IT IS WELL, WITH MY SOUL

"

A POST WORTH READING

Here is the link to a blog I subscribe to.  The man who writes there often has many good things to say but today is really worth sharing.  Here is the link.  Enjoy.

http://www.reformedandconservative.com/2011/11/worship-and-beauty-and-difference.html?showComment=1322663733384#c7993102532642353535

BACK TO WORK

Today is Monday.  Not just any Monday, but the Monday after Thanksgiving.  Four days off of work is a very long time.  It was a wonderful time.  I cannot remember the last time I had that many days off with nothing special to do.  Sure, there was the week off of work to go to Texas and Tulsa as well as all of the monthly trips to the Cancer Treatment Centers of America to get Melissa's treatment but we were just as busy there as I would have been if I went to work instead.  These past four days have been so wonderfully refreshing because there was nothing to do but sit in my apartment and well, do nothing.

WWII in HD

If you have not seen the movie series titled, "WWII in HD", then you should.  I have watched it in the last two days and it has prompted and galvanized a greater appreciation to God for the grace He has shown me by keeping me from seeing and experiencing greater amounts of horror than otherwise possible.  We live in a world of pain and this great country I was born into continually fails to appreciate God for that grace which we deem so common.  In light of the world around us, it is not as common as we would like to pretend.

“If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our bodies. And if they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for.” - Charles Spurgeon

VICTORY OVER SIN

The vanquishing of sin in your life as a Christian is many times held back by God for the purpose of driving you to your knees in prayer, promoting more dependence on God and less dependence upon self.  True fellowship with God is necessary to overcome the sin that so easily entangles you.  Not just biblical truth itself, but actual, secret meetings with God.  Meetings where you take the time to pour out your heart before the Lord, requesting that God use His strong arm on your behalf to destroy any strongholds that the enemy has built up in your life.  Regular meetings with God until you can confidently say with the Psalmist, "I love the Lord because He hears my voice and my prayers for mercy.  Because he bends down to listen, I will pray as long as I have breath!"  Let the fact that God has heard your prayers and vanquished these pockets of resistance in your life be real and practical and not just theoretical.  Dear reader, ask yourself, "Can I truly say with the Psalmist that I will pray as long as I have breath because He hears me?"  Have you set yourself to pray for specific things in your life and continued in prayer until it has been won?  We truly do not have, because we have not truly asked.  Go.  Meet with God and He will deliver.  Depend not upon yourself any longer and you will surely be delivered from whatever it is that is coming in between you and your God.

WHAT IS THE GOSPEL?

TRACTS

The Lord has opened many doors for getting tracts out this weekend.  Just this morning, I got out over 50 of the www.illbehonest.com business cards that I had printed and that before 5am!  Pray that the Lord might use these paper messengers of hope to advance His kingdom in the Kansas City area.

PARENTAL ADVICE for OWS PROTESTERS (by Marybeth Hicks, Washington Times)

Call it an occupational hazard, but I can't look at the Occupy Wall Street protesters without thinking, "Who parented these people?"


As a culture columnist, I've commented on the social and political ramifications of the "movement" - now known as "OWS" - whose fairyland agenda can be summarized by one of their placards: "Everything for everybody.


Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it's clear there are people with serious designs on "transformational" change in America who are using the protesters like bedsprings in a brothel.

Yet it's not my role as a commentator that prompts my parenting question, but rather the fact that I'm the mother of four teens and young adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters' moms clearly have not passed along.


Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters' mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn't, so I will:


• Life isn't fair. The concept of justice - that everyone should be treated fairly - is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, "You can't always get what you want."

No matter how you try to "level the playing field," some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they're dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons. Is it fair? Stupid question.


 • Nothing is "free." Protesting with signs that seek "free" college degrees and "free" health care make you look like idiots, because colleges and hospitals don't operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers and "slow paths" to adulthood, and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical.

While I'm pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.


 • Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that don't require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college student is not a state of victimization. It's a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for - literally.


 • A protest is not a party. On Saturday in New York, while making a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn't evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don't dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don't seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.


 • There are reasons you haven't found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn't a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It's not them. It's you.

JOSH GARRELS

I found this guy through someone's blog that I follow.  The lyrics in all of his music are solid.  By 'solid', I mean biblical.  The sound is nice, although it takes a little bit to get used to.  The music has the sound of 'Iron and Wine' if you are familiar with them.  I have very much enjoyed it and have actually been encouraged by the songs on this album to worship God truly.  He is a great encouragement to the brethren and you can sense this attitude in all of the songs.  The best part of the whole thing is that you can download the entire album at no cost.  I would pay double for this sort of music.

http://joshgarrels.bandcamp.com/

EDWARDS' RESOLUTION #63

63. On the supposition, that there never was to be but one individual in the world, at any one time, who was properly a complete Christian, in all respects of a right stamp, having Christianity always shining in its true luster, and appearing excellent and lovely, from whatever part and under whatever character viewed: Resolved, to act just as I would do, if I strove with all my might to be that one, who should live in my time. Jan.14′ and July ’3′ 1723.


Jonathan Edwards is saying here that there can only be one person who at any one time is 'the strongest Christian alive'.  And the goal for his life is to be that man.  Let us seek to have this attitude.  

HINDERING PURSUASIONS OF THE ENEMY - CLINT LEITER

TIME WELL SPENT

I watched this hour long teaching from Tim Conway, Pastor of a church in San Antonio, TX.  The video can be found on www.illbehonest.com

SPURGEON QUOTE ON HELL

"Scripture does not speak of the fire of hell as chastening and purifying, but as
punishment which men shall receive for deeds done in the body. They are to be
visited with many stripes, and receive just recompense for transgressions. What can
there be about hell fire to change a man’s heart? Surely the more the lost will suffer
the more will they hate God."  -CH Spurgeon