Christianity

Never mind who let the dogs out!

Who let the pigs in?  Who threw their pearls to the swine?

As in,who let the pigs  into the church so that people with a malevolent agenda could film children and children ministry leaders in some very intimate deeply spiritual moments!!!

I’m talking about one of the most inspirational films I’ve ever seen. It’s inspiring because it totally torqued me off! There is smoke pouring from my nostrils and fire balls over my head!

“Jesus Camp,” is an evil twisted movie that takes the precious innocence of child like faith and makes it out to be something like Hitler’s Youth Program or Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

It looks like some well meaning Christian leaders were conned into letting this serpent, film their youth camp. They of course only show the most controversial radical moments.

So, I’m inspired and proud of all the all the kids in the film and the youth director who got scammed by this snake in the grass film maker.

I wish I could send my kids to a camp like the one in this movie.

If you have NETFLIX on line you can get the documentary “Jesus Camp” on demand.

Just be prepared to be torqued off if you’re an evangelical Christian!

Revelation 1       
1 This is a revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants the events that must soon take place. He sent an angel to present this revelation to his servant John, 2 who faithfully reported everything he saw. This is his report of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.

   3 God blesses the one who reads the words of this prophecy to the church, and he blesses all who listen to its message and obey what it says, for the time is near.

4 This letter is from John to the seven churches in the province of Asia.

   Grace and peace to you from the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come; from the sevenfold Spirit before his throne; 5 and from Jesus Christ. He is the faithful witness to these things, the first to rise from the dead, and the ruler of all the kings of the world.

   All glory to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by shedding his blood for us. 6 He has made us a Kingdom of priests for God his Father. All glory and power to him forever and ever! Amen.   

7 Look! He comes with the clouds of heaven.
      And everyone will see him—
      even those who pierced him.
   And all the nations of the world
      will mourn for him.
   Yes! Amen!   

8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end,” says the Lord God. “I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come—the Almighty One.”      

9 I, John, am your brother and your partner in suffering and in God’s Kingdom and in the patient endurance to which Jesus calls us. I was exiled to the island of Patmos for preaching the word of God and for my testimony about Jesus. 10 It was the Lord’s Day, and I was worshiping in the Spirit. Suddenly, I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet blast. 11 It said, “Write in a book everything you see, and send it to the seven churches in the cities of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.”

   12 When I turned to see who was speaking to me, I saw seven gold lampstands. 13 And standing in the middle of the lampstands was someone like the Son of Man. He was wearing a long robe with a gold sash across his chest. 14 His head and his hair were white like wool, as white as snow. And his eyes were like flames of fire. 15 His feet were like polished bronze refined in a furnace, and his voice thundered like mighty ocean waves. 16 He held seven stars in his right hand, and a sharp two-edged sword came from his mouth. And his face was like the sun in all its brilliance.

   17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as if I were dead. But he laid his right hand on me and said, “Don’t be afraid! I am the First and the Last. 18 I am the living one. I died, but look—I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave.

   19 “Write down what you have seen—both the things that are now happening and the things that will happen. 20 This is the meaning of the mystery of the seven stars you saw in my right hand and the seven gold lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.
New Living Translation (NLT)

Over at Pastoral Musings, here, Jason provides a look at how Jesus viewed the Old Testament Scripture. Towards the end of the article he states that, “the sinless Son of God Who preached and taught the Scriptures as being authoritative, verbally inspired, and inerrant.”

While I would definitely agree that Jesus viewed the Scriptures as authoritative, I would not agree that Jesus viewed the Scripture as “verbally inspired.” On this point the articles says (in reference to Matt 19:3-9):

Jesus also viewed the Scriptures as the inspired Word of God. Note how Jesus used Genesis 2:24-25. He takes the words penned by Moses and says, “He which made them at the beginning..said…” In other words, Jesus was stating that while Moses wrote it, God had spoken it. Jesus viewed the Scriptures as the inspired Word of God.

Personally, I do not see how one can read into Matthew 19 that Jesus is claiming that God spoke the words of Genesis to Moses (i.e. verbally inspired). I do believe that Jesus viewed the Scripture as “inspired”, but to take that a step further and say that He viewed them as “verbally inspired” seems like quite a stretch to me.

I would also disagree with a couple things the blog article says about inerrancy but my thoughts on that topic are for another post for another day. I just wanted to mention the inspiration issue because I am currently writing a paper on the topic of verbal inspiration of Scripture.

If anyone out there in blogdom reading this holds to the verbal inspiration view of Scripture then I would be happy to hear your thoughts.

Channeling my inner stereotypical-broken-hearted-teenage girl, I went to WaWa last night to pick up some Ben & Jerry’s (Stephen Colbert’s “Americone Dream”, in case you were wondering). I had just gotten off work and was about to head home, pig out, and catch up on some TV. I pulled in, got some gas, and then pulled up to the side of the actual store to get my ice cream.

I saw the usual poor guy sitting on the pavement on the side of the building asking everyone that passed by for their spare change. The usual little battle happened inside my mind: Oh God, I’m going to get asked for money aren’t I? Okay, what walking path can I take that keeps me just far enough away from him that he doesn’t actually ask me. I’d rather say nothing than have to say no and feel bad later. Ah! What am I thinking! Stop it, Paul! Why are you so heartless? This is not the Gospel. Serve him.

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[Jesus said,] “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”  Matt. 11:29-30

Since my husband lost his job last year, he has had to become a truck driver to pay the bills, and I have also had to go back to work.  He is gone a lot now, and the girls and I miss him.  But during Spring Break, we excited to get a few days off work and take the kids Branson, MO.

Unfortunately everyone came down with the stomach virus just before we had to leave!  I’m sick, trying to pack, and clean up unmentionable messes!  Some of us felt sick on and off throughout the trip, but overall we had a really good time, just getting to be together.  And part of me begins to feel so resentful toward God for allowing all of these hard things in our lives lately.  As much as I don’t want to feel this way towards Him, sometimes I do.

Early this morning when I couldn’t sleep, the Holy Spirit suddenly made it clear to me.  I repeated it back to Him: “The problem is not that You are not good.  It is just that I don’t understand.”  And somehow seeing that truth made me feel better.  God is always good.  That is a constant, unchangeable fact.  Therefore the real problem lies in the fact that my finite mind just cannot comprehend all that He is doing right now.  But I can rely on what the Bible says about Him:  He is good.  He loves us beyond our imagining.  And all that He allows in our lives are being worked together for our good, to create a beautiful, glorious tapesty in us that we will get to see one day in heaven.

He revealed this to me in such a gentle way that I did not even feel corrected, even though that is what He was doing!  And it occurred to me how gentle He is.  In fact, He is the gentlest Person I know.  I am a sensitive person and have been hurt by people, but I cannot ever remember having my feelings hurt or being treated harshly by Him.  It feels to me more like a gentle revealing and encouraging to understand the truth, like He is working with me to understand and to change.  He even changes my desires to agree with His more and more.  How is He able to gently correct us and change us so that His will even becomes ours??

Our God is good, and He is gentle.  How blessed are we?!  What an amazing God we have!

Obama and Pelosi (Partners in Crime).

Are Obama and Pelosi really ready to end their Don Quixote quest for health care and actually vote? No, Pelosi and Obama have adopted the “demon pass” procedure to avoid a vote yet get the bill.

Now that it is crunch time for counting votes on health care, and after Obama has kept Ohio under siege with his flurry of recent visits to friendly audiences in order to threaten Ohio congressmen, we find out that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has now come up with yet another procedural manipulation called the “deem and pass” procedure to circumvent the Constitution and force legislation through the House with no vote on the Senate Health reform bill.

This procedure has never been used for major legislation nor was it ever intended to be used for that purpose. Therefore, what Pelosi proposes, that the House only vote for fixes to the Senate bill while never voting on the Senate bill itself, is comparable to going to war with no war resolution approved by the Congress. Pure and simple, it is Constitutionally illegal.

Pelosi does not have the votes for a legitimate vote even though the Democrats control Congress by a huge majority. That much is obvious or she would not be proposing a procedure that is certain to assure her a spot in the history books, as the first Speaker of the House to flaunt a disregard for the US Constitution in the interest of partisan politics and because she is incapable of leading her own majority.

If her own Democrats will not give her the votes to pass the proposed Senate Health Care Reform kickback program, approving minor amendments while declaring the Senate bill deemed and passed with no vote is sheer insanity and will be an issue before the Supreme Court long before it can ever be implemented.

Pelosi and Obama are counting on a really stupid public to not understand the shell game that was just played on them with this Pelosi demon pass procedure and expect us to rollover and accept a monstrous bill full of secret deals, campaign payoffs, White House deals with the SEIU union bosses and the dreaded pharmaceutical companies, and who knows what else, because of all the lies we have heard on health care, claims that the process was transparent when secrecy dominated the process is the most arrogant and deceitful slap in the face of the public we have heard.

Well if Pelosi resorts to the demon pass rule of stealing our Constitutional process then Pelosi is not fit to serve as Speaker of the House because her own oath of office said she was to protect the Constitution, not undermine it with procedural gimmicks. And our president, proud of his status as a Constitutional Lawyer from Harvard of the Ivy League, had better start telling us what Constitution he took an oath to defend.

He has endorsed a procedural trick to circumvent the Senate with reconciliation, he has embarrassed the Supreme Court in front of the world, and now he is backing a procedural trick to circumvent the House. Is he trying to work in a bi-partisan matter as he promised or to undermine every separate branch of government, the Legislature and Judiciary, that won’t do what he wants? This is sheer insanity.

Every ounce of energy and every bit of the attention of our president and White House is focused on this garbled health care reform bill and it has been the entire last year. Forget about jobs, unemployment, wars, crumbling foreign relations, drug wars spilling over the American borders, non-prosecution of the thieves on Wall Street, cover ups for the legislative and regulatory actions that led to the collapse of our economy, forget about everything that is important to Americans.

There are far better ways to fix health care than the conglomeration of secret deals and payoffs about to be shoved down our throats. It makes one wonder, what is really in the bill that makes it more important to the president and Democratic congressional leaders than any other problems, issues or priorities including the economy. What is in the bill that has caused such panic over not having the votes that they risk rules and procedures never intended for the purpose, and in the case of the Pelosi demon pass procedure, has never even been used for that purpose.

Is it so important to pass anything no matter what the cost, ramifications or even potential for helping with health care. It leads me to think we have still not been told all the secret deals made to get this bill passed and we are yet to know the real purpose for the bill. If it was just about fixing health care and lowering costs no one would object and legislative tricks would not be necessary.

Maybe in the interests of transparency President Obama and Speaker Pelosi could tell us the truth, why is this bill so important, what is in the bill they have not disclosed, and is it worth the challenges to the Constitutional foundation of our nation. Who did you promise and what did you promise to make this bill supersede everything our government has done for the last year. Transparency also means truth. It is time to put truth in the discussion.

Enough Washington, get the dirty deed done. We the people will deal with the consequences. Fix the real problems we face with the economy, unemployment, corruption, kickbacks, foreign affairs mess, coddling of Wall Street and lack of campaign reform . Admit whatever you do on health care will not happen for several more years and get on with the business of governing.

“Glen Beck, Social Justice, and Political Polarities” AKA “Stupid Musings from a Glen Beck Look-alike and a wanna-be hippie” (Above is direct link to mp3)

Podcast site is here: http://groansfromwithin.podbean.com/

Subscribe through iTunes by following the above link to the podcast site.  Then scroll down the page and on the right hand collum click “Add to iTunes”

This is the first podcast show that we have produced from the blog Groans From Within.  It features Jason Ekk and Kurt Willems who discuss the recent events surrounding Glen Beck, social justice, and political polarities.  This is our first episode, so if you have any helpful feedback or encouragement… please let us know!  Also – A disclaimer.  This is simply two guys acting ridiculous and trying to have fun with these issues, so if you disagree with us, please do not take offense