Weakness

For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Paul from Tarsus

Christian Drift -------The Hole in our Gospel ------ Richard Stearns

This has always been a problem with God's people; we tend to drift away from God's bold vision, replacing it with a safer, tamer vision of our own.
The Hole in our Gospel  ------ Richard Stearns

Pastors survey on Priorities The Hole in our Gospel ------ Richard Stearns

A few years ago World Vision did a survey of pastors, in which we asked them to rate the things they considered real priorities for their churches. Based on a list of items that we provided, these ministers were to tell us which ones they thought took precedence over the others. In the highest-priority category, 79 percent listed worship: 57 percent, evangelism; 55 percent, children's ministry; and 47 percent, discipleship programs. Just 18 percent said that "helping poor and disadvantaged people overseas" was of highest priority." Startling when you consider the words of the apostle James: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world" (James 1:27)
The Hole in our Gospel  ------ Richard Stearns

Reasonableness ... Chip Heath

Beware the soul shocking force of reasonableness
Chip Heath

- 

A Good Movie has a memorable scenes.... Donald Miller

A good movie has memorable scenes
and so does a good life.
Donald Miller

I simply don't believe utopia is going to happen - Donald Miller

I simply don't believe utopia is going to happen. I don't believe we are going to be rescued. I don't believe an active man will make things on earth perfect, and I don't believe God will intervene before I die, or for that matter before you die. I believe instead we will go on longing for a resolution that will  not come, not within life as we know it, anyway.
If you think about it an enormous amount of damage is created by the myth of utopia. There is an intrinsic feeling in nearly every person that your life could be perfect that if you only had such and such a car, or such and such spouse, or such and such job. We believe we will be made whole by our accomplishments, our positions, our social status. It's written in the fabric of our DNA that life used to be beautiful and now it isn't, and if only this and if only that it would be beautiful again.
Donald Miller  - A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

A conference - Fred Allen

A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing but together can decide that nothing can be done. Fred Allen 1894

California is a fine place to live in - Fred Allen

California is a fine place to live in - if you happen to be an orange

Fred Allen 1894

Desiring God: If We Love God Most, We Will Love Others Best

JUNE 24, 2016 If We Love God Most, We Will Love Others Best

Article by 

Jon Bloom

Staff writer, desiringGod.org

The most loving thing we can do for others is love God more than we love them. For if we love God most, we will love others best.

I know this sounds like preposterous gobbledygook to an unbeliever. How can you love someone best by loving someone else most? But those who have encountered the living Christ understand what I mean. They know the depth of love and breadth of grace that flows out from them toward others when they themselves are filled with love for God and all he is for them and means to them in Jesus. And they know the comparatively shallow and narrow love they feel toward others when their affection for God is ebbing.

There’s a reason why Jesus said the second greatest commandment is like the first: if we love God with all our heart, we will love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:37–39). It functions like faith and works; if we truly have the first, the second naturally follows.

But if God is not the love of our life, there is no way that we will truly love our neighbor as ourselves. For we will love ourselves supremely.

He First Loved Us

The reason we will love others best when we love God most is that love in its truest, purest form only comes from God, because God is love (1 John 4:7–8). Love is a fundamental part of his nature. We are only able to love him or anyone else because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). We are only able to give freely to others what we have received freely from him.

And as God’s image-bearers (Genesis 1:26), we are designed to love God and others in the same way that God loves God and others. God, being the most pure, perfect, powerful, and precious entity in existence, must love himself most in order to love everything else best, since everything else is “from him and through him and to him” (Romans 11:36). If God loved something or someone else more than himself he would be violating the first commandment (Exodus 20:3) and the foremost commandment (Matthew 22:37–38). For God to love something or someone more than himself would be inappropriate, perverted, immoral. Like God, we must love him supremely in order to love everything else best.

The Horrible Result of Not Loving God Most

When we (or anything else, if that’s possible) become our supreme love instead of God, love becomes distorted and diseased. Love ends up devolving into whatever we wish for it to mean.

This is a great evil, greater than we often realize. This is the world as we know it: everyone loves in the way that is right in his own eyes. Which of course means that everyone hates in the way that is right in his own eyes. They become supreme “lovers of self” (2 Timothy 3:2) and live “in the passions of [their] flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind,” since they were “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). It is not hard to understand why there is so much confusion and conflict and heartbreak and violence in the world. We live in an anarchy of love resulting in much of the horrifying things we hear in the news.

The Greatest Love Ever Shown

But God, being rich in mercy (Ephesians 2:4), “so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). The author and perfecter of love, Love himself, stepped into our horrible evil anarchy to redeem us (Romans 5:8), his people, and give us new life (Ephesians 2:5), and transform us from children of wrath back into children of God (John 1:12) who are able to love him supremely and therefore love each other rightly — the way he has loved us.

And how has he loved us? With the greatest love there is, the love that moves one to lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). But this doesn’t mean that Jesus loved us, his friends, more than his Father. It means that Jesus loved us best because he loved his Father most (John 17:26; Mark 14:36). And “if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11).

What May Be Our Most Loving Act Today

So we see that if we love God most, we will love others best.

I find this to be a convicting and uncomfortable truth: How we love others, particularly other Christians, reveals how we love God. The apostle John puts it bluntly: “He who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen (1 John 4:20). Our love for each other is an indicator of the place God is holding in our hearts.

God is very good at designing things this way: our faith is revealed by our works (James 2:18), our creeds are revealed by our deeds (Luke 6:46), and our love for him is revealed by our love for others (1 John 4:20). He makes it very hard for us to fake it. And this is a great kindness (Romans 2:4).

Since the greatest and second greatest commandments are involved in these things, we know they are important to God. So perhaps the best thing we can do today is take an honest, lingering look at the way we love others, allow what we see to have its Philippians 2:12effect on us, and ask God what he would have us do in response.

We may find that this is the most loving thing we will do for everyone else today.

Jon Bloom (@Bloom_Jon) serves as author, board chair, and co-founder of Desiring God. He is author of three books, Not by Sight, Things Not Seen, and Don’t Follow Your Heart. He and his wife live in the Twin Cities with their five children.

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He Held the Stars in Place

The infinite became an infant. His mother held him, while he held the moon and stars in place.

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Enter the Dragon Slayer

From the garden, to the manger, through the cross, to that final day, watch the devil rise in anticipation, writhe in agony, and then fall before the Dragon Slayer.

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when we are most satisfied in himLearn more about Desiring God 

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Theology is but an appendix...Toyohiko Kagawa

"Theology is but an appendix to love, and an unreliable appendix!"

Japanese evangelist Toyohiko Kagawa 

Lyons Carrot Cake

Lyons Carrot Cake

   2 - Cups Flour
1.5 - Teaspoons Soda
   2 -  Teaspoons Baking Powder
   1 - Teaspoons Salt
1.5 - Teaspoon Cinnamon
   1 - Teaspoon Nutmeg
   2 - Cups Sugar
1.5 - Oil
   4 - Eggs, beaten
   1 - (8.25 ounce) Crushed Pineapple, Drained *
   2 - Cups Grated Carrots
0.5 - Cups Raisins
0.5 - Cups Walnuts
Cream Cheese Frosting

Sift together the flour, soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar.  Add oil, eggs, drained pineapple, carrots, raisins, and walnuts. Mix well and turn into a greased and flowered bundt pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Ice with Cream Cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting
  1 Pound - Powder Sugar
  1.5 Cups - Sugar
  1(8 Ounce) Package Cream Cheese
    1 -  Teaspoon Vanilla

For best flavor let sit for two days before serving

*  - A little bit more Pineapple is not bad and will make the cake moister include some juice
 - Adding a little bit of the pineapple juice will intensify the flavor.
 - Mix carrot grating with fine and heavy creates a lighter texture using half whole wheat will create a bit heavier but delightful cake.
 - Half Brown sugar brings out a richer flavor.
- Coconut - flakes or grated is terrible in texture and never desired though replacing the oil with coconut oil might be enjoyable.

- Using grape seed oil has proven to improve flavor and density

Albert Einstein On Religion

Einstein says: “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”
Albert Einstein

The one-and-a-half page letter, written in 1954 in German and addressed to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, contains reflections on God, the bible and Judaism.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/albert-einsteins-god-letter-reflecting-on-religion-up-for-auction/ar-BBQtzAp?OCID=ansmsnnews11

- Islam, Religion, Judaism, Christianity,

CH Spurgeon

I see it publicly stated, by some who call themselves Christians, that it is good for Christians to attend the theatre, so that the tone and character of the productions may be improved. The suggestion is about as sensible as if we were bidden to pour a bottle of lavender water into the main sewer to improve its aroma.
CH Spurgeon

- Entertainment, Culture,