Category Archives: Political awareness

2019, Guests, Political awareness, Prayer Requests, Prayers for We the People

Easy to be Angry

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A simple but powerful prayer, if we mean it, from Journey Magazine:

“Thank You, LORD, for reminding me that in this flawed world you still find pleasure in your people. Help me to be determined to keep that goal before me and to choose pleasing You at every opportunity.” 

In light of all that I read this day, this prayer is needed! It is so very easy to find the abounding evil in our beloved Nation. BUT GOD is at work and we are invited to join Him.  

It’s not wrong for us to be angry with the sins flaunted and celebrated on every digital screen available; however, anger will not get Christianity flourishing. 

HERE is a helpful essay. Perhaps you will read it.  LINK.

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?!

2018, Genesis, Political awareness

For Thousands of Years

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6 So he released everything he owned into Joseph’s hand. With him in charge, he did not think about anything except the food he ate.
Now Joseph was handsome in form and handsome in appearance.
7 Now after these things, the master’s wife lifted up her eyes at Joseph and said, “Come, lie down with me!”
8 But he refused. “Look,” he said to his master’s wife, “my master doesn’t think about anything in the house with me in charge, and everything that belongs to him he’s entrusted into my hand.
9 No one in this house is greater than I, and he has withheld nothing from me—except you, because you are his wife. So how could I commit this great evil and sin against God?”
10 So whenever she spoke to Joseph, day after day, he did not listen to her invitation to lie down beside her, to be with her.
11 Now on one such day, he came into the house to do his work, and none of the people of the house were there in the house.
12 Then she grabbed him by his garment saying, “Come, lie with me!” But he left his garment in her hand, fled and went outside.
13 When she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and fled outside,
14 she screamed to the men of her house and said to them, “Look! Someone brought a Hebrew man to us to fool with us. He approached me to lie with me so I screamed out loud.
15 When he heard me raise my voice and scream, he left his garment with me, fled and went outside.”
16 Then she kept the garment with her until his master came home.
17 She spoke the same words to him saying, “The Hebrew slave that you brought us approached me to fool with me.
18 When I raised my voiced and screamed, he left his garment with me and fled outside.”  Genesis 39  source

Christian Living, Political awareness, Prayers for We the People

Sticky Wicket

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The details escape me at the moment but seems there was some teaching decades back that as the wrapping up of this earthly experience moves closer to its final round it will become easy to distinguish Christ Followers from all others. I think that has merit not only in matters of our relationship with JESUS but with one another.

Perhaps we can agree there is a widening of the gap between people identified as Conservatives and people identified as Liberals.  Albeit the sharp contrast does help for identifying purposes; yet it is not without sorrow and pain. When I see/hear the world jawing and protesting about anything, I know right away it is likely I am compelled by the Word of GOD to refuse to align myself with the matter that has given rise to the uproar. Which only poses a sticky wicket for me if some member of my family or a friend has aligned themselves with the jawing ones. When that happens I have two choices,  I can explode on them or I can pray, choose my words wisely, or perhaps offer no words at all, continue to love and pray some more.

Right about now I’d like to quote the Whole of the Bible because it is the Whole Word of GOD that must be our plumb-line for sticky wickets and/or all out spiritual war.

Matthew 10:16 (NKJV)  Persecutions Are Coming 16 “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.  source 

These are exciting and challenging times to live and breathe the Gospel of JESUS CHRIST.  Let us pray for one another that we put on the full armor of GOD every day.

Pursuing Him  ΑΩ 
Kathie 

Extra Reading: HERE, HERE