Playing in the Mud

Written by Kristi Huseby

 Are you struggling with feelings of sadness, loneliness or despair? Need someone to listen? We’re here. Talk to a mentor.

“And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of His face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like Him.” (2 Corinthians 3:17-18, The Message)

What is it about boys and mud? It attracts them like bees to honey! If there was any mud to be found in our back yard, my four boys would find it. They would never carefully step around a mud puddle. Oh no, they would stomp right into the middle of it! I can’t tell you how many times I would go out to the backyard and find them playing in a mud puddle and rubbing mud all over each other. They would often try to clean themselves before I found them but that only made matters worse. The only way to get them clean was to spray them down with a hose and get them into the bathtub for a good soak.

5 Easy Memory Aids That Can Help Anyone

Whether the problem is cognitive impairment or normal aging, try these assists.

By Paula Spencer Scott, Caring.com senior editor

Having problems remembering to take pills, buy grocery items, or make appointments? 

Everyone experiences memory problems sometimes. Memory experts often recommend the following simple aids to people with mild cognitive impairment or early symptoms of dementia. But anybody (including harried caregivers!) who's ever forgotten something important can benefit.

1. A GPS system

The Designer of Your Destiny

by Jack Hayford

Throughout all of Church history there has been a great debate as to what degree things automatically happen, with the tilt leaning both in society and in theology toward fatalism. It reminds me of the story of a classic theologian who believed that everything was preordained by God. He was coming down the stairs from his study one day when he tripped and tumbled all the way to the bottom. When he got up, he brushed himself off and said, "Well, I'm glad that's over," presuming there was no way he could have avoided falling because it must have been foreordained.

There's no such thing revealed in the Scripture, but neither is there any such thing as the human capacity to make things happen by our own power. All you and I have is the power of choice, and even that does not provide the engine to bring about what is needed to make our lives work. I can push my car only a little bit and not very far. Certainly not up hill. But I can choose to turn on the engine.

The vanity of the flesh is the supposition that we can on our own achieve the best purposes for our lives. That's not an invitation to passivity any more than faith in the providence of God is a call to fatalism. Fatalism and passivity can be opposites, or they can go together: "Well, I'm just along for the ride." We're on a journey with the Lord to a place only He can take us, but there are things we need to do, choices we need to make, while we are on board.

How Father God Feels About You

by Jack Hayford

The story of the prodigal son, recorded in Luke 15, is often called the parable of the Father's heart. Jesus tells it, along with two other stories, not only in response to the seemingly "heart-less" religionists of His day, but also for you and me to know what is the Father's heart toward us.

Jesus tells of a man with two sons, one of whom asked for his inheritance in advance. The father gave it to him, and the son went out and squandered it, ending up in a pig sty. Finally, Scripture says, the young man "came to himself." He recognized the insensibility of the pathway he'd walked and how foolish he'd been to leave home. He returned, humbled, thinking he would ask to be just a servant at his father's place.

"But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' And they began to be merry." (Luke 15:20-24)

Don’t Alienate the Aliens

In 2008 a Vatican astronomer suggested that if we ever find intelligent beings in outer space, these aliens would be “our brothers” and “children of God” as much as human beings are.* The UK’s Daily Mail now reports that another Vatican astronomer also says he would be happy to baptize an alien.**

Such a statement reveals the silliness that results when someone tries to reconcile evolutionary thinking with the Bible.

The idea of intelligent aliens is pure speculation that depends heavily on evolutionary presuppositions. The argument is, “Life evolved here, so it must have evolved elsewhere in this incomprehensibly huge universe— we can’t be a special case.” The Bible contradicts both assumptions—life didn’t evolve here, it was created from nothing. And we are special, the pinnacle of God’s creation, created in His image.

Because Adam’s sin affected the whole universe, it would also affect any alien. But as nonhumans, aliens would not be eligible for salvation (this is one reason we are confident that intelligent aliens do not exist). So baptizing an alien would be pointless at best, and a mockery at worst. Jesus did not die for Martians—only descendants of Adam can be saved.

^* “Pope’s Astronomer Insists Alien Life 'Would Be Part of God’s Creation,'” www.independent.co.uk, May 15, 2008.

^** “I’d Love to Baptise ET, Says Vatican’s Stargazer,” www.dailymail.co.uk, September 17, 2010.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v6/n1/aliens

The Expanse of Redemption

Zechariah 14:20–21

The book of Zechariah ends with a remarkable statement about the expanse of redemption (see Zec 14:21). Above and beyond God’s ownership as Creator stands his ownership as the Re-creator who extends redemption “far as the curse is found.” 

God cares even for the little things that were spoiled by the fall, and he wants to restore it all. By affirming God’s redemptive interest in minuscule details like cooking pots, Zechariah reveals the enormity of God’s victory. Not only has Christ’s finished work secured salvation for sinners; it also has cleansed every nook and cranny of creation from sin’s decay.

But the last day—the culmination of God’s ultimate re-creation—isn’t here yet, we may argue. From the very moment of our conception, we’ve been living in eternity. Granted, the best is yet to come, but the here and now already is replete with foretastes. The trouble is, we’re eternal beings with a finite mentality, and we tend at times to get confused.

A Supernatural Cycle of Blessing

"Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days." (Ecclesiastes 11:1)

One of the most exciting things I ever discovered about God's law of sowing and reaping was the fact that financial harvests are not seasonal. If you plant year round, you can be receiving year round.

Don't misunderstand. I'm not saying your harvest will come instantly. It usually won't. You may have to wait for it for several months. What I'm saying is, if you'll keep planting consistently, you'll receive just as consistently. If you'll continually cast your bread on the water, eventually it will come in on every wave!

Of course, some people never get to enjoy that kind of constant blessing. That's because, instead of giving, they keep waiting to receive. They stand on the beach saying, "I wonder where my prosperity is? As soon as it comes in, I'll start giving."