#1938 Gusto for Goldilocks

#1938

Gusto for Goldilocks

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  - Declaration of Independence

A big mistake among people of faith, that people can think; that they have something to think with a brain-heart.  We are really parents to ourselves, because we make ourselves who we are.  We can't live in a community where we treat people like objects.  Do you agree with Bill O'Reilly when he said, there is nothing wrong with a little lust?  More money is spent in this nation on pornography than is taken in by all television networks and all sports teams combined.  Face it, pornography leads to sex crime.  If it were not for the threat of rape and ravaging involved in sex, Goldilocks' house would have no doors or locks.  In Heaven, there will be no doors or locks on anything.  The great actress, Betty Davis, said, "Sex is the biggest joke God played on mankind."  No, it is not a joke; it is not a source for sensual-Satanic acts.  Sex was intended to be intimate and a message of beauty. 

The sexual act is the beginning of life, the female egg fertilized by the male sperm.  But, life begins long before sex, in the council chambers of eternity; your life was designed by God.  Every life was designed by God.  "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you.." (Jeremiah 1:5)  God always gives more never less.  Only in glory will we realize His love for His children, only there will we really know a mother's love for her children.  Actions are often a result of bad ideas.  Is an embryo really a child?  How many months of gestation before an embryo becomes a child?  We have pictures of warfare, the horrors of killing in war, but never pictures of the killing in an abortion. 

In another article, I have described my observation of an abortion, the first abortion I ever saw performed and it was in an Army hospital.  I had just arrived as a staff member at the Army Hospital, Fort McClellan, Alabama.  The duty officers would hang around the hospital BOQ while they awaited calls where they were needed.  One surgeon, David (it so happens that David and I were born on the very same day), asked me if I wanted to go to surgery to witness a procedure he was about to do.  I had no idea that it was an abortion.  I learned later that the OB-GYN medical officer who was assisting him was the father of five children.  I was in scrubs like the others, totally ignorant about what they were doing.  AND THEN, I saw them taking out baby parts-little feet-little arms, a crushed once alive baby.  I left the room and told both of them to never mention that incident to me again.  I had seen a cesarean delivery, had assisted in other deliveries, but to this day cannot conceive of any doctor killing a baby within a mother. 

I have never met an individual who wished they had been aborted.  In spite of the heartache involved; I have never met a mother who wished she had aborted her child.  There is exponential increase in joy...joy heaped upon joy every year, with mothers as they enjoy their children.  But, I must add to this, that joy in the hope of Jesus Christ brings joy to everything else in life.  It is never lawful to do evil when some good might come of it.  Basic intelligence, even to people of little faith, there must always be certain limits.  I cringe when I hear about love of pets, turtle hospitals, even, the maturing of human body parts in the bodies of hogs. 

And, to think, that 59 million precious babies have been murdered in the holocaust of abortion since the Supreme Court decision of 1973.  Just to think, that 72% of all black babies are aborted (in USA 3000 abortions each day, 1500 are black babies), precious black children who could contribute so much to this world.  So many young people die young, that's God's business, Mozart died at 37: FDR became a victim of infantile paralysis at age 39: nearly 2,000 young children will die of cancer in America this year.  The age old question, why do bad things happen to good people, when God is love?  A better question, why do good things happen to bad people, when God is just?  The answer is GOD IS BOSS, HE IS IN CHARGE, WE ARE TO TRUST HIM.  Does any of this killing of babies make any sense whatsoever? 

Man is God's chief creation, his brain design a matter which no scientist has ever been able to understand.  Just think of one organ, the heart, capable of pumping blood through vessels, for 2,000 miles, minute after minute, year after year.  And, think how human beings, who have the intelligence to protect their bodies, abuse not only their heart but everything else.  Every organ, every tissue of the human body valuable, a brain dead human body will sell for as much as one million dollars.  Taking the parts, especially the liver and heart, just as quickly as death is determined...transplanted into another human being, extending life to another.  When this doctor, world traveler, was in a hospital in Chin Yang, Manchuria Communist China (I had some vision at that time), I saw in the surgery theatre live prisoners opened, their body parts being taken and transplanted to other sick non-prisoner citizens and, the greatest exhibit of it all everything done with acupuncture.  The patient receiving the transplanted organs smiling, the prisoners strapped to the table, eyes, and mouths, covered with tape...another image I want to forget. 

Great writer, Ernest Hemingway, said, "Truth has a certain ring to it."  This writer was one of the first Americans into Communist China after it reopened, a plane load of doctors and lawyers sent over by President Nixon.  I came back and wrote about body parts taken from prisoners, child slavery in factories.  Noone wanted to hear it.  Truth is truth whether anyone believes it or not...you can discern truth when you hear it from the political podium or the church pulpit.  I get so tired of milk-toast preachers, politically correct politicians. 

I sleep on a very old four poster bed, it is the first furniture image I have in my mind.  My grandparents, my parents slept on this bed.  In a time of same sex marriage, killing of babies, this bed gives me a gravitas of morality and integrity which I need in my life. 

Without fail, every time I have spoken about abortion at a church or anywhere else, someone will say, "Most children are not wanted."  I have five adopted cousins, a friend with two adopted daughters (from China) words cannot explain the joy these adopted children have brought to their parents.  ALL ABORTED BABIES WOULD BE ADOPTED AND GIVEN THE CHANCE OF LIFE.  One image I want to remember, a young man, interviewing me for a story and I asked about his home.  He said, "I was adopted, I know my parents wanted me."  In a world of great mountains, great oceans, the greatest creation of God, the human mind, ministry of the Holy Spirit of God, righteousness of Jesus, a direct relationship between man and God available in the human mind.  

#1937 Clean Up the Talking Boxes

#1937

Clean Up the Talking Boxes

And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.  (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12)

Youth is a gift of nature; old age is a work of art.  I used to think that youth was such a waste, so much to learn.  And now, youth in the rear view mirror, old age with its struggles through the windshield, is not a time for daredevils or sissies. 

My mother's parents lived in the house in which she and her siblings were born, the house in which her father and his siblings were born, the house in which his father and siblings were born: a large frame plantation type house, biggest in the community, the type as in all old southern houses, at one time, the kitchen built away from the house, still standing and still in use, a house which survived the Civil War.  The light switch-refrigerator-electric stove were still miracles to my grandmother who had lived most of her life before electric power lines came into the community.  After my grandfather's death, a lady was brought in to care for my grandmother and one family member thinking that she should be "enlightened" brought in for my grandmother's enjoyment a television set (talking box).  So, all of a sudden, people in a box talking to her, she would talk back and wave at them, staggered that they would not talk back or respond to her.  Such is the bottomless ocean of technology that has enshrouded our lives just during my lifetime, eighty-six years.  I still cannot understand the impersonal attitude of the woman who talks to me on my cell phone and she says such "curt" things to me "I did not understand what you said" or "I am here to serve".  (Is there really a little woman in this cell phone I hold, is everyone in the world, even children, talking to someone in their little phone?)  What will life be like at the schoolhouse, courthouse, or your house when robots are doing most of the menial labors or even complicated things that a complex world demands?

My father's parents owned one of the first radio's in the community, if you could hear anything above the static.  But, they did listen to FDR's fireside chats, etc.  And this writer became totally addicted to the radio, "The Lone Ranger", "Portia Faces Life", etc.  The first exposure for most country folks to modern technology, after power lines arrived, a movie shown in town on outside on the side of a building.  The first time I ever saw a movie inside a theater was "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs".  The first TV set I ever saw, 1948, was when I was a freshman at UNC-CH, in the store window of a furniture store.  I finally owned one, a large cabinet with a very small screen, just a few inches...everything black and white.  If you want today's psychological problems solved with young people...their lack of manners, their slang, their laziness, their dissatisfaction with everything (real or imagined), CHILDREN WITH TOO MUCH TOO SOON.  Young people never knew the talking box when it was on just during the hours of six to midnight, the large peacock.  People went to bed, did not stay up all night watching trash, audiences snickering at sexual innuendo, "supposed entertainers".

Yesterday, Mary Tyler Moore died at age eighty.  Like so many of the early TV shows, she entertained people with a clean, hilarious program.  If our young people could only have seen early TV shows such as Jack Benny, Charlie McCarthy, or even the Ed Sullivan show.  If our young people could only have heard early radio shows such as "Fibber McGee", "The Great Guilder Sleeve", "Lum and Abner", "Major Bowes Amateur Hour", "Henry Aldridge" ("Coming Mother"), etc.  They were clean-decent-acceptable in most homes.

This old man has many warts and stains from sin (B.C. - before Christ) but, I am astonished at today's acceptable language heard on radio and TV, which at one time, one only heard in an Army barracks, which now goes out over cyberspace.  I well remember while a student in Memphis, TN, fifty years ago, a young announcer in a minute of exasperation used a four letter word which got him kicked off-job lost.  A word which now can be heard on any street corner anywhere...television was such a wonderful source of entertainment, especially for those whose lives had been so entertainment free.  From the tallest building in most cities, to the creeks in the most impoverished farmlands, the same entertainment, NOW IN EVERYONE'S HOME, if, they had the television reception...and most found the means to have it.  I saw small shacks in the countryside with a television antenna on top, which you would think would not support a nice size cat or bird, but all these people enjoyed television and they sat on their "roosts" like chickens for free entertainment.  It moved many of them onto the welfare rolls.

Most, thank God, used entertainment like other forms of indolence and care.  My Aunt Mamie, who owned a television set, would have all of her neighbors into her house to watch "I Love Lucy".  These people, who had done nothing but survived by the undercoatings of living via hard work, finally had something to enjoy, finally could hear one another laugh, and finally could have some joy in a world of troubles-struggles.  And, for the most part, it was clean entertainment.  For the most part, after other stations were added in addition to the big three, CBS, NBC, ABC, one could travel the world and see the sights which only a few of us had been able to see by actually going there.  With equality, those with eyesight could view the great pyramids in Egypt, which sit at the exact landmass center of the Earth, could see the pyramids in the Yucatan, the glaciers of the poles, the frigid ice of Siberia, and the heated sand of the Sahara...SUCH A SOURCE OF EDUCATION. 

But, as was the case in Heaven when one third of the angels got kicked out by God, along with the Devil, Satan gets involved in everything.  And, like pornography in the backstreet bookstores, peep shows, pornography was moved into your living room.  And, when enough parents, preachers, physicians got concerned about the pollution of your children's minds; much of television was cleaned up.  But, Satan never gives up...always on the job.  He moved right into your living room, a smaller box that didn't talk as loudly, that not only had a snare but a net (internet).  So absolutely-fantastically educational that every home-business-student must have one...the computer, they were made more acceptable by calling them fruit names such as Apple and Macintosh.  With such obviously innocent characters as a "mouse", this sightless veteran has never seen one, cannot use one.  The computer has taken over the world, from the nuclear silos to the restaurant kitchen...all life revolves around the computer...all of Wal-Mart's inventory,  all of Planned Parenthood's fetal tissue abortion results. 

The computer, like television, has become more addictive than opium, more time consuming than eating.  And, at a time when children watch television four hours each day, old folks watch television seven hours each day.  How addictive soap operas became.  One of my long time church friends was in a nursing home, many health problems; she was too old-too broke for her pastor or church friends to visit her anymore.  She had no money, treasure, talent, or time to give them.  I asked a woman preacher, who I knew, to go and visit her.  When she went, my friend said to her, "I don't have time to see you; I have to watch my story."  Out in the country, country church, one of my mother's friends asked the people at prayer meeting to pray for one of the soap opera characters who had gone to the hospital.  This is how real Satan has made sin such a pushover to everyone-every age-every economic strata.  Technology has become so real; this writer has made eight trips around the world, every continent including both poles, passport stamped in 157 countries.  I have smelled poor sanitation, witnessed filth, particularly in Godless communist countries.  My first trip to Communist China, I would not touch anything in the room without cleaning it...filth everywhere.  In Burma, you could smell the toilets in airports from a long distance; this is what happens when uncleanness, lack of sanitation, a sewer mentality takes over a world, a nation, and the people of a nation.  This not healthy or holy, from the beginning God expected us to be holy because he knew this led to physical and mental health.  “And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.” (Leviticus 20:26)  Looking back, Peter said, "Be holy because I am holy."  (1 Peter 1:16)

#1936 A Salute to Mount Olive University

#1936

A Salute to the University of Mount Olive

Nido Qubein is a businessman, motivational speaker, and President of High Point University since 2005.  He received his Associate's Degree in Business from Mount Olive College, where he was a member of ΔΠΔ fraternity.

In the family cemetery at Lucama, NC, town named for my Lucas ancestors, my father's mother was Martha Lucas Morris, is the monument for Elder T.T. Lucas.  For many years, I have given two pastoral awards in the Freewill Baptist denomination honoring this early horse and buggy preacher.  I feel such men, called and chosen by God should be honored even with two $3000 awards each to outstanding pastors, each year.  I give many other awards honoring such called people. 

Lucas was an extensive farmer-landowner, twelve children, the ancestry of both he and his wife has been traced back to England.  He and other members of his family were instrumental in the first Freewill Baptist college at Ayden, NC.  From one of his sermons, handwritten, which I found with other books at my grandparents' family home; I found these words, which I have used many times in speaking and in writing, and "We are not stuck where we start." 

I thought about the mission of this Christian university when the words of the president of High Point University were brought to my attention, Dr. Nido Qubein is a graduate of Mount Olive University.  During this time in American history when the future seems so uncertain for the Christian church, we need to think of another John Dunne poem, "No Man is an Island":

            No man is an island,
            Entire of itself,
            Every man is a piece of the continent,
            A part of the main.
            If a clod be washed away by the sea,
            Europe is the less.
            As well as if a promontory were.
            As well as if a manor of thy friend's
            Or of thine own were:
            Any man's death diminishes me,
            Because I am involved in mankind,
            And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
            It tolls for thee. 

As unto God, among the thousands of dollars in awards each year attempting to honor those who have served the denomination so well: James Evans, Louise Edgerton, Burkett Rapier, M.L. Johnson, Gary Barefoot, etc, it is my firm conviction that like the Middlesex Children's Home and so many other Christian institutions, WE, as Christians, must not be indifferent to the very rapid change in the culture which surrounds us...the fact that most churches have just become country clubs with steeples.  Church members, those who claim the name of Christ, must be different, and so it is with a Christian university.  And, we must be willing to give of self to show that difference.  The Apostle Paul said, "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."  (Romans 12:2)  Only in Heaven will those who have labored in the vineyard of God's work, such as a Christian college, realize the difference they have made.  We are called to be different-separated from the world, it is not just a matter of having one's name on a church roll, even observing the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper, but totally entrenched, concerned about the "soul" condition of those around us. 

In impoverished Eastern North Carolina, people and churches on dirt roads, never knowing anything about power lines, phone lines, or running water that this university matured, led by our good friend and one of the finest men any other man has ever known, Dr. Burkett Rapier.  The story of this university and small mostly rural denomination still goes on.

About thirty years ago this writer participated in a Christian conference in Atlanta, GA.  Another speaker, owner-president of a large candy manufacturing company in his address said, "I recently sent my watch back to the manufacturer and on it's face so that every time I look at the time I will see it, I had these words engraved, 'The Night Cometh', I realize that every minute time is passing and we have so much to do." 

#1934 Deplorables and Confusoids

#1934

Deplorables and Confusoids

"When America is united, America is totally unstoppable. There should be no fear. We are protected and we will always be protected. We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement and most importantly, we will be protected by God." - Donald Trump Inauguration Speech

Let the chips fall where they may, in the squirrel cage, we call life, running from one aggravation to another.  The time has come for clear thinking, plain speaking.  Thank God, on Friday, January 20th, inauguration of President Donald K. Trump, much to the chagrin of the politically correct crowd, the lying-pretending news crowd, and the fake news people, there was an inaugural address, words which real Americans could understand and comprehend.  Too often, in the past, the nation has sought a president whom they wanted to be many men (great military, great educator, great provider of everything) but a man who at the end could fill only one grave. 

One of the great mysteries of my life, the aptitude of many men, it was always a mystery that many of the worst sinners, after a real conversion, became great preachers...men who had never had any seminary training, had probably never even attended Sunday school or many worship services.  But, they had been changed, had repented, and repenting means turning, they had turned completely and it was so evident, no guess work involved.

A story is told about an old dog falling in the well on the farm of one old man.  The farm-well owner, said, "I really don't use the well, the dog is old and no good, why should I spend the money or effort to get the dog out of the well?  I will just bury him in the well."  So, he began throwing dirt in the well, the dog just shook the dirt off and every time he got closer to the top of the well, finally the dog just jumped out of the well.  We have a President Trump who was thrown into the well, a well filled with hatred, partisanship, rhinos, and fair-weather friends.  In spite of everything they threw at him, trying to bury him, he just jumped out of the old well and is now sitting in the oval office. 

Someone asked Reverend Franklin Graham if he had any problems participating-praying at the Trump inauguration knowing that Trump (like the rest of us) has the stains of sin in his past.  Mr. Graham, said, "No, I was sitting behind former President Bill Clinton."  We could add to that George W. Bush (Clinton well-known for his womanizing, Bush forty-three well-known for his alcoholism).  The story is well-known about the Bushes and Clintons tethered to certain vulgarities of wealth.  They believe money is made round so it can be kept in circulation, Grandpa Bush with Hitler, Hillary with Islamists. 

We are so thankful that many of our fellow believers were saved on their deathbeds, that one "jailbird" who had never attended church or done anything for anybody except rob them, was the first person in Heaven following the death of our Blessed Lord.  Don't give up on President Trump. 

Two of the most delightful women I have ever known, sisters, I met at the great Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong (perhaps the world's greatest hotel, they bring you from the airport to the hotel in Rolls Royces).  In the dining room, as was so often the case with unescorted women, they asked me to eat with them and we became great friends, me visiting them at their beautiful Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan.  One was well-known in national advertising.  When I went with them to a restaurant, people acted startled, an old blind man with two women decked out in furs and jewels.  One's favorite phrase, as we were doing anything-just visiting, "I wonder what the poor folks are doing?"  America knows what the poor folks have been doing, we know what the rich folks have been doing (just one percent of the American population pays sixty-eight percent of all taxes, billionaires support the country).  We don't care if there is a billionaire in the White House OR if he is surrounded by billionaires, most of these people have proven themselves, have had a real job.  Not like the last president, just a street organizer, pimping democrats for his office...mostly staying on the golf course, stating, that the greatest thing about being president was Air Force One...never a job, never built anything, never fired a Daisy air rifle, or even ran a lemonade stand.  We need leadership with character (Dr. Ben Carson, General Mattis); we need a man who owns golf courses, one who does not spend all of his time just playing on one.

Hillary called her opponents deplorables.  The deplorables of life, those without rich supporters know the struggles of life, even in raising children, the differences in victories and defeats.  We deplorables know that shallow politicians have bought their seats of power.  It is like explaining advanced math to a three-year-old, understanding these people whose main work in office, the exorcism of money from the taxpayer.  The deplorables were not as dumb as the democrats and their fellow conspirators, the news media, surmised.  The little man has seen the fall of the little man, the little farmer-the little business owner. 

All crimes are against the dignity of life.  King David's greatest crime was not against Bathsheba but against Bathsheba's husband, Uriah, who was one of David's greatest friends, one of his men of valor.  (1 Chronicles 12)  Confused women and millennials, confused students can march against President Trump, just showing they are being stunted- trapped in the democrat party.  Confused sensuality, uncontrolled passions, will destroy a person's ability to love and live normally...will even destroy love of country.

#1935 Paths and Highways

#1935

Paths and Highways

            "The Road Not Taken" - Robert Frost

            Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

            And sorry I could not travel both

            And be one traveler, long I stood

            And looked down one as far as I could

            To where it bent in the undergrowth;

The paths to any inventions, technology, did not come from any "fringe" nation, only from America.  Just as God never appointed a committee, just as most of the great inventions of the world did not come from any "think tank", every invention that has brought so much progress to America has come from the mind of one man, one man plus God, and anything is possible...the inventions of Edison at Menlo Park or Bill Gates in a garage.  If it had been a group, fellow researchers, Edison-Gates-Bell-Salk would have been shut down.  This writer-scientist-field grade Army officer has been a member of many committees-advisory boards.  If there are ten individuals in a room there will be ten opinions...each individual, most of the time, looking down a separate path.  The bias-partisan-infidel-pretender will always think that he and he alone is right, now you know about political correction-fake news-public corruption.  It is a world of "me-ism" even pigs had a path, which they all traveled through the hog pasture. 

When will human beings that God wired with the most intricate brain neurons any scientist has ever studied, learn to ask the right questions and let God help with the answer...and, then believe God's answers? 

The most sobering thing about a funeral-burial, as you walk down the pathway to the hole in the ground, where you will place a loved one..."It is going to eventually happen to me"..."Am I ready?" 

There are therapy paths such as yoga and its path to inner peace: there are many religions (Islam, Buddhism, etc), thousands of Christian denominations, institutes filled with psychologists, everyone thinking they have the answer. 

Meditation-intervention-rehabilitation, none of these mind changing-drug altering, scientific or pseudoscience methods will be in the least effective if you are not willing to "walk the talk". 

I spent much time in Oxford, Mississippi, the home of William Faulkner (and the home of a former wife), perhaps America's greatest writer.  Faulkner said, "The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself."  A sad thing, starting on dessert, eating too much before the dessert, I get so depressed at a meal, when someone starting on dessert, talks about eating too much of the previous food.  Are there no paths to mind control?  We just buried one of my good friends, body destroyed by diabetes who simply could not resist sweets...eating ice cream for breakfast. Another sad thing, and I experienced it myself, twice, coming home from work and your wife having moved out of the house, closing all paths to fairness.  It always showed that she loved "stuff" more than she loved me.  It was so good to know that she had her stuff...the furniture which I had worked so hard to provide BUT, that is nothing compared to walking down the path to the jailhouse to bail your child out of prison.  Thank God, I never experienced that, so many parents have and then there was always the question in their minds, "Did we in some way take the wrong path?" 

In my lifetime, marchers-protestors-demonstrators, who took the wrong path, in today's world, most ordinary people just attempting to survive, where do these protestors get the time and money to finance such political action? 

Another dismal path of disparity and discouragement to this writer is the very recent knowledge that the sale of human body tissues brings in more money than the awful holocaust of abortion.  A body called brain dead will bring in one million dollars by the time the hospital sells the various parts.  A heart or liver is not transplantable after five minutes of death.  Every tissue must be refrigerated at once, the quicker the better.  The most sickening "nouveau riche" practice of practitioners wearing not only a white coat but a black mask, rushing-pushing families into ending the lives of very ill family member patients.  It is much bigger business than Planned Parenthood.  One of my favorite cousin's wife, cooking breakfast, keeled over with a stroke, she was in the hospital, comatose, he called me each day to ask my advice, he said, "They tell me she is brain dead, that there will be no better for her, I think I will let her go."  What are you going to tell someone facing this decision?  He did let her go and I often wondered if it was because she was the inheritor of much wealth from her parents, one farm near one town sold for millions to developers.  Surely she would have been a medical problem for some time, such as Terri Schiavo, who had become a husband and hospital problem.  Before going down the path of removing life support, get two or three "second opinions".  Remember, it takes time for brain healing and there is a history of people coming out of a comatose "death".  I knew one doctor who remembered doctors talking to his family about removing his life support.  Advocates for prolife not just in the sanctuary of the womb but in the hospital bed, such as lawyers-pastors-scientists should be awakened to what is going on...follow the money.  It is risky to be honest and your writer has been honest about paths of glory, introspection, and even the seduction of death.  

#1933 Happy Hour

#1933

Happy Hour

Today's Puritan Devotional:

Spurgeon's Morning by Morning, January 20

How would you judge the lawfulness or unlawfulness of any pleasure?

(Susanna Wesley)

"All things are lawful for me--but not all things are profitable.
 All things are lawful for me--but I will not be mastered by anything." 1 Corinthians 6:12

How would you judge the lawfulness or unlawfulness of any pleasure?

Use this rule: Whatever . . . 
  weakens your reason,
  impairs the tenderness of your conscience,
  obscures your sense of God,
  takes off your relish for spiritual things--
that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may seem in itself.

By this test you may detect evil, no matter how subtly or how plausibly temptation may be presented to you.

"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do--do it all for the glory of God." 1 Corinthians 10:31 

  ~  ~  ~  ~

You may want to read J.R. Miller's practical short article on the same topic, "AMUSEMENTS".

Addition Dr. Morris:

How any sane person can read the inerrant holy word of God and not be changed is beyond my comprehension.  The Bible, which is called "The Book", is the word of God...the Creator of the universe actually writing down instructions for life and living, using inspired men of His choosing.  Charles Shelton wrote the book, "What Would Jesus Do?"  It is all so simple, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do--do it all for the glory of God."  (1 Corinthians 10:31)  It takes many years for we "mere mortals" to comprehend.  We live in a world of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People".  Even children from Christian homes are encouraged to seek popularity among unbelievers.  It took two times of marriage with this writer to fully understand that God was serious, that he meant business when he said not to be yoked with unbelievers. 

It has taken me many years to realize that every man cannot be called my brother...even those at the church house.  I am very careful about whom I call brother; it has become very popular among the "in-crowd" to call one another "bro".  I have male blood relatives that I cannot call brother because they have never shown that they have my values as a brother.

There is a new form of tribalism in our world today, replacing the time when men were "brothers in Christ" at the church house, "brothers in some sort of mission" at the fraternal hall (Masons, Moose, Elks, etc), "brothers of some sort in do-gooding" at a civic club (Rotary, Kiwanis, Lyons, etc).  The new fraternal culture is that found in the pool hall or private club where drinking alcohol-swearing-lewd jokes are acceptable to all. 

When I was in college, I would walk by the Greek letter fraternity houses where those elitist frat boys had a constant party and just conjured within my mind what fraternities have to do with higher education.  Then, after having graduated following eight years of university professional education, a poor boy almost starving to death trying to get through-working at night and going to school during the day, never any time for any type social activity, I learned what it was all about.  A fellow medical officer, fellow staff member at an Army hospital asked me to accompany him to an Alabama football game at Tuscaloosa.  Of course, he had been one of the elitist (his father a doctor) and so he took me to his old fraternity house for lunch, and there is was, I finally knew what it was like to be a "fraternity man".  Present and former frat boys "good ol' southern boys" were there for the game.  In the frat house, black butlers were catering to their every whim, putting out great trays of food on buffet tables in the dining rooms: even remembering their names, bowing and scraping, calling them "mister" or in the case of my friend "doctor".

God never promised any of his followers pleasure, he promised us a hard time..our pleasure will come later. 

#1932 Kangaroo on the Front Porch

 #1932

Kangaroo on the Front Porch

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.  The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."  - Eisenhower Farewell 56 years ago today

For believers in Christ, there are no permanent tragedies.  For believers in Christ, when there is answer to prayer, your life should never be the same again.  Now you know that God hears and that God cares. 

Children at a birthday party are always unimpressed with their gifts.  I once heard the daughter of a friend complain about the gifts that Santa Claus did not bring her, even though you could barely walk through all the stuff that he did bring. 

This writer knows answers to prayer, I certainly prayed for the election of Donald Trump, as president.  Like the rest of us, Donald K. Trump is contaminated by sin.  We know that he is a bully, became a multibillionaire as a "questionable" businessman, sauntering through the alleyways of gambling, his many marital adventures, etc.  I do not know about his relationship with Jesus Christ, whether he is saved or not.  But, most of us, love God, family, country too much to vote for a female criminal.  Can you even imagine listening to that voice for four or eight years...having to even think about her pervert husband sleuthing around in the White House?  Her just adding to the damnation brought upon all of us by the eight years of Obama.

The population of the Earth was probably about the same at the time of Noah's flood as it is today.  The Creator of the universe was "sickened" by the whole mess and he destroyed it all with water, except for one "preacher of righteousness", his family, and the animals God chose to save.  Their salvation provided by a large boat which it took this man, Noah, one hundred twenty years to build.  Afterwards, as the Earth was repopulated again by this one family.  Man, sinners by nature, started the same mess again...God picked out one real man,  Abraham, first Jew, and sent him nine hundred miles south to start a new nation.  Sent him to a place without a forwarding address, along the way, Damascus, he buried his idol worshiping father.  But even this chosen people, the race to which God chose to have his own son born and live in the world, there was much sin-struggles-trials-warfare.  These people struggled as slaves for four hundred years, and then struggled after their salvation in a wilderness for forty years...God seeking to humble them.  All except two men of the two million who left the slavery-bondage in Egypt died in the wilderness.  These chosen people had many corrupt kings.  So, as any student of history knows, bizarre rulers-leadership is not unknown to God.  It just might be that a "firewall", such as Donald Trump, might be what this nation needs to "drain the swamp" in the District of Corruption which the founders called Washington. 

In this day of computer complexity, intricate telephones with the names of fruit, a bottomless ocean of technology, most young people do not know, what I remember, the founding of IBM by Thomas Watson and the signs which he  had hung everywhere with just one word, THINK.  It is time for American citizens to think about what is happening to their country, even all those black folk and others who are almost fifty percent of the population will just vote for any criminal who comes along if she or he just promises "more free stuff", more pampering to laziness-slothliness.  Does it not make you sick to hear people snicker about every type sexual innuendo-every type sexual perversion?  How low can we get?  A politician baptized in the sewer of political correctness-one who thinks that money grows on trees-that three thousand babies can be murdered in this nation (one hundred fifteen thousand around the world) everyday without arousing the wrath of God-that Christianity, on which this nation was founded, is now a blight-that such a politician will correct anything.  We live in a different world from the world in which I was born, eighty-seven years ago, there have been a few wake up calls, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, $20 Trillion National Debt.  And, please think of this, Midnight Basketball-Cash for Clunkers-Genderless Marriages, Toilets, and Showers. 

People like their soft comfortable lives, their La-Z-Boy chairs as they drool over a talking box, cramming with chips-hot and cold drinks, pretending religion as they habit a church for one hour on Sunday.  Social security checks from government, spiritual security check up from God.  WHO DO WE THINK WE ARE FOOLING? 

I have a beautiful house right near the ocean; it has always amazed me that people who go to the beach to enjoy the water will FLEE the beach with the first few drops of rain. Perhaps, Donald can fan the flames-awaken the "fag" boys and girls who run the country.  If Donald cannot break through the firewall, we are lost.  Just think, less than two hundred fifty years, what our hardworking, God-fearing ancestors built.  We had a superpower not just with military, but foundations devoted to scientific research...the best education system in the world.  All inventions leading to a better way of living, better health, came from America.  From America went ninety percent of all Christian missionaries.  Stand on a hill and look at any American city, all the church steeples.  Not just steeples but every type factory...all this giving stockholder confidence along with the gift of ambition to youth.  In my lifetime, the take over of the democrat party-the solid south-etc.  Godless communism and what it has done to the souls of American children.  Prayer was taken out of the school classroom and police now patrol the school halls. The jewel of mental holiness-morality removed from the university campus and replaced by "so-called" racial equalizing cultural centers populated by sports stars. 

There have always been men and women who would burn down a city in order to rule the ash.  Craziest of all, breakdown of boundaries, invasion by a "religion" dedicated to the destruction of the people of the Judeo-Christian faith, without a whisper of discontent Americans have seen mosques built barking out their hatred for the infidels.  When this world traveler was in any of the forty-two Muslim nations and heard the call to prayer from mosques throughout the cities, saw the faithful on their prayer rugs, I thought, what if it should get contagious.  It did, and is now an epidemic.  In few short years instead of Schulmerich carillon chimes from churches you will hear the call to prayer from minuets in a mosque. 

This writer was born in poverty, impoverished Eastern North Carolina; dirt roads, we had no power, phone, or water lines.  BUT, there was a line connecting the country church to the Creator of the universe.  In most towns, there were cotton mills-cotton mill stores where the workers had to buy their necessities at inflated prices.  The countryside was populated by tenant farmers eeking out an existence from the soil...the land-hog-owner usually living in town.  One man plus God, always in this world, and particularly in this country, anything is possible.  One such man is writing this AND, I firmly believe that one such man, by the name of Trump, can change this nation, FOR THE BETTER. 

#1931 Windmill Tilters

#1931

Windmill Tilters

"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose."  (Romans 8:28)

Two things you must overcome if you are to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, comfort and approval.  There are many things this writer has observed on this bumpy road we call life, the terrible smallness of men, especially those who consider themselves so large.  Most had dwelling within them a "cowardness" of smallness, the self delusion-narcissism of competence and confidence. 

IF you decide within yourself that you are a disciple of Jesus, in spite of everything, IF you decide that you are going to do right, in spite of everything, you will find yourself very much ALONE. 

Many times, alone, you must give up, EVEN family, don't expect even family members to understand or appreciate you, if you have become drenched in fulfillment, I mean by that, fulfilling what God wants from your life, because you were chosen by God, in the council chambers of eternity, before the Earth was formed for life and for doing certain things for Him.  He did not choose pretenders...from His word we know how much He hated hypocrisy: "Whited sepulchres filled with dead men's bones" (Matthew 23:27). 

Know right now, if you have not realized this fact, in this lifetime, you have two families: one you are born into, one your build for yourself.  The one you build for yourself, friends and associates, choose to love you.  Most of the time, more or less, your own family, even those who put their feet under your mother's table just as you did, just put up with you.  Most of the time, and I know this, because I have experienced this, and all of its hurt, your own family will be the first to criticize; will be the last to show you any appreciation whatsoever.

I never indulged myself with idleness, always reading, always seeking to achieve, even when young, I learned a new word everyday to add to my vocabulary.  I read books that others did not read, I despise the trash of senseless music-senseless lyrics-senseless "true" stories, such as the malarkey found in movie magazines.  If you have paid attention to the world around you, most "grown-ups" are like children, they just want "bedtime stories" where everyone lives "happily ever after".  Christianity is not complicated, just tough.  One must live Christ-like every moment of every day.  Why else would one want to live eternally with Christ in such a manner? 

Many of us get very little of what the world considers wealth.  I have not forgotten yet the beautiful story of the old couple, who had worked hard, lived frugally and faithfully, nearing the end of their life, was sitting in their sparse kitchen eating just some soup.  One said to the other, "All this and Heaven too." 

This writer can honestly say that he worked as very few men have worked not only in the poverty of an impoverished Eastern North Carolina tobacco farm but all the way through for an eight year university education.  I saved fifty cents of every dollar I ever made, invested twenty-five cents in securities, twenty-five cents in real estate.  I would have invested more if not for high taxes.  From the fifty cents left of each dollar, I gave most of that to the cause of Christ, awards, scholarships, church building programs.  Living alone all these years, taking care of myself, God has been so good to me...even as a totally blind, 100% disabled, medical officer veteran of the Korean War era, now, at 86, still working-saving-"stingy".  I was editor of one professional journal for eight years, published in many magazines; I hear these blogs read on national radio.  Yet, having lived in this present house for over forty years, only five blood-family relations have ever put their foot in my house, my sister-her children, three cousins.  My own two grandsons, who bear my name-my DNA have only been in my house one time in their entire lives.  My mother's family, a very large family, a reunion each year at Thanksgiving, and me, the oldest grandchild, was never invited...not once.  Is it envy, jealousy, some radical notion of non-acceptance that causes one's blood relations to act in this manner?  We are told that Jesus had very little relationship with his brothers, that even his brother James, by whom one book in the New Testament was written, did not accept him until after Jesus was crucified.  Jesus disciple John, cared for Jesus' mother Mary after the crucifixion, I visited the house at Ephesus where they supposedly lived.  Jesus prepared us for the non-acceptance-appreciation of our family (Matthew 12:50). 

There are more sermons preached from the book of Psalms than any other book in the Bible.  There are 1189 chapters in the Bible, and the one which most of us can recite is the twenty-third Psalm.  In the psalms we often hear the word "selah" which means think of it.  David wrote seventy-three psalms, praising God.  I often think of both David and Joseph, of the Old Testament, both of whom had brothers and their own brothers did not care much for them.  Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery and David was very much a pizza delivery boy to his brothers, as they stood quivering on a mountain facing the giant Goliath.  The great poet, Robert Louis Stevenson, said, "Sooner or later a man must sit down to a basket full of consequences."  No one must remind me of my flaws, I am just a sinner saved by grace.  But, as Charles Shelton wrote in his book "What Would Jesus Do", we cling on to Jesus' promises-God's faithfulness by the very nail tips of our fingers. 

I must remind myself everyday about my own emotional climate: I must consider the baggage carried around by others: I must remember the limit of life, the limitlessness of eternity.  The genome of a man is very close to that of a rat but the actions of most men are very much like those of a sheep.  Look at the twenty-third Psalm as if you are a sheep, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."  At the end of the road, it will just be a relationship-conversation between me and Him, no one else, family-lawyer-preacher, will be able to tilt the windmill.

#1928 Fishing Without a Net

#1928

Fishing Without a Net

"If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a well song, if I can show somebody he's traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain."  -- Martin Luther King, Jr. (at the request of his widow, these recorded words of Dr. King's last sermon were played at his funeral)

__________________

"Go Tell the Spartans" - Simonides of Ceos

Go, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

Prayer is spiritual cement.  When you have government, you have what governments can do.  When you have money, you have what money can do.  When you have politicians, you have what politicians can do.  When you have the cement of prayer holding the values of your life together, you have what God can do. 

The final battle of this world is the total destruction of the home.  Only a fool, totally brainless, cannot see what is happening everyday...the destruction of the home, the family, and the insanity of same sex marriage.  Satan fears marriage and family.  Just a few years ago, we could not imagine same sex marriage. 

Most pleasurable things in life are not memorable; we seem to always remember the "hurts" of life because we learn from them.  We chase someone else's ideas of living...the movie screen-soap operas.  All animals are true to their nature except man, the only animal that can blush, laugh, and cry.  Only man has the ability to speak, the ability to deceive and tell a lie.  Scripture tells us that there is a time to keep silent (Ecclesiastes 3:7).  One of my doctor friends told me that one of his patients told him that people were saying bad things about him all over the world.  He said, "Isn't it better for someone to be saying bad things about me all over the world, than for people all over the world to be saying bad things about me to someone?" 

In today's storm within this nation, when we have more fear of a disaster from within than from without, sports has become the national tranquilizer.  Not that there is anything wrong with sports.  Just down the road from where this writer was raised, a young man was reared and became a national sports figure-his fingers blessed by God to handle any ball.  He constructed his first baseball glove from the Naugahyde cover from an old sofa.  Russia's Lennon said the opiate of the people was religion.  Religion has become just a separate compartment in most believers' lives: totally indifferent to the unbeliever...fishing without a net, most church people could care less. 

The one thing from which a child never recovers, poverty, this writer now lives in comfort, letters after his name, never concerned about money, BUT, this writer has never recovered from poverty.  Those raised in poverty know that they must give more than those who won life's lottery, that they must have the charisma to "charm" others, they must excel when others don't care, must learn to hide behind a veneer of charm so that others can never detect what they are actually thinking.  The greatest disguise, ever perfected, keeping hid what you are really thinking.  This writer so despised those flashy fraternity boys at the university-the country club set, where he was never accepted, when they tried to impress him with their ancestry and money but he had the good sense to never let them know what he was thinking.  After all, I claim the name of Christ; I am supposed to be different.  Our Blessed Lord said, "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another" (John 13:34).  This will help calm the storm within, as you fish without a net, especially when you don't have much "bait".  You just put on that smile but never look them in the eye, your feelings about others will betray you if you look at them directly in the eye...the window of the soul.  Beware when any sales person talks to you about anything, if they will not look you in the eye.  How well I remember the owner of one department store trying to sell a hardworking farmer a new dress suit.  He would take the trousers and twist them saying, "This suit will never wrinkle."  Of course it is very difficult to wrinkle new material.  You can know that they are fishing without necessary equipment...even a net.  Life is hard, the game is rigged. 

Every experience of your life makes sense, WHEN YOU KNOW THAT GOD HAS A REASON FOR YOUR LIFE.  Do you think God had a reason for making me a blind man?  Do you think that God will not hold the world in the grasp of his wrath when we consider the one hundred fifteen thousand babies killed everyday in the world...in the holocaust of abortion?  Think of those killed who would probably have been the great musicians, parents, scientists, leaders of the world.  For those of us chosen for life, our devotion to our Creator is more than just hope when we think there are no other options.  For, we will never know God's strength until we have experienced weakness, God's riches until we have experienced real need.  This writer was needier during the long years of professional education, than ever in the poverty of our farm.  How can I forget the ten cent aisle, where I bought my groceries, every can ten cent because it was dented.  God helped this old, blind, veteran to forgive those who spend hundreds of dollars for a meal. 

God helped me to forgive the drug addicts-those who have never learned to protect health.  It is so much easier to stay well than to get well.  It is so much easier to never start drugs (and alcohol is a drug) than to go through the rehabilitation of getting over sin...something which many times takes years. 

When will our country's leaders learn that it is easier to keep a nation safe from within than to fight enemies from without?  In this time of political uncertainty, pretending religion, Lord help some of us to know that when you fast and pray Satan will flee.  

#1927 Wisdom Fee

#1927

Wisdom Fee

            "There Is A Way To Come Back Home Again" - Rouse and Vader

           

            There is a way
            To come back home again
            A way to be clean
            And be made whole again
            Regardless of your past
            Or how far away you've roamed
            There is a crimson path
            Leading to the Father's throne
            Yes there is a way
            To come back home again

The one sentence you have heard all your life, like the pacifier in the baby's mouth, "Somehow, everything will be fine, you will see."  Do you notice, even if you are not my age, the world gathers speed with every passing day?  How well I remember, the hot sun, the sweat, the thirst, the hot dirt, the torture of work in impoverished Eastern North Carolina.  The long rows of crops (tobacco-cotton-soy beans-corn); it seemed the days would never end.  Even those of us whose brains were wired to think, could not have imagined people working in the comfort of air conditioning-fountains of cold water-minimum wage.  This writer saw his own mother, a woman with a brilliant mind, and God only knows what she could have done with a good education, working in green tobacco all day long to make one dollar.  This writer well remembers working all day long, sun up past sunset, to make one dollar. 

I still remember my "daddy" hauling black mother's and their children from town to work all day long picking cotton by hand, in order to make one or two dollars.  They were dressed in the coarsest of clothing; their mental or physical conditions could not interfere with a day's work.  Life, until a few years ago, for most of us, was a matter of survival.  We can well understand why tenant farmers, cotton millworkers, even school teachers who made eighty-five dollars a month, or medical doctors who earned less than ten thousand dollars a year, filled houses of worship because they knew what Jesus meant, when he said, "Count the cost."  (Luke 14:28)  WE KNEW THE RIGORS OF LIFE.  The only possibility of what people consider a goodtime, where God places me.  A goodtime was visiting in the shade of a front porch (there was never AC in any home, any church, any school) I still remember the classrooms at the nation's oldest state university, UNC Chapel Hill, this writer sitting in a classroom with water dripping from his elbows onto the floor.  Most of today's pew warmers have never seen an old fashioned funeral home church fan. 

The American nation was built on the concept of family and an honest day's work.  Father's took pride in holding down a job which would support his family.  Some men would even go home for lunch, the mother in the home had time to act as "school mother" to her child's classroom...volunteer in tax-exempt institutions such as the hospital.  In the bottomless ocean of technology, the progress in America, as a world superpower, both parents must hold down at least one job and often two jobs.  Many children must begin work of some sort, where they get paid, as soon as the law allows.  AND, the law controls everything.  For you mentally weak people, you Godless democrats, Obama Care had nothing to do with insurance, only his "sickness" to control sickness.  Everything in American life now is a matter of control, a permit or license for everything. 

Our precious Lord of Glory, who created the world and everything in it, never dealt in numbers.  He never appointed a committee.  One man plus God, and anything was possible: think of Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Peter, Paul, etc.  And there have been modern men totally yielded to God.

A new word has reached the lexicon of print and news casting, with which many of us have been familiar for a very long time: fakery: fake news.  Even the new president of the United States, in whom most of us have much confidence, recognizes fake news.  President Trump was elected because the common man is tired of deceit-compromise-political correctness.  Satan always pays off in counterfeit, fakery.

Commitment precedes behavior.  There has always been a veneer of behavior, "First impressions are so important."  Like putting lipstick on your pig or a diamond studded collar around your puppy, they may look good but they are still hogs and dogs.  If you give them the chance they will act like their DNA-breeding-training dictates.  Even Peter said, "The sow has returned to her wallow."  (2 Peter 2:22) 

How well I remember the time when "nice girls" did not smoke in public, that men did not wear earrings.  This writer has been blind for a very long time, has not been able to tell if a light is on in a room, a totally blind one hundred percent disabled veteran but thank God, I can remember when women looked like women and men acted like men.  I am told now that you can hardly tell the difference and many politicians-pastors-pretenders want them all to go to the same "toilet".  My grandparents, great grandparents would have used a buggy whip on all of them.

The most innovative minds now are criminal minds: minds only interested in mentally breaking into someone else's cyber-information.  I am so tired of hearing the word hacking: it used to be someone who could not control their coughing at the church house or someone cutting wood for the fireplace.  The powerbrokers-opinion molders-those who throw one another under the bus, should have learned long ago that fretting about dishonesty of any type is as useless as blowing your horn in a big traffic jam. 

I challenge any scientist to challenge me on this statement, when God created the world and everything in it, he created everything that man would need for life...every element has a purpose.  There is not one rogue molecule.  He knows the location of every stream of water-gold-silver; the cattle of a thousand hills are his (Psalms 50:10).  Our greatest wealth is our immune system; pity those who have cursed it with vaccines.  When I was in school-young, autism affected one child in four thousand, today, one in every sixty-eight children.  At the same time, diabetes and cancer were rare diseases...Alzheimer's almost unheard of.  The world flesh devil has given life the chance to be rapidly snuffed out...all in the name of progress.  The smarter we have become, fee of wisdom, the smarter we must be.  

#1926 More Important Than All the Gold

#1926

More Important Than All the Gold

Spurgeon's Morning by Morning, January 12
Play Audio! Download Audio

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The Golden Key! The Golden Thread!

(Octavius Winslow)

Click to LISTEN to Audio while you read along with the quote below!

Jesus is the one great theme both of the Old Testament and the New. The whole Bible is designed to testify of Christ, "The Scriptures point to Me!" John 5:39

In Christ the Messiah, in Jesus the Savior, in the Son of God the Redeemer--all the truths of the Bible center. 

To Him all the types and shadows point! 

Of Him all the prophecies give witness! 

All the glory of the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation--culminates at the cross of Christ!

The Bible would be an inexplicable mystery apart from Christ, who unfolds and explains it all. 

He is the golden Key which unlocks the divine treasury of Scriptural revelation! 

Until He is seen, the Bible is, in a sense--a great mystery. But when He is found, it is a glorious revelation. 
Every mystery is opened, 
every enigma is explained, 
every discrepancy is harmonized, and 
every truth and page, sentence and word--is quickened with a life and glowing with a light flowing down from the throne of the Eternal God. 

Christ is the substance of the Gospel. 
  All its divine doctrines, 
  all its holy precepts, 
  all its gracious instructions, 
  all its precious promises, 
  all its glorious hopes-- 
meet, center, and fill up their entire compass in Jesus! 

He is the Alpha and the Omega of the Bible--from the first verse in Genesis, to the last verse in Revelation. 

Oh, study the Scriptures of truth with a view of learning Christ. 

Do not study the Bible as a mere history. 
Do not read it as a mere poem. 
Do not search it as a book of science. 
It is all that, but infinitely more. 
The Bible is the Book of Jesus! 
It is a Revelation of Christ! 

Christ is the golden thread which runs through the whole! 

Blessed Lord Jesus! I will read and study and dig into the Scriptures, to find and learn more of You! 
You, Immanuel, are the fragrance of this divine box of precious ointment. 
You are the beauteous gem sparkling in this divine cabinet. 
You are the Tree of life planted in the center of this divine garden. 
You are the Ocean whose stream quickens and nourishes all who draw water out of this divine well of salvation. 
The Bible is all about You!

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For further reading: J.R. Miller's helpful one page  article, "The Necessity of Daily Bible Reading".

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Feel free to FORWARD these gems to others who may be encouraged or profited by them!

Addition Dr. Morris:

The most important words my mother ever said to me, after I was grown, leaving the house on my own, "Remember who you are."  I believe she meant, remember who you belong to.  Those of us who carry around in our body "the dying of our lower Jesus" (2 Corinthians 4:10) know to whom we belong.  When you get my age, 86 plus, you think about all those wasted minutes...all those wasted times...that you were not truly His.  If Christians really believed what we are supposed to believe, the world would have been converted to Christ long ago and we would not be in the mess we are in today...locally, nationally, and worldwide.  We are supposed to be different but in a world of flesh and the devil, living among the pretenders of Christianity and the followers of Satan, we often choose popularity AND indifference.  This time on Earth is so short, when thinking of eternity with all the promises to those who are enveloped by the saving grace of God.