I'd Be Happy If...

Sharon Jaynes

Today's Truth
"Don't be deceived, my dear brothers (and sisters). Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows" (James 1:16, 17 NIV)

Friend to Friend
Adam and Eve lived in a perfect world. All their needs were cared for. They had perfect communion with God and each other. They were "naked and unashamed." The only restriction placed on them was that they were not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil located in the middle of the Garden. God warned them, "If you eat of it, you will surely die."

As they basked in the light of God's love, darkness slithered into the Garden with his plan to kill, steal and destroy the image bearers. And how did he do it? He did it with the most powerful weapon of all...lies.

Move Forward with God’s Forgiveness

by Rick Warren

"Look straight ahead with honest confidence; don't hang your head in shame." (Proverbs 4:25 TEV)

You don't need to walk around carrying a load of guilt. The Apostle Paul says, “Yes, all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious ideal; yet now God declares us ‘not guilty’ of offending him if we trust in Jesus Christ, who in his kindness freely takes away our sins” (Romans 3:23-24 TLB).

God wants to forgive you. Imagine a giant blackboard with all of your sins written across it and God comes along with a giant eraser and erases it all. It's like an Etch A Sketch: You turn it upside down and shake it, then turn it back up, and the slate is clean. That's good news, isn't it?

But we need to accept God's forgiveness. We may know about God's forgiveness intellectually, but we need to believe it, deep down inside, accepting in faith that it is true — because it is!

One thing that often blocks us from accepting forgiveness from God is that we are unable to forgive ourselves. You need to forgive yourself for your past failures and sins, for the habits and hang-ups that led you to sin. Forgive yourself!

Compassion

Pastor Mark Jeske

If this were reality TV, here's how the story would continue. "But while he was still a long way off, his father's security guards spotted him and relayed the message. The father gave strict orders that his wastrel offspring was never to set foot on the family estate again, and if he tried, the dogs should be set on him."

Here's how the Bible describes the father, your Father: "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed him" (Luke 15:20).

There is hardly a more beautiful description in the entire Bible of grace, which is God's decision to love unlovable people because of Jesus' willing death on Calvary. Jesus wants you to know that you can always count on the Father's mercy, because it is not based on your performance.

Compassion means that the father felt his son's shame and pain. And get this: he didn't make his son crawl. The father ran to embrace his prodigal bonehead. Wouldn't you like to be in your heavenly Father's embrace right now?  

CNN Doesn’t Need To Fire Erick Erickson For Stupid ‘Vagina’ Comment

12:30 pm, September 11th | by Laura Donovan

Like many, CNN contributor Erick Erickson said something really stupid recently. During the DNC, the Red State V editor-in-chief tweeted, “First night of the Vagina Monologues in Charlotte going as expected.” Naturally, people got upset and he looked like a jealous, misogynistic coward. Less than an hour later, he issued a public apology, stating, “My apologies to those offended by my tweet. Wasn’t my intention.”

“Sorry” didn’t cut it for a lot of people, and women’s group UltraViolet headlined a campaign to get him banned from CNN. The petition has received more than 100,000 signatures, and while he definitely needed to be held accountable for his words, pushing to fire him is extreme and a waste of everyone’s energy.

Everyday Sexual Assault

Laura Bates

Founder of the Everyday Sexism Project

Posted: 03/09/2012 00:00

Once, I was walking down the street when a group of men came up behind me. I didn't turn around. There was plenty of room on the pavement for them to pass by. But they didn't. They stopped behind me and one, suddenly, roughly and completely out of the blue, grabbed my jeans-clad bottom from behind and squeezed, pushing his fingers forwards and upwards towards my crotch.

I'd like to say that I screamed; that I put him in his place there and then and articulately delivered a cutting speech that shamed him into apologising. I'd like to say that I said anything at all. But I didn't. I gasped, I froze, and I felt the blood rush to my face in mortification. Then I stood there, silently, as they walked away laughing.

The Everyday Sexism Project was designed to document instances of normalised, everyday sexism experienced by women worldwide to prove the enormous scale of the problem. But since it launched five months ago, we have received hundreds of reports of women being groped, grabbed, manhandled, slapped, tweaked, pinched, stroked and smacked in public, usually by complete strangers. The area of focus is almost always the breasts, the bottom or the thighs - sensitive, sexual, intimate regions of the body. And the tone of the reports usually mirrors my own experience almost exactly in that the victim describes an overwhelming sense of powerlessness, fear, shame and embarrassment:

Your Life Is Shaped by Your Thoughts

by Rick Warren “Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” (Romans 12:2 NLT) You cannot become all God created you to be until you understand the five factors that influence your identity. The first two are chemistry (how you are made) and connections (your relationships). You are a product of the way God created you and of the relationships in your life. Your identity is also influenced by your circumstances and your consciousness. Circumstances are the things that happen to you and around you — none of which you control. You are a product of the trauma, troubles, suffering, shame, shock, pressures, and pain that have shaped your life. Perhaps even abuse has affected your identity. If you’ve ever had a series of failures or a catastrophe, it has left an indelible mark on who you are.

A Healing Journey

Written by Angie Cote

Secret -concealed from general knowledge or view, hidden. (Webster’s Dictionary)

There are different kinds of secrets. Some are things hidden from our understanding, sometimes called the mysteries of life: how they built the pyramids, miracles, unexplained events. There are military secrets – confidential military matters, the CIA and spies. There are the secrets that are methods or formulas based on successes: if you send in your hundred dollars, you can receive a secret blend of tea/cream/pills guaranteed to make your cellulite disappear. Don’t we wish. There are the secrets where others share confidences with you.

Then you have the secrets that are of the personal nature – things that we have done ourselves, or had done to us, or been involved in that we don’t want anybody to know about. Usually it is something that is not socially or morally acceptable.

How God Values You

"You are of more value than many sparrows." - Luke 12:7

Read Ministry Letter Dear Loved One, The people of Jesus' day lived under the brutality of Roman rule,  diminishing their sense of human worth. So Jesus gave the example of little birds that were cheaply bought and sold to help them understand their own value to God. If not one of these relatively insignificant creatures is forgotten by God, He said, then think of the value God places on people. "The very hairs of your head are numbered," He says. There's no way to count the hairs on a person's head without being intimately close and putting your hand upon them. Jesus is telling us, "Father God is that close to you. He knows every detail, and His hand is upon your life."

How is Jesus "The Truth"?

Randy Alcorn

Truth is rooted in the eternal God who’s all powerful and unchangeable. Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is Truth” (John 17:17).

Truth is far more than facts. It’s not just something we act upon. It acts upon us. We can’t change the truth, but the truth can change us. It sanctifies (sets us apart) from the falsehoods woven into our sin natures.

As Christ the living Word is truth, so his written word is truth. Though heaven and earth will pass away, God’s truth never will.

Over half the New Testament uses of “truth” (aletheia) are in John’s gospel. Truth is reality. It’s the way things really are. What seems to be and what really is are often not the same. As I develop in my novel Deception, “Things are not as they appear.” To know the truth is to see accurately. To believe what isn’t true is to be blind.