The Onesimus Programme

I Was Wrong - the Apocrypha & the Bible.

2020-12-02T19:14:00.001-08:00

CALVINISM OR ARMINIANISM

2015-10-24T13:43:00.001-07:00

Calvinism or Arminianism:
(From RZIM)

Calvinism (sometimes called the Reformed tradition, the Reformed faith, or Reformed theology) is a theological system and an approach to the Christian life that emphasizes the rule of God over all things. It was developed by several theologians, but it bears the name of the French reformer John Calvin because of his prominent influence on it and because of his role in the confessional and ecclesiastical debates throughout the 16th century. Today, this term also refers to the doctrines and practices of the Reformed churches of which Calvin was an early leader. Less commonly, it can refer to the individual teaching of Calvin himself. The system is best known for its doctrines of predestination and total depravity.

Arminianism is a school of soteriological thought within Protestant Christianity based on the theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609) and his historic followers, the Remonstrants. The doctrines' acceptance stretches through much of mainstream Christianity, including evangelical Protestantism.

Arminianism holds to the following tenets:

Humans are naturally unable to make any effort towards salvation.

Salvation is possible only by God's grace, which cannot be merited.

No works of human effort can cause or contribute to salvation.

God's election is conditional on faith in the sacrifice and Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Christ's atonement was made on behalf of all people.

God allows his grace to be resisted by those who freely reject Christ.

Salvation can be lost, as continued salvation is conditional upon continued faith.

Arminianism is most accurately used to define those who affirm the original beliefs of Jacobus Arminius himself, but the term can also be understood as an umbrella for a larger grouping of ideas including those of Hugo Grotius, John and Charles Wesley, and others. There are two primary perspectives on how the system is applied in detail: Classical Arminianism, which sees Arminius as its figurehead, and Wesleyan Arminianism, which sees John Wesley as its figurehead. Wesleyan Arminianism is sometimes synonymous with Methodism.
RZIM does not have an official ministry position on the doctrines of Calvinism or Arminianism, and we have staff members holding to a variety of views in both of these doctrinal traditions. Our ministry is not officially affiliated with any particular denomination, and our staff represents a variety of different denominations. The mission and vision of RZIM is evangelism undergirded by apologetics, and we seek to stay true to that mission and calling. Dr. Zacharias is ordained in the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church. For more information on this denomination, please see their website.
For further study on Calvinism or Arminianism, here are some resources that many have found helpful in exploring these teachings:
Alister McGrath has put together a wonderful collection of historical writings on various issues including predestination and free will. It is called The Christian Theology Reader (Blackwell, 1995). This book gives a sampling from the great works of theology on various topics. From this, one reads the primary sources including John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will and John Wesley’s writings, for the “free will” perspective. An excellent edition is John Wesley's Sermons: An Anthology (Abingdon Press, 1991) compiled by Albert Cook Outler and Richard P. Heitzenrater. Responsible Grace by Randy Maddox is also an excellent treatment of Wesley's theology.
For a more contemporary reading, InterVarsity Press has published a book (1985) entitled Predestination and Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom. Norman Geisler and Clark Pinnock are contributors in this volume. Finally, D.A. Carson has written a book entitled How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil (Baker Academic, 1991) that deals with the issue of sovereignty and suffering.
Ravi also recommends J.I. Packer's book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (InterVarsity Press, 1991), and has written a brief article describing his own position regarding human freedom and the sovereignty of God.

INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT

2015-10-12T14:20:00.001-07:00

INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT - Switch on Your Brain with the 5-Step Learning Process (R) and Metacog system (TM)

Written by Dr. Caroline Leaf

Working in the field of education for over 25 years, I love to teach people how to think and learn, and see them reach their full potential. Based on my academic research and clinical work, I developed a learning system based on how the brain works: The Switch on your Brain 5-Step Learning process (R). In South Africa I used in this system in many schools across the economic and cultural spectrum, with both students and teachers. Watching their faces light up as their academic performance increased (up to 35-75% improvement in many cases), many of them realizing that they could achieve anything they correctly put their minds to, was truly inspiring!

Three years ago I was presented with an opportunity to introduce this learning system in a Charter school group in Dallas, Texas, with similar results to South Africa. Once again, regardless of nationality, culture or any other differences, I saw children and teachers improve, both academically and emotionally, when they realized that they could succeed in life. Our circumstances, even though they constrain us, do not determine our destiny. (You can read more information at Dallas Charter School results, and more about the research and application under Science Article downloads)

But what exactly is this learning system? It is a Metacog™-based program, mirroring the way the brain builds memory, thereby stimulating deep thinking and learning. It simplifies the learning process, helping a person become an effective learner and increasing their intelligence.

A Metacog™ is essentially a way of writing things down on paper that is more compatible with the way your brain actually thinks, as opposed to writing in the normal linear fashion. The Metacog™ patterns look more like trees with words on lines, which stimulates the two sides of the brain to work together more efficiently, which in turn stimulates long-term brain development. The Metacogs™ essentially switch on your brain! I have a book and DVD set that teaches you exactly how to follow the Switch on your Brain 5-Step Learning process (R). We are so excited about the results that we have been introducing the concept into more schools and educational institutions, and we are in the process of creating the online Switch on Your Brain® learning program.

As a scientist, I understand the importance of reaching younger generations, teaching them how to think so they can succeed in every area of their life, since the patterns for adulthood are laid down in childhood. Because of this I firmly believe (and the research backs this up) in not only teaching adults how to reign in unruly toxic thoughts that are messing up their minds and bodies, but in also getting children to think properly, as thinking and emotions are all intertwined in the learning process and need to be dealt with as early as possible. Indeed, we need to get our children thinking again, considering the fact that American thinking patterns and therefore creativity alone are in decline (Newsweek July 19, 2010). The implications of such a decline are severe, and the evidence is already in front of us. There is an urgent need to improve Intellectual Development.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT - Understanding the Work and Gifts of the Counselor.

2015-10-01T16:20:00.000-07:00

excerpted from the SmallGroups.com training tool called Discussing Doctrine and Theology.

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. He comes from the Father and is sent by the Son. Symbols of the Holy Spirit include wind and breath (Genesis 1:2; John 3:8; John 20:22; Acts 2:2), water (John 4:10, 15; John 7:37–39), fire (Matthew 3:11; Luke 3:16; Acts 2:3), oil/anointing (Exodus 29:7; Acts 10:38; 1 John 2:20, 27), a seal (Ephesians 1:13–14; Ephesians 4:30; 2 Corinthians 1:22), and a dove (Luke 3:22).

Each of these symbols gives us a window into the personality and work of the Spirit.

The Work of the Spirit

Creation
- Genesis 1:2—"Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."
- Ezekiel 37:14—"I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD."
Conviction and calling
- "The Holy Spirit works in the conversion process as the agent who fosters conviction of sin. In addition to convicting people of sin, the Spirit is at work in conversion as the agent of God's call directed towards sinful humans" (Grenz, Theology for the Community of God).
- John 16:8—"When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment."
- John 15:26—"When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me."
Adoption
- Adoption is the act whereby the Spirit makes us members of God's family.
- John 1:12—"Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God."
- Romans 8:14–17—"Because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, 'Abba, Father.' The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory."
Sanctification (spiritual growth)
- In sanctification, the Spirit of God works to make us more and more like Christ. "It is our cooperation with the Spirit in living out in daily life the regeneration, justification, freedom, and power which is ours through conversion, so that we grow into Christlikeness and service to God" (Grenz, Theology for the Community of God).
- Galatians 5:22–23—"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."
- The Holy Spirit helps us in prayer (Romans 8:26–27) and illuminates Scripture for us (John 16:13; 1 Corinthians 2:10).
Empowerment
- "When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost and thereafter, he gave power that enabled the ministry of Christ to be carried forward. It was not power in a general sense—that is, an increment of supernatural strength that could have many uses—but power for ministry that flowed from the Father through the Son" (Williams, Renewal Theology).
- Acts 1:8—"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
- Romans 15:18–19—"I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done—by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ."

2015-09-15T09:52:00.000-07:00

JESUS IS AMONG US AS ONE WHO SERVES:

Scripture: Luke 22:24-30

A dispute also arose among them, which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And he said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For which is the greater, one who sits at table, or one who serves? Is it not the one who sits at table? But I am among you as one who serves. "You are those who have continued with me in my trials; and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Meditation: What kind of dispute were the disciples having during the Passover feast? They were likely arguing about who should sit in the place of honour at the table. Are we not like that! We want the place of honour and recognition, especially when others will have to give notice and defer to us. (See Jesus' parable of the dinner guests in Luke 14:7-14.) Jesus did the unthinkable! He turned the world's value of greatness upside-down and He wedded authority with loving-sacrifice and with selfless-service. Authority without sacrificial love is brutish and self-serving. The way of greatness in God's kingdom is the way of servanthood and humility, putting others first in our care and concern. Jesus willingly laid down his life for our sake in obedience to God and because He loved us first (John 3:16). He calls us to love as He did, by laying down our lives in sacrificial service for the good of others. An early church father summed up Jesus' teaching with the expression: to serve is to reign with Christ. We share in God's reign by laying down our lives in humble service of one another as Jesus did for our sakes. Are you willing to put others first in your care and concern and to love them with the same merciful love that Jesus has for you? *Lord Jesus, make me a servant of love for your kingdom, that I may seek to serve rather than be served. Inflame my heart with love that I may give generously and serve joyfully for your sake.

(c) rc.net. The Onesimus Programme.

JESUS

2015-09-11T12:10:00.001-07:00

"Jesus did not come into the world to found a Church but to proclaim a Kingdom - the two being by no means the same thing."
If Jesus chose Peter to be the rock on which his church was to be founded, thereby in effect nominating him to be the first of a long line of his Vicars on earth, there have been many mundane intruders into this spiritual domain, from the Emperor Constantine onwards. To those who like myself, rightly or wrongly, have become convinced that what is called 'Western civilization' is irretrievably over, and that another Dark Age is upon us, this seeming collapse of the Church is desolating. We bemoan the passing of a liturgy in which we never participated, of high virtues which we never practiced, of an obedience we never accorded and an orthodoxy we never accepted and often ridiculed.
Yet even if it is true that, despite the assurance given to Peter, the gates of Hell have prevailed, or at any rate are now swinging on ecumenical hinges, that is only a lost battle. The war goes on; and suddenly, in the most unlikely theater of all, a Solzhenitsyn raises his voice, while in the dismal slums of Calcutta a Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity go about Jesus' work of love with incomparable dedication. When I think of them, as I have seen them at their work and at their devotions, I want to put away all the books, tear up all the scribbled notes. There are no more doubts or dilemmas; everything is perfectly clear. What commentary or exposition, however, eloquent, lucid, perceptive, inspired even, can equal in eludication and illumination the effect of these dedicated lives? What mind has conceived a discourse, or tongue spoken it, which conveys even to a minute degree the light they shine before men?

I was hungry, and you gave me meat.
I was thirsty, and you gave me drink.
I was a stranger, and you took me in, and I was naked and you clothed me.
I was sick, and you visited me.
I was in prison, and you came unto me.

The words (of Jesus) come alive, as no study or meditation could possibly make them, in the fulfillment in the most literal sense of Jesus' behest to see in the suffering face of humanity his suffering face, and in their broken bodies, his. The religion Jesus gave the world is an experience, not a body of ideas or principles. It is in being lived that it lives, as it is in loving that the love which it discloses at the heart of all creation becomes manifest. It belongs to the world of a Cervantes rather than that of a Wittgen-stein; to Rabelais and Tolstoy rather than to Bultmann and Barth. It is for fools like me, the poor of this world, rather than for the king.

Thinking of Jesus, I suddenly understand that I know nothing...and for some reason begin to laugh hilariously, which brings me to the realization that I understand everything I need to understand. So, in the face of a Mother Teresa I trace the very geography of Jesus' Kingdom; all the contours and valleys and waterways. I need no other map. In the light of such a faith as hers, the troubles of the Church, its liturgical squabbles and contending theologies and Vatican Councils drowsing through interminable sessions, seem of little account. Once when I was complaining about Church dignitaries and their attitudes, Mother Teresa drily pointed out that, of the twelve disciples, hand-picked by Jesus himself, one turned out to be a crook and the rest ran away. How, she asked, can we expect mere popes and bishops to do better? How indeed?

And he said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

Jesus particularly charged his disciples that they should tell no man he was . . . the Christ. He knew, of course, that if his Messianic role were to be bruited abroad the danger would arise of his becoming the focus of some sort of insurrection, which would falsify the whole purpose of his ministry. Being an attractive, forceful and persuasive speaker and teacher, with a strong personality, once he was seen as the Messiah, and known to have accepted that title, the violence anticipated in many of the Messianic prophecies might easily erupt about his head. To abate any possible ardor in this direction among the disciples, he broke it to them that he would shortly go to Jerusalem, and that there he would suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Peter was outraged, and protested strongly; if Jesus was indeed the Messiah, as now they all accepted, they looked for him to be victorious, not defeated, and expected to share in his triumph.

Be it far from thee Lord; this shall not be done unto thee, Peter insisted.

This time Jesus rebuked him: Get behind me, you Satan: you are an offense to me: for you do not savor the things of God, but those that be of men!

It effectively shut him up.

The danger that Jesus, once generally accepted as the Messiah, would be pushed into at any rate seeming to lead a rebellion, was a very real one. According to the Fourth Gospel, after the miracle of the loaves and fishes the excitement of the crowd was so great, and their conviction so strong that Jesus was indeed the prophet whose imminent coming into the world had been prophesied and was not eagerly awaited, that Jesus feared he might be taken by force and proclaimed a king. To avoid anything of the kind, he departed again into a mountain, himself alone.

'It is the simple historical fact', Professor William Barclay writes, 'that in the thirty years from 67 to 37 BC before the emergence of Herod the Great, no fewer than one hundred and fifty thousand men perished in Palestine in revolutionary uprisings. There was no more explosive and inflammable country in the world than Palestine. If Jesus had publicly claimed to be Messiah, nothing could have stopped a useless flood tide of slaughter.' He goes on to point out that before he could openly claim the Messiahship, he had to show it to the world in a quite new light, with a quite new significance; as a Messiahship whose only power was sacrificial love. In other words, he was indubitably the Messiah, but one 'whose reign was in the hearts of men, a Messiah who reigned from a Cross'. Professor Barclay, along with the late Dr. C. H. Dodd, provides the unfamiliar traveler across the deserts and jungles of Biblical criticism with one of his few sure, steady and infinitely reassuring beacons to guide him on his way.

Peter is only one of the disciples whose character emerges clearly and strongly; the others are somewhat dim figures who in the Gospel narratives do and say little that distinguishes them from one another. This is the case even with John, the disciples Jesus is said to have loved with a special tenderness, and to whom he handed over the care of his mother as he was dying. Peter, on the other hand, is quite definitely a person - impetuous, mercurial, easily stirred to passionate protestations of devotion and loyalty, and equally prone to lose heart in face of difficulties, and to fall down on his undertakings when the test came. Just because of the clearer delineation of his character, he is always the easiest to pick out in group paintings of the disciples; for instance, in Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. At the same time, he is sympathetically portrayed, and there is, indeed, something irresistible about him even when he is at his worst; as in his tragic threefold denial of Jesus while Jesus was being examined by Caiaphas, the High Priest, and his father-in-law, Annas - a sinister figure who had managed, in a manner any contemporary political boss like Mayor Daley of Chicago might envy, after he had been High Priest himself for a number of years, to get the job for five of his sons in succession, as well as for his son-in-law Caiaphas. Peter stayed in the ante-room, and was warming his hands by a coal fire there when the first question was put to him by a maidservant guarding the door: Art thou also one of this man's disciples? His curt answer was I am not. A certain maid beheld him as he sat by the fire, and earnestly looked upon him, and said, This man was also with him. And he denied him, saying, Woman, I know him not.

How vivid the scene is! -- the flames of the lately lit fire illumining the faces of those silently gathered round it; within, the farcical interrogation going on, with occasional words heard, and the sound of Jesus being struck by one of the officers with the palm of his hand. All present must have been conscious that something momentous was happening. Then came the second question, from one of the people gathered with Peter round the fire: Art not thou also one of his disciples? Again the denial, this time accompanied with shouts and curses; the resort of all of us when we succumb to cowardice and panic. Now the third and last question, from one of the High Priest's servants who had noticed Peter's Galilean accent, and thought he recognized him as having been in the Garden of Gethsemane with Jesus when he was taken: Art not thou also one of his disciples? No, he was not, Peter insisted, more vehemently than ever, pouring out a strong stream of abuse, curses and obscenities. Fishermen, like bargees, always know how to curse. At this point the dawn broke and the cock crowed, and Peter remembered how the evening before Jesus had prophesied that before the cock crowed he would have denied him thrice. So he went away and wept bitterly.

For Peter there was unforeseen comfort to come. After the Resurrection Jesus three times asked him if he loved him, thus balancing the three times Peter had denied him; and a chastened Peter each time answered less confidently than had been his way, saying that Jesus, who knew all things, must know that he loved him. To intimate his forgiveness of Peter and renewed faith in him, Jesus entrusted him with one of his most deeply felt commands: Feed my sheep! This, too, Jesus repeated three times to emphasize its urgency.

Another incident described in the Gospels, which Jesus particularly asked the three disciples who were present at it not to mention to anyone, at least until after his death and Resurrection, was what is called 'the Transfiguration'. The three disciples were Peter, James and John, and the incident occurred some eight days after the conversation at Caesarea Philippi. They had accompanied Jesus up into a high mountain; like all mystics, he needed from time to time to withdraw from the world, as he had into the wilderness after his baptism by John the Baptist. A high mountain, especially at dawn, offers a greater sense of isolation than even the desert of the high seas, and so is a favorite place for such withdrawals. On this occasion, Jesus became so rapt that he was momentarily carried away into heavenly regions where he might commune more closely with God. Hearing him speaking as though with some unseen presence, and seeing his face shining with ecstasy, and even his clothes glistening and luminous, the three disciples were overcome with awe, so that they fell on their faces and were afraid. They had the impression that Jesus was conversing with Moses and Elijah, and Peter made the endearingly ludicrous suggestion that, in order to protract so remarkable a situation, he might construct three tabernacles for Jesus and the two prophets. At this point, we are told, a bright cloud overshadowed them all, and they seemed to hear a voice out of the cloud, like the one at Jesus's baptism, acknowledging him as God's beloved Son in whom He was well pleased, but on this occasion adding: Hear ye him! It was, after all, the essential requirement - to hear and heed what he had to say. It is so still.

Such transports as the Transfiguration are common enough among mystics, and there are numerous detailed descriptions of them, all of which bear a close resemblance to one another. This strongly suggests that the experience itself is related to some permanent, continuing element in human life which in a mystical state is clearly perceived, but only vaguely and occasionally glimpsed amidst the ordinary preoccupations of earthly living. As the existence of hunger presupposes the existence of bread, and the existence of a fiddle that of music, so the longing for God and awareness of God which characterizes all these mystical experiences presupposes His existence. How precious such experiences are! How one longs for their recurrence! And how mysteriously they come and go! Suddenly, everything seems clearly related to everything else; the harmony perfect, then as suddenly lost. The joy in the consciousness of this harmony is the greatest ever vouchsafed to us in this world, as the sense of loss when it passes is the great desolation.

At the Transfiguration, when the glory was upon Jesus, the luminosity was too much for the three disciples with him, and they had to shut their eyes. Still, they had seen and heard, and to that extent participated. Coming down from the mountain when it was all over, the reaction will have set in. I imagine them then, their footsteps laggardly, and their talk listless, looking closely at Jesus' familiar face and movements, and wondering whether it had really happened - that light, those voices, the words spoken from on high. Experiencing these brief ecstasies, so long watched and waited for, and passing so quickly, is like sitting through a dull concert because at some point there will be a movement, or maybe just a few chords, so sublime that the roof and the walls of the concert-hall will dissolved, the orchestra and their instruments and the prancing conductor with his baton disappear, leaving one alone in a universe overflowing with the music of life itself, its generality and its particularity merged into a oneness, eternal breakers beating against the shores of Time. Then back to the concert-hall, the violins and the cellos, the drums and the trumpets and the whistling flutes; mortality-s familiar orchestration. Stretching a 'crumme of dust from heav'n to hell':
Yet take thy way; for sure thy way is best. As the old English poet, George Herbert saw it:

Stretch or contract me, thy poore debtor:
This is but tuning of my breast,
To make the music better.

In Augustine's Confessions the experience is wonderfully described.It happened when he was at Ostia with his mother, Monica, after his conversion. They were on their way back to Africa; she triumphant, and soon to die, he full of peace and joy, with his long life's work before him. As they leaned from a window overlooking the courtyard of the house in which they were staying, their conversation turned on what the eternal life of the saints would be like, 'that life which no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no human heart conceived', and they concluded that no bodily pleasure, however delectable and lustrous in earthly terms, was worthy of comparison, or even mention, beside the happiness of the life of the saints. As they talked on, their thoughts reached higher and higher; from 'the whole compass of material things in their various degrees, up to the heavens themselves, from which the sun and the moon and the stars shine down upon the earth'. Then higher still, full of the wonder of all creation, until they reached their own souls; pressing on even beyond them, towards the eternal Wisdom which belongs neither to the past nor the future, but simply is:

And while we spoke of the eternal Wisdom, longing for it and straining for it with all the strength of our hearts, for one fleeting instant we reached out and touched it. Then with a sigh leaving our spiritual harvest bound to it, we returned to the sound of our own speech, in which each word has a beginning and an ending - far, far different from your Word, our Lord, who abides in himself for ever, yet never grows old and gives new life to all things.

The descent to words - those clumsy and inflexible bricks - is like trying to play the Missa Solemnis on a mouth-organ, or to dance the Mazurka with no legs. A lifetime at the task but serves to make it seem the more impossible; truth in words at best attaining only meaning, beauty only elegance, and strength no more than shock. A daddy-long-legs struggling to climb out of a bath, or a mole diligently throwing up his heap of useless earth - so the artificer of words. Every spiritual harvest has, like Augustine's and Monica's, to be left behind, ungarnered; there is always the desolating return to the sound of words which begin and end when what they have to say has neither ending nor beginning. Happy the dumb who cannot be mocked by what they say; the illiterates who cannot be cheated by what they read, or cheat others with what they write!

Jesus spoke, but he also healed. The two went together; they were the equipoise between loving God and loving one's neighbor - the two duties into which Jesus resolved all that the Law laid down and the prophets had proclaimed. Even in the Garden of Gethsemane he healed, restoring the man's ear that Peter had impulsively hacked off with his sword. For that matter, even on the Cross he offered healing words to the penitent thief crucified beside him, making a rendezvous with him in paradise. Jesus never for one moment forgot our human need for bodies and minds in working order; for eyes that truly see and ears that truly hear. His compassion for the maimed, whether they were physically, mentally or spiritually disabled, was fathomless. More often than not, it was his healing powers which drew crowds to him. When it was known that he would be in a particular place they poured in from every direction, sometimes coming long distances - the blind groping their way, the halt and the lame and the inform stumbling along as best they might, some carried on stretchers and litters; then the lepers, shunned by the others, with stumps for arms and lost noses and hobbling toeless feet. Such macabre gatherings assemble at festivals in India, chattering and pleading in the expectation of alms or miracles or both.

At Lourdes, too, bowing their heads, abating their twitchings, holding out their hands, if they have any, as the Blessed Sacrament approaches, they recall his healing words:

Daughter, they faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.
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"Thinking of Jesus, I suddenly understand that I know nothing..."

WHY TRUTH MATTERS:

2015-09-09T07:26:00.002-07:00

At first sight, the biblical view of truth is obscene to modern minds. But on a deeper look, the biblical view is profound, timely, and urgent for today, even for those who reject it.

The following is a plenary session delivered by Os Guinness at Lausanne 2010 in Cape Town, South Africa (www.lausanne.org). Used by permission of the author.

In this extraordinary moment in human history, why is it that truth matters? There are times when history and the gospel of Jesus converge and create a great thrust forward in human history. So it was with the “gifts” of the gospel, such as the rise of philanthropy, of the reform movements, or the creation of the universities, or modern science. There are other times when history and the gospel collide and the titanic struggle shapes history in a different but equally decisive way. So it was when the Lordship of Christ triumphed over the might of imperial Rome. But there are still other times when history and the gospel appear to collide but, in fact, the gospel speaks to the deepest dilemmas and the highest aspirations of the age, even to those which oppose it. So it is today with the concept of truth.
At first sight, the biblical view of truth is obscene to modern minds. It’s arrogant, it’s exclusive, it’s intolerant, it’s divisive, it’s judgmental, and it’s reactionary. But on a deeper look, the biblical view is profound, timely, and urgent for today, even for those who reject it. But obviously regardless of what the world thinks, we follow the one who is the way, the truth, and the life. We therefore worship and serve the God of truth, whose Word is truth, and who Himself is true and may be trusted because of his covenant faithfulness.

Let me, therefore, sum up six reasons why truth matters to us supremely. And why those Christians who are careless about truth are as wrong, and as foolish, and as dangerous as the worst scoffers and skeptics of our time.

FIRST, ONLY A HIGH VIEW OF TRUTH HONORS THE GOD OF TRUTH.
Too often truth is left as a philosophical issue. Philosophical issues are important to us but truth is first and foremost a matter of theology. Not only is our Lord the God who is actually, objectively, really, and truly there—so that what we believe corresponds to what actually is the case —but our Lord is also the true one in the sense that He is the one whose covenant loyalty may be trusted and the entire weight of our existence staked on Him. Those who weaken their hold on truth, weaken their hold on God.

SECOND, ONLY A HIGH VIEW OF TRUTH REFLECTS HOW WE COME TO KNOW AND LOVE GOD.
Jesus is the only way to God although there are as many ways to Jesus as there are people that come. But the record of Scripture and the experience of the centuries show us that there are three main reasons why we believe, often overlapping. We come to faith in Christ because we are driven by our human needs. We come to faith in Him because He seeks for us and finds us. And we come to faith in Christ because we believe his claims and the claims of the gospel are true. It is because of truth that our faith in God is not irrational. It is not an emotional crutch. It is not a psychological projection. It is not a matter of wish fulfillment. It is not an opiate for the masses. Our faith goes beyond reason because we as humans are much more than reason. But our faith is a warranted faith because we have a firm, clear conviction it is true. We are those who think in believing and we believe in thinking.

THIRD, ONLY A HIGH VIEW OF TRUTH EMPOWERS OUR BEST HUMAN ENTERPRISES.
Skeptics and relativists who undermine the notion of truth are like the fool who is cutting off the branch on which he is sitting. Without truth, science and all human knowledge collapse into conjecture. Without truth, the vital profession of journalism and how we follow the events of our day and understand the signs of our times dissolve into rumor. Without truth, the worlds of politics and business melt down into rules and power games.
Without truth, the precious gift of human reason and freedom becomes license and all human relationships lose the bonding element of trust that is binding at their heart. We then as followers of Christ are unashamed to stand before the world as servants and guardians of a high view of truth, both for our Lord’s sake but also for the highest endeavors of humanity.

FOURTH, ONLY A HIGH VIEW OF TRUTH CAN UNDERGIRD OUR PROCLAMATION AND DEFENSE OF THE FAITH.
If our Lord is the God of truth, we gladly affirm that all truth is God’s truth and we therefore welcome all ideas and arguments and beliefs that pass the muster of God’s standard of truth. But we also know that all humans, including we ourselves, are not only truth seekers but truth twisters. And that because all unbelief, as St. Paul says, holds the truth in unrighteousness, we have the grounds as well as the duty to confront false ideas and false beliefs with the assurance that they are neither true in the end nor are they in the best interests of those who believe them. And we must never forget today that our stand for truth must start in the church itself. We must resist the powerful seductions of those who downplay truth for methodology, or truth in the name of activism, or truth for entertainment, or truth for seeker sensitivity, and above all those who put modern and revisionist view of truth in the place of the biblical view. Whatever the motive of these people, all such seductions lead to a weak and a compromised faith and they end in sorrow and a betrayal of our Lord. To abandon truth is to abandon faithfulness, and to commit theological adultery, and to end in spiritual suicide. Let the sorry fate of Protestant liberalism be a stern warning to us all.

FIFTH, ONLY A HIGH VIEW OF TRUTH IS SUFFICIENT FOR COMBATING EVIL AND HYPOCRISY.
Postmodern thinking makes us all aware of hypocrisy but gives us no standard of truth to expose and correct it. And now with the global expansion of markets through capitalism, the global expansion of freedom through technology and travel, and the global expansion of human dysfunctions through the breakdown of the family, we are facing the greatest human rights crisis of all time and a perfect storm of evil. Both hypocrisy and evil depend on lies. Hypocrisy is a lie in deeds rather than in words. And evil always uses lies to cover its oppressions. Only with truth can we stand up to deception and manipulation. For all who hate hypocrisy, care for justice and human dignity, and are prepared to fight evil, truth is the absolute requirement.power games. Without truth, the precious gift of human reason and freedom becomes license and all human relationships lose the bonding element of trust that is binding at their heart. We then as followers of Christ are unashamed to stand before the world as servants and guardians of a high view of truth, both for our Lord’s sake but also for the highest endeavors of humanity.

SIXTH AND LASTLY, ONLY A HIGH VIEW OF TRUTH WILL HELP OUR GROWTH AND OUR TRANSFORMATION IN CHRIST.
Just as Abraham was called to walk before the Lord, so are we called to follow the way of Jesus. Not just to believe the truth or to know and defend the truth, but to so live in truth that truth may be part of our innermost beings, that in some imperfect way we become people of truth. So let there be no uncertainty from this congress, as followers of Christ and as evangelicals. If we do not stand for truth, this congress might as well stop here. Shame on those western Christians who casually neglect or scornfully deny what our Lord declared, what the Scriptures defend, and what many brothers and sisters would rather die than deny: that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
Let us say with the great German reformer, as he said of truth in regard to the evil one, “One little word will fell him.” Let us demonstrate with our brother the great Russian novelist and dissident, “One word of truth outweighs the entire world.” If faith is not true, it would be false even if the whole world believed it. If our faith is true, it would be true even if the whole world were against it. So let the conviction ring out from this conference. We worship and serve the God of truth and humbly and resolutely, we seek to live as people of truth. Here we still stand, so help us God.
As evangelicals we are people of the good news, but may we also always be people of truth, worthy of the God of truth. God is true. God can be trusted in all situations. Have faith in God. Have no fear. Hold fast to truth. And may God be with us all.
Os Guinness is senior fellow of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

2015-08-26T06:59:00.002-07:00

Formation Of Long Term Memory - The SOWER AND THE SEED - 4-Types of Listeners

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Written by Dr Caroline Leaf.

As we form long term memory, the structure of the brain is changed, right down to the cellular, molecular and even the level of quantum physics. Here we shall examine how long term memory is formed at the level of cells and molecules.

The reason it takes about 63 days for habit formation is because habit formation depends on long term memories which goes through a process to be fully established [1]. It takes time for the cellular and molecular structures to be fully formed.

As we learn, nerve cells (neurons) fire and release neurotransmitters in the small gaps (synapses) between them and other neurons, which cause them to also fire. These neurotransmitters therefore relay the electrical impulse from one neuron to the next neuron across the synapse between them. As we continue to learn, this connection (synapse) gets stronger chemically and structurally making it easier for the impulse to be relayed and therefore nerve networks to be established [2]. This is short term memory.

However, research is now showing memory is not just shown in strengthened synapses, but also by intracellular changes in microtubules. Microtubules were once thought to be merely cell scaffolding- now it is realized that they actually form the 'brain' of the cell. In fact the microtubule network in the dendrites have been likened to mini-computers [3].

As we learn a molecule called, CAMK 2, is activated in the dendrite [4]. CAMK 2 has been nick-named the 'nanopoodle' because of its molecular shape. As we persist in learning, activated CAMK 2 'walks' on the mircrotubules depositing phosphate groups thereby imprinting memory in the dendritic mini-computers [5]. As this process of memory imprinting continues, the dendritic spines, which form part of the synapse, changes shape- from a bump, then a lollipop, and eventually to an umbrella shape [6].

Microtubules have even been implicated in how consciousness is expressed through in the brain by a process of quantum computing operating at fantastic speeds of 10 to the power of 27 operations per second for the whole brain [7].

As long term memory is fully established in our brains, our thoughts become automatized into habits . It is then that God's word is firmly 'implanted' and can 'fully save our souls' (James 1:21) leading to godly behavior (Matthew 7:20) and life giving words from our mouths (Matthew 12:34).

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References

1. Mol Brain. 2012 May 14;5:14. The molecular biology of memory: cAMP, PKA, CRE, CREB-1, CREB-2, and CPEB. Kandel ER. Nature. 2000 Aug 17;406(6797):722-6. Fear memories require protein synthesis in the amygdala for reconsolidation after retrieval.Nader K, Schafe GE, Le Doux JE. Nature. 2013 Nov 7;503(7474):115-20. Dendritic spikes enhance stimulus selectivity in cortical neurons in vivo. Smith SL, Smith IT, Branco T, Häusser M. Nature. 2015 Jan 8;517(7533):200-4. Calcium transient prevalence across the dendritic arbour predicts place field properties. Sheffield ME, Dombeck DA. Fodor, J. The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT/Bradford, 1983. Science. 1999 Nov 26;286(5445):1745-9. Building neural representations of habits. Jog MS, Kubota Y, Connolly CI, Hillegaart V, Graybiel AM. How do habits guide behavior? Perceived and actual triggers of habits in daily life. Neal, DT; Wood, W; Labrecque, JS; Lally, P; (2012) How do habits guide behavior? Perceived and actual triggers of habits in daily life. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY , 48 (2) 492 - 498. European Journal of Social Psychology. How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. Phillippa Lally, Cornelia H. M. van Jaarsveld, Henry W. W. Potts and Jane Wardle .Article first published online: 16 JUL 2009 Br J Gen Pract. 2012 Dec;62(605):664-6. Making health habitual: the psychology of 'habit-formation' and general practice. Gardner B, Lally P, Wardle J.

2. Physiol Rev. 2004 Jan;84(1):87-136. Long-term potentiation and memory. Lynch MA. Mol Brain. 2012 May 14;5:14. The molecular biology of memory: cAMP, PKA, CRE, CREB-1, CREB-2, and CPEB. Kandel ER.

3. University of North Carolina School of Medicine. (2013, October 27). Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 22, 2015 fromwww.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131027185027.htm Spencer L. Smith, Ikuko T. Smith, Tiago Branco, Michael Häusser. Dendritic spikes enhance stimulus selectivity in cortical neurons in vivo. Nature

4. Nature. 2009 Mar 19;458(7236):299-304. Activation of CaMKII in single dendritic spines during long-term potentiation. Lee SJ, Escobedo-Lozoya Y, Szatmari EM, Yasuda R.

5. PLoS Comput Biol. 2012;8(3):e1002421. Cytoskeletal signaling: is memory encoded in microtubule lattices by CaMKII phosphorylation? Craddock TJ, Tuszynski JA, Hameroff S.

6. Magic Trees of the Mind: How to Nuture your Child's Intelligence, Creativity, and Healthy Emotions from Birth Through Adolescence k – January 1, 1999 by Marian Diamond, Janet Hopson. Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2007 Nov;88(4):445-50. Epub 2007 Aug 27. Morphological changes in dendritic spines of Purkinje cells associated with motor learning. Lee KJ, Jung JG, Arii T, Imoto K, Rhyu IJ.

7. Biol Phys. 2010 Jan; 36(1): 53–70. Published online 2009 Jun 4. A critical assessment of the information processing capabilities of neuronal microtubules using coherent excitations Travis John Adrian Craddock and Jack A. Tuszynski Phys Life Rev. 2014 Mar;11(1):39-78. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2013.08.002. Epub 2013 Aug 20. Consciousness in the universe: a review of the 'Orch OR' theory. Hameroff S, Penrose R.

Is African Charismatic Christianity a Counterfeit?

2015-05-20T16:55:00.001-07:00

For the last several weeks, I have been asked for my response to an article posted on the Grace to You website by Conrad Mbewe, pastor of the Kabwata Baptist Church in Zambia and one of the speakers at Pastor John MacArthur’s upcoming Strange Fire conference. According to the article, which is entitled “Why Is the Charismatic Movement Thriving in Africa?” this movement is not a powerful visitation of the Holy Spirit. Rather, “We need to sound the warning that this is not Christianity.”
Not Christianity? Really?
Now, had Pastor Mbewe said, “I praise God for the wonderful things that He is doing throughout Africa by His Spirit, but there are serious errors that need to be addressed,” I would have said, "Amen," to many of his concerns. In fact, charismatic leaders in Africa are addressing these problems as well.
Unfortunately, Pastor Mbewe, just like many other anti-charismatic leaders, fails to see the extraordinary forest because of some very bad trees.
He distinguishes the modern charismatic movement in Africa from “the old conservative form of Pentecostalism once represented by the Assemblies of God churches,” claiming that the new movement is spreading like wildfire because it “has not challenged the African religious worldview but has instead adopted it.”
But this is a gross overstatement. Rather, as noted by J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Ph.D., professor of contemporary African Christianity and Pentecostal/charismatic theology in Africa at the Trinity Theological Seminary, Accra, Ghana, “Pentecostalism is a response to ... cerebral Christianity and wherever it has appeared the movement has defined itself in terms of the recovery of the experiential aspects of the faith by demonstrating the power of the Spirit to infuse life, and the ability of the living presence of Jesus Christ to save from sin and evil.
“The ministries of healing and deliverance have thus become some of the most important expressions of Christianity in African Pentecostalism. Much of the worldviews underlying the practice of healing and deliverance, especially the belief in mystical causality, resonates with African philosophical thoughts.”
As expressed to me by evangelist Daniel Kolenda, Reinhard Bonnke’s successor, “The Western brand of stale, cold, theoretic and purely cerebral Christianity that Africans have been offered by many of the [Western] evangelical denominations is laughable to them. For Africans, their faith must have real-world consequences or it is worthless.”
Put another way, since Africans see the spiritual realm and natural realm as one, and since they don’t need to be convinced about the reality of demonic spirits, if Jesus is really the Savior, then He also saves from sickness and demonic powers.
At the same time, Pastor Mbewe is absolutely right that many traditional, worldly practices and mindsets have been incorporated into African charismatic Christianity. What he fails to mention, however, is that some of these same errors are found in African evangelical churches as well—although, to be sure, the vast majority of evangelical churches in Africa practice the spiritual gifts as well—and, as noted by Kolenda, “Many of those who are speaking the loudest against these heresies are the Pentecostals and charismatics!”
What, then, are some of the most serious abuses? Pastor Mbewe claims that in “the African Charismatic circles, the ‘man of God’ has replaced the witchdoctor,” endued with special powers and breaking through the barriers of the demonic world and ancestral spirits, which “is also why the heresy of generation curses has become so popular.”
Although somewhat overstated, this is a real problem, and so when the people are not experiencing divine blessing, they run to the “man of God” to pray for them, giving these leaders a stranglehold over the people. It is the man of God who can bring the “breakthrough,” because of which, Pastor Mbewe points out elsewhere, this form of Christianity threatens the important New Testament teaching of the priesthood of every believer.
Another charismatic minister involved in Bible school training in several African nations pointed out to me that “the preachers started to live like kings while the people that attend the churches live in abject poverty. Being a preacher became an occupation, not a divine calling. And now some even have private jets whilst their people are burying their dead because they couldn’t afford a doctor.”
But to repeat yet again, these abuses are being addressed by many charismatic leaders as well, and they are the loud, ugly, glaring exceptions rather than the general rule.
They should absolutely be addressed and exposed and corrected, but they should not be taken as an indictment of African charismatic Christianity as a whole, God forbid, nor should they distract from what God is doing in Africa. (Remember that Paul didn’t reject what the Spirit was doing among the Corinthians. Rather, he praised them for excelling in the gifts and then corrected the errors in their midst.)
As for the so-called “heresy of generation curses,” this teaching can obviously be exaggerated and exploited, but the Scriptures do teach that generational curses exist (see, for example, 1 Samuel 2:27-33), and in a continent like Africa, which is full of ancestor worship, it is not farfetched to think that certain demonic, generational curses need to be broken off of people’s lives. Is it right to brand this a heresy?
There’s something else we need to consider, and that is the extent to which we have baptized Christianity into our own American culture, equating size and prestige with spiritual success and running the church like a business. (Another distinctly American Christian error is mistaking patriotism for the kingdom of God.)
And just as some African charismatics have morphed the witchdoctor into the “man of God,” we have morphed the megachurch pastor into the CEO and superstar, the almost infallible guide whose every word is to be followed and who does most of our scriptural thinking for us. So much for the priesthood of every believer! (It has been pointed out that preachers in the Reformation, wearing robes and ascending their lofty pulpits, did not sufficiently break with the Roman Catholic model of ministry.)
Turning back to Africa, Pastor Mbewe writes that “prayer in the modern Charismatic movement in Africa is literally a fight. In fact, the people praying are called ‘prayer warriors’.” And that’s why so much time is spent in the prayer meetings rebuking Satan and demons in Jesus’ name, with people shouting and praying fervently. Yes, he writes, “This is nothing more than the African traditional religious worldview sprinkled with a thin layer of Christianity.”
Again, it is certainly a serious error to focus on Satan as much as (or more than!) God or to be more demon conscious than Jesus conscious (even remotely so), but it is also true that there is a time for intimate fellowship with God as well as a time for fervent, even warring prayer, in keeping with verses that speak of spiritual warfare and of striving in prayer (see, for example, Ephesians 6:10-19; Romans 15:30; Luke 22:44; and 2 Corinthians 10:3-4). And what’s wrong with the concept of “prayer warriors”?
Pastor Mbewe also claims that the main leaders in the movement “survive on a few, well-worn, tortured verses. ... There is absolutely no effort to properly exegete Scripture. Rather, by chanting phrases and making people drop under some trance, in witchdoctor fashion, they are holding sway over the popular mind.” He wonders why others are not seeing this or sounding the alarm, stating, “For the love of crowds, we have allowed African traditional religion to enter the church through the back door.”
And so he states emphatically, “This is not Christianity. It does not lead to heaven. It is a thin coating over the religion that has been on African soil for time immemorial, which Christianity was meant to replace. We have lost the Christian faith while we are holding the Bible in our hands and using some of its words. This is really sad.”
As for the “men of God” who lay hands on the congregants every week, he says they “are imposters and must be rejected with the contempt they deserve.”
Really, it is blanket statements like this that are so dangerous and inaccurate, leading readers to make their own, equally erroneous statements, such as: “How tragic that the church people of Africa have been duped into apostasy.” Or this: “I think the charismatic movement should not waste their time debating cessationists, but rather take the time to fix the devastating effects they have had on Africa as a whole.” (These comments were posted on the Charisma News and Grace to You websites.)
In reality, as noted in a Pew Research report, “The share of the population that is Christian in sub-Saharan Africa climbed from 9 percent in 1910 to 63 percent in 2010.”
This is absolutely extraordinary and represents one of the greatest advances of the gospel in history, and almost all of this growth is charismatic in nature. Yet because of some abuses, many of which reflect the immaturity of the movement, this glorious work of God that has resulted in tens of millions of Africans coming to faith in Jesus is being rejected and scorned.
As for the very real weaknesses that do exist, as one of my colleagues heavily involved in African ministry expressed, how much better it would have been had Pastor Mbewe recognized, “If we have the gift of teaching, we should lovingly serve those who need it, instead of alienating them when they are giving God the best they know, and they have some real strengths too.”
And perhaps we in the West could learn from some of their strengths.
As Kolenda notes, “Some of the finest, strongest and most sincere Christians I have ever met anywhere in the world are in Africa. I personally know families who have lost family members who gave their lives as martyrs because of their confession of Christ. Many of the Africans Christians that I know have a faith in Christ so strong that it would put most Western Christians to shame. Their faith, humility and love for the Lord is an indictment of the indifference and unbelief so prevalent in the Western church.”
One of my American friends hosted a pastor from Ghana who was visiting for a few weeks, and after attending several church services—after which the people inevitably went out for a meal together—the pastor said, “Now I see why nothing is happening in your churches! You spend all your time feasting; we spend ours praying and fasting.”
Some of the finest students we have ever trained in our ministry schools have been African charismatic believers, marked by their devotion to Jesus, their passion for the lost, their willingness to sacrifice for the gospel, their solid lives of prayer and their hearts for holiness.

As noted by Professor Asamoah-Gyadu, “The foremost theological emphasis of Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity is ... the transformative encounter with God who is holy and who is spirit. In the African context, participants in Pentecostalism keenly testify not only about their new life, but also the transition often made from resorts to traditional religious resources in order to be sincere Christians believing in God alone.”
Jesus is doing the transforming work!
Again, there is no denying that this rapid spread of the gospel throughout much of the continent of Africa bears all the marks of a new, often immature movement, but rather than rejecting it as un-Christian, God is pleased when we recognize His work and help bring it to maturity.
In the words of Kolenda, “If we are going to point out the negatives of the charismatic church in Africa, let’s be fair and also point out the many, many positives. Without the ‘charismatic’ church in Africa, Islam would have taken the continent over and there would be very little gospel influence at present. Waves of salvation have swept across entire nations,” and millions have responded to a clear gospel message of salvation through repentance and faith in Jesus alone.
And so, while it is likely that those attending the Strange Fire conference who hear Pastor Mbewe speak will come away with an entirely negative view of African charismatic Christianity, the perspective of Professor Asamoah-Gyadu is far more accurate: “African Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity is complex. It is alive. It is thriving. And it must be a major focus for Christians around the world who are involved in evangelism, missions and the state of the global Church.”
In sum, quoting Kolenda once more, “Many of these African Christians are the first generation of their tribe in history to become Christians. They will have to work through many traditional, tribal and cultural issues (just as our ancestors did in the West when the gospel first came to them), but we should not underestimate the power of the gospel and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. We should thank God for the unprecedented harvest that is taking place and continue to contend for the integrity of the gospel.”
Can I hear an amen?
Michael Brown is author of The Real Kosher Jesus and host of the nationally syndicated talk radio show The Line of Fire on the Salem Radio Network. He is also president of FIRE School of Ministry and director of the Coalition of Conscience. Follow him at AskDrBrown on

SPIRITUAL WARFARE: COMBATING DECEPTION

2015-03-25T09:31:00.001-07:00

The reason Satan tries to deceive us, is to get us to believe something that is simply not true. Believers who are ignorant of God's Word are more likely to be deceived and if they begin to accept Satan's lies as truth, the devil will start to build a stronghold in their minds. A stronghold is an incorrect thinking pattern based upon error and lies that a person has received as truth.

For example, many believers are feeling guilty and condemned because of their past. They feel dirty and unworthy to approach their heavenly Father or have a relationship with Him. The devil has setup this stronghold by continually reminding the person how badly they messed up. He keeps reminding them of their sins which should have been long forgotten. What happens? The person begins to see their sins as greater than the blood of Jesus! How Satanic of those demons to paint such a picture in a person's mind!! If God has chosen to make us new creations, so that our pasts are no longer associated with us, then what are we doing thinking about them?? What is greater... your past sins or the Blood of the precious lamb of God without spot nor blemish?

The devil has convinced many of God's children to believe in a lie that is making them feel just downright defeated and hopeless! Is that the way a child of the Almighty God should be thinking or feeling? Especially after the very Son of God has shed His blood to remove those sins?? Good grief!

Another common way the devil tries to deceive us is getting us to see God incorrectly. Satan wants God's people to see their heavenly Father as a cruel dictator that is cold and distant. Why? Because it will keep them from drawing close to Him and having the intimate relationship that God so deeply longs to have with them! Many people fear God so much that they can't even get near Him! God's Word is clear that love casts out fear... the two are opposites:
1 John 4:18, "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love."

It is true that we are to 'fear' the Lord, but that's a different kind of fear. That's a respectful attitude and reverence for the Lord. A person who properly fears the Lord isn't going to be out mocking His Holy name, but they will not be afraid of Him either.

As you can see, many believers are deceived and fall into a thinking mode that makes them feel hopeless and condemned... all because they accepted error as truth and allowed a stronghold to form in their minds! The devil has fed them a lie that their heavenly Father is cold, cruel and distant... and because they accepted that lie, their feelings reflect the error.

God's Word clearly tells us to watch out, because the devil would love to get our minds muddied up concerning our relationship with God through deception:

2 Corinthians 11:3, "But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled (deceived) Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."

How do we counter this weapon of deception?

First, let me ask you this. What is deception based upon? Error! Lies! Untrue assumptions! How do you counter a lie? With the truth! Where do you find the truth? God's Word!

The devil says, "God doesn't love you anymore since you had that adultery!"

God's Word says, "You are loved for who you are, not for what you've done. For even before you accepted Jesus at all, Christ gave His life for you! Just turn back to your heavenly Father, repent of your sins, for He longs to have your relationship with Him restored!"

1 John 2:1, "...if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."

The devil replies, "Yeah well, God may forgive you, but you're relationship with Him will never be the same!"

God's Word replies, "God will not only forgive you, but He longs (deeply desires) to be gracious to you! Your heavenly Father wants to restore the precious relationship that you once had with Him!"
Isaiah 30:18, "Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you..." (NASB)

Isaiah 1:18, "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

Stop meditating on the deception the devil has been feeding you, and start meditating on God's Word. You will begin to tear down strongholds and as your mind is renewed by the Word of God, your feelings will reflect those changes.

(copyrighted (c) 2003-2008 Robert L. and its licensors)

2015-02-26T09:30:00.000-08:00

Part One cont.
How Psychics Get Information About the People Who Visit Them by Perfectly Natural Means, While People Are Assuming They Got It Through Psychic Power

But whether deliberate or not, psychics gain information they can deduce things about the client from by using a number of perfectly natural techniques. A lot of psychics are aware that the things people are likely to want insight into fall into a very few main areas: relationship issues, career and financial worries, and health. They can use that knowledge to say they can sense the person visiting them has, or has had in the past, or will have in the future, three main areas of concern, but there's only time to talk about one. They'll ask the customer to choose which one they'd like to talk about, and immediately the customer answers, they have information about what's concerning the customer. They can guess more about the customer by thinking about what's most likely to be concerning someone of their age, ethnicity, class and financial circumstances, which they can get some idea of by looking for clues such as the way the customer dresses, the kind of car they have, whether they're wearing jewellery and what kind of quality it is, and things like that.) They guess at what kind of problems someone of the kind they assess the customer as being is likely to have. For instance, a young person might be more likely to have career concerns and an old person is likely to be concerned about declining health. A middle-aged person might well be concerned about the behaviour of their teenage children, and so on.

The psychic will look at the customer's body language to get clues as to whether they're making good guesses about what's bothering them or not, and how much the customer wants them to carry on talking about the thing they've mentioned. Often the customer will tell the psychic how close they're getting and give clues by talking a bit about the things the psychic's brought up. If what the psychic says isn't relevant to the customer's concerns, they'll be able to pick up on that quickly by the customer's facial expression, eye movements and so on. They'll use those clues to tell them to change the subject a bit. When they're closer to what's concerning the customer, they'll be able to pick up on that by the customer's facial expressions and so on.

So soon, they can be guided by all the clues to say things that are highly relevant to the customer. The customer will likely assume they're doing it by psychic ability, even reading their mind. And if they've fallen for the claims the psychic has made about what they can do, and they're awed by the psychic's charisma and the surroundings that will have been purposely given a mystical air, then they'll often let their guard down and take the psychic into their confidence, telling them things about what's bothering them.

Some people who were very clear about the fact they weren't psychics have used the techniques psychics use and have impressed people with their accuracy, convincing them they were real psychics before they told them the truth.

Other techniques psychics can use to gain information they can pass off as having known all along, or to impress the customer or make them want to come back for more readings, can include:

Finding out something about the person before the appointment for the psychic reading, perhaps via a friend, and pretending to be revealing it as new information they couldn't possibly have known by natural means;
Making things happen to impress the client that are really done by trickery. For instance, some might claim to be able to move objects by the power of their mind. They might pretend to prove it by, for example, holding out their hand with a match stick in it and holding their hand still while the match stick moves around. The trick can be done if there's a little nail hidden in the matchstick and their hand's near a magnet.
Scaring the client into coming back for more readings, for instance by getting them to spit into a glass, then secretly adding some black dye to it to make it look like blood and telling the client the fact it's turned to blood means they're cursed and they need to pay money to have the curse removed.

That doesn't mean all psychics are deliberate frauds. They don't all use deliberate trickery such as making objects move in natural ways and claiming they're using the power of their mind to move them or it's being done supernaturally. Many just use the techniques of picking up clues from what the customer says and their body language, and making some guesses, and genuinely believe they're using a psychic gift. It would be wrong to say that no one ever genuinely does have one, because no one can be sure. But science has never found any evidence for psychic power really existing. And there have been former psychics who have said they eventually realised what they were really doing.

How Scientific Tests of Psychic Phenomena Have Never Found Any Genuine Extra-Sensory Ability

A lot of studies have been done into whether psychic phenomena exist for over 100 years. But no evidence that it works has ever been found. Some studies have at first seemed to show that things like clairvoyance, telepathy and the like really happen, but later it's been discovered that deliberate fraud took place. Either that, or the study was badly designed, so they got results that they thought were evidence of psychic phenomena, when really they were evidence of something entirely different and they didn't realise. For instance, things that allow people to cheat can be overlooked. Or the success rate a person could have purely by chance could be underestimated, so a higher success rate than that gets put down to genuine psychic ability when it isn't.

Examples of Experiments of Psychic Ability That Seemed Genuine at First But Weren't

One of the first people to conduct experiments of telepathy and clairvoyance was called J B Rhine, in the 1930s. People had previously set out to debunk the claims of people calling themselves spiritualist mediums but who used trickery to make people think they were conjuring up the dead in séances. But this man had a laboratory in a university where he did experiments of psychic ability. He asked several people to try to tell him which of five symbols - a cross, a circle, a rectangle, a star or wavy lines - was on the concealed side of various cards he took from a pack. He compared the number of correct answers each person gave with the number he thought they could be expected to give if they were just guessing.

Sometimes it was telepathy he tried to test that way, by having someone looking at the image and trying to send it via thought waves to another person. Sometimes he tried to test clairvoyance, by putting a card face-down on the table without anyone having seen it and seeing if people could tell what it was.

He tested a lot of people, and concluded there was strong evidence that telepathy and clairvoyance existed. At first, what he'd done seemed like good scientific evidence, since it had been done under conditions that would supposedly eliminate the possibility of cheating. But as more details came to light about the tests, people began to discover there had been problems with it:

Some people who'd been tested seemed more gifted than others. But people began to suspect they were just better at cheating. It turned out that some of the people being tested had been allowed to shuffle and handle the cards themselves before the experiment, which would enable people good at looking for clues about what was where to spot them. One person in particular was good at doing that and had an impressive success rate, ... except when people other than the experimenter were watching.

Also, the cards weren't all manufactured to the highest quality, so an observant test subject could tell what some of them were by things like warped edges, spots on the backs, or other imperfections. The symbols on some of them could even be read through their backs under certain lighting conditions.

Also, there were questions about how effective shuffling is at really mixing up all the cards anyway. It can be easy to miss some parts of the pack or not to do that good a job so they're not in all that much of a different order from what they were before.

Because of the strong doubts over the reliability of those studies, they're not often mentioned nowadays as evidence for clairvoyance and telepathy. But no unquestionably strong evidence has ever been found by other studies either.

After Rhine's experiments, a set of experiments was done by a different person, mathematician G S Soal. They seemed to have been designed better. People claiming to have telepathic ability were tested to see if they could tell what a number of pictures were when someone tried to send them via their thoughts. At first, he failed to find any evidence of telepathy. A lot of people were disappointed. Then it was suggested that perhaps there was a bit of a delay in people picking up telepathic signals, so the pictures they thought they were being sent were really the ones sent the previous time. He looked and said he'd found a couple of people who were gifted after all. He tested them lots more times, and concluded that some people had telepathic ability after all. Because he had previously failed to find evidence of telepathic ability, people assumed he must be an honest unbiased researcher who really must have found evidence of it this time. For years not much could be said to challenge the conclusions of the research, since it seemed to have been designed well. It was considered strong evidence by many. But eventually it came to light that the mathematician had altered the records to make it look as if people were making a lot more correct guesses than could be expected by chance when they weren't really. Eventually, it was discovered beyond all doubt that the records had been altered.

Sometimes the design of an experiment seems to have been good and no obvious fraud has been committed. But one experiment on its own can't be seen as proof of anything, since there's always the possibility there was some kind of cheating, or there might have been mistakes in the design of the experiment after all. So experimenters need to explain in detail how their experiment was done, so others can try it. Only if the design of the experiment was indeed good so as to eliminate the possibility of cheating or mistakes, and if several others get similarly impressive results when they try it, can evidence of anything significant be said to have been found.
By Diana Holbourn

2015-02-26T09:23:00.000-08:00

Part One
The Tricks Many People who Claim to be Psychic Use

Introduction - Why People Need to Know About False Claims of Psychic Ability and Other Supernatural Power

It seems most people believe psychic power exists. It can seem exciting and fun to visit psychics or for a person to test their own psychic ability. And people can believe they'll receive comfort and care and words of wisdom when they go to see a psychic, hoping they'll be able to speak with a relative who died or be able to get some insight into their future so they can prepare for what's coming. They may well get compassion and words of wisdom, but if they do, the wisdom is likely to come from the person's natural store of it, not from somewhere mysterious or supernatural.
It's impossible to know for sure that supernatural help won't be on offer; but people need to be wary, because unfortunately, many people have been conned or frightened by people who claim to be psychic, because, for instance, they have scared them by telling them they can sense that a curse has been put on them, only to ask for more and more money to remove it till they're causing the person financial problems, or they have told them things that caused them to be frightened all their lives, such as that they'll die fairly young. Those people can be full of regrets over blighted years if they live longer than they thought they would.
Reputable psychics will not do things like that to people. But there are lots of other things they do that lead to people coming away impressed with the accuracy of what they believe to be the supernatural power of the psychic, when in reality it wasn't any such thing but a clever technique that almost anyone could do if they learned it, by perfectly natural means. And people's lives can still be influenced, not always for the better. For instance, there are psychic hotlines where people with serious problems phone up and spend a lot of money talking to someone, hoping to get advice that's of a higher quality than they could get elsewhere because it has supernatural insight. But they can come away with no better advice than they could have got from a friend, and it might possibly be advice to do something that really isn't a good idea, which they're more likely to take because they believe it was given with supernatural authority.
It's because people claiming to have psychic ability can have such undue influence over people's lives that people need to understand what tricks or techniques they can use to gain people's confidence. The more they know about them, the less likely they will be to fall for them.

Bogus Insights Into Personality That Can Fool People Into Believing the One Giving Them Must Have Special Insight or Power

One reason people can easily be fooled by psychics is because they can say things that sound very specific and accurate about an individual's personality, while in reality they're things that are common to most people. Tests have been done where each person in a large group of people has been given a personality profile, supposedly of themselves, and asked to rate how accurate it is. A high percentage of people have rated it accurately and been impressed with the insight or psychic knowledge of the person describing them, when in reality everyone was given the same personality profile, not designed for them at all but something that's always used on tests like that. It was first used by a psychologist called Bertram Forer. The tendency for people to think it must have been specially written for them and to be impressed is now called the Forer effect or the Barnum effect. The personality profile says:

You have a strong need for other people to like you and for them to admire you. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. You have a great deal of unused energy which you have not turned to your advantage. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You pride yourself on being an independent thinker and do not accept other opinions without satisfactory proof. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.

People tend to think the statement gives deep insight into their personality, but in reality, most people have those personality traits to some extent. Besides, there are enough claims making up the description that some are almost bound to be true.

How Psychics Can Sound Very Accurate So People Can Think They're Getting Information Via Psychic Power When They're Not

One reason is that people claiming to be psychic will often have memorised a set of psychic readings that sound as if they were designed for an individual but in reality they're true of lots of people. They'll recite different ones according to what kind of person they're talking to; for instance, a wealthy old man will get one that's quite different from one a teenage girl still working out what to do with her life would get. And they'll modify the readings according to what they find out about each individual. So they can sound accurate, and a customer visiting a psychic can put that down to the psychic ability of the person they're visiting.

Another reason people can be impressed with psychic readings is that people tend to forget things that were said but which weren't all that relevant to them, and give the psychic the benefit of the doubt when they say something inaccurate, assuming that since communication methods between one world and another probably aren't perfect, information can't be expected to be accurate all the time. But at the same time they'll often believe it is accurate when something worrying comes up, such as if a psychic says they have a curse on them and they need to pay money to have it removed.

If a psychic says something that either sounds accurate or worrying, it'll stand out more in the memory, so a person can forget that the psychic only got one thing right in all the 200 things they said. If it surprises them because it seems so accurate, the person can still go away thinking they've seen a psychic who has accurate insights into their personality or makes accurate predictions or knows things they couldn't know any other way.

The psychic might not even have been accurate at all without a number of clues from the person visiting them. That's because if a psychic says something that sounds a little bit relevant, such as saying they're picking up a communication from someone in the spirit world whose name is John, or perhaps someone whose name has the same first letter, people will excitedly or helpfully try to help the psychic along. They might do it by saying there's a James, for example. Then the psychic will refer to the person as James from then on, and the person who helped them along might forget they did it, misremembering that the psychic got in touch with their relative James.

Also, the psychic might suspect he was the father of the person visiting them. But to avoid getting it wrong, they might ask that in more of a questioning tone. The person helping them along might think it was close and tell them he was their uncle. So the psychic has got accurate information from making a few guesses that they didn't pick up on their own. But if they refer to the spirit they're supposedly in contact with as the person's uncle James from then on, the person might forget they gave the psychic a few hints along the way, and misremember that the psychic accurately guessed they'd had an uncle James who died. That's especially if they want to believe it's true because the thought of their uncle James being still around and allright comforts them. They won't think about what happened as critically as they would if they were told something by someone they didn't want to believe in.

Accounts told by people who've visited psychics of how impressively accurate the psychic was shouldn't be taken at face value, no matter how sincere the person talking about them is, for these very reasons and more; they might simply not realise how they were taken in, and the psychic might have seemed so nice they can't believe the psychic would defraud them.

Also, they might, for instance, come to be convinced the psychic told them very specific details about their future, when what really happened was that the psychic said something that was actually fairly vague, but the person looked for meaning in it for some time afterwards, found something it applied to, became convinced the psychic was talking about that, and from then on, misremembers the psychic as having remarkably predicted that that very thing would happen. Sometimes, a psychic will actually tell them that what they say might seem a bit vague but it's up to the client to work out in the coming days or months how it fits into their lives. They can also say that their gift doesn't work that well and whether it does can depend on how receptive the client is; so if they fail, the implication is that the psychic isn't the one to blame; the client just wasn't focusing hard enough; it's not that the psychic's a fraud.

Often though, the psychic won't be trying to defraud a client; they will be picking up cues from their body language, descriptions of their circumstances and so on, and guessing things by intuition that they assume to be coming to them from a psychic gift. When they analyse what they've been doing, they can be as unhappy and embarrassed as anyone else when they realise they're not actually that accurate, they got a lot of their information from their client's clues, and they took credit for revealing things the client actually told them, - perhaps because they were so pleased they said something accurate and believed in their gift so much they forgot they weren't the one who first mentioned it.

Also, sometimes a "psychic" can say something remarkably accurate just by chance. It can seem really impressive, looking back, but if the person who heard it listened to the whole meeting over again, they might realise it was one accurate thing out of a lot of things that were said that were vague or inaccurate, that they forgot soon afterwards because they didn't seem important so the brain didn't store them.
By Diana Holbourn

2014-12-05T10:04:00.000-08:00

THE DANGER OF CHRISTIAN CELEBRITY:

The world doesn't need more Christian celebrities. Neither does the church. (Lightstock)

I have been back in the USA for over a year now. After living in South Asia and Africa for almost 10 years collectively, I'm noticing things I probably didn't before. I'm older, not nearly as starry-eyed and have had opportunity to see the beautiful and the broken in so many places as I have traveled.

There is a trend in some parts of our Western Christianity that is dangerous and counter-productive, especially as it has recently been amplified by social media's explosion. It mirrors the "cult of celebrity" in popular culture where twitter feeds dictate reality and reality TV is anything but real.

Let me preface what I am about to say by saying there have always been leaders who were well known in their day within the church and recognized by history as influential. I am not talking about being well known in and of itself.

In the last few years as the selfie has become a social media staple, it seems the goal has shifted even in ministry to becoming well known, as well as having a more powerful platform, a bigger ministry, a wider-reaching Facebook presence and a broader personal branding empire ... for Jesus' sake of course. #allforhim (I couldn't resist.)

History's "famous" leaders—and many of today's—became known simply as a by-product of their fixed gazes following Christ, the only famous one, and paying unimaginably high prices to do so. Being "well known" was never the goal. Being known well by Him was.

I've been hearing a subtle shift (and sometimes not-so-subtle) in some emerging leaders away from sacrifice and servanthood to savvy staging and success, from empathy to empire, from celebration to celebrity. "I want to be famous for Jesus so I can influence many."

Celebrity—not to be confused with having a broad influence as a leader—has no place in the church. Period. It is dangerous and subversive to the gospel itself. Celebrity puts leaders on pedestals (usually not of their own making) and then crucifies them when they fall off or fail to meet the image others have created for them. Celebrity creates unreachable "guru-status" with special inside knowledge or gifting and by default makes that gifting seem unattainable to the masses.

Jesus Himself rejected man's pedestals and crowns, instead choosing a cross.

The gospel is a celebration of His strength in our weakness, His faithfulness in our failures, His beauty in our brokenness and His victory in places of our defeat.

Are we raising up a generation truly hungry for Jesus even if He takes them to a place of utter obscurity where they never see a stage or receive a speaking invitation? If they never become a "revivalist" or are never recognized as an apostle? If they never sign a book deal or garner 1000 fans on Facebook? The ultimate goal must be to hear His "Well done" when the race is finished.

We create the benchmark of success for the next generation by what we celebrate in our own. That is why "Christian celebrity" is possibly one of the greatest dangers to the future of the Western Church.

Let's begin to intentionally cultivate celebration and not celebrity, where Jesus is celebrated in each of our lives, whether we are known throughout continents or simply to a few immediate friends. Where we celebrate the truth that everything He paid for on the cross is available to every single person who believes and that there are no glass ceilings in God's Kingdom.

The church that lives out this kind of celebration becomes dangerous to darkness and unstoppable in His love that never fails.

Michele Perry is the founder of Create61 and River Tree Creative based in Jacksonville, Florida. She is an artist & author who spent the last seven years in an African war zone as a founder of an international development and ministry base with a children's rescue home. You can find her online at BravelyYou.com.

IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE, IF YOU BELIEVE IN GOD YOU WILL BE HEALTHIER!

2014-11-18T10:09:00.001-08:00

Written by Dr. Caroline Leaf

Over the last few years research has been showing that a belief in a loving and benevolent God has many health benefits. A large proportion of these studies have been done in the USA but now in a large Norwegian longitudinal health study called HUNT, researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) were able to find a clear relationship between time spent in church and lower blood pressure in both women and men.

It was initially thought that the large cultural and religious differences between the US and Norway would make it difficult to apply findings from the US to Norway. However, despite these differences, and the fact that only 4% of Norwegians (as opposed to the 40% of Americans) go to church on a weekly basis, the findings of the health benefits of believing in God were almost identical: those who were religiously active were healthier than those who were not religiously active!

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Other research shows that those who attend church were 30% less likely to suffer depression and those who believe God have a sense of purpose and are 70% less likely to be depressed.

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For many, religious activity changes between childhood and adulthood, and a new study finds this could affect one’s mental health. According to Temple University’s Joanna Maselko, Sc.D., women who had stopped being religiously active were more than three times more likely to have suffered generalized anxiety and alcohol abuse/dependence than women who reported always having been active religiously.

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Now a new national study by two Brigham Young University sociologists finds that religious involvement makes teens half as likely to use marijuana. The research showed the protective effect of church and the influence of parents.

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Missouri University health psychology researchers have found that religious and spiritual support improves health outcomes for both men and women who face chronic health conditions. The research showed that both genders may increase their reliance on spiritual and religious resources as they face increased illness or disability.

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Research also shows that religion and spirituality are linked to positive physical and mental health; however, most studies have focused on people with life threatening diseases. A new study from the University of Missouri-Columbia shows that religion helps many individuals with disabilities by enabling them to adjust to their impairments and can give a new meaning to their lives.

a new meaning to their lives.

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More than 20 percent of atheist scientists are spiritual, according to new research from Rice University. Though the general public marries spirituality and religion, the study found that spirituality is a separate idea — one that more closely aligns with scientific discovery — for “spiritual atheist” scientists.

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A dose of God will help medicine. Research shows that many patients do not feel the medical system adequately meets their spiritual needs,” said Cadge. “By shedding light on how religion and spirituality connect to the practice of medicine, this study is a first step toward addressing such needs of patients and their families during a profoundly threatening chapter of life.

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More than half of physicians believe that religion and spirituality have a significant influence on patients’ health, according to a report in the April 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Physicians who are most religious are more likely to interpret the influence of religion and spirituality in positive ways.

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In times of economic distress and plenty, ninety percent of Americans pray, more than half of us once a day or more. We pray for big things—to stay healthy, to keep our jobs, and to strengthen our relationships. And we pray for small things—to find parking spaces and missing items. Some of us are sure God exists and others pray simply to cover the bases.

These are just a few of the studies showing that no matter who we are, what is happening or where we are…we NEED to believe!

BE HEALTHY AND POP THE EVIL!

Did you know all of us can perform brain surgery? Is that possible? Don’t we have to go to medical school and then undergo many extra years of training?

I will teach you in just 21 days.

Let me explain…. As the Holy Spirit convicts us we bring toxic thoughts buried in the non-conscious into consciousness. The conscious thought, represented as a toxic branches (dendrites) in the brain, become changeable. Our mind can then send a series of signals over a 21 day period that literally pops off the toxic branches, ‘pop goes the evil!’.

During this 21 day period we can build a healthy thought represented by healthy branches. To become self sustaining the healthy branches need another 42 days to be established; a total of 63 days. This is how we perform brain surgery on our own brains!

The property of our brains that allow it to change is called ‘neuroplasticity’. We are actually neuroplasticians, this brain surgery at the nano, even the quantum, scale.

I have developed the online 21 day brain detox program to enable help you pop off those toxic branches (thoughts) and build healthy ones. Go to www.21daybraindetox.com.

Watch Episode 5 of my TV Show for more details.

TO watch the TV show 'Switch on Your Brain' or replays of the shows see BROADCAST

CALVINISM, Is It Biblical?

2014-11-06T09:39:00.000-08:00

Question: What is Calvinism and is it biblical? What are the five points of Calvinism?

Answer: The five points of Calvinism can be summarized by the acronym TULIP. T stands for total depravity, U for unconditional election, L for limited atonement, I for irresistible grace, and P for perseverance of the saints. Here are the definitions and Scripture references Calvinists use to defend their beliefs:

Total Depravity - As a result of Adam’s fall, the entire human race is affected; all humanity is dead in trespasses and sins. Man is unable to save himself (Genesis 6:5; Jeremiah 17:9; Romans 3:10-18).

Unconditional Election - Because man is dead in sin, he is unable to initiate a response to God; therefore, in eternity past God elected certain people to salvation. Election and predestination are unconditional; they are not based on man’s response (Romans 8:29-30;9:11; Ephesians 1:4-6, 11-12) because man is unable to respond, nor does he want to.

Limited Atonement - Because God determined that certain ones should be saved as a result of God’s unconditional election, He determined that Christ should die for the elect alone. All whom God has elected and for whom Christ died will be saved (Matthew 1:21; John 10:11; 17:9; Acts 20:28; Romans 8:32; Ephesians 5:25).

Irresistible Grace - Those whom God elected He draws to Himself through irresistible grace. God makes man willing to come to Him. When God calls, man responds (John 6:37, 44; 10:16).

Perseverance of the Saints - The precise ones God has elected and drawn to Himself through the Holy Spirit will persevere in faith. None whom God has elected will be lost; they are eternally secure (John 10:27-29; Romans 8:29-30; Ephesians 1:3-14).

While all these doctrines have a biblical basis, many people reject all or some of them. So-called “four-point Calvinists” accept Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints as biblical doctrines. Man is definitely sinful and incapable of believing in God on his own. God elects people based on His will alone – election is not based on any merit in the person chosen. All those whom God has chosen will come to faith. All those who are truly born-again will persevere in their faith. As for Limited Atonement, however, four-point Calvinists believe that atonement in unlimited, arguing that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, not just for the sins of the elect. “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). Other verses in opposition to limited atonement are John 1:29; 3:16; 1 Timothy 2:6; and 2 Peter 2:1.

The five-point Calvinists, however, see problems with four-point Calvinism. First, they argue, if Total Depravity is true, then Unlimited Atonement cannot possibly be true because, if Jesus died for the sins of every person, then whether or not His death is applicable to an individual depends on whether or not that person “accepts” Christ. But as we have seen from the above description of Total Depravity, man in his natural state has no capacity whatsoever to choose God, nor does he want to. In addition, if Unlimited Atonement is true, then hell is full of people for whom Christ died. He shed His blood in vain for them. To the five-point Calvinist, this is unthinkable. Please note: this article is only a brief summary of the five points of Calvinism. For a more in in-depth look, please visit the following pages: Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints.

Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/calvinism.

Speaking In Tongues

2014-02-06T07:51:00.003-08:00

Speaking in tongues has continued on through the history of the church and reveals why it is not to be forbid even today:
Early Church history reveals this gift as legitimate and being practiced (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossolalia#Church_History_.28A.D._100_to_500.29)

1. For the prophetical gifts remain with us, even to this present time. (Justin Martyr, c.150)
a. Now, it is possible to see amongst us women and men who possess gifts of the Spirit of God. (Justin Martyr, c.150)
2. The early church Fathers also recount the lists of gifts of the Spirit recorded in the New Testament.
a. This is He who places prophets in the Church, instructs teachers, directs tongues, gives powers and healings, does wonderful works, often discrimination of spirits, affords powers of government, suggests counsels, and orders and arranges whatever other gifts there are of charismata; and thus make the Lord's Church everywhere, and in all, perfected and completed. (Novatian, c.200-c.258)
b. For God hath set same in the Church, first apostles...secondly prophets...thirdly teachers...next mighty works, among which are the healing of diseases... and gifts of either speaking or interpreting divers kinds of tongues. Clearly these are the Church's agents of ministry and work of whom the body of Christ consists; and God has ordained them. (Hilary of Poitiers, 360)[49]
c. Let Marcion then exhibit, as gifts of his god, some prophets, such as have not spoken by human sense, but with the Spirit of God, such as have both predicted things to come, and have made manifest the secrets of the heart; let him produce a psalm, a vision, a prayer -- only let it be by the Spirit, in an ecstasy, that is, in a rapture, whenever an interpretation of tongues has occurred to him; let him show to me also, that any woman of boastful tongue in his community has ever prophesied from amongst those specially holy sisters of his. Now all these signs (of spiritual gifts) are forthcoming from my side without any difficulty, and they agree, too, with the rules, and the dispensations, and the instructions of the Creator; therefore without doubt the Christ, and the Spirit, and the apostle, belong severally to my God. Here, then, is my frank avowal for anyone who cares to require it. (Tertullian, c.207)[51]

REPENT AND BELIEVE THE GOSPEL

2014-01-22T08:45:00.003-08:00

Now men today are trusting in the fact that at least one time in their life they prayed a prayer and someone told them they were saved because they were sincere enough. And so in their salvation if you ask them, “Are you saved?” they do not say, “Yes, I am because I am looking unto Jesus and there is mighty evidence giving me assurance of being born again.”

No. They say, “One time in my life I prayed a prayer.”

And they live like devils. But they prayed a prayer. And some of them... I heard of one evangelist who was coaxing a man to do that thing. Finally the man felt so uncomfortable the evangelist said, “Well, I’ll tell you what. I will pray to God for you and if it is what you want to say to God, squeeze my hands. Behold the power of God.”

Decisionism, the idolatry of decisionism. Men think they are going to heaven because they have judged the sincerity of their own decision.

When Paul came to the Church in Corinth he did not say to them, “Look, you are not living like Christians so let’s go back to that one moment in your life when you prayed that prayer and let’s see if you were sincere.”

No, he said this, “Test yourselves, examine yourselves to see if you are in the faith.”

Because I want you to know, my friends, salvation is by faith alone. It is a work of God.
It is a grace upon grace upon grace. But the evidence of conversion is not just your examination of your sincerity at the moment of your conversion. It is the on going fruit in your life. It is the ongoing fruit in your life.

Oh, my dear friends, look what we have done. Isn't a tree known by its fruit?
What 60%, 70% of America thinks it is converted, born again.
We kill how many thousands of babies a day?
We are hated around the world for our immorality.
Yet we are Christian.

And I lay this squarely, the blame, at the feet of the preacher.
~Paul Washer

G.K. Chesterton: It's Not Gay, and It's Not Marriage.

2013-11-18T06:06:00.002-08:00

by Dale Ahlquist

One of the pressing issues of Chesterton’s time was “birth control.” He not only objected to the idea, he objected to the very term because it meant the opposite of what it said. It meant no birth and no control. I can only imagine he would have the same objections about “gay marriage.” The idea is wrong, but so is the name. It is not gay and it is not marriage.

Chesterton was so consistently right in his pronouncements and prophecies because he understood that anything that attacked the family was bad for society. That is why he spoke out against eugenics and contraception, against divorce and “free love” (another term he disliked because of its dishonesty), but also against wage slavery and compulsory state-sponsored education and mothers hiring other people to do what mothers were designed to do themselves. It is safe to say that Chesterton stood up against every trend and fad that plagues us today because every one of those trends and fads undermines the family. Big Government tries to replace the family’s authority, and Big Business tries to replace the family’s autonomy. There is a constant commercial and cultural pressure on father, mother, and child. They are minimized and marginalized and, yes, mocked. But as Chesterton says, “This triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it.”
This latest attack on the family is neither the latest nor the worst. But it has a shock value to it, in spite of the process of de-sensitization that the information and entertainment industries have been putting us through the past several years. Those who have tried to speak out against the normalization of the abnormal have been met with “either slanging or silence,” as Chesterton was when he attempted to argue against the faddish philosophies that were promoted by the major newspapers in his day. In 1926, he warned, “The next great heresy will be an attack on morality, especially sexual morality.” His warning has gone unheeded, and sexual morality has decayed progressively. But let us remember that it began with birth control, which is an attempt to create sex for sex’s sake, changing the act of love into an act of selfishness. The promotion and acceptance of lifeless, barren, selfish sex has logically progressed to homosexuality.

Chesterton shows that the problem of homosexuality as an enemy of civilization is quite old. In The Everlasting Man, he describes the nature-worship and “mere mythology” that produced a perversion among the Greeks. “Just as they became unnatural by worshipping nature, so they actually became unmanly by worshipping man.” Any young man, he says, “who has the luck to grow up sane and simple” is naturally repulsed by homosexuality because “it is not true to human nature or to common sense.” He argues that if we attempt to act indifferent about it, we are fooling ourselves. It is “the illusion of familiarity,” when “a perversion become[s] a convention.”
In Heretics, Chesterton almost makes a prophecy of the misuse of the word “gay.” He writes of “the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion.” Carpe diem means “seize the day,” do whatever you want and don’t think about the consequences, live only for the moment. “But the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people.” There is a hopelessness as well as a haplessness to it. When sex is only a momentary pleasure, when it offers nothing beyond itself, it brings no fulfillment. It is literally lifeless. And as Chesterton writes in his book St. Francis of Assisi, the minute sex ceases to be a servant, it becomes a tyrant. This is perhaps the most profound analysis of the problem of homosexuals: they are slaves to sex. They are trying to “pervert the future and unmake the past.” They need to be set free.
Sin has consequences. Yet Chesterton always maintains that we must condemn the sin and not the sinner. And no one shows more compassion for the fallen than G.K. Chesterton. Of Oscar Wilde, whom he calls “the Chief of the Decadents,” he says that Wilde committed “a monstrous wrong” but also suffered monstrously for it, going to an awful prison, where he was forgotten by all the people who had earlier toasted his cavalier rebelliousness. “His was a complete life, in that awful sense in which your life and mine are incomplete; since we have not yet paid for our sins. In that sense one might call it a perfect life, as one speaks of a perfect equation; it cancels out. On the one hand we have the healthy horror of the evil; on the other the healthy horror of the punishment.”

Chesterton referred to Wilde’s homosexual behavior as a “highly civilized” sin, something that was a worse affliction among the wealthy and cultured classes. It was a sin that was never a temptation for Chesterton, and he says that it is no great virtue for us never to commit a sin for which we are not tempted. That is another reason we must treat our homosexual brothers and sisters with compassion. We know our own sins and weaknesses well enough. Philo of Alexandria said, “Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a terrible battle.” But compassion must never compromise with evil. Chesterton points out that balance that our truth must not be pitiless, but neither can our pity be untruthful. Homosexuality is a disorder. It is contrary to order. Homosexual acts are sinful, that is, they are contrary to God’s order. They can never be normal. And worse yet, they can never even be even. As Chesterton’s great detective Father Brown says: “Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down.”
Marriage is between a man and a woman. That is the order. And the Catholic Church teaches that it is a sacramental order, with divine implications. The world has made a mockery of marriage that has now culminated with homosexual unions. But it was heterosexual men and women who paved the way to this decay. Divorce, which is an abnormal thing, is now treated as normal. Contraception, another abnormal thing, is now treated as normal. Abortion is still not normal, but it is legal. Making homosexual “marriage” legal will not make it normal, but it will add to the confusion of the times. And it will add to the downward spiral of our civilization. But Chesterton’s prophecy remains: We will not be able to destroy the family. We will merely destroy ourselves by disregarding the family.

Tagged as: divorce, G.K. Chesterton, gay marriage, homosexuality, Oscar Wilde

The views expressed by the authors and editorial staff are not necessarily the views of
Sophia Institute, Holy Spirit College, or the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.

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By Dale Ahlquist

Dale Ahlquist is the president and co-founder of the American Chesterton Society. He is the creator and host of the Eternal Word Television Network series, "G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense." Dale is the author of G.K. Chesterton: Apostle of Common Sense and the recently published The Complete Thinker. He is also the publisher of Gilbert Magazine, and associate editor of the Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton (Ignatius). He lives near Minneapolis with his wife and six children.

The Miracle of Human Creation

2013-11-13T07:15:00.000-08:00

by American Life League

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Photo: The Miracle of Human Creation

By Judie Brown

A beautifully made video illustrates the beginnings and development of human life. This kind of tool is important in the education and enlightenment of others about the humanity of God’s children at all stages.

Recently a remarkable new video came to our attention, thanks to the watchful eye of crack pro-life news blogger, Jill Stanek. The video is entitled The Miracle of Human Creation and shows the wonder of life from its very beginning.

Stanek’s recommendation was that this video represents an excellent way to teach children where babies come from, at least those whose lives begin the way nature intended—at fertilization.

And I would add that this video represents a refresher course for pro-life leaders, tacticians, strategists, and all those who persist in falsifying when and how human beings begin their journey. There is no such thing, as this video affirms, as someone beginning his life “in the womb.”

The undeniable facts in this video confirm that any chemical or device that interferes with the human being prior to implantation in his mother’s womb is, in fact, an abortion agent. While some pro-lifers have attempted to avoid discussing these types of abortion, The Miracle of Human Creation makes it clear that most human beings begin at the beginning, not at implantation or sometime thereafter.

Professor Dianne Irving, Ph.D., M.A., circulated the link to this video with these comments:

“This video, portraying normal sexual reproduction (fertilization) within the woman’s body, is truly thrilling and superb! Wouldn’t it be nice to see a similar video showing asexual reproduction—both in the woman’s body with natural identical “twinning,” as well as outside her body—in petri dishes in IVF and ART research laboratories and ‘infertility’ clinics? Maybe, next!”

Yes, it would be a great boon to the pro-life educational effort if there were a video that provided an accurate account of how asexually created individuals come into being. And I dare say such a video would be equally as amazing if not more so. We suggest this because, as The Miracle of Human Creation makes clear, teaching the truth with such beauty is never out of vogue.

When using this video for education purposes, Professor Irving suggested that viewers follow along with each Carnegie Stage for the first eight weeks. You can access the URLs at: http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/irv/irv_216genuinecarnegiestages.html.

Most interesting is Dr. Irving’s insight dealing with the facts regarding when human persons actually begin their journey after sexual procreation:

The video demonstrates first that a new sexually reproduced human being is neither the father’s sperm nor the mother’s oocyte (“egg”)—but a combination of both—and shows them coming together in the mother’s fallopian tube (not in her uterus!). While in the fallopian tube, the sperm penetrates and fuses with the oocyte—the beginning of the new single-cell human organism called the “primitive” embryo (Carnegie Stage 1a), followed by the next phase called the “ootid,” when the male and female nuclei are formed but remain separate (Carnegie Stage 1b), and finally when the zygote phase takes place (Carnegie Stage 1c).

Note that the zygote has no nucleus; it immediately splits into two cells, the beginning of Carnegie Stage 2.

And as hard as it seems it is for many, the embryo formed from Stage 1a and throughout all the developmental stages that follow is how human beings normally look! We are not little perfectly “preformed” homunculi who look like miniature adult human beings during all of this development!

The video then depicts this new human being moving through the fallopian tube toward the mother’s uterus (which takes about a week) growing bigger and bigger, and at the multi-celled “free blastocyst” Stage 3 shows the embryo shedding the outer “shell” (called “hatching”), and then implanting into the mother’s uterus (blastocyst Stage 4, the multi-celled “implanting” blastocyst).

The video then shows the various Carnegie Stages as the human embryo develops through the first eight weeks post-fertilization—and, that too is how human beings are supposed to look at those early developing stages! After eight weeks, the embryo moves into the “fetal period” of development—and this video vividly shows how incredibly complex the entire process is. Truly a miracle.

The only thing we can add to Dr. Irving’s enthusiastic explanation is that to fail to watch this video and share it with others is to fail in our obligation to spread the truth and teach that truth accurately.

Judie Brown is president and cofounder of American Life League and a three-time appointee to the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Christian Sues Employer Who Would Not Guarantee Sundays Off.

2013-10-22T07:29:00.000-07:00

Celestina Mba lost her job after she was told her employers could not guarantee she would never have to work Sundays. (YouTube)

A British Christian woman who was told she could not be guaranteed off on Sundays will take her case to the Court of Appeal this week.
Celestina Mba, a 58-year-old children’s care worker with Merton Council, lost her job after she was told her employers could not guarantee she would never have to work Sundays.
“I chose not to work Sunday and my employers accommodated it for almost three years, and then decided that I now must work Sunday, violating my rights as a believer to practice Christianity in the way that blesses me and blesses other people,” she said in a Christian Concern video posted on YouTube in February 2012.
Mba, a Baptist with three children, first brought a claim against her employer in February 2012 when they threatened her with disciplinary measures—even though her co-workers were willing to pick up the Sunday shifts.
She lost her claim for constructive dismissal when a judge ruled her employer could make her work on a Sabbath. The tribunal ruled that keeping Sunday as a day of rest was not a “core component” of Christianity, Daily Mail reported.
“Even though I have lost the case, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ because it is the gospel that sets us all free,” Mba stated in the video.
She will say in her appeal that an employer has a duty to “reasonably accommodate” the beliefs of a Christian worker. Mba will argue that her employer breached her Article 9 guaranteeing freedom of thought, conscience and religion, the U.K.’s Mirror says.
“We have so many different faiths in this society,” Mba told The Sunday Times. “I am standing up for my beliefs, not for anyone else’s.”
The Christian Legal Centre is backing Mba in her case. Its founder, Andrea Williams, said, “We are seeing secular courts ruling on core components of Christian practice,” The Independent reports.
“The courts have acted to protect the kara bracelet [worn by Sikhs], Afro cornrow haircuts, the wearing of the hijab and a Muslim’s right to fast, but have refused to grant protection to the cross or the Christian Sunday.”
Mba now works in southwest London at a job that lets her take off Sundays and Mondays.

MULTITASKING IS A MYTH:

2013-10-11T08:37:00.002-07:00

And now I have your attention because I am sure you use the word ‘multitasking’ often as you go through your day! However, the truth is that it is actually impossible to multitask – we don’t do multiple things at once; we actually shift between different tasks quickly. If we do this well then we are doing busy well – this is what I spoke about in my last blog. But, if we are doing busy badly, we are doing what I call milkshake multitasking. We cause literal neurochemical chaos in our brain, which, in turn, causes literal brain damage.

Milkshake multitasking switches confusion on in our mind and brain!
In this blog I want to encourage you to really become aware of how you are doing busy because time is the most expensive commodity of all: once spent, it is gone forever, never to be found again. And when we milkshake multitask, we lose time forever. Lets look at a very obvious example of where we can lose focus and intentional directing of our thinking:
Picture this: you are working on an email, then suddenly your phone flashes multiple times and you get distracted from your focus on the important email you need to finish and you see you have a text; and a message on facebook; and a like on your instagram photo (and it’s just too tempting not to have a look at the comments); and a missed call and vm. By the time you have chaotically jumped between these distractions, and remember you have to finish the email, you find you have lost your train of thought and now it’s going to take you another 15 valuable minutes to try and recoup…and the next tweet has popped up on your screen… and someone has walked into your office to hand you another pile of things that “have to be done yesterday”…and…you get the picture!
Lets see how this could have been done: instead of jumping haphazardly between the above tasks, get disciplined and focused closure per task. This means you would say to yourself something like: “Lord help me remember where I was in this email and what should I respond to first – or shall I finish this email then look?” then intentionally and purposefully – and quickly – direct your attention in a deeply intellectual way to each task. Discipline yourself to listen to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Watch how your efficiency and peace will improve.
See my new book “Switch on your Brain” for more information at www.drleaf.com.
In my next blog I will ask you the question: Are you a social media enthusiast or an addict?

Originally posted: 4th October, 2013
(c) Dr. Caroline Leaf.

DOING BUSY WELL

2013-10-11T08:33:00.001-07:00

It’s okay to be busy! I bet you didn’t think I would tell you that on one of my blogs…but…it’s the truth. We are designed to be busy – after all we are made in the image of a brilliant God who certainly knows how to do busy well. At any one moment we have four to seven thoughts going through our brains as we respond to day to day life. Just living is a busy activity.
Doing busy badly will cause you to go into negative stress, which is stress stages two and three. Stage one of stress is good and happens when we do busy well.
What does doing busy badly look like? It is the:

rapid haphazard shifting of attention from task-to-task;
a lack of focused attention to a task or activity or written text
ineffective concentration
lack of deep intellectual thinking

And all the above will result in patterns of flightiness and a lack of peace, which in turn lead to bad choices and decision-making. In fact, we will move into a shallow passive mindless reactive mode, which is the exact opposite of what the bible tells us and the exact opposite of how God designed the brain. Colossians 3:15 in the Amplified bible says the following:
“And let the peace (soul harmony which comes) from Christ rule (act as umpire continually) in your hearts (deciding and settling with finality all questions that arise in your minds, in that peaceful state to which as members of Christ’s) one body you were also called to live. And be thankful (appreciative), giving praise to God always.”
Its only when our minds are at peace that we will hear the leading of the Holy Spirit and think clearly. Doing busy well means we are not shifting haphazardly between life events but that we are:

interacting mindfully
in a self-reflective way,
thinking things through in a focused quality manner,
listening, watching and reading intently,
keeping our eye on one thing at a time and
fixing it in our mind.

This does not mean that you slow down, it means the quality of how you spend each second of your time improves. It’s not about quantity; it’s all about quality. You can find more information on this in my new book: “Switch on Your Brain,” available at www.drleaf.com
In the next blog I will share with you how multitasking is a myth!

Originally posted: 23rd September, 2013
(c) Dr. Caroline Leaf.

The Prodigal Cyrus

2013-08-28T10:44:00.005-07:00

Paul Asay

Aug 27, 2013 10:00 AM

Miley Cyrus performed Sunday at MTV’s Video Music Awards and, for what it’s worth, she got exactly what she wanted: attention.

Her performance was a study in excess. From the aggressively lolling tongue to the skin-colored bikini to the simulated sex acts with a foam finger to a whole lotta twerking, Cyrus was out to prove—again—that she is no longer a Disney diva. In truth, her wholesome image was dead and buried well before her VMA performance, so Sunday was really more about digging up the corpse and burning it.

“Haven’t been to a strip club in a while, but good to see nothing has changed,” comedian Bill Maher tweeted about Miley’s performance. Director Judd Apatow, whose films Superbad and The 40-Year-Old Virgin aren’t exactly family entertainment, lamented the innocent Miley Cyrus of old. He tweeted out a poster from her the old movie So Undercover. “I will always have this version of Miley,” he wrote. “Let’s live in the past and heal.”

The New York Times called Miley’s VMA appearance a “shambolic, trickster-esque performance.” MSNBC’s Mike Brzezinski said it was “disgusting and embarrassing.” Salon.com’s Prachi Gupta wrote, “If an alien species came across footage from last night’s MTV VMAs and watched it, trying to determine whether we’re a race worth saving, Earth surely would have been blown up by now.”

My reaction was, I guess, a little of all that: Shock, disgust, anger, sadness.

But I think what I thought on the most is this: Miley Cyrus is someone’s daughter.

What if she were mine?

I have a daughter a year younger than Miley. She’s a sophomore in college studying psychology and holding down two jobs. I’m so proud of who she is and who she’s becoming. I don’t worry about her following Miley’s example.

But when you’re a father, those moments of pride are sometimes balanced by moments of sadness or anger or disappointment. Emily’s not perfect and never has been. She sometimes makes decisions I don’t agree with. She sometimes makes mistakes.

Those times can be exasperating when a child’s growing up: You get frustrated with the parent-teacher conferences or the little lies or the broken curfews. And yet, if there’s a saving grace in these times, it’s that you can do something about it. You can sit them down and talk. You can dole out punishments. You can set new, better rules. You still have a chance to teach your kids a few lessons—set them on a better path before they walk out the door.

But what do you do when they’re already gone? What do you do when they’re 20? When they have their own money? What’s a father to do?

I suspect that, as hard as fatherhood can be when they’re kids, it can be harder when they become adults. When they’re all grown up but they still have a lot of growing to do. When they turn prodigal on you. All the standard tools are gone. You can’t spank them. You can’t ground them. You can’t take away privileges or force them to listen to you. The last arrow you have in your quiver is love. Plain ol’ love. And sometimes, it seems like that love is a puny thing indeed.

And yet, it works. We see that love and patience work in the story of the Prodigal Son. We see God’s love and patience work in our own rebellious hearts. And sometimes, it even works with our kids. We leave the door open a crack and the porch light on, even when they swear they’ll never come back. And sometimes, days or weeks or years later, they come back. Love draws them back.

Hours after Miley’s performance had undergone withering criticism online, Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley’s father, tweeted this:

“Thanking God for so many blessings tonight. Continue to pray for world peace. More love … less hate.”

I don’t know exactly what Billy Ray meant in his tweet. Some believe that he was showing his support for Miley’s performance, and that may be. But when I read that, I don’t necessarily hear vindication for what Miley did. I hear a dad trying to protect his daughter—his little girl, who he probably still loves as much as anything and doesn’t want to see her hurt. Sometimes, even when your daughter makes a mistake—a big one—the only thing you want to do is take her into your arms and hug her. Protect her. Help the hurt go away.

But however he meant his tweet, Billy Ray’s right about one thing. The world could use more love. Sometimes as parents, it’s the only tool we have to bring our children back.

Paul Asay (@AsayPaul) is a contributor for Dad Matters and a senior associate editor forPluggedIn.com.

POPE FRANCIS THE RADICAL

2013-08-09T06:17:00.001-07:00

As the first year of Pope Francis's papacy unfolds it has been clear from the outset that he has plenty to say about the free market economy. Critics on the ideological right have been swift to point out his relative silence on social issues such as abortion (despite the fact that in May he joined 40 000 pro-life activists on the streets of Rome). But what Francis understands that many of us fail to grasp is the intimate link that exists between the economic reality we find ourselves in and the collapse of social morality.

The widespread legalisation and acceptance of the murder of the unborn did not just pop into existence overnight by way of some sort of instantaneous demonic possession of the social consciousness (although I have no doubt of the diabolical nature of the abortion industry). Rather, acceptance of such evil has emerged as part of a broader way of seeing reality that has slowly entrenched itself into the mind of post-industrialised society.

The absolute autonomy of the individual, the unquestioned goals of pleasure, comfort and wealth, and the subsequent commodification of human sexuality are at the root of the social malaise much of the world now finds itself in. (As recent studies have shown, one in four South African men admit to having raped before, while only one in three children grow up with fathers at home.) In today's world economic activity is not merely one social dimension out of many—it dominates our post-modern reality and provides the very matrix in which everything else finds its meaning and reason for being. Everything is for sale and everything has a price. (In Brazil, where Francis has just visited for World Youth Day, teenagers are auctioning off their virginity online to the highest bidder, attracting offers of over $750 000.)

Francis understands that while there is an important place for activism on behalf of the rights of the unborn, and an important place for the defence of traditional marriage, the most effective way in which to counter the prevailing moral collapse is to rather lift the gaze of society beyond the allure of wealth and consumerism, and beyond its vision of an atomised and fragmented society that has been blindly accepted under the guises of autonomy and liberty. These are the real roots of the problem. True conversion is not merely an assent to each individual moral teaching of the Church, but a radical (from Late Latin radicalis: “of or pertaining to the root”) re-orientation that takes place when we encounter Jesus, a new horizon that expands far beyond the confines of the individualism, affluence and materialism that seek to distract and enslave us. Francis knows exactly what has enticed the modern world from its eternal calling, but he also knows what will bring us back.

In a homily towards the end of May, he made the link between our economic reality and our moral collapse clear. As an example of what he termed 'the anaesthesia of affluence', he spoke of married couples who, confronted with the choice that the world presents to them between having children and travelling the world or buying a new house, opt for the latter. Contraception is, as the Church has always taught, an intrinsic evil that deserves to be tackled head-on, but it is also a symptom of a much broader worldview in which our actions are only desirable or meaningful insofar as they either provide temporary satisfaction or contribute towards financial security and social status.

The ability to see the entirety of our actions—whether in our sex lives or in the market place—in the light of our faith is what enables us to hear the call to conversion. Distributism is often misunderstood as purely a political program or an economic alternative to Socialism or Capitalism. While the ideals of Catholic Social Teaching it embodies (especially those of solidarity and subsidiarity) certainly do need to be enacted on a political and economic level, at its heart is the call to a deeper encounter with the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the light of men.

Pope Francis doesn't want the world to merely know what the Church teaches on moral issues like marriage, abortion and contraception. As he said to journalists on his flight back to Rome from Rio, the world already knows (and ignores and ridicules) what the Church teaches. Rather, by confronting the allure of temporary satisfaction and the illusion of lasting affluence, Francis is bidding today's Church to free herself from what threatens to hold her back, so that—in the footsteps of a peasant girl who walked the earth 2000 years ago—she can authentically bear Christ to a broken world. It is in that encounter that conversion will take place.

2013-08-06T16:14:00.003-07:00

The Importance Of Spiritual Food

Napoleon Bonaparte had conquered almost all of Europe with his might. No one could resist his leadership and war technique. He showed his strength in Spain, Prussia and Austria. Soon, the desire to conquer Russia was musing in his mind.

He moved to Russia with a large army. Knowing the advance of Napoleon, the Russian people destroyed all their fields and crops. Taking the cows with them they moved to the interior parts of the village abandoning their houses.

The French army could find only the burnt out fields and empty villages at their arrival in Russia. They were in trouble. They had nothing to eat. As the Russians destroyed all the crops and took with them all the animals, the French army didn’t have anything for their survival. Lakhs of soldiers starved to death. Even then Napoleon led the army ahead. Reaching Moscow, the capital city, they had the terrible sight of the city burnt into ashes. People had retreated to the interiors.

Soon winter started and the French army was in dismay. They suffered a lot in the new land. At last Napoleon was forced to call back his army. An estimated 5 lakhs soldiers died in between. Only one sixth of Napoleon’s army survived on their return.

At this juncture the enemies attacked Napoleon and his worn out army. On March 30, 1814, the French army was defeated. Napoleon was dethroned and deported to Elba Island, in the Mediterranean Sea.

The highly keen war technique of the Russian people made Napoleon’s army fragile and caused their defeat. Out of fear the Russian army took shelter in the interior villages during the initial stages of the war. But they made it sure that the enemies reaching their land would not get anything to survive. As they didn’t get food, diseases were on the rise. They couldn’t resist the heavy weather and the adverse situations.

Satan puts traps

As we loose our zeal for the Holy Eucharist, the Word of God and prayer, we will feel a terrible scarcity of spiritual food. Reluctance to repent and aversion to sacraments will make us weak and morally powerless. Knowing that we are fragile, he will start his direct fight against us. Therefore we should never ignore the importance of spiritual food, however great and strong we may be.

Sin will tear down our confidence. Like our forefathers, sin will take away the courage to face real life situations. It is the white robe of holiness that make us strong in our fight against the enemy. Therefore never ignore the spiritual food.

Prayer: Lord, help us that we may not ignore the spiritual food that you prepare for us through the Church. Strengthen us so that we may be ready to fight the enemy by approaching the sacraments seriously. Amen.

written by Benny Punnathara

The Onesimus Programme

I Was Wrong - the Apocrypha & the Bible.

CALVINISM OR ARMINIANISM

INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT

INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT - Switch on Your Brain with the 5-Step Learning Process (R) and Metacog system (TM)

THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT - Understanding the Work and Gifts of the Counselor.

The Work of the Spirit

JESUS

WHY TRUTH MATTERS:

At first sight, the biblical view of truth is obscene to modern minds. But on a deeper look, the biblical view is profound, timely, and urgent for today, even for those who reject it.

Formation Of Long Term Memory - The SOWER AND THE SEED - 4-Types of Listeners

Is African Charismatic Christianity a Counterfeit?

SPIRITUAL WARFARE: COMBATING DECEPTION

Part One cont.How Psychics Get Information About the People Who Visit Them by Perfectly Natural Means, While People Are Assuming They Got It Through Psychic Power

How Scientific Tests of Psychic Phenomena Have Never Found Any Genuine Extra-Sensory Ability

Examples of Experiments of Psychic Ability That Seemed Genuine at First But Weren't

Part OneThe Tricks Many People who Claim to be Psychic Use

Introduction - Why People Need to Know About False Claims of Psychic Ability and Other Supernatural Power

Bogus Insights Into Personality That Can Fool People Into Believing the One Giving Them Must Have Special Insight or Power

How Psychics Can Sound Very Accurate So People Can Think They're Getting Information Via Psychic Power When They're Not

IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE, IF YOU BELIEVE IN GOD YOU WILL BE HEALTHIER!

Written by Dr. Caroline Leaf

BE HEALTHY AND POP THE EVIL!

CALVINISM, Is It Biblical?

Speaking In Tongues

REPENT AND BELIEVE THE GOSPEL

G.K. Chesterton: It's Not Gay, and It's Not Marriage.

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By Dale Ahlquist

The Miracle of Human Creation

Christian Sues Employer Who Would Not Guarantee Sundays Off.

MULTITASKING IS A MYTH:

DOING BUSY WELL

The Prodigal Cyrus

POPE FRANCIS THE RADICAL

Satan puts traps

Part One cont.
How Psychics Get Information About the People Who Visit Them by Perfectly Natural Means, While People Are Assuming They Got It Through Psychic Power

Part One
The Tricks Many People who Claim to be Psychic Use