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Getting somewhere requires effort, it takes
faith to push on, it's easy to screw up,
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Friday, November 2, 2012
The confidence of being with God “You are the only person on earth who can use your ability.” ~
Zig Ziglar
Isn’t it true that sometimes we can lack confidence that we know
what to do or are in fact making the right decisions and doing the right things?
Some signs of this are when we overly explain our reasons for doing something, or when we respond harshly to
criticism, or when we compensate for lack of confidence (maybe we get arrogant or try to appear overly
confident). Other ways we see our lack of confidence in our is when we start making out we are brave, or unable
to fail. We push out our chest and say things that sound good and confident to others, when underneath we are full of
fear and anxiety.
Has
that ever happened to you, I know I have had that problem in the past!
Another pointer to look for is when we try to explain to everyone just how perfect
we are at things. This is one sign, another is expressing insecurity or telling others we just can’t
do things because we are scared of failing.
I guess at one time or the other, we have all done some, or all of these things to compensate
for our lack of confidence.
We have a tendency as humans to know our failings, but many of us like Jethro Gibbs of NCIS, tend to lie about our insecurity and
try to make out we are somehow God himself and never insecure. How does that work for those of us that do it? We know the
truth don’t we?
Reality is this ...everyone goes through times of insecurity.
The bigger the task God gives us to do, the more easily we fall into insecurity, right?
Then we read...
“But God chose you to be his people. You are royal priests. You are a holy nation. You
are a people who belong to God. All of this is so that you can sing his praises. He brought you out of darkness into his wonderful
light.” 1 Peter 2:9 NIRV
As Christians, we
understand we are specially chosen by God! That means that
God wanted us to do specific things for him that nobody else could do. Now, we also need to understand, that if God asks us
to do something he will guide us on how to do it.
Remember how God asked Moses to do something for him?
Moses was a runaway society misfit, who had taken up farming and was avoiding the powerful people and governments of his time.
Yet, God chose
this scared guy to change the most powerful nation on earth at the time.
His request was simple yet scary. To see a brief YouTube animation of this you can click this link.
Most of us think that if God
asks we would jump up and do what is asked immediately!
We forget that when faced with God, our understanding of our own inadequacies
increase as well! That’s one of the main reasons we
often fail to do tasks. Fear of our inadequacies and an understanding of how much more powerful, holy and pure God is. We
can’t measure up, we think! Then if we are not careful we do ourselves a damage and turn away from the tasks God has
given us.
Are we wimps,
or winners?
Jesus came
to clear away our sins and enable us to be pure, so that we can have God with us, and go from being wimps to being winners!
With Christ we are winners!
Now, we
don’t always feel that way and sometimes we need God
to help us make the move from wimp to winner.
Moses
needed that help! (See Exodus 3 and 4 for the story). God
had to not only give Moses supernatural powers (turning sticks into snakes, creating and healing major diseases), but he even
gave him a human companion by allowing him to have his brother go with him, to help him.
God will do the same for us! He will do miracles to help us gain favor and do the right things. He puts our Christian brothers
and sisters around us to help. He takes us from being evil orphans and makes us family. We are family of God, and with that
comes support and love on a superhuman scale.
Today, let’s understand our inadequacies are not failings, they are not even inadequacies. They are attributes that make us different from others, and by doing this, shape
us to be of special use to God in very specific circumstances.
The problems and pains we experience if we have God with us, only make
us better, wiser and more powerful people.
That’s the joy of living the Christian life!
Let’s go enjoy living our lives today!
Fri, November 2, 2012 | link
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Doing things right when in a hurry “If you are in a hurry you
will never get there” ~ Chinese Proverb
Sometimes we get into a situation in life where doing things quickly is necessary, isn’t it?
At times like these we often find that despite our desire to complete
what we have to do quickly, we often find there are numerous interruptions, people need things, we are
tired, and the frustrations of life can easily get in the way.
There was this specific group of people who were being exploited by those that had control over them. They worked hard, long hours
and never got anything much in return.
Then
God decided to do something about it!
In this
specific case he sent people to tell the overlord that they were to let these people go so that they could find a better life
elsewhere. This guy needed some serious encouragement to comply! God provided it!
Worse and worse things happened to him and the families and friends around this overlord to force him to listen.
Finally,
God after warning him what would happen if he didn't listen, God has an angel kill off all the firstborns around
him. Yes all! The firstborn animals and the firstborn children everywhere died together over the same night. Public
outcry and anger and fear was the result. You can imagine it! This was too much!
Panicking, this overlord and all those around him wanted these troublesome
people out of their lives. This overlord was the Pharaoh of Egypt and this was his attitude to the guy and his spokesman who
were leading the people…
“He said to them, “Get out of here! You and the Israelites, leave my people! Go. Worship the Lord, just
as you have asked. Go. Take your flocks and herds, just as you have said. And also give me your blessing.”
The Egyptians begged the
people of Israel to hurry up and leave the country. “If you don’t,” they said,
“we’ll all die!” Exodus 12:31-33 NIRV
One
minute the Israelites were told to stay, the next they had to go!
In times like these it is easy to miss out important things isn’t it? That’s why God was ahead of their hurrying. He had already prepared them.
God organized a good meal the night before, that they would already be dressed to go, and that they had the right shoes and
equipment for the journey nearby.
God can pre-prepare us for those situations where we need to rush.
The key aspect is that in the rush, we need to remember what God has
said to us through his bible and messages. We need to avoid
neglecting God as we hurry, and we should only hurry when we know that God is with us directing where we are to hurry to and
how we are to conduct ourselves along the way.
Often
when hurrying, we find we come up against a roadblock. Those
Israelites did. They came across a sea blocking their road. Rather an impossible situation.
You and I often come across impossible situations in our lives
don’t we. The important aspect is to remember the words of Jesus when he said,
“Things that are impossible with people are possible with God.” Luke 18:27 NIRV
Those Israelites faced the impossible and God cut through the problem by bringing in a wind that separated the sea and made a path through it. God can make a way through
our impossible situations if we trust him and do what he asks us to do.
Faith cuts through failure!
We need to remember that today as we face our impossible tasks and need to hurry ahead.
Have a great God blessed day!
Thu, November 1, 2012 | link
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Be prepared, scouts and Christians… Be Prepared... the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous
thinking out and practicing how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise. ~ Robert Baden-Powell
Anyone caught in a disaster situation knows that preparation
is 50% of being able to deal with the emergencies that occur.
If we don’t carry flashlights and candles at home during
the evenings, then when the power fails, we have little ability to continue with tasks we were doing those few seconds prior
to the blackout emergency.
If the
USA didn’t setup FEMA with the powers and budget it has for warning people and establishing emergency services, the
impact of impending disasters such as Sandy, that hurricane that hit the coast this week, would be far worse.
As Christians, the apostle Peter warns us we too should
be prepared. Here is what he says…
“Control yourselves. Be on your guard. Your
enemy the devil is like a roaring lion. He prowls around looking for someone to chew up and swallow. Stand up to him. Stand
firm in what you believe. All over the world you know that your brothers and sisters are going through the same kind of suffering.” 1 Peter 5:8-9 NIRV
Like Sandy, the hurricane, threat of evil is
obvious, impeding, and we can see that the evil in this world damages people.
Denying the existence of
evil seems a futile activity, and in my estimation, so is
the activity of denying the personality that coordinates and promotes the evil. I am talking of Lucifer, or Satan, and his
helpers the demonic forces.
I find it interesting that many Christians have a half belief in Satan! They believe he exists the same way an older child believes in Santa Claus. The belief has little
strength and is clothed in suspicion.
Mature Christians do understand that the devil, Lucifer, or Satan is real!
I guess
we can take a look at a few serial killers lives to see the impact of Satan’s work on lives. We can look into our own
inabilities to stand against temptation. We continually fail ourselves don’t we? At least, without God’s help
we do!
How many people tried to
give up alcohol without God and failed, only to do it with God, and succeed? (We are not saying some extraordinary strong
people don’t manage to overcome without accepting God, but I also wonder who was praying for them, don’t you?)
We need to understand
Satan is real and has supernatural beings that invade our spiritual space each day.
They
push people to do nasty things, ignorant things, selfish things! They
want to see us fail! Best of all, they want to feed our desires to make us believe we are getting something wonderful, and
then enjoy pulling the supports away and gleefully watching us drop into pains, sorry and self hate.
For example, time and again, I watch young girls falling in love
with a guy who is selfish and self fulfilling. They ignore the advice of others and have sex with the guy, that they initially
enjoy. Often they tell everyone that they are stupid for warning them. Then the pregnancy starts and the horror that ensues
is devastating. Generally the guy leaves them and they are alone to deal with that devastation. Satan and his demons murmur
murder into their ears and some abort their child. Then Satan laughs as the guilt sucks joy from their life every year from
then onwards. I am sure the demons gurgle with delight as the mother of the aborted child sees other children, and considers
what her child would have been doing. The pain injected into that life is huge. Satan and his friends, I am sure, are laughing
out loud as the Christians rally around to love, support and help these unfortunately duped individuals. With God’s
love, many recover well! God is in the healing business!
Let’s understand this is an example! We ourselves often fail to see what we are getting into. How many of us
pray to God and look for Holy Spirit to guide us through the invisible hazards that Satan structures into our lives? Are we
wise or are we as duped as those teenage girls I have mentioned.
We need to control ourselves, listening to Holy Spirit, reading God’s words and
asking him to help us understand. Wisdom comes from God,
not our friends. We need to be prepared, ready to take action against life’s dangers.
Demons are real! Yes! Real!
Let’s understand, you cannot be a Christian
and not believe in demons. Face the facts! Satan has helpers
that influence and get into the lives of people. They prowl around looking for entry into lives.
How do they get in?
Demons use sin as the door into our lives. Those selfish, ignorant and nasty things we allow in our lives become portals that lead to an invasion
of our spirit. Unseen, these viral monsters spread evil into every crevasse of our thinking that offers them an attachment
point, influencing and massaging our thoughts towards the emptiness and darkness that they hate so much themselves. Taking
our pure souls with them into the black eternity is their hope.
Yet, God has given us free will.
We can decide
to reject these satanic monsters. We can stand firm in what
we believe, what God reveals through his word. We can instead of moving towards the darkness, move into the light. We can
allow the fire of Holy Spirit to burn away these evil monsters and by choosing God over selfishness, wisdom over foolishness,
caring and love over greed and envy, we can move to a place of peace and joy where none of the evil can gain a foothold in
our lives.
That’s
why Jesus died and rose again, he did it to enable us to
have this power. It is in the hands of every Christian. We need to practice using this ability, to acknowledge God, reject
evil and stand firm.
Today, let’s do exactly that as we face the day. Have a good one!
Wed, October 31, 2012 | link
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Power, internet and phone outages are a pain! “The power outage caused
power, internet, and phones to be unavailable. Chaos and sense of controlled helplessness ensued!”
Hurricane Sandy hit the USA east coast yesterday causing considerable storm damage and leaving many struggling.
· What do we do when we lose control of our lives?
·
What do we think of?
· How many of us turn to God for direction and trust him to help us through?
·
How many just don’t
know where to turn?
When we have no power, it’s
cold and wet, the phones don’t work, when the pumps at the gas station stop working, we start to experience what
life is like without our human controls don’t we?
Most of the time we consider how wonderful we are and what we have done to make our lives better. During the times when we seem to be
in control some people even snub God, indicating they don’t need him!
Then, one hurricane comes past, and we find that God is still in control in a mighty way, don’t we?
What did we do to stop this hurricane from causing problems?
Everything we could!
Was it effective?
In a minor way!
We need to understand our lives are still subject to God’s mercy and intervention. Our illusion of control is just that! One earthquake, one tsunami,
one hurricane, and we are at a loss.
We are not saying God causes these events!
What we are saying, is these events are part of nature that God created and that most of the time
we enjoy. Sometimes, when it turns against us instead of for us, we need to remember that we are not in control
of the planet.
We are in only control over the living things, upon the planet that God allows us to control.
God never gave
us control of the oceans, the sky and the earth.
If you think this is wrong, please read Genesis 1 where God hands out the aspects we are able to control.
We need to understand that as much as we would like to, we cannot control nature fully!
We are subject to the forces generated by our world at large.
The only
controls we have are through prayer and reacting to help others that are in need.
In times where our world is falling apart, it is
good to hang onto two key aspects. The first is God, who is timeless and always with us, and the second is our ability to
do something for the person next to us.
It is in the times of great need that great selfless love rises up above the squalor of petty life to build deep friendship, that can sustain us not only in the moment, but often
for years to come.
Unlikely
people are brought together by need, developing relationships where the spark of God’s compassion, energized by our
humble lives and attitudes of joy, peace and trust, improve circumstances.
In times where others have little peace and security, we as Christians
can let Holy Spirit give us the confidence and compassion to help them gain control in the difficult times.
Ability to accept help is sometimes as important
as giving it. Here too, true humility that
Jesus provides in our lives, removes the pride that stops us allowing others to help, again forging close, deep relationships.
“My brothers and sisters, you will face all kinds
of trouble. When you do, think of it as pure joy. 3 Your faith will be put to the test. You know that when that
happens it will produce in you the strength to continue. 4 The strength to keep going must be allowed to finish
its work. Then you will be all you should be. You will have everything you need.” James 1:2&3
Today, as you deal with
life, let’s remember, God is with us, and is in control. We need to love God, and others as we ourselves want to be
loved.
Let’s have compassion for our world!
(PS: How about sending some money to help with hurricane relief or supporting teh world relief organizations
with a a little money if you can spare it?)
Tue, October 30, 2012 | link
Monday, October 29, 2012
DNA sequences, human and other… 
It's good to know where you come from. It
makes you what you are today. It's DNA, it's in your blood. ~ Alexander McQueen Humans are full of
pride aren’t we? We puff ourselves up and proclaim
to everything in the world that we are superior, more complex, and far more intelligent. If we don’t do that, we secretly
think it, don’t we? The fact that
we are more complex, superior to the other naturally determined species, is actually determined by God and not by ourselves
or even nature. While nature may have been used by God to construct us, it seems unlikely
we just arrived by chance. Why do I say that? Well to be transparently honest, it’s because I have a relationship
with the God of the universe, and he says… 26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the
sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 27 So God created mankind in his own image in the image of God he
created them;
male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule
over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” That said, it is interesting to me, to evaluate how science has been used by God to build our life and existence.
Today, I want to look into just
one aspect of this! The life block of human existence! The code that programs our abilities and procreation! The DNA in our
bodies! We are complex, having about 3 billion DNA pairs. However did you know there is an amoeba, scientific term Polychaos dubium ("Amoeba" dubia) that has 670billion
pairs? An amoeba is a one-celled
creature having no definite form and consisting of a mass
of protoplasm containing one or more nuclei surrounded by a flexible outer membrane. One
of the simplest organisms on earth! This means complexity of human genome is less than that of amoeba! Let’s pop our pride balloon! Next,
according to the scientists our closest DNA relative is the chimpanzee.
We have about 95 to 98.5% of the chimp DNA depending on the counting mechanisms. Chimpanzees have 24 chromosomes, whereas
we have 23 of which 18 are almost identical to the Chimp, but chromosomes 4, 9 and 12 have been “altered”. Our Y chromosome is very different to that of the chimps. On chromosome
21 there are very different and apparently non-random areas of difference to the chimps. Almost as if someone had changed the code deliberately,
right? There is no real evidence we did come from chimps, however this is something that many in science assume! Assumptions like this from the past, have been found to
be wildly inaccurate. For example go back thirty years and
almost every textbook on evolution said we came from Neanderthal’s, a fact now disproved by science. I can remember
being heavily criticised in those days for saying that Neanderthal origin was an assumption not a fact. I expect people will
label this statement of mine the same way, but the fact is actually that humans coming from Chimpanzee’s is an assumption. We don’t yet understand the dynamic of
what builds DNA’s from one species to another. Our
current evolutionary tools describe how a species changes due to evolution but not jumps between them. I know we are trying
hard to show this can happen, and we use similar species as tools and try and map DNA, but please let’s not make out
we know. How could such a complex organism as an amoeba have such a long evolutionary hereditary without adapting, or are
we saying it adapted backwards from complexity to simplicity? I prefer to look at this as God picking up the toolkit to build life and choosing the right parts to build what he
wants. Out of all of this he ended his creative process by saying, “ God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” Our pride
should be in our God who created us as the most amazing part of his creation. Let’s
honor the living God, allowing him to use whatever tools he designed into nature to do this, but let’s not fail to give
him the honor and glory that comes from a spectacular creation. We are spectacular, we are great, not on our
own merit, but because God made us that way. How about we thank God as we consider that today?
Mon, October 29, 2012 | link
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If you want to see a short blog describing a perspective on what I believe click here
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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: 
:)
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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 |
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| Good advice for students living on limited $'s. Click on the image! |
May you be blessed today!
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