Category Archives: Holy Soap Box

1 Timothy, 2 Samuel, 2 Thessalonians, 2019, Genesis, Holy Soap Box, Political awareness, Romans

The Scratch

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At this juncture in my 67-year-old life, rights are important. One I highly treasure is LIFE. Beyond that, many of the rights I see extolled today may be best defined as social demands.

I watched a video today of homeless college students in California, actually living in their vehicles. I admire them so much! I saw them as intelligent, capable, determined, well-groomed, articulate, courteous, etc. Amazing young souls who in days or perhaps years to come will wow their worlds with their contributions!

A commentator asked if college housing should be made a right. What a tragedy that would be! Albeit, this is a phenomenal ministry opportunity for God’s people to come alongside with appropriate helps and comforts. I am convinced making it a right implemented and administered by our political system would hinder the building of grit, confidence, ingenuity, accomplishment, and more for many. Am I romanticizing what these particular young people are doing? Perhaps a tad, but would not it be grand if all our lives were lived as an earthly romance with a heavenly quest?

Can you imagine these young people when they finish this college adventure with little to no debt because of their own choices and sacrifices, how confident and strong they will be? A Psychologist told me he and his colleagues had discovered we only value those things into which we have invested ourselves (including our money) – what costs us little or nothing we deem of little or no value.

2 Samuel 24:24 New Living Translation (NLT)
24 But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on buying it, for I will not present burnt offerings to the LORD my God that have cost me nothing.” So David paid him fifty pieces of silver for the threshing floor and the oxen.

Each of us has the God-given right to life. Beyond that we are owed what we earn.

Romans 13:8 New Living Translation (NLT)
8 Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill the requirements of God’s law.

2 Thessalonians 3:10 New Living Translation (NLT)
10 Even while we were with you, we gave you this command: “Those unwilling to work will not get to eat.” 

Genesis 3:17-19 New Living Translation (NLT)
17 And to the man he said,
“Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree
whose fruit I commanded you not to eat,
the ground is cursed because of you.
All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
18 It will grow thorns and thistles for you,
though you will eat of its grains.
19 By the sweat of your brow
will you have food to eat
until you return to the ground
from which you were made.
For you were made from dust,
and to dust you will return.”

It’s not love that motivates us (or Systems) to negate The Scratch!

Wait! A thousand times NO! This is NOT a license to neglect, abandon, abuse or in any wise cause harm to one another. GOD also tells us in

1 Timothy 5:8 King James Version (KJV)
8 But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel. 

It is not Political Systems that should feed, clothe, shelter, provide medical coverage, or educate any of us.
Political Systems enslave the ones they ‘help’.
BUT GOD! Well, The Scratch is a holy gift to each of us – young and old.
What shall we do with it?!

Ephesians, Holy Soap Box

Just Saying

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I invested a few minutes looking at some pictures of early elementary school students. Clearly the colors of their skin did not matter to them. So, I am pitching this out for consideration.

Why teach them otherwise? Why expose and indoctrinate them with violent attempts to sanitize America’s history? The very act of sanitizing history introduces hatred. Why not tell them the truth; the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Why not learn the truth ourselves? Why not do valid research and learn just how many people groups have been slaves and who are still slaves? And while we are researching let’s not limit it to slavery, let’s look at the coming to America; who came and why, what they found, the sins they committed, the good they did. Let’s be honest, let’s be human about it and seek The Creator to understand it all; and added to this, let us not forget the framing of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Through it all, let us use the old documents to tell the real story, not the opinions of some 20th and 21st century authors whose aim it is to re-write history.

We cannot undo what has been done but we can learn from the past and we can do better today and tomorrow.

To continue stirring and spreading this present hatred will not change the past but it will destroy the future.

We can help. We can stop posting unwholesome, non-edifying, strife-building stories, videos, pictures on Facebook, Instagram, snap-chat, etc. etc.  

IF IT WILL NOT HELP US APPRECIATE EACH OTHER, DON’T POST IT.

Ephesians 4:29 (AMPC) 29 Let no foul or polluting language, nor evil word nor unwholesome or worthless talk [ever] come out of your mouth, but only such [speech] as is good and beneficial to the spiritual progress of others, as is fitting to the need and the occasion, that it may be a blessing and give grace (God’s favor) to those who hear it. source

Chazaq! 

Holy Soap Box

Bare Confidence

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I read her post and it was on. The thought train pulled into the station and I boarded; took me a good ways – a round trip all the way back to the Garden of Eden.

She was right; before sin Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed and well they should have been. However, no such public ‘well they should’ is attainable on earth today.

Revelation 3:17  (NKJV) 17 Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked—  source

Shall we return to the beginning?

 Genesis 2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. source

The two were naked and unashamed – spiritually, emotionally, and physically.

You see that word naked in Hebrew more definitively means ‘bare’.  So we could say they were bare before GOD and unashamed or since they were unashamed at being bare, they did no hiding from GOD. But when they sinned, they lost that confidence and so much more!  And the cover up began!

Seems ironic to me that as time has marched on the more women refuse to bare themselves before the holy God, the more they expose themselves to an unholy world and profess to be unashamed of it.

Where was I?  Oh yes. Adam and Eve.
After sin they were immediately aware of the change and they sewed for themselves loin-coverings in an attempt to cover the nakedness they had brought on themselves and all who would come after them, through them. Please note also they hid from the Presence of the LORD when He came for His usual walk in the cool of the day. Their bare confidence was gone! (Genesis 3)

I wonder if these propensities to bare our bodies is yet another perversion of our innate longing to be bare, to be seen, and known by GOD.  Allow me to summarize a conversation I had with my beloved in the midst of writing this post.

As a man when we are out and women cross our path I will often take note that she is attractive if she has presented herself well; but when she is scantily clad with cleavage showing and thighs shining I think Ugh! Why?! Put some clothes on!
And I said but you are not like the world’s men, your nakedness has been covered; the world’s men have not and they want to see that.
What grieves my spirit is when women who profess love for JESUS give no thoughtful concern to contributing to the nakedness of the world’s men and even more than that, give no appreciable thought to honoring JESUS with their physical ‘coverings’ which should give testimony that they have spiritually received HIS COVERING.

The Bible instructs us to dress in modest apparel; perhaps we would do well to examine what we are trying to hide when we expose so much of our skin to the world. Our clothing choices must not be ultimately based on culture and trending fashion. It is no easy task to find modest apparel in today’s market; especially swimwear. Much of today’s swimwear gives less coverage than underwear.  I get the pull to wear it – it was my practice too before my eyes were opened. Would we consider that the covering of our physical nakedness before we step out our doors into community is an act of worship? (Question is who are we worshiping?) As Christian women do we not want the clothes we wear to testify to people that our spiritual nakedness has been covered by the shed Blood of JESUS?  And would we also be willing to acknowledge when we refuse to wear modest apparel we are giving testimony to all who see us that we are our own god; that we have chosen for ourselves what is right and wrong?

When the Father made the coats of skin to cover the bodies of Adam and Eve, He was demonstrating for them and for us that covering our nakedness involved much more than just our bodies; fig leaf aprons would never do! Rescuing them and us required the shedding of blood and the ultimate blood to be shed would be HIS VERY OWN SON’s. There was no other way! With this being so, I will most gladly with all honor and pleasure dress myself in modest apparel. It’s a small token of gratitude to give to Him Who has covered my wretched nakedness and shame. I would rather it not have taken me decades to get here so if I can help shorten a sister’s travel time to modesty that would be my delight; hence this posting.

Salt and Light,
Kathie

Matthew 5:13-16