Stables are where Lambs are born.  What a perfectly significant place for the Lamb of God to be born into this world....

12/20/06 Merry CHRISTmas Everyone....

1 John 3:17-19 - 17 But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? 18 My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. 19 And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him.

In todays terms, if you have worldly items, cars, a house, televisions and computers, lots of luxury items and a house full of items that have absolutely nothing to do with the NEED of survival, and you have a brother in church who maybe asking, not for a hand out, but a loan of $80 to pay their rent with a promise to pay it back, and if you say, I don't have $80 to give you, when in reality you do, this verse is saying in essence that you do not have Gods love in your heart. Oh people do not want to hear this, but please read on as I would like to journal one of my recent experiences in my spiritual growth.

This past year I suffered with an inability to breathe.  No matter how many times I tried to yawn or take a deep breath, I could not seem to get enough air.  A doctor diagnosed me with Emphysema.  Before the diagnosis, there were a couple times I wasn't sure if I was going to live through the night.  I prayed hard and constantly in contemplative and petition prayer, seeking answers for my children and my wife who lean on me dearly for security and comfort.  I petition prayed that even though I was old for starting a family of my own, that I would like to live long enough to walk my little girl down the isle. I prayed hard in contemplative prayer about my life, where I've been, where I was headed, and asked repeatedly for conviction, for God to show me what I've done wrong that I've not even considered.  Yes, we all have sins we do not remember, it is simply a part of being human.  Finally, one night when my breathing was troubled, I got what I asked for, and boy did I get it. It was not a vision of my life passing before my eyes in a sense of seeing everything you've done, but it was more like a sudden recognition of my true human nature state. It was such a devastating revelation of myself that I was very unsettled and this feeling I experienced haunted me for weeks afterwords, and even now I remember it and pray to God about it.

I think I know a little bit about what Isaiah and Job and others experienced when confronted by the presence of pure Holiness, no I was not in Gods presence any more than we all are, but I saw me in a spiritual perspective I've never seen before, and I realized my human condition.  We are selfish creatures.  I have always been charitable, I've given when I was behind in my own bills to help someone else in need, but this did not matter, it was not a shining star on my hat or chest, it was still my own selfishness.  I really do not know how to put it, but we live our lives for things we want and what we would like to experience, I do it, you do it, we probably all do it.  I think the best way I can explain it is this way....

If you ask even a secular person what does love mean, most people will say, it means you care about someone else more than you do yourself.  I imagine that if we were all in heaven, and to put it in earthly terms, a material heaven, and I had just received a blessing of some nice or valuable item for which I had worked for and had set a goal to achieve, and no sooner than I receive this hard sought after goal I turn around and another is in dire need of exaclty what I have just received, I would give it all over to them to fulfill their need. This is pure love, and it is it's own reward because in heaven all are filled with the same pure love.

So measure your selfishness.  Maybe you have a goal or have wanted a big screen TV, or a new car, maybe a caribean cruise, and you know someone who has fallen into hardship, maybe a health problem or a broken family, maybe a lost job due to outsourcing.  You take that new finally realized dream and give it's value to the one who needs help.  Can you do it?  You've lived all your life with that CRT TV set that still works fine, can you give up your dream set to help another in need?

I'm not saying this is what we must do in this life, let each give as the calling of God inspires them.  I do believe God would like us to enjoy the reward of our hard efforts, but not to the neglect of others.  If you only have one loaf of bread and the person you are sitting next to hungers, share that loaf with them, do it cheerfully and with love because God is smiling upon you for this kindness, and your cup will runneth over far more than that TV set will even run.

By the way, I have been recently diagnosed as not having Emphysema, by the very same doctor who heard emphysema in my lungs less than six months earlier. God is good, all the time.

Dano-

10/5/06 - God has made all creation for His pleasure and for the purpose of worshipping Him.  I think some people confuse this, those who do not understand Gods love.  I've heard people equate this as a demand for worship, and on occassion in my life I've questioned this also, but have come to realize this is not a worship of ownership, but a worship of love.  Our worship of God is not one that will be demanded, but one that will be freely given by the overwhelming love and security we find in our Savior and the Father.  God is Love, and has shown His freely giving Love in the fact that He put on the human garment and gave His life as the covenant sacrifice for our sin.  This is no less an act of giving through love than the worship we will freely and in return give to Him for eternity.  God holds the very beat of my heart in His hand, I live, walk, and breathe by His desire for me to do so, and my life will cease at the moment He chooses. Without His hand, I am nothing, I have nothing, and I am not worthy...  It was not required of God to die for me, it was out of Love for me that he came into my hostage situation and died showing me the way out.  Me, a simple act of His love to create me, then to redeem me, and what can I possibly do to Love Him back?  Our greatest works are as filthy rags, therefore there is not even any way for me to love Him back that is worthy of the love He has first given me.

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9/06 - Some people ask me why I am adamant about creation as opposed to taking a more evolutionary view.  I have even been asked if it doesn't or cannot be conformed to fit into the Genesis account.  I've been asked about the gap theory and the extended days theory, and no, I cannot in my heart take the words God has given us and stretch them to conform to something some man thought up.  If you read carefully my genesis account and evolution vs creationism, you will see there are distinct things that answer opposingly to the gap theory and extended time theories, such as the evening and morning were the X day.  These are descriptive terms, but there is one stronger point which I lean on.  Romans 4:3 says, ".... Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.".  Abraham BELIEVED God, and when you BELIEVE God, it counts to you for righteousness.  Don't skim through yet, let me finish... Jesus quoted Genesis which confirms to us the Genesis account.  So, you have Darwin, some guy who flip flopped on his own theory more than once, or you have God.  Whom do you believe?  If I understand my scriptures correctly, and my history correctly, God was here, IN THE BEGINNING, and has always been here, so He knows how everything was created, Darwin on the other hand lived a length of time nothing more than a grain of sand in the hour glass of creation.

Chemistry was my favorite subject in school, and for the life of me, no matter how hard I or anyone I've talked to try, none of us can figure out how that first cell, being nothing more than a soup of chemicals, (if that were the case), suddenly grew a skin that breathed, split for duplication, and gave life to what is nothing more than a meaningless glass of elements and molecules.  There is absolutely nothing natural, theoretical, or explainable in the association of molecular chemicals and the force and form of life.  If it were so natural, then the world would be repleat with new life forms and new single cell organisms springing to life all around us, instead what we do see around us for as far back in time as we find record, is death, and endless chain of extinctions, and no where has a new creature evolved into being.

Have you given any thought to what the tribulation will look like when it begins? It may not be anything like people expect it to be.  The popular belief is that millions will be raptured, which would be an obvious sign of the tribulation, (if the rapture is true, although there is no place in the Bible where it says we will be taken up before the tribulation.  Matt 24 Jesus says near the end of the tribulation...) What do you think the tribulation will look like?  Antichrist ruling the world and making slaves of people?  Poverty and enslavement of the masses?  I don't think so.  When the Babylon the Great is destroyed, the worlds merchants who have ships and who trade by sea will morn because they have been made rich by Babylons desires for luxuries and trinkets.  This is not a world of enslavement and poverty.

Consider this, you cannot serve both God and Mammon, people who love money have a problem finding God or continuing a spiritual relationship with God.  The Devil knows this, and the Devil wants your soul.  It is more likely that after a major war, there will be a lot of construction and rebuilding of infrastructure, the workers in the work force will be in demand, the economies will likely flourish.  People will have money, and will be buying what their heart desires.  There will be a few, (144,000) men trying to minister to people that money and personal wants are not the way to God, that others should be placed before ourselves and our own wants, that the Lord will be coming soon and love is the most important gift, but people will not be willing to let go.

The Bible gives us a BIG clue that life will appear to move forward as ussual, but the last chance to realize and deny the earthly king and follow Christ is the mark of the beast. Why would Christians still be in a position of realizing the mark of the beast as being their last opportuinity to, "Get it right", if in fact there were obvious signs of what is happening on earth and that we were in the tribulation?  People should have known long before this if there were a rapture and the antichrist were an obvious Devil.  Be ready for Revelation says there will be a great deception, so great that if it were possible even Gods Very Elect would be deceived.  This should tell you, it isn't going to be that simple, or that obvious in fact, many who believe themselves to be Christians will fall for this deception and will follow the Devil into the winepress of God's wrath!