Head-dibs

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was looking out the window at the gathering storm clouds when I saw it. A cloud shaped like Pegasus. Unmistakable. Fantastic! He was flying right along: legs pulled up in a gallop, head rearing up, mane flowing out behind and wings spread out from his back like a chicken. Maybe it is a chicken. Well, it is now. Scratching along in that great barnyard in the sky like a hotdog. Well, it’s a hotdog now. Now it’s gone. And I’m hungry.

I find myself standing in the midst of very complex matters. God and His Word remain in everlasting steadfastness, while the sands of change shift all about me covering and uncovering those Ozymandian reminders of human attempts to improve on what God has already done. These days are much akin to standing on the beach just within the water’s reach, the sand moves beneath one’s feet. Not much later one find himself ankle deep (or deeper!) in mud, left to fight the suction in pulling away to return to the bedrock. Considering the gravity of God’s own concern for His own glory, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd commandments weigh heavy throughout scripture. God wants man to live and move and have his being within the confines of who He is: He alone is God, man dare not make up a God to suit himself and God must be accurately represented through man’s dealings (as His vice-regent) to the world through word and work. The apostle Paul develops this theme throughout his letters, instructing his cont...

Of all our children, our youngest daughter is the philosopher. (We also have one Bohemian, one hippy, one extremist, one artist, and one realist. If you are counting and know how many children we have, well, you get to figure out whose who.) She can really think up the questions, too, and when she gets started, you'd better not have any plans for the rest of the evening. Her method is to think things through from start to finish, even if it takes all night (as she does not like to start her thoughts over again). This means the questions take on deeper nuances. Recently she has been entertaining the subject of knowledge and knowability in heaven. Of course it began with the question, “will we know everything in heaven.” She is wise to hypothesize in her processes, because she knows I will ask, “what do you think?” or, “what does the Bible say?” For some reason, her question got stuck in my brain and I found myself entertaining the thought on a deeper level as well. Will we k...

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" This sickness is not unto death ." John 11:4 From our Lord’s words we learn that there is a limit to sickness. Here is an "unto" within which its ultimate end is restrained, and beyond which it cannot go. Lazarus might pass through death, but death was not to be the ultimatum of his sickness. In all sickness, the Lord saith to the waves of pain, "Hitherto shall ye go, but no further." His fixed purpose is not the destruction, but the instruction of his people. Wisdom hangs up the thermometer at the furnace mouth, and regulates the heat. 1. The limit is encouragingly comprehensive. The God of providence has limited the time, manner, intensity, repetition, and effects of all our sicknesses; each throb is decreed, each sleepless hour predestinated, each relapse ordained, each depression of spirit foreknown, and each sanctifying result eternally purposed. Nothing great or small escapes the ordaining hand of him who numbers the hairs of our head . 2. This lim...

Maybe Elvis was Just a Carnal Christian . From Way of the Master Radio. Here is Reisinger's article , mentioned in the above-mentioned.

Last year I was shaken to the roots when I heard that Ken Blanchard was going to be a speaker at the Willow Creek Leadership conference. Ken sits on the Board of Advisors of The Hoffman Institute , an organization that promotes personal transformational change for individuals. Though “The Hoffman Process” or the “Quadrinity Process” is not described in great detail, we can certainly get an idea of what kind of help Blanchard promotes by a survey of those who sit on the board: Joan Borysenko, PhD: international authority on mind/body medicine; Margot Anand: practitioner and teacher of Sexual Magic and Ecstasy; Ward Ashman, PhD: A licensed psychologist and management consultant specializing in personal and organizational evolution; Anat Baniel, internationally known master practitioner and Training Teacher of the Feldenkrais method for movement, mind/body integration and physical healing; David Bork: a pioneer in the field of counseling family owned businesses for over 25 years; Sonia Ch...

In central Georgia and other parts of the South (like where I live), a common sight is trees completely covered with kudzu vines. Often these lush-green leafy vines completely hide the tree and even small houses. Although imported to be a ground cover to combat erosion, these vines are now a curse. Covering acres and acres of excellent timber and farmland, they slowly destroy other vegetation. And the kudzu begins as a little seed but is almost impossible to eliminate, once it sets its woody roots. Spiritual and moral kudzu vines choke our world and hide our true identity. They begin as insignificant seeds of thought and grow into massive systems of destructive thinking, completely distorting and hiding our real nature, even from ourselves. In a parable Jesus warned about weeds that choke the true plant and keep it from bearing fruit. The kudzu vine is not really the tree whose exterior it covers. It is a foreign element so attached to the tree that one could easily mistake it for the ...

"The doctrine of the death of Christ and its significance was not St. Paul’s theology, it was his gospel. It was all he had to preach. It is with it in his mind — immediately after the mention of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present world with all its evils — that he says to the Galatians: ' Though we or an angel from heaven preach a gospel to you contravening the gospel which we preached, let him be anathema. As we have said before, so say I now again, if any man is preaching a gospel to you contravening what you received, let him be anathema’ (Galatians 1: 4, 8 f.). I cannot agree with those who disparage this, or affect to forgive it, as the unhappy beginning of religious intolerance. Neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament has any conception of a religion without this intolerance. The first commandment is, ‘Thou shalt have none other gods beside Me,’ and that is the foundation of the true religion. As the...

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Blasphemy is the use of action and language in terms of supreme insult that reveals the true heart of a person. Primarily, blasphemy concerns one’s attitude toward God. Specifically to blaspheme means to blame God. Blasphemy clearly communicates one’s lack of reverence and in that communication the blasphemer exalts himself above another, even implying that he himself has attributes of diety. This is why blasphemy is wrong. It is the next domino to fall after breaking the 1st commandment (“You shall have no other gods before Me”) and the 2nd commandment (“You shall not make for yourself graven images and bow down to worship them”). G. Campbell Morgan teaches his readers that taking the name of the Lord in vain is more than simple profanity, the reducing of the name of God and the reputation that name recalls to a mere throw-around word. Morgan shows that where there is blasphemy is also frivolity and hypocrisy. [i] We are accustomed to the concept that one simply does not use the na...

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