|
|
Getting somewhere requires effort, it takes
faith to push on, it's easy to screw up,
|
|
Friday, October 12, 2012
Allowing bad things to happen and causing them to happen are different aren’t they?  “Bad things are always going to happen in
life. People will hurt you. But you can't use that as an excuse to fail or to hurt someone back. You'll only hurt yourself.”
Life has tough times as well as good times!
For some of us, the tough times seem to outweigh the good times, and if we feel that way we need to really take a look at
where we are and what we can do to change ourselves, don’t we?
Looking around, it is quite normal to see those that are worse off
than ourselves, and those that are better off. Have you
noticed however, that there is a third group, a group of people who seem to ride the waves of life whether they are going
up or going down, and either way, seem to be able to maintain their balance in the most precarious of circumstances.
Circumstances cannot always be controlled,
but our response to them can!
Many people blame God for bad circumstances,
others see God as standing by without love, allowing them to suffer!
This is the unhealthy crowd of believers. They believe the wrong things! These are the people who are missing the love God has for us all,
and instead see him as a mean and nasty God.
When we read of some of the Old Testament prophecies and see how they came true, we could almost agree with these
people couldn’t we?
Evil people
in the ancient past would abuse Judah or Israel, and the prophets would warn of horrible things that would happen. Then, we
find that a while later, what the prophets predicted, happened! It was nasty, very nasty when it happend! Here is one example...
Amos prophecies
“The Lord and King gave me a vision. He was
bringing large numbers of locusts on the land. The king’s share of the first crop had already been harvested. Now the
second crop was coming up. 2 The locusts stripped the land clean. Then I cried out, ‘Lord and King, forgive
Israel! How can Jacob’s people continue? They are such a weak nation!’
3 So the Lord had pity on them.
‘I will let them continue for now,’ he said.”
Vision and result one!
Nasty things will happen, but God gives them a chance and controls
the situation.
Yet, after a while they still ignore God and
so the King of the time, Jeroboam (nasty guy), ends up with this prophecy against him,
“Then the Lord gave me a third vision. He was standing by a wall.
It had been built very straight, all the way up and down. He was holding a plumb line. 8 The Lord asked me, “What
do you see, Amos?”
“A
plumb line,” I replied.
Then
the Lord said, “Look at what I am doing. I am hanging a plumb line next to my people Israel. It will show how crooked
they are. I will no longer spare them.
9 “The
high places where Isaac’s people worship other gods will be destroyed.
The other places of worship in Israel
will also be torn down.
I will use my sword
to attack Jeroboam’s royal family.”
King Jeroboam had led the country away
from loving God, and had encouraged false god worship (including throwing newborn babies into a fire of an idol god to burn
alive).
This King, led people into
evil, and more and more evil happened under his direction.
Slowly the whole country became distorted by the darkness of sin. Fear and darkness invaded families and lives. The governing people took on a
nasty bullying form of government. King Jeroboam thought he was better than God! He didn’t acknowledge God for whom
God is!
Yet
Prophet Amos stood firm in this turmoil. He was not disturbed!
He stuck to God’s will (even though it could have got him killed).
He was asked by God to warn the people. Why?
Was it because God was vindictive and wanted them to suffer knowing
what was to happen to them?
No!
He warned them
so they could change their ways and move back into life of peace and joy
and worshiping the giver of life and the protector of the righteous.
The King and people ignored him.
Amos stood by, and watched all the events unfold as God have told him they
would happen.
Notice
that he in no way considers he was the cause of the events,
by letting them know of God’s punishment.
He simply stood by and tried to help as they failed, due to going against God. He helped the righteous, and God punished the evil doers.
As Christians, we are to try and warn people where
a godless life leads them so they can avoid the pain.
If after a while they do not listen, we simply continue praying to God until he tells us to stop praying and wait. Then, we
wait and watch!
God’s
will is always effective! We don’t understand the
intricate weavings of a universe of lifetimes, but God does, and he establishes the events of life to ensure the minimal pain
for those that he loves.
Who does God love? EVERYONE!
As these horrible events occur in life, we need to understand that without God’s intervention and timing,
these horrible events would be far, far worse!
Imagine we see a bunch of teens about to
jump into a waterfall, so they can land in a pool of water below. Perhaps we warn them it's dangerous. Perhaps we even get
into an argument, but they simply refuse to listen and verbally abuse us. Perhaps they jump and find out that unseen to them,
there are spikes of rocks under that water and they end up hurt and dying.
Would it have been better to physically
stop them even if they ended up hurt and angry in the process? Perhaps...but they would probably have come back another day
to try again.
Sometimes we can only warn people! The damage they do to themselves
by ignoring good advice is theirs. We are not to blame because of the stupid factor others have in their lives. We are only
asked by God to warn others. Not force them to change direction!
God allows some pain to limit the real excruciating experiences we could experience!
When we face these times,
we can only maintain our balance by sticking close to God, by allowing Holy
Spirit to be our God and by continually seeking the will of Father God.
That way, we ride over these waves of life, experiencing their power, but remaining
untouched by their progress.
That’s a thought for today, isn’t it?
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Peace in painful timesJohn 14:27
“I leave my peace with you. I give my peace
to you. I do not give it to you as the world does. Do not let your hearts be troubled. And do not be afraid.
Notice how the world sometime blows into our lives
and tries to unsettle us?
We
as Christians need to allow God’s presence to rest with us and
be alongside us as the waves of life hit us, rocking our boat and threatening to unsettle us. We need to know Jesus is there
with us and when we get frightened, all we need to is turn to him and insistently ask for His help. Holy Spirit is with us
and before we know it the sea is calmed and sometimes we are even walking over it.
That’s the power of God in difficult circumstances!
Let us remember that!
Thu, October 11, 2012 | link
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Quantum clocks, two places at once and God’s creation Every good and perfect gift is from God. It comes
down from the Father. He created the heavenly lights. He does not change like shadows that move ~ James 1:17
This week, two guys Serge
Haroche, and David Wineland, got presented with the Nobel prize in physics for finding new ways to
measure and control particles while preserving the quantum mechanical nature.
The problem is most of us cannot even understand that sentence that I just
wrote so we battle to even start to understand the importance of their work, don’t we?
This seems to be the way life works today! To be top in a specific
field means you have to focus your life to the point that simple “normal” folk have great difficulty understanding
you.
What did these guys do?
Well David Wineland
found a way to trap ions (charged particles) and cool them to a state that they could be put in various states by
lasers. The tricky part is that he could put them in a state where they existed in two different ways at once. He could do
this with confidence knowing what states they were in.
Then Serge Horoche found a way to bounce photons(particles of light) inside a cavity between two
very highly polished mirrors so it could survive for about a tenth of a second (which is a long time to record a ph, as they
travel at the speed of light). Then he floated a single atom through this trap and monitored how it changed due to interaction
with the photon.
So, why all the fame?
It is all around quantum
mechanics! Materials in a quantum state can exist in two states simultaneously
but when we try to measure them we destroy their state and the material picks one or the other state.
A famous guy named Schrödinger tried to explain it (but
it will still be vague) like this...
A scientist
puts a cat in a box together with a canister of cyanide that has a quantum cap on the bottle.
Now since it’s a quantum cap, the cat is both alive
and dead at the same time. (Crazy but logical it the same time)
The problem is that if you look inside you have a 50% chance of killing the
cat because the quantum state would immediately resolve into either open or close and lose it’s state of “being
both”.
(Told you it’s
crazy but logical)
Why don’t we experience this daily? Probably
because none of us work with or look at single particles of matter like atoms, ions, or photons. (and a quantum cap to a bottle
is simply not yet possible). This makes these experiences appear to be all “out of our world”
Does this mean it doesn’t exist? No!
They don’t give Nobel prizes for things that don’t exist.
Now, I want to talk about another case of being in two state simultaneously
and its resolution.
Have
you ever thought about the fact that we are also in two states simultaneously?
We are here in this physical world, and simultaneously inhabit a spiritual
world which like that quantum world, is everywhere. However
as a normal human being we cannot see it.
To enable us to know about it, God sent Jesus into this world to experience the physical presence and interact between
the physical and spiritual in such a way that by observing what Jesus did and said, we might understand the spiritual better.
Rather like the atom Serge used to study photons, Jesus interacts with the spiritual world giving us
information to learn how to do the same.
We are both spiritual and physical!
Yet our spiritual state can be either one of being in God’s will, or being out of God’s will. We think of that
as good or evil!
Like Schrödingers
cat we are both alive and dead at the same time, and there
is an event that decides which way we will end up.
When we die physically, our spiritual state is resolved permanently! We will spend eternity in a good state, or eternity
in an evil state. Death resolves the spiritual ambiguity that exists while we are alive on Earth.
Our prize is eternal life, if we have our life
resolved to the “good” state, the state where
we have accepted Jesus and his guidance, where we live our life in such a way that we can know which way death will resolve
our state, and we know we are going to heaven.
“It is written,
‘No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has known
what God has prepared for those who love him.’ (Isaiah
64:4)
But
God has shown it to us through his Spirit.”
Jesus, both man and God, also in two states
simultaneously, guided us into this knowledge.
Now isn’t that something to wrap our minds around? :)
1 Corinthians 2:9&10 NIRV
Wed, October 10, 2012 | link
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Apparently the USA police are arresting Christians in public parks! Is this bureaucratic terrorism?
“Terrorism is escalating to the point that Americans soon may have to
choose between civil liberties and more intrusive means of protection.” ~ William S. Cohen
What is Terrorism? Is it not the use of violence and intimidation in
the pursuit of political aims?
Is the current focus on the destroying of the Christian religion and eliminating it from the fabric of our society
a political act of terrorism?
Is
this act of terrorism perhaps more effective than those used by people of other faiths and persuasion, to physically attack
those in the country?
At
least we believe America is one of the lands of religious freedom in this world, don’t we?
Should we believe this?
We find that “Police in New
Jersey charged six Christians yesterday for evangelizing in a public park without government permission, and for causing some
hearers to be upset with their Gospel message”
Religious freedom is being eroded at the
moment isn’t it?
How about
the police being forthright and honest with people?
Here is another quote from the same report “When Parker first spoke to the police,
he stated that Officer Baker demanded identification from all of the Christians under the threat of arrest. Parker said that
at first he declined, but police insinuated that if they provided identification, everything would be fine. However, that
did not turn out to be the case.”
Is that not lying? Not something expected by police in the USA is it?
Surely if they got more people involved this would solve the problem right?
Wrong!
“When the supervising officer arrived on the scene to assess
the situation, he agreed with Baker. Parker said that at this point, there were five to six law enforcement officials surrounding
them.
When contacted,
the Jersey City Police Department stated that because members of the public were upset with the message being proclaimed,
the officers had a right to prevent potential violence.”
How can this happen in a land that has freedom of religion?
Will
this be the thin edge of the wedge to attempt to open up the possibility to close down Christianity in the USA using bureaucratic
tools?
Should Christians
be activity in addressing injustices in this way? I believe they should. Maybe we should arrive en mass and stage a sit in
at the park so that the police have a few thousand people in that park to deal with.
Whatever we do about this intrusion on our freedom,
it should not be nothing!
Doing
nothing and standing back because we as Christians do not support violence and want peace, is the incorrect option in situations
like this. We should never be violent! We should be peaceful! But we should also stand firmly on our rights as citizens of
this world for the aspects of free speech available to us.
We need to pray that the influences that are causing this disruption of the value systems in our world would be stopped,
that we can continue to approach others with good news (in love).
Politics is people making decisions about public policy. We cannot divorce our decision making on public policy from
our religion since that would be an impossible task. We Christians as people, are not double minded, but single minded. We
want to speak and live in truth. Our public and personal life is identical.
That means we have to speak truth as we see it in all of its shades and colors. No
matter how difficult it is to stand our ground, we will need to do so. The brightness of God’s words and value systems
need to be injected into a dark world, if people are to understand the joy they are missing!
What can we as Christian individuals do around the
world?
We can stand
firm on our beliefs and insist we get a chance to provide God’s message of love and truth to others.
We should not bow down to those who would use violence and intimidation to try and stop us speaking!
These people are
bureaucratic terrorists.
Today
if people try and intimidate us, to cause us to feel alienated, or those who use unjust means (or misuse just means) to attempt
to shut us down, we must respectfully and lovingly, but firmly resist these actions.
Passive resistance is a
better option than violent resistance in any of these circumstances.
Yes, we can perhaps be hurt in the process, we may be abused, but Jesus’ name gets
lifted higher and higher as we endure unjust attacks.
Not the easiest thing to think about, but something we need to consider! The bible says...“Be on your guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be brave. Be strong. Be
loving in everything you do.”
1 Corinthians 16:13&14 NIRV
Tue, October 9, 2012 | link
|
|
If you want to see a short blog describing a perspective on what I believe click here
 |
Rift in Evil
By Ken
X Briggs - Published: September, 2010
- Format: Perfect Bound Softcover(B/W)
- Pages: 208
Size:
6x9 - ISBN: 9781450250894
Available from Barnes and Noble, Amazon, iUniverse. |
Credit cards are acceptable on sites having Ken's books: 
:)
 |
|
Click
on XML Click here =>  to be told of new blogs
| Ken's book covers are displayed below. . . | |  This
suspense thriller centers on Kiara, a beautiful young woman pursued by a murderous group of people, who relentlessly and ruthlessly
hunt her and her sisters. Kiara has no idea why she is being targeted! When Kiara and her family turn to the law for help,
this fails. Her pursuers’ powers reach deeply into the political and law enforcement world. Family support for her dwindles
when they too have to flee her pursuers. Can Kiara escape the clutches of both the law and dishonest big business? With the
media broadcasting that Kiara and friends are dangerous and subversive, can Kiara clear her name and bring her pursuers to
justice?
| | | | | To purchase Kiara's Pursuer ebook
@ $1.99 kindle version click here, To contact the author contact Author@KenXBriggs.com | | | | | | | | The town of Zinaville is dropped into a spiral of evil causing a young man and a beautiful but abused woman
to launch into an investigation that unveils an evil conspiracy. A horrific mining accident results in Joshua
Robyn's father being killed. Joshua struggles both with himself and his townsfolk as he tries to make sense of an incomprehensible
situation. Is it an accident or a murder? Why is there a seeming link to evil? Why is his work environment suddenly threatening?
What is the conspiracy about and what are they trying to do? As action moves dramatically from exotic African grasslands to
the heart of North America's cities, the plot unfolds and the pace quickens. Will there be time? Why is a beautiful abused
young woman in the center of this plot? Evil tendrils tighten on their lives and the interplay between the visible
and invisible world shows opposing forces at work. Will there be a rift in evil? Will they be able to stop the
evil in time? | | - Published: September, 2010
- Format: Perfect
Bound Softcover(B/W)
- Pages: 208
Size: 6x9 - ISBN: 9781450250894
Available
from Barnes and Noble, Amazon, iUniverse. Chapters | | | | |
| Frugal Eating Advice |
|
| Good advice for students living on limited $'s. Click on the image! |
May you be blessed today!
|
|
