Messages From Heaven: Taking It Easy with Time and Touch!

Messages From Heaven: Taking It Easy with Time and Touch!: Maybe it's because I just had another birthday. maybe it's because I'm a granddad several times over. Or maybe it's becau...

Taking It Easy with Time and Touch!

Maybe it's because I just had another birthday. maybe it's because I'm a granddad several times over. Or maybe it's because of a struggling young seminarian I met recently who wishes he had been higher on his parents' priority list than, say, fifth or sixth. He was hurried and ignored through childhood, then tolerated and misunderstood through adolescence, and finally expected to "be a man" without having been taught how.
My words are dedicated to all of you who have the opportunity to make an investment in a growing child so that he or she might someday be whole and healthy, secure and mature. Granted, yours is a tough job. Relentless and thankless...at least for now. There is every temptation to escape from the responsibilities that are yours and yours alone. But nobody is better qualified to shape the thinking, to answer the questions, to assist during the struggles, to calm the fears, to administer the discipline, to know the innermost heart, or to love and affirm the life of your offspring than you.
When it comes to "training up the child in the way he should go," you've got the inside lane, Mom and Dad. No teacher or coach, neighbor or friend, no grandparent or sibling, counselor or minister will have the influence on your kid that you are having. So — take it easy! Remember (as Anne Ortlund puts it) "children are wet cement." They take the shape of your mold. They're learning even when you don't think they're watching. And those little guys and gals are plenty smart. They hear tone as well as terms. They read looks as well as books. They figure out motives, even those you think you can hide. They are not fooled, not in the long haul.
The two most important tools of parenting are time and touch. Believe me, both are essential. If you and I hope to release from our nest fairly capable and relatively stable people who can soar and make it on their own, we'll need to pay the price of saying no to many of our own wants and needs in order to interact with our young...and we'll have to keep breaking down the distance that only naturally forms as our little people grow up.
Time and touch. nothing new, I realize, yet both remain irreducible minimums when it comes to good parenting. Take it easy! Listen to your boy or girl, look them in the eye, put your arms around them, hug them close, tell them how valuable they are. Don't hold back. Take the time to do it. Reach. Touch.
Don't stand alongside your son or daughter like statues, unable to say what you feel, uncomfortable and distant. Take time to feel, to listen, to hold your child close.
When you are tempted to get involved in some energy-draining, time-consuming opportunity that will only increase the distance between you and yours, stop and think of the unspoken message it will convey. Ask yourself hard questions like, "Could my time be better spent at home?" and "Won't there be similar opportunities in the years to come?" Then turn your attention to your boy or girl. Hold nothing back as you renew acquaintances.
Take it easy!

Messages From Heaven: Jesus’ Selflessness!

Messages From Heaven: Jesus’ Selflessness!: 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with Go...

Jesus’ Selflessness!

⁵Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷but madehimself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.⁸And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. —Philippians 2:5-8
This passage is so rich; we only have space to examine one jewel. It’s the phrase, He “made himself nothing” (v.7a). Notice, Jesus “made Himself.” He didn’t get a memo. He wasn’t pushed out of heaven. He was fully engaged in God’s whole plan!
That phrase there, “made himself nothing,” is actually the basis for a lot of false teaching. Some translations rightly put it, “He emptied Himself.” Then the question becomes, emptied Himself of what? Some falsely suggest that Jesus emptied Himself of Deity and that He literally became a first-century Jewish man; that there was no God, just Jesus, the man. But the Bible teaches the Incarnation of Jesus, 100 percent God; 100 percent man, undiminished Deity dwelling in humanity.
You ask, “Well, what did He empty Himself of then?”
Answer, at least five things:

• He emptied Himself of glory. In John 17:5, Jesus prayed, “Glorify me...with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” He gave up the adoration of the saints and angels when He came into this world.
• He emptied Himself of independent authority. In John 5:30, Jesus said, “I can do nothing on My own.” He brought Himself into a different relationship with the Father, where ALL of His activities and actions had to be cleared in that unusual way. Though equal with the Father, now uniquely submissive to Him.
• He released the voluntary exercise of His divine attributes. Compare John 1:43–51 with Matthew 24:36 to see how Jesus sometimes was omniscient and sometimes not.
• He gave up eternal riches. I just want you to try to imagine for a moment the treatment that the Son of God, the King of the universe, gets in heaven. Yet 2 Corinthians 8:9 says, “...though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”

He gave up His intimate relationship with the Father. Who can describe the fellowship that exists between the first and second Person of the Trinity? And to hear Jesus on the cross in Matthew 27:46 shouting, “My God, why have You forsaken Me?” He made Himself nothing — for you and me.

Messages From Heaven: Richard Dawkins Exposes the Immorality of His Athe...

Messages From Heaven: Richard Dawkins Exposes the Immorality of His Athe...: Giving further ammunition to those who say that atheists cannot fully value all human life, Richard Dawkins has now stated that it would ...

Richard Dawkins Exposes the Immorality of His Atheism!

Giving further ammunition to those who say that atheists cannot fully value all human life, Richard Dawkins has now stated that it would be "immoral" not to abort a baby with Down syndrome. Are you surprised?
It was just last week that the British scientist exposed the irrationality of his atheism when he claimed that nice, nonviolent practitioners of religion served as enablers for religious terrorism.
He first noted that, "It's very important that we should not demonise ordinary, law-abiding, very decent Muslims, which of course is the vast majority in this country" (speaking of the U.K.).
But that was only the prelude to the punchline: "[However] there is a sense in which the moderate, nice religious people—nice Christians, nice Muslims—make the world safe for extremists."
How so? He opined that, "the moderates are so nice we all are brought up with the idea that there's something good about religion faith. That there's something good about bringing children up to have a faith."
And, since faith can't be defended rationally (according to Dawkins), then, "Once you teach people that that's a legitimate reason for believing something then you, as it were, give a licence to the extremists who say 'my belief is that I'm supposed to be a suicide bomber or I'm supposed to blow up buildings—it's my faith and you can't question that."
This is complete bunk, not to mention utterly irrational.
To give one example out of millions, let me tell you the story of my Indian friend P. Yesupadam.
Raised an untouchable, he rejected his father's Christian faith and his nation's Hindu faith.
Almost dying of malnutrition as a boy, he learned to hate the caste system and, at the age of 11, he became a Naxalite, a Maoist communist. Soon he was a committed atheist (in keeping with his Naxalite philosophy), an alcoholic, and a violent man, engaging in acts of terror against the rich.
Then, in his mid-20's, he had a vision of Jesus and has since given himself to serve the poor and needy of India (and other nations) for the last 40 years–-building orphanages, schools (from nursery school to junior college and nursing schools), feeding programs, homes for the elderly, training centers to teach trades to the handicapped, also bringing the message of the gospel to the tribal regions.
Of the many orphans and needy children his ministry has fed, clothed and educated over the last 25 years, some are now doctors in America, some nurses and school teachers in India, and others pastors and Christian leaders.
The accomplishments are truly staggering to the point that, when he turned 60 a couple of years ago, government leaders came to the celebration to commend him for his humanitarian work.
Following Prof. Dawkins' "logic," we would have to say that "nice Christians" like Yesupadam encourage people to strap on a suicide belt and blow themselves up, together with their innocent victims.
To repeat: This is complete bunk and a demonstration of the irrationality of Dawkins' atheism.
Now, to add insult to injury, Dawkins has exposed the immorality of his atheism, stating that if a woman knew she was carrying a baby with Down syndrome, she should "abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice."
This is not just bunk. It is utterly rancid.
Aside from his claims that the baby would feel no pain in being aborted (he's quite sure about that?), he is doing the very thing that theists claim atheism can lead to, namely, devaluing of human life based on a survival-of-the-fittest mentality.
Really now, if you can determine that some people are not worthy to live before they are even born, surely it's not that big a jump to determine that some people are not worthy to live after they have been born.
Perhaps the very elderly and the hopelessly infirm, especially if their lives could be terminated "mercifully"? Perhaps those who are incorrigibly violent? Perhaps those who are seriously mentally handicapped?
Why not? Or, more specifically, based on what criteria do we judge who is worthy to enter this world and who is worthy to live?
Writing on LifeSiteNews.com, Dustin Siggins points out that, "Although it is widely believed that people with Down syndrome are doomed to a life of suffering, in one large survey 99 percent of respondents with Down syndrome said they were 'happy.' At the same time, 99 percent percent of parents said they loved their child with Down syndrome, and 97 percent said they were proud of them." (The siblings of Down syndrome children expressed similar, overwhelmingly positive sentiments.)
It is becoming increasingly clear that Dawkins is something of an embarrassment, even to other atheists (although he is still revered by many). The only question that remains is this: Are his irrational and immoral positions unique to him, or are they the logical outcome of his Darwinian evolutionism?