few English-speaking Arabs who are pro-democracy and a few Facebook pages out of the Middle East and extrapolated that to a region-wide love of secular democracy,” adding, “It is as insane a situation as I’ve ever encountered in my life.”

No wonder Obama’s running for re-election on his foreign policy expertise!

Among Republicans, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum all called for aggressive action against Gadhafi, including enforcement of a no-fly zone.

Santorum cited Reagan’s 1986 bombing of Libya (after Gadhafi had killed American servicemen in Berlin), saying, “If you want to be Reaganesque, it seems the path is pretty clear.”

Gingrich took all sides, first demanding: “Exercise a no-fly zone this evening. We don’t need to have the United Nations. All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we’re intervening. This is a moment to get rid of him. Do it. Get it over with.”

Then, two weeks later, he said: “I would not have intervened.”

Only Mitt Romney and Haley Barbour resisted calling for aggressive action against Gadhafi, with Romney merely criticizing Obama’s deer-in-the-headlights response, and Barbour stating more directly, “I don’t think it’s our mission to make Libya look like Luxembourg.” No offense, he said, “but it is not ever going to look like what we’d like.”

The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman exulted that the Arab peoples “have come up with their own answer to violent extremism and the abusive regimes we’ve been propping up. … It’s called democracy.”

The Washington Post’s David Ignatius praised Obama’s major shift in strategy in seeing the Libyan uprising as a “positive development” and refusing to provide aid to the embattled dictator. “My own instinct,” he said, “is that Obama is right.”

French liberal blowhard Bernard-Henri Levy announced that “Libya will go down in history as the anti-Iraq. Iraq was a democracy parachuted in by a foreign power in a country which hadn’t asked for it. Libya was a rebellion which demanded help from an international coalition.”

The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette editorialized: “Most of the world is rejoicing because of the historic success in Libya. We’re glad it was accomplished by Libya’s people, not by a U.S. invasion ordered by right-wing American politicians.”

I note that the American ambassador in Iraq has not been murdered and his corpse dragged through the streets. I also recall that, a few years ago, when Muslims around the globe erupted in rioting over some Dutch cartoons, one Muslim country remained utterly pacific: George W. Bush’s Iraq.

Apparently U.S. invasions ordered by right-wing American politicians are the only ones that work in the Middle East. Fake uprisings orchestrated by Muslim fanatics are less propitious.

Learn your history, Americans. The American Revolution was not the revolt of a mob. It was a carefully thought-out plan for a republic, based on ideas painstakingly argued by serious men in the process of creating what would become the freest, most prosperous nation in world history.

The much-ballyhooed “Arab Spring,” with mobs of men gang-raping American reporters, firing guns in the air and murdering their erstwhile dictators, is more akin to the pointless bloodletting of the French Revolution.

That godless antithesis to the founding of America is the primogenitor of the horrors of the Bolshevik Revolution, Hitler’s Nazi Party, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot’s slaughter and America’s periodic mob uprisings, from Shays’ Rebellion to today’s union thugs in Madison, Wis., and Occupy Wall Street.

Americans did win freedom and greater individual rights with their revolution. By contrast, the French Revolution resulted in bestial savagery, a slaughter of all the revolution’s leaders, followed by Napoleon’s dictatorship, followed by another monarchy, and then finally something resembling an actual republic 80 years later.

Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter is a columnist and author of Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault On America.

http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2012/09/12/libya_commemorates_911/page/full/

Getting It Right

“When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” Matthew 16:13

There’s lots of talk about Jesus these days. From The Da Vinci Code debate to Jesus’ claims to be the only way to the Father (John 14:6), there’s nothing like a little Jesus-talk at the water cooler to get a heated discussion going!

In the early 90s, a gathering of professors picked through the gospel accounts asking, “Did Jesus really say that?” They would bring their opinions to the table and then all would vote on the authenticity of Jesus’ words. When all the votes were counted, any confidence in the words of Christ was resoundingly discredited.

Wrong answer.

The movie, The Da Vinci Code, spun another view of Jesus that comes to the staggering assertion that Jesus never claimed to be God but married and fathered a line of offspring that continues to this day.

Wrong answer—big time!

But these “conclusions” don’t just surface in the scholarly and literary worlds. It seems that most people are more than happy to think of Jesus as being what they want Him to be. Everyone is okay with a Jesus who is merely a “good teacher” or a “noble example.” Even Muslims and Hindus view Jesus as a sage prophet. And gay activists speak of Jesus as being tolerant and loving.

But all this Jesus-talk hits the wall when the exclusive claims of Christ are put on the table. When Jesus claims to be the only way or when He talks about heaven and hell and judgment, the Jesus party is over! Our seemingly tolerant society is not interested in the actual claims of Christ. Happy to discuss Jesus in vague, ethereal terms, the average guy resists any thought of personal accountability to Him as Lord and Savior.

And yet that’s exactly what Jesus claims to be and what He calls us to embrace!

When Jesus asked Simon Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” it was no coincidence that the question was asked in Caesarea Philippi. No place could have been more threatening, politically and spiritually, to the disciples. And Jesus asked that question, not because He was uncertain about His identity or His rating in the polls, but because He wanted to be sure that the disciples knew whom they were following.

Peter moved straight past the politically correct, carefully couched answers to a bold declaration—that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah and the Son of God. Right answer! Jesus pointed out that this was a God-given insight and that those who believe are blessed in their declaration.

Today, Jesus asks us the same personal question: “Who do you believe that I am?” Announcing that He is the true Messiah—our Savior—starts us on a journey of faith that stretches through eternity in heaven. A life that embraces this truth is blessed and bolstered with confidence in His character and delivering power.

But it’s more than just believing. When the question arises in conversation, we have the privilege of becoming His witnesses in the swirl of so many dead-end opinions about Jesus. Whether it’s a friendly chat about a spiritually oriented movie or a discussion about the turmoil in the Middle East, the topic of Christ may well surface.  And when it does, let’s be sure to present the real Jesus in a gracious yet confident manner. The right answer may just be the key to someone’s eternity!

YOUR JOURNEY…

• What perceptions about Jesus have you seen in your co-workers, family, and friends? Do those perceptions match up with the biblical picture of Jesus?
• How has your understanding of Christ been shaped by your study of Scripture?
• Have you trusted Jesus as your Savior? When and how did you come to that conclusion?
• What opportunities have you had to speak up about your trust in Christ?

http://getmorestrength.org/daily/getting-it-right/

As a Deer

“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.” Psalm 42:1

Several years ago my wife Martie and I had the unique experience of going on a camel safari in the desert of the United Arab Emirates. We rocked back and forth on top of those ugly beasts for an hour as we perused the quiet of the desert. In the course of describing the attributes of camels, our guide mentioned that they could live for 3 months without water. They are obviously built for the desert.

What a contrast to the sleek, “type A” gazelle the writer had in mind in Psalm 42:1-11. Bounding through the meadows and the forests, the deer is satisfied and sustained on a regular basis by water. He needs it and yearns for it in his fast-paced existence.

How easy it is in the midst of our abundance to be far more like the camel than the deer. Rarely sensing a need for God, some people can go for months without desiring Him. For some of us, life has been a long stretch of religious and secular activity without any sense of utter dependence on Him or sincere desire to know Him. The problem is that we weren’t built for life in a spiritual desert. We were built—redeemed, in fact—for regular, satisfying access to the refreshing presence of God in our souls.

So what is it that keeps us from really longing for and seeking Him? Of all the things that make us like the camel, none is so glaring as the sin of self-sufficiency. We have relegated Jesus to the sidelines, while we go about our business. Cultivating him as our soul mate and supreme necessity for life has somehow escaped us. But it hasn’t escaped Him. He still knocks at our heart’s door to offer the sweet fellowship that only He can bring (Revelation 3:20).

Let’s drink deeply, living in Jesus more like a deer and less like a camel.

YOUR JOURNEY…

• Am I more like the camel or the deer? Why?
• Do I spend time in the Word daily? If yes, what have I been learning? If no, why have I been neglecting this time with God?
• What have I just learned about my self-sufficiency? How has God’s Spirit and Word refreshed me today?

http://getmorestrength.org/daily/as-a-deer/

Can You Hear It?

“When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble?” — Amos 3:6

The trumpet, or the shofar in Hebrew, is a call to arouse us from our spiritual slumber. It is a nudge to awaken and repent. But what if the shofar is sounded and the people remain unmoved?

This is the question posed by the prophet Amos:  “When a trumpetsounds in a city,do not the people tremble?” In other words, how can it be that the shofar is sounded and no one trembles? Like the saying, “if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it still make a sound,” we ask, if the shofar is sounded and no one trembles, does it still make a sound?

A blacksmith’s assistant from a village once visited a large city. There he visited the local smithy. He noticed that the workers used bellows to fan the flames in the forge. Back in the village, they fanned their fire manually. The bellows were much more efficient and far less exhausting than manual fanning. The assistant excitedly purchased a bellows and returned with enthusiasm to his master’s shop.

Immediately, he set out to demonstrate the magic that he had uncovered. He set up the bellows and began to pump vigorously. But, alas, no matter how quickly he pumped, no flame appeared. “I can’t understand it,” he said. “In the city, I saw with my own eyes how a huge flame was produced by the bellows.”

“Did you first light a small fire?” the master asked.

“No,” the assistant replied. “I just pumped the bellows.”

“You fool!” the blacksmith said. “The bellows can only increase the size of the flame when you begin it with a spark. When you have no spark of fire, all the pumping of the bellows is of no use at all.”

Like the bellows, the shofar can only arouse us if there is a spark lit inside of us. If there is no spark, if we are spiritually deadened, then all of the shofar-blowing in the world will not get us to tremble.

The shofar represents the many messages that God sends to us all of the time. The tragedy of 9/11 was a shofar call. The tsunami was a shofar call. All of the upheaval in the Middle East – it’s all a great shofar call. Do we not tremble? Do we not repent?

The answer to our original question is yes; whether or not we hear the shofar, it does indeed make a sound. God is desperately trying to wake us up.

Now the question is:  Do we hear Him?

http://www.holylandmoments.org/devotionals/can-you-hear-it

The Spirit of Youth

“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” — Hosea 11:1

While the modern State of Israel may still be in its childhood, the nation of Israel is one of the oldest nations in the world. When the prophet Hosea referred to Israel’s childhood, he wasn’t referring to the last 64 years. He was referring to the nation’s true beginning, thousands of years ago, when the children of Israel where taken out of Egypt.

About this stage the prophet says, “When Israel was a child, I loved him.” But the Sages teach us another way to understand the verse:  “Israel is a child, therefore I love him.” Even today, say the Sages,  Israel is like a child. And that is something that God loves.

One of the profound differences between children and the elderly is the ability to recover. If a child falls down and hurts his knee, he gets up pretty quickly. Even if he sheds a few tears, he is off and running again just a few minutes later. But for someone in their older years, a simple fall can result in broken bones and irreversible damage. Older people have weaker bones and need more time to heal. Children are simply more resilient.

No nation on the face of the Earth has experienced the traumas that the nation of Israel has had to deal with, repeatedly, over thousands of years. Expelled from its homeland twice, and subjected to inquisitions, pogroms, holocausts, and all kinds of hostility, the nation of Israel reacts with the resilience of a child.

Though deeply bruised and beaten, Israel cannot be broken. Injuries heal quickly, and she is back on her feet. Israel continues to build and rebuild though her enemies seek to destroy her every single day. This is what the prophet means when he calls Israel a child. The nation may be old, but her spirit is young.

The lessons we can glean from Hosea’s words and from the nation of Israel’s experience are timeless — no matter what life throws our way, we can respond with the wisdom that comes with age, but also with the resiliency of a child as we trust and depend upon the One who loves us like a Father.

http://www.holylandmoments.org/devotionals/the-spirit-of-youth

Garden of God

“And though a tenth remains in the land,      it will again be laid waste. But as the terebinth and oak      leave stumps when they are cut down,      so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.” — Isaiah 6:13

Rebecca Rupp, author of children’s and young adults’ books, recently wrote, “When our kids first started gardening, they wanted to grow doughnuts and bluebirds. If only we could, I thought.”

For young children – and maybe even for grizzled adults – gardening represents the potential for good in our world; it represents the hopes and dreams of people from all walks of life. This wonderful observation may shed light on Isaiah’s comparison, in this passage, between the Jewish people and a tree in the garden of God.

In his day, Isaiah spoke to a Jewish people threatened by an Assyrian empire at the height of its power. The Assyrian forces had conquered far and wide and had successfully exerted its power over much of the Middle East. It seemed then that Assyrian control over their world would never end.

Indeed, the Jews living in Israel thought that their land would be decimated by the Assyrians. It must have been nearly impossible for them to imagine that they could survive those troubled times.

That’s why Isaiah’s message in this passage is so powerful. He paints a picture of a mighty tree in autumn. All the leaves have fallen off, and the tree looks like it’ll never flourish again. But then, when spring returns and the sun comes back out, the tree begins to bloom back into the mighty specimen it once was.

Think about the State of Israel. For years this was just a dream to Jews who dared not hope that it might ever come true. Who could possibly have imagined the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the flourishing of a vibrant democracy in the very place where once Jews feared their nation would not outlive the now-long-dead Assyrians? Who would have thought, when leaves were falling off the oak tree, that come springtime, the oak would return to its former glory? And yet, like the oak tree, here we are. Back home again.

In fact, this is the attitude we need to have throughout our daily lives. Sure, when trouble strikes, it’s easy to feel as if we might never smile again – as if there’s no end in sight.

It’s during times like those that we need to remember Isaiah’s lesson:  Have faith in God, and one day that oak tree will flourish again!

http://www.holylandmoments.org/devotionals/garden-of-god