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  • In God We Trusted – 3

    In God We Trusted – 3

    Disclaimer & claim:

    WE the PEOPLE of the LORD trust God. 
    Nations rise and nations will fall.  The Prophet Jeremiah had warned Judah of their impending fall.

    By now you must see the present application of Lamentations 3.

    The warnings of the Prophets also speak to our nations.

    Noah_Webster_The_Schoolmaster_of_the_Republic

    We the people of the US have forgotten:

    In God we trusted.  Our heritage of faith is buried deeply in disbelief and rebellion.

    Lamentations is indictment of rulers who do not hear the cries of their people or acknowledge the leadership of God. 

    Lamentations 3

    English Standard Version (ESV)

    Great Is Your Faithfulness

    3 I am the man who has seen affliction
    under the rod of his wrath;
    2 he has driven and brought me
    into darkness without any light;
    3 surely against me he turns his hand
    again and again the whole day long.

    4 He has made my flesh and my skin waste away;
    he has broken my bones;
    5 he has besieged and enveloped me
    with bitterness and tribulation;
    6 he has made me dwell in darkness
    like the dead of long ago.

    7 He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;
    he has made my chains heavy;
    8 though I call and cry for help,
    he shuts out my prayer;
    9 he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones;
    he has made my paths crooked.

    Noah Webster, author of the first American Speller and the first Dictionary said,  

    “The Christian religion, in its purity, is the basis, or rather the source of all genuine freedom in government. . . . and I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable in which the principles of that religion have not a controlling influence.” 

    Think about this from a man whose mission was to educate our forefathers.

    Civil government, to exist and be durable MUST have the principles of religion as a controlling influence: the MORALITY OF GOD – Good, and not evil.

    19 Remember my affliction and my wanderings,  Noah-Webster-source-of-freedom
    the wormwood and the gall!
    20 My soul continually remembers it
    and is bowed down within me.
    21 But this I call to mind,
    and therefore I have hope:

    22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
    his mercies never come to an end;
    23 they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
    24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
    “therefore I will hope in him.”

    25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
    to the soul who seeks him.

    Even responsible leaders of men will look to our future.

    Thomas Jefferson, A Nation of Sheep will have a Government of Wolves

     If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you & I, & Congress & Assemblies, judges & governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor. – Thomas Jefferson, To Edward Carrington Paris, Jan. 16, 1787

    Yet the Prophet both warns and comforts the people who ask, ‘How?’

    31 For the Lord will not
    cast off forever,
    32 but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion
    according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
    33 for he does not afflict from his heart
    or grieve the children of men.

    34 To crush underfoot
    all the prisoners of the earth,
    35 to deny a man justice
    in the presence of the Most High,
    36 to subvert a man in his lawsuit,
    the Lord does not approve.

    40 Let us test and examine our ways,
    and return to the Lord!
    41 Let us lift up our hearts and hands
    to God in heaven:
    42 “We have transgressed and rebelled,
    and you have not forgiven.

    PH-GiveMeLibertyOrDeathHas our history revealed the truth of the complete plea to God of Patrick Henry…

    or just a simple, secular sound-byte?

    Jeremiah had warned those who once spoke of ‘life so dear or peace so sweet.’ Patrick Henry plead: Forbid it, Almighty God!

    58 “You have taken up my cause, O Lord;
    you have redeemed my life.
    59 You have seen the wrong done to me, O Lord;
    judge my cause.
    60 You have seen all their vengeance,
    all their plots against me.

    64 “You will repay them, O Lord,
    according to the work of their hands.
    65 You will give them dullness of heart;
    your curse will be on them.
    66 You will pursue them in anger and destroy them
    from under your heavens, O Lord.”

     

     

  • Africa: Faith in a House of Cards

    Africa: Faith in a House of Cards

    Americans, Europeans, many South Americans, South Africans, Australians, upper class Indians and upper class Asians of countries like China and Japan are very blessed.

    Even though we may be poor compared to most of our own countrymen, most ‘relatively rich’ Christians (like us) do NOT see and hear the great need of many brothers and sisters in Christ, let alone the great needs of Christian missions to others in countries and states hostile to Christ Jesus.

    How often do you hear of Christian Missions in places like Cameroon and Central African Republic?

    Central African RepublicThe MAP of our world changes continually, nowhere more radically than Africa. The reasons do not change: greed, power and control by religion (especially Islam, but also others).

    Here is a better current perspective to ‘world history’ than a schooling from ancient textbooks of the 20th century. Visit any continent (courtesy BBC country profiles) like this one for Africa. Facts & History will reveal an ongoing battle of Islamist radicals and others to displace and defeat Christians.

    As you may know from Sudan and other troubled places in Africa, greed and radical religious beliefs know NO boundaries. Patient authoritarian Islamist leaders aggravate and stir the hatreds of hot spots from their comfortable places in Saudi Arabia, Iran and many other countries.

    Persecuted Christians on all continents and the Christian missions which bring the Gospel of Christ Jesus to the unsaved have been on my heart for many months now.  Many fine missionary organizations support these through our many small contributions though our local churches.

    Check with your own church and you can often find ways to contribute even more to these MANY needs.  Just one example of our church is Operation Christmas Child.

    I know you know John 3:16; do you know 1 John 3:16? (& 17 & 18)?

    For truth we do not hear and in deed we have no charity (agapē).

    The Middle East typically receives the most press. As a reminder, many of the troubled countries are part of N. Africa.

    On occasion we will hear of troubles of Somalia, Kenya, or other African peoples in struggles against the tyranny of evil, greed, military force,  rebels, anarchists, Islamists,  forces of  ‘nature’, famine, war… etc. etc… while mention of the daily struggles and needs of the poor remain rare.

    MISSIONARIES NARROWLY ESCAPE COUP IN AFRICA

    Posted by  on Friday, May 10, 2013

    Here is the full story you never hear from just five months ago. Please pray for and support the missions of these faithful Christians.

    ghana

    One might be shocked to learn that some areas of Africa have become mighty fortresses for Christ, but great need persists for these faithful Christian brothers and sisters, especially for many abandoned children who would have no hope were it not for the love of these faithful Christians.

    Ghana, a country once known as a place where Portuguese and British ruled and exported slaves into other parts of the world has now become a place where the freedom of Christianity is sent into other parts of Africa.

    Never-the-less, Americans, Europeans and others do not realize the extent of poverty in nations such as Ghana, where the average annual income is only $1,410, compared to $48,620 in the US or $36,010 USD in Hong Kong or $80,440 in Qutar, a place for Arabian princes and World Capitalists to shelter their considerable wealth.

    2013-09-26 Saida's children

    Refugees from war-torn African nations and abandoned aids babies of immoral powerful men depend on the support, love and charity of Christian community and even homes of many compassionate Christians in places like Ghana.

    They depend on the financial support of Christian missions and a few individual Christian churches and missions.

    Please consider support and prayer for one of these welcomed into the love of Christ Jesus.

    These are the faces of orphans living in a Christian home in Ghana and provided for by a poor worker in a nearby home for other orphans.

    These are the faces of Christian love.  These little ones are also the faces of Christian need for a Christian sister with barely enough to keep food on their table.

    I will close with a personal story of Christian love from this beloved sister in Christ from just last SUNDAY, 6 OCTOBER, 2013 (a day our church feasts every month after first Sunday communion.)

    Ghana-Tracywe met Tracy last Sunday when she was at church Alone!

    She didn’t want to go back home because she was denied from eating food for the last four days as punishment for the not carrying her auntie’s baby!

    she preferred sleeping at church than going back home, so we went with her and talked to her auntie about it!

    she is now living a happy and hopeful life! Thank You for your prayers!!

    Who else will intervene for Jesus when others turn away the little children?

    If you can help in any small way, in addition to prayer, please visit the link behind  “Child Passion Children’s Home, with Patti Crabtree Brown and 22 others. we follow the biblical directive to rescue, love and care for orphans. We believe that when we do, we are following Christ’s commandment and are acting as His hands and feet.”

    Jesus said: And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.” – Matthew 10:42

     

  • Hansel and Gretel – 4

    Hansel and Gretel – 4

    IF you have NOT already taken time to watch the Hosea Movie of a previous post, it is related to this series and I recommend it. Watch it as a family, if possible (80 min.); especially your teens.

    Roger Harned

    HANSEL & GRETEL – Chapter 4

    The story of Hosea is a story of reconciliation between a husband and a wife.  It is a story of reconciliation between a people who have done evil in the sight of the Lord and our God of unfailing, unconditional love.

    As a wife commits adultery against her husband; so does a people who sin commit adultery against God.

    Why is it that after his adultery with Bathsheba David had prayed, “Against You and You only have I sinned?”

    God will judge and punish; yet God may have mercy on the one who repents.

    Christ died for sinners, adulterers against God. Christ died for you and for me. We have His blood as our redeeming Light of hope, an escape from this woods of darkness away from our Father.

    If we are like Hosea, a faithful husband with unconditional love, we know that the evil of the step-mother of this story is not committed against Hansel and Gretel or against her husband. The evil of their actions affects ALL, but God will judge.

    Dear Christian husband, beloved Christian wife: do not believe you have sinned against each other, when Christ has sacrificed His undying love for your forgiveness and redemption. Do not continue to sin against our Lord.

    You believe your sin is against me; but your sin is the adultery of Judas.

    Rev. 2:21

    (Enough for now of the importance of marriage.)  Returning to the story of our children:

    Hansel and Gretel are children of a step-family. Their father has given in to an evil step-mother and sent the children off into the woods… twice. The father and step-mother want to be alone.  The children want to be with their parent. CONFLICT.

    (Parents, once you have a child you do NOT get to be alone. That is God’s intention. Children need the loving affection of both parents… often.)

    Go to your room!

    As the story goes, after being sent away once the children find their way back. Hansel has marked the way with stones.

    Yet after their return to what they hoped and had known as the love of home, the second time the wicked step-mother locks them in their room and they cannot gather stones to mark the way home.

    Separation. Return home. Locked up alone by hatred. Sent away once more… never to see the love of home again.  A sad and all-too-familiar contemporary non-fiction.

    Then, as we observed in a previous chapter, a wicked witch (not unlike the step-mother, according to literary analysts) holds the children to serve her and even to become the food for the table of her famine.  All seems hopeless; but once again (as we discovered in the previous chapter) their cleverness wins out and they escape the witch, who comes to her death as a result of her own evil intended for Hansel and Gretel.

     2 Chronicles 29:6 For our fathers have been unfaithful and have done what was evil in the sight of the LORD our God. They have forsaken him and have turned away their faces from the habitation of the LORD and turned their backs.

    A man has turned his back on his own children in favor of a new wife.

    Is a father not lord over his children? Is a husband not lord over his wife? Is the man who led his own children into the hands of hopelessness and the fates of the darkness of the woods not unfaithful to the Lord?

    The father and the step-mother have BOTH done what is evil in the sight of the Lord.

    Yet somehow, without the help of their earthly father, Hansel and Gretel escape.

    But what next? How better off will the children be in returning a third time to the home of an evil step-mother?

    Then they stayed for several days to  eat some more of the house, till they discovered amongst the witch’s belongings, a huge chocolate egg. Inside lay a casket of gold coins.

    (The Grimm answer of fable: the money will make it all right.)

    I hadn’t really remembered this part of the story after all these years, until looking up Hansel and Gretel and rereading the ending.

    I had only remembered that they returned home.

    God has planted this deepest desire into the heart of every child (even a man, who has no home).

    So I ask us: where is home?

    How must a father welcome a lost child?

    They filled a large basket with food and set off into the forest to search for the way home.

    After two days they find their own way home (not knowing what to expect). Yet the picture of the father is of joy, as in the story of the prodigal son. (My mom needed not tell us that the prodigal of Hansel and Gretel is the father.)

    Once upon a time, children were innocent. Fables and bed-time stories spoke to hope – hope of living “happily ever after.” Hansel and Gretel (in a sense) does not disappoint in this.

    “Promise you’ll never ever desert us again,” said Gretel, throwing her arms round her father’s neck.

    Is this not the heart of every child who loves her father? The heart of every little boy who loves his father?

    Promise.

    (I did not remember the next scene of the ending, either.)

    Hansel opened the casket.

    What did Hansel see?

    Competition? For had the step-mother not also seen competition for love in the children of the woodcutter? Of course.

    It was evil for her to not love these as her own children. And now, providence has placed her with the same fate as the witch: death. Hansel looks inside the casket at the face of evil – dead and harmful no more.

    His conclusion is perhaps childish. (Even his father, the woodcutter, may have learned an untold lesson in this fable.)

    “Look, Father! We’re rich now . . . You’ll never have to chop wood again.”

    And they all lived happily together ever after. The little ones who were still awake would say in unison.

    As parents we know that this is but a fable. As Christians we know that indeed we are the prodigals of the story. As those whose home is in heaven, hopefully we tell our children of the real treasure.

    Jesus said: The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. – Matthew 12:35

    Proverbs teaches children what Hansel and Gretel observed in the house of the witch. She was hungry in a house made of food. The witch had not purchased the food of righteousness with the treasure she had hidden away.

    Proverbs 15:

    6 In the house of the righteous there is much treasure,
    but trouble befalls the income of the wicked.

    16 Better is a little with the fear of the LORD
    than great treasure and trouble with it.

    Therefore, look into the casket, dear children. See the death of the wicked and the bones of our future.

    And look to your Father in Heaven to the hope of our salvation.

    2 Corinthians 4:16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

    2 Corinthians 5:

    The Ministry of Reconciliation

    11 Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience.

    18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

    As I see it, Hansel and Gretel is a story of reconciliation. The father, who loves his children, is finally reconciled to them. And the children, who love the father, are finally reconciled to him.

    It is not really a story of a step-mother or of a witch, as much as a story of the death of evil and the triumph of God – that is, the triumph of God: Who IS and was and will judge every evil and reward every good.

    Therefore, IF you want to live happily every after (and eternity is a long time…):

    Our Heavenly Father has rescued us from the woods of deep darkness and evil through the Light of the Sacrifice of His only Son and the redemption by His Blood on the Cross.

    Walk in Love

    Ephesians 5 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

    8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.

    Wives and Husbands

    22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

    25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

    Dear Christian brother, beloved Christian sister of these last days,

    Do you look to the light of the promises of Scripture and obey?

    Teach these to the children of your bowels and remain faithful to the Head of the body, Christ Jesus our Lord.

    31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

    Children and Parents

    6 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

    And they lived happily ever after… Eternally!