Best Friends Means Friends Forever

Being a best man or maid of honor is exactly that, an honor. It means that you will stand side by side and support that person on one of the most important days of his or her life. It includes helping that person prepare for the big day. Most of those responsibilities conclude after the reception, when the food is put away and the couple leaves for their honeymoon. However, today I came to realize that the duties and responsibilities of this position of honor have not ended for my best friend, Nathan. Rather than forfeiting his role at the end of the day four years ago, he has diligently returned daily to be my best man. Today, on a weekend visit, Nathan reminded me that he is my best man for life and is willing to lay down his life for me. I was struck by his commitment, which has not wavered in those four years. His willingness to serve me and my wife is as focused as on the day of our wedding. We finished our talk with quality time in prayer where Nathan offered intercessory prayer on my behalf, asking God for clear discernment and wisdom as I lead my family. After being overwhelmed with God’s peace, I hugged Nathan and praised Jesus Christ for His love and the manifestation of that love in a best friend like Nathan. In conclusion, I would urge all of you best men and maids of honor to return to your duties daily. You were selected for a reason; one that God may know more keenly that you. A reason more meaningful that you will ever know.

Lessons from the Art of Surgey

Dr. Selzer’s narrative in the chapter, “Lessons From the Art of Surgery”
“I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor from her cheek, I had cut the little nerve.
“Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry-mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks.
“’Will my mouth always be like this?’ she asks.
“’Yes,’ I say, ‘it will. It is because the nerve was cut.’
“She nods, and is silent. But the young man smiles. ‘I like it,’ he says, ‘It is kind of cute.’
“All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works. I remember that the gods appeared in ancient Greece as mortals, and I hold my breath and let the wonder in.”

- I hope you appreciate this as much as I did.

Mensa Contest

The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding,  subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the winners:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the  subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus : A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxicaton : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you  realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a  hillbilly.
5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6. Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about  yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7. Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
8. Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
9. Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon : It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these  really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido : All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.

The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

And the winners are:
1. Coffee, n.. The person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3.. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4 esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.
6.. Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7. Lymph, v.. To walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has  been run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men

Doctrine…

“Doctrine is a wonderful servant and a horrible master.”

Rob Bell

Apostasy

I promised to share the lengthy components of apostasy, referenced in Hebrews 6. Secondly, I would ask that you pray for God’s discernment and discretion as you read through.

APOSTASY

Apostates are people who hear the gospel, make a profession of being Christians, become identified with a Christian church, and then abandon their profession of faith, decisively repudiate Christ, desert the Christian fellowship, and take their place with enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ. Apostasy is a sin which can be committed only by unbelievers, not by those who are deceived, but by those who knowingly, willfully, and maliciously turn against the Lord.

It should not be confused with the sin of the average unbeliever who hears the gospel but does nothing about it. For instance, a man may fail to respond to Christ after repeated invitations from the Holy Spirit. But he is not an apostate. He can be saved if he will commit himself to the Savior. Of course, if he dies in unbelief, he is lost forever, but he is not hopeless as long as he is capable of exercising faith in the Lord.

Apostasy should not be confused with backsliding. A true believer may wander far away from Christ. Through sin his fellowship with God is shattered. He may even reach the point where he is no longer recognized as a Christian. But he can be restored to full fellowship as soon as he confesses and forsakes his sin (1 John 1:9).

Apostasy is not the same as the unpardonable sin mentioned in the Gospels. That was the sin of attributing the miracles of the Lord Jesus to the prince of the demons. His miracles were actually performed in the power of the Holy Spirit. To attribute them to the devil was tantamount to blaspheming the Holy Spirit. It implied that the Holy Spirit was the devil. Jesus said that such a sin could never be forgiven, either in that age or in the age to come (Mark 3:22-30). Apostasy is similar to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit in that it is an eternal sin, but there the resemblance ends.

I believe that apostasy is the same as the sin leading to death, mentioned in 1 John 5:16b. John was writing about people who professed to be believers and had participated in the activities of local churches. They then had imbibed the false teaching teachings of the Gnostics and had spitefully left the Christian fellowship. Their deliberate departure indicated that they had never been truly born again (1 John. 2:19). By opening denying that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 2:22), they had committed the sin leading to death, and it was useless to pray for their recovery (1 John 5:16b).

Some earnest Christians are troubled when they read Hebrews 6 and similar passages. Satan uses these verses especially to unsettle believers who are having physical, mental, or emotional difficulties. They fear that they have fallen away from Christ and that there is no hope for restoration. They worry that they have drifted beyond redemption’s point. The fact that they are even concerned about it is conclusive evidence that they are NOT apostates! An apostate would not have any such fears; he/she would brazenly repudiate Christ.

If the sin of apostasy does not apply to believers, to whom then does it apply in our day? It applies, for instance, to a young man who makes a profession of faith in Christ and seems to go on brightly for a while, but then something happens in his life. Perhaps he experiences bitter persecution. Perhaps he falls into gross immorality. Or perhaps he goes off to college and is shaken by the anti-Christian arguments of atheistic teachers. With full knowledge of the truth, he deliberately turns away from it. He completely renounces Christ and viciously tramples on every sacred fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith. The Bible says it is impossible to restore such a one to repentance, and experience corroborates the Bible. We have known many who have apostatized from Christ, but we have never known one who has returned to Him.

As we approach the end of the age, we can expect a rising tide of apostasy (2 Thess. 2:3; 1 Tim. 4:1). Therefore the warning against falling away becomes more relevant with every day that passes.

(MacDonald, William (1995) Believer’s Bible Commentary, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, TN)

Religious People

There is this false twisted idea out there among religious people that somehow you gotta have it all together to have a relationship with God, that like somehow God’s only looking for people who have no problems, and have it all nailed down, and can put on like the happy face all the time. Yet the scriptures speak directly against this kind of thinking. I mean Jesus is just straight ahead and said “come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden”. I mean the essence of salvation is crying out to God and admitting “I don’t have it all together,” its admitting “I am lost, I am hurting, and this sinful nature that I carry around with me have really screwed things up for me, and God if you don’t show me the way home, if you don’t fix thing if you don’t step in, I am dying here. And this kind of thinking is all through out the scripture, its over and over again God says to us “When you come to me, you come to me with all your junk, you come to me with your problems, come to me all screwed up all messed up, let me take care of it. Jesus, even sets out looking for people, He even says this; He says “I’m not looking for the healthy, I come for the sick.

— Rob Bell (Rain)

Floored.

Everyday, the enemy tries to offer us an apple, when God has already given us an orchard.

Most Amazing Palindrome Ever.

I Will Beat My Body Until I Break My Hand

One of the messages that I have been hearing recently is that “we tend to believe that the sin that surrounds us is more dangerous than the sin that resides inside us.” The author of a book that I’m reading goes on to write that “this is why it is hard for a husband to understand that he can’t blame his coldness on his wife, nor can the wife blame her bitterness on her husband, nor can their child blame his/her rebellion on his parents’ failures.” This has been a shocking realization for me since society has warnings against violence, drugs, promiscuity, homosexuality, stealing, cheating, etc. These are the sins that I have been conditioned to fear. But what about the internal ones such as greed, lust, envy, pride (tough one) and gluttony. These deadly sins (can you name the other two?) are rooted more in my heart and are more threatening that the previously mentioned sins. So why are we so ill-prepared to combat these deadly sins? Why hasn’t society realized the severity of these heart killers? Maybe because they are more more commonly shared, more easily disguised, more secretive, more invisible. Why am I not being warned more often about these sins? Maybe it is due to the fact that I cannot remove the speck in your eye while there is a plank in my own? (Name that scripture). I truly seek is to take ownership of my actions plus my internal thoughts, desires, feelings. I’m good at avoiding the external sins but I need to spend some time working on the heart. A heart transplant is due.

How will I do it? I will beat my body until I break my hand.

1 Corinthians 9: 24-27 “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”

Pray that we are obedient, examine our own hearts and reconcile before God.

And that’s your daily dose of ferocious.

WoodCutting 101

In times past, there was a very strong woodcutter. He asked for a job from a timber merchant, and was hired. The work was important and rewarding and the woodcutter was determined to do his best. His boss gave him a new axe and showed him the forest area where he was supposed to work. The first day, the woodcutter brought down 18 trees, impressing the boss who said, “Congratulations! Keep up the great work!”

Motivated by the encouragement, the woodcutter tried harder the next day, but he only could bring down 16 trees. On day three he tried even harder, but he only could bring down 12 trees. Day after day he was bringing down fewer and fewer trees, or faced working longer to keep up. He went to the boss and apologized, saying that he could not understand what was going on.

“When was the last time you sharpened your axe?” the boss asked. What? He was much too busy trying to cut trees. He hadn’t thought to sharpen his axe. He didn’t have the time.

The moral of the Woodcutter Story should be clear immediately:

We sometimes get so busy that we don’t take time to sharpen the axe. In today’s world, it seems that everyone is busier than ever, with more demands on us, perhaps less productive than we can be, and perhaps even less happy.