Daily Meditation

Restoring Our Relationship

Ligonier Ministries

Unregenerate man is consistently described as being in a state of alienation and enmity. This is the condition that makes reconciliation necessary. Reconciliation is necessary only when a state of estrangement exists between two or more parties. Estrangement is the natural fallen state of our relationship to God.

How are we enemies of God? Jonathan Edwards provides an insightful summary of the problem. He lists several points of tension between God and man:

1. By nature, we have a low esteem of God. We count Him unworthy of our love or fear.

2. We prefer to keep a distance from God. We have no natural inclination to seek His presence in prayer.

3. Our wills are opposed to the law of God. We are not loyal subjects of His sovereign rule.

4. We are enemies against God in our affections. Our souls have a seed of malice against God. We are quick to blaspheme and to rage against Him.

5. We are enemies in practice. We walk in a way that is contrary to Him.

Coram Deo

Examine your spiritual condition in light of Edwards’s five points of tension between God and man.

Passages for Further Study

Ephesians 2:12
Ephesians 2:14-16
Romans 5:10

Wanted: Teacher Union Free Schools

The Teachers' Unions Have To Go

"What an opportunity we lost."  These words were penned by Allan Peachey, former celebrated Principal of Rangitoto College.  Back in the eighties some mad cap educationalists did what bureaucrats do best: they penned a marketing slogan.  The government education system was to be given a new name: Tomorrow's Schools.  The bureaucrats and the educrats were grasping after their own deification.  It has always been an attribute of the Living God that He speaks reality into existence-even reality out of nothing.  The educrats thought they would give it a go: they, in magisterial arrogance, thought they could name a reality to come into existence out of very little, if not nothing.  

Tomorrow's Schools were gradually put together by a collection of Uncle Tom Cobblies in the 1980's and 90's.  It's governing religious precept was "the gummint knows best".  Few other fields of human endeavour have survived this statist hangover from the middle twentieth century.  But with Government Education, the "Force" was strong.

Peachey writes:

Perhaps most insulting of all was the patsy, middle-class patronising of the less well-off communities by those who call themselves liberal.  It is not difficult for me to hold the "Chardonnay socialists" in contempt.  I was stunned by the sheer arrogance of those who claimed that some communities were too poor, too unskilled, or too uneducated to know what was best for their children. 

I get sick of hearing schoolteachers, principals, trade unionists, capital-city bureaucrats, and left wing politicians using the socio-economic status of communities as an excuse to expect less of children within those communities than those children expect of themselves.  [Allan Peachey, What's Up With Our Schools? A New Zealand Principal Speaks Out (Auckland: Random House, 2005), p.86.f.]

The Chardonnay socialists had one bottom line: neither trust  nor empower  parents and local communities when it comes to Education.  Hence Tomorrow's Schools failed.

The Sisterhood's Ideal World

Stop Dumping Kids in 'Factory Farms'

Deborah Hill Cone
NZ Herald


This week on my way to a morning lecture on attachment theory, I walked past a noisy daycare centre. It must have been drop-off time. 

One mother, in yoga pants, was remarking to another: "She had a tantrum the entire way here." Her tone of voice was amused, insouciant.  The other mother, brisk, replied: "Did you walk?"  Yoga pants replied: "I just dragged her here!" She sounded triumphant at imposing her will over a tiny child. I half expected her to add: "Little madam."

Maybe that little girl normally loved daycare. Maybe she was frustrated because she wanted to wear her fairy wings or because there was no Nutella for her morning toast.  She may not have been protesting about being forced to spend most of her waking hours in a loud daycare centre among strangers, with grimy plastic toys to fight over and a cold equivalent of a prison-yard to play in.

Yet, on her behalf, I felt like crying. I wanted to tell ol' yoga pants to listen to her daughter. To take her feelings seriously. I wanted to tell her to make sure her daughter did not feel invisible, invalidated.  Instead I kept walking to my class, where I learned some more terribly uncomfortable truths about child development.

Daily Meditation

Recognizing Our Enmity

Ligonier Ministries

As children we played games drawn from the scenario of war. When a friend approached we pretended that we were sentries. The dialogue was simple: “Halt! Who goes there? Friend or foe?” Our categories left no room for indifferent neutrality. They were restricted to two options, friend or enemy. Those are the only options we have in our relationship with God. No one is neutral. We are either God’s friends or God’s enemies.

Jonathan Edwards once preached a sermon titled, “Man, Naturally God’s Enemies.” In this sermon Edwards declared: “Men, in general, will own that they are sinners. There are few, if any, whose consciences are so blinded as not to be sensible they have been guilty of sin … And yet few of them are sensible that they are God’s enemies. They do not see how they can be truly so called; for they are not sensible that they wish God any hurt, or endeavor to do Him any.”

Yet despite human protestations to the contrary, Scripture clearly describes natural fallen men as enemies of God. Paul, in speaking of our salvation, wrote, “While we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Rom. 5:10). Again, “You … were alienated [from God] and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds” (Col. 1:21). Also, “The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God” (Rom. 8:7).

Coram Deo

Think of the characteristics and qualities of intimate friendship, then apply these to your spiritual relationship with the heavenly Father. Are you truly a friend of God?

Passages for Further Study

Romans 8:7
Colossians 1:21-22a
Romans 7:18

Holding To the Faith "Once For All Delivered to the Saints"

Scottish Infidelity Versus Fidelity 

The acceptance of sexual sin in the Scottish Episcopal Church is causing ructions and schism.  It is part of many such excisions taking place around the world within Anglicanism.

One of the largest churches in Edinburgh has voted to split from the Scottish Episcopal Church amid tensions over its decision to become the first Anglican body in the UK to endorse gay marriage.  St Thomas’ is the latest evangelical parish to quit the official Anglican church in Scotland and back a rival splinter movement in reaction to the vote supporting gay marriage in June last year.

A number of other churches have either left or are considering leaving in the wake of the decision to change the Scottish Episcopal Church's (SEC) definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman.  [The Telegraph]

This development is consistent with similar moves around the world.

The Public Isn't Dumb

Democratic Party And Its Allies In Self-Destruct Mode

I was a long-time Democrat who 'walked away' from the party because I couldn’t stomach the Democrats’ anti-democratic antics. 

Saritha Prabhu
The Federalist

I don’t much like Donald Trump and didn’t vote for him (or Hillary) in 2016, but I’ve been feeling sorry for him for about 18 months now. It feels strange feeling sorry for someone who’s a boor, a narcissist, an egomaniac, and a serial philanderer, plus the 37 other negative traits usually used to describe him. But it has something to do with the fact that he has been treated in a grossly unfair manner by the mainstream media and the political and cultural left, on a scale we’ve never seen before.

One story of the last two years is how this most alpha of alpha males has become an underdog of sorts in American politics today. Of course, you won’t find this narrative in any of the mainstream media outlets. This narrative merely exists in the minds of millions of voters who are outside the core Democratic base: those of us who are Republicans, moderates, independents, former Democrats like myself. We’ve been silently watching, listening, observing the opposition to Trump in the last eighteen months, and it’s been the most sickening thing to see, more appalling than what the right did to President Obama.

As one voter put it in an article I read a while ago, the hatred shown toward Trump has been “un-American.” I agree with that sentiment, even as I simultaneously hold the thought that Trump is not someone whose character needs defending.

Memo to the left: Know why Trump’s poll numbers have been steady or rising slightly in spite of the invective you’ve been pouring on him every minute of every day? It’s because the economy is booming, and also because most Americans are fair-minded and think that even a flawed sinner like Trump doesn’t deserve to be figuratively kicked every day in a manner that’s often dishonest, exaggerated or out-of-context.

Daily Meditation

Avoiding a Hardened Conscience

Ligonier Ministries

We are warned not to allow ourselves to become hardened, because if we look at the whole concept of hardening in its biblical perspective, we see that something happens to us through repeated sins. Our consciences become seared. The more we commit a particular sin, the less remorse we feel from it. Our hearts are recalcitrant through repeated disobedience.

When God hardens the heart, all He does is step away and stop striving with us. For example, the first time I commit a particular sin, my conscience bothers me. In His grace, God is convicting me of that evil. God is intruding into my life, trying to persuade me to stop this wickedness. If He wants to harden me, all He has to do is to stop rebuking me, stop nudging me, and just give me enough rope to hang myself.

We see in Scripture that when God hardens hearts, He does not force people to sin; rather, He gives them their freedom to exercise the evil of their own desires (James 1:13–15).

Coram Deo

Pray this prayer with the psalmist David: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. 139:23–24).

Passages for Further Study

James 1:13-15

A Great Cause for Thanksgiving

Thailand Cave Rescue

Adun and His Church Gather to Praise God

CompassionBlog

Christians from all around the Chaing Rai District of northern Thailand gathered on Sunday, July 22, to praise God for the dramatic rescue of 12 boys and their soccer coach after they were trapped for two weeks in a flooded cave system. One of the boys who was rescued is Adun, who is sponsored through Compassion Thailand.

The majority of the soccer team participated in a Buddhist ceremony* on July 24, but Adun chose to worship God at a special thanksgiving service held at the Compassion partner church he attends.

Thailand Cave Rescue: Adun and His Church Gather to Praise God

Pastors from churches in the Chaing Rai province prayed for Adun at a service on Sunday, July 22.

Although nearly 95 percent of Thailand’s population is Buddhist, a small minority of Christians in the country — about 1 percent of the population — lives peacefully with their Buddhist neighbors.  Local governors, officers and those who participated in rescue operations attended the service to thank God for the safe return of the Wild Boar soccer team.

During the thanksgiving service, Adun shared a moving testimony with those gathered of what it was like to be in the cave.





“By the 10th night, we were losing patience, hope, physical energy and courage. We could not do anything to help. The only thing that I could do was pray. 

“I prayed ‘Lord, I’m only a boy; you are almighty God, you are holy, and you are powerful. Right now I can’t do anything; may you protect us. Come to help all 13 of us.‘

“And then I finished my prayer, thanking God for everything that happened to myself and my friends … all 13 of us.

“Thank you to everybody who prayed for me and the whole team,” Adun said. “Thank you to everybody that helped us, and the last thank-you [goes] to the Lord: Thank you God. God bless you all.” . . . .



Adun’s parents were special guests of the event, and they were dressed in traditional ethnic Lua garb.

“God is great love and there’s nothing He can’t do,” his parents said in a previous interview.

Other youths from the church had the honor of leading all those who gathered in worship. It was a time of joy, fellowship and thanksgiving to God.  What’s next for Adun? His church family and Compassion center will continue to minister to him and are working toward helping him gain citizenship.

The Good, the Bad and the Very Ugly

Government's Spiteful Behaviour

Maori, particularly Maori educators are continuing to express their disgust and anger at the New Zealand Labour Government shutting down charter schools.  This decision has nothing to do with the quality of education being provided.  It has everything to do with the demands of teacher unions who are incestuously cuddled up to the Labour Government.  There is an old proverb about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.  The Government is in the process of doing precisely that when it comes to education.

A Murupara-based long-time educator has hit out at the Education Minister's decisions to close partnership schools in favour of special character schools.  Pem Bird, who won the 2018 Matariki Award for contribution to education, said, in his opinion, Chris Hipkins' actions were "profoundly disrespectful".

"It's condemning these children to return to a system where Māori and Pasifika underachievement is chronic, intractable and systemic."  Bird said partnership schools were making a positive difference for Māori and Pasifika students.  "They are thriving in these culturally inclusive and wairua uplifting environments," Bird said.  "In mainstream schools where 95 per cent of Māori are concentrated, they are routinely failed. According to figures issued by this Coalition Government, on an average school day around half of all Māori and Pasifika secondary school pupils are truant.
 
The Ministry of Education prefers this status quo of failure to continuing with Charter Schools which have achieved some very positive results in the few short years they have existed.  [NZ Herald.   Emphasis, ours.]

Dr Lance O'Sullivan, another highly respected voice, has also condemned the Government's oppressive tactics in closing charter schools for no good reason.

Justice Minister Wants Three Strikes Gone , But . . .

Three Strikes Law Working Extremely Well

David Farrar at Kiwiblog writes:

Very few second strikers

The Ministry of Justice’s latest figures show that the number of First Strikers has just reached 10,000, or 10,031 to be exact.

Only 302 of those 10,031 were unwilling or unable to control themselves from re-offending and went on to become Second Strikers.

And just four of those 302 second strikers have gone on to become Third Strikers.

This appears to me to be working very well in discouraging reoffending. Yet Labour wants to repeal the law.

The strikes by year are:

2010 – 160, 0, 0
2011 – 912, 1, 0
2012 – 1,310, 12, 0
2013 –  1,335, 16, 0
2014 – 1,277, 32, 0
2015 –  1,297, 53, 0
2016 – 1,446, 57, 1
2017 – 1,538, 85, 1
2018 – 747, 57, 2

Daily Meditation

Eliminating Unrealistic Expectations

Ligonier Ministries

Sometimes we all feel as if our prayers lack the power to penetrate our ceilings. It seems as though our petitions fall on deaf ears and God remains unmoved or unconcerned about our passionate pleading. Why do these feelings haunt us?

There are several reasons why we are sometimes frustrated in prayer. One is that our expectations are unrealistic. This, perhaps more than any other factor, leads to a frustration in prayer. We make the common mistake of taking statements of Jesus in isolation from other biblical aspects of teaching in prayer, and we blow these few statements out of proportion.

We hear Jesus say that if two Christians agree on anything and ask, it shall be given to them. Jesus made that statement to men who had been deeply trained in the art of prayer, men who already knew the qualifications of this generalization. Yet in a simplistic way we interpret the statement absolutely. We assume the promise covers every conceivable petition without reservation or qualification. Think of it. Would it be difficult to find two Christians who would agree that to end all wars and human conflict would be a good idea? Obviously not. Yet if two Christians agreed to pray for the cessation of war and conflict, would God grant their petition? Not unless He planned to revise the New Testament and its teaching about the future of human conflict.

Prayer is not magic. God is not a celestial bellhop at our beck and call to satisfy our every whim. In some cases, our prayers must involve the travail of the soul and agony of heart, such as Jesus experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane. Sometimes young Christians have been bitterly disappointed in “unanswered” prayers, not because God failed to keep His promises, but because well-meaning Christians made promises “for” God that God never authorized.

Coram Deo

Do you have unrealistic expectations that account for seemingly unanswered prayers? Are you treating God like a celestial bellhop?

Passages for Further Study

Psalm 102:17-18
Psalm 141:2

Normal Transmission Resumes

The Greens Have Lost Their Vaunted Integrity

Marama Davidson--bald faced liar.  Green political leader.  No surprises there, it seems. 

In New Zealand we are about to have what is colloquially called the Anti-Waka-Jumping Bill.  It is designed to protect one politician, and one only.  Winston Peters, leader of the New Zealand First party has a long history of infighting amongst his own party.  Peters is a prima-donna.  Relationships tend to fracture when the egos of other NZ First politicians collide with Peters's view of the world.

Therefore, Peters negotiated a back-room deal with the Labour Party to pass a Bill which required that any MP could be ejected from Parliament if he or she did not do obeisance to the respective party leader.  It is a Bill nurtured in the insecurity of one MP--Winston Peters.  Labour gladly rushed to sign up to ensure that the Peters Protection Bill passed into law. 

But, in order to pass it needed one more party's support: the Greens.  Historically, the Greens had been staunchly opposed to any Bill which undermined the sovereignty of Parliament.  They had been decidedly principled on the matter.  But in the end, despite staunch opposition from the Greens rank-and-file, the party has fallen into line and declared it will support the Peters Protection Bill. 

The leader of the Greens, Marama Davidson lied to herself, her party, and to the nation.

Justice UK Style For Those Deemed An Enemy of the Realm

"I Was Kept in Solitary Confinement 23.5 Hours a Day"

Jack Montgomery
BreitbartLondon

Tommy Robinson has described a Spartan existence in prison in an interview following his release, claiming he was kept locked in solitary confinement for 23 and a half hours at a time and had to subsist on one can of tuna a day.

The activist was bounced into prison to serve two consecutive prison sentences for contempt of court within five hours of an arrest for an alleged breach of the peace in May.

The decision was defended at the time by a number of left-liberal talking heads and legal commentators, including the pseudonymous ‘Secret Barrister’, but quashed on August 1st in the Court of Appeal by the Lord Chief Justice, who ruled that the sentencing judge had moved with unseemly haste and deviated from proper due process in a way that was “much more than a technical failure”.

Robinson’s time in prison appeared to have a taken a serious toll on him in the interview, conducted by his former employer at Rebel Media, Ezra Levant. The Luton native appeared gaunt, hollow-eyed, and slurred his words.

Daily Meditation

Stunting Worship

Ligonier Ministries

The visual impact of the furnishings and the buildings of both the Old Testament tabernacle and temple was awesome. The eyes were dazzled with a sense of the splendor of God.

Sound was vital to Old Testament worship. The choral compositions of the Psalms were moving to the Spirit. They were accompanied by the full harmony and rhythm supplied by the harp, the lyre, the flute, and trumpets. The piano and the organ are marvelous instruments, but they cannot produce the sounds that the other instruments provide. Hymns and choral anthems are greatly enhanced when they are supported with greater orchestration.

Old Testament worship involved all five senses. The element of touch is missing in most Protestant worship. Charismatic groups emphasize the laying on of hands, which meets a strong human need for a holy touch. Early Christian worship involved the placing of the pastor’s hands on each person with the pronouncement of the benediction. When congregations got too large for such personal attention, the act gave way to the symbolic gesture of the benediction spoken by the pastor with outstretched arms. This was a simulation of the laying on of hands, but the actual touch was lost.

Old Testament worship included taste and smell. The fragrance of burning incense gave a peculiar sense of a special aroma associated with the sweetness of God. One of the first gifts laid at the foot of the manger of Jesus was that of frankincense. Most Protestants reject incense without giving any substantive reason for its rejection.

Taste was central to the Old Testament feasts as well as the New Testament celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The injunction to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 34:8) is rooted in the worship experience. The people of God “tasted the heavenly gift” (Heb. 6:4).

Perhaps we have stunted worship by excluding elements that God once included and deemed important.

Coram Deo

Reflect on ways you might involve your physical senses in worshiping God in your private devotions.

Passages for Further Study

Psalm 150:3-5

Rejection of Secularism, Both Soviet and Western European Styles

Middle Europe Rises

One has to be intrigued by developments in Middle Europe.  Here are a bunch of countries who know first hand what the fruits of secularism taste like.  Countries like Poland, Hungary, and Romania lived under secularist oppression for decades.  Back then it was called Communism. 

Regrettably it seems that most folk in the West have not yet clicked to the indisputable truth that Communism, as experienced in the Soviet Union and its "satellite" states, was one of the most perfected secularist countries ever seen in human history.  But so bad was its record and its outcomes that even Vlad the Impaler, leader of today's Russian Federation has discarded secularism to the point where he acknowledges the former Christian influence and guidance of the "Russias", up until another Vlad, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin seized control in 1917. 

In a similar manner, Middle Europe has been turning back to its Christian past.  Its chief opposition to this development has been--irony of ironies--the now secularist West, particularly Western Europe. 

Victor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary, is very much aware of what seems to be taking place throughout Middle Europe.  The secularist West, on the other hand, cannot comprehend, much less accept it. Here is Orban:

North Korea Tops World Rankings

"No Rival On Earth"

Dr Thomas D. Williams
Breitbart News

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence excoriated North Korea’s record of human rights violations Thursday, asserting that the nation’s persecution of Christians is the worst on the planet.
“North Korea’s persecution of Christians has no rival on the Earth,” Pence told leaders gathered in Washington, DC, for the State Department’s Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. “It is unforgiving, systematic, unyielding and often fatal.”

“The mere possession of a Christian Bible is a capital offense,” Pence noted, and “Christians are regularly executed or condemned with their families to North Korea’s gulags.”  Mr. Pence’s words echoed the findings of watchdog groups monitoring Christian persecution, which consistently place North Korea at the top of the list of nations where it is most dangerous to be a Christian.

This year, one such organization, Open Doors, which publishes an annual World Watch List (WWL) about Christian persecution, noted that North Korea has been considered “the worst place for Christians” for 16 consecutive years, since 2002.

In his address Thursday, the vice president said that while Americans all hope relations between the United States and North Korea will continue to improve, “there is no escaping the plain fact that North Korea’s leadership has exacted unparalleled privation and cruelty upon its people for decades,” a cruelty that has included “torture, mass starvation, public executions, murders, and even forced abortions, and industrial-scale slave labor.”

Appearing with Mr. Pence at the Ministerial was a North Korean Christian woman named Ji Hyeona, whom he met when in the region this year.

Daily Meditation

Our Weakness Reveals His Worth

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9)

John Piper

God’s design for suffering is that it magnifies Christ’s worth and power. This is grace, because the greatest joy of Christians is to see Christ magnified in our lives.

When Paul was told by the Lord Jesus that his “thorn in the flesh” would not be taken away, he supported Paul’s faith by explaining why. The Lord said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). God ordains that Paul be weak so that Christ might be seen as strong on Paul’s behalf.

If we feel and look self-sufficient, we will get the glory, not Christ. So Christ chooses the weak things of the world “so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:29). And sometimes he makes seemingly strong people weaker, so that the divine power will be the more evident.

We know that Paul experienced this as grace because he rejoiced in it: “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9–10).

Living by faith in God’s grace means being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus. Therefore faith will not shrink back from what reveals and magnifies all that God is for us in Jesus. That is what our own weakness and suffering does.

Our Culture of Identity Politics

Identifying As An Afflicted Dairy Cow

Here is an observation on political correctness in schools, penned by Allan Peachey.  It speaks for itself.

The politics of political correctness are playing too big a role in our schools.  Single-issue activists seem to have an influence well beyond either the merit of their ideas or the level of support for them.  Now we have gay marriage masquerading as civil union, legalised prostitution and willingness to make claims of "sexism" or "racism" without apply reasoned argument to support them.

It is ironic that these activists--who promote sweeping social change--are arguing for tolerance, yet they are not tolerant of people who hold more orthodox or traditional views.  We are seeing political correctness made into law and there is a politically correct, sanctioned intolerance being built into our education system.  [Allan Peachey, What's Up With Our Schools?  A New Zealand Principal Speaks Out (Auckland: Random House, 2005),  p.80.]

Fifteen years later, little has changed, except things have got worse.  One of these days we expect someone will make an Official Information Act request of the Ministry of Education, asking it to divulge how many abortions schools have procured for their students without parental knowledge or consent over the past fifteen years.  We fear that the number would shock us all--although it will take a sledgehammer to crack through the wall of stony silence, the OIA notwithstanding.

New Life Celebrated--An Old Treasured Hymn Made New

"I Found My Treasure, My Pleasure in Thee"

John Piper is a much appreciated minister of the Gospel.  He is now retired from the pastoral ministry.  He remains busy, however.  He was speaking at a recent conference on Deuteronomy 29 & 30.  The folk leading the attendees in singing had scheduled "Great is Thy Faithfulness" as one of the hymns.  It is a great favorite of many.

John Piper thought he would contribute a couple of new verses that would reflect more directly some of the themes in his lectures.  They became an instant "hit".



Here is the "up-to-date" rendition of "Great is Thy Faithfulness" with the new Piper verses included in italics.

Daily Meditation

Why We Don’t Lose Heart

Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. (2 Corinthians 4:16)

John Piper

Paul can’t see the way he used to (and there were no glasses). He can’t hear the way he used to (and there were no hearing aids). He doesn’t recover from beatings the way he used to (and there were no antibiotics). His strength, walking from town to town, doesn’t hold up the way it used to. He sees the wrinkles in his face and neck. His memory is not as good. And he admits that this is a threat to his faith and joy and courage.

But he doesn’t lose heart. Why?

He doesn’t lose heart because his inner man is being renewed. How?

The renewing of his heart comes from something very strange: it comes from looking at what he can’t see.  We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)

This is Paul’s way of not losing heart: looking at what you can’t see. What did he see?

A few verses later in 2 Corinthians 5:7, he says, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” This doesn’t mean that he leaps into the dark without evidence of what’s there. It means that for now the most precious and important realities in the world are beyond our physical senses.

We “look” at these unseen things through the gospel. We strengthen our hearts — we renew our courage — by fixing our gaze on the invisible, objective truth that we see in the testimony of those who saw Christ face to face.

Talkback Truth

A Rarely Heard Insight

Talkback radio has a select, but faithful hard-core audience.  One thing it does achieve, more than most other media we believe, is give insight into a societal fringe.  Sometimes that insight has to do with matters of important moment.

Therefore, we were interested to read Kerre McIvor's recent article on domestic violence.  Some background would be helpful.  Our world is awash with do-gooders who naively believe that if taxpayers' money is dripped down upon some social problem, hey-presto!  Things magically change for the better.

Last week we were told that victims of domestic violence were going to get a wonderful blessing--a new piece of legislation,  via employers.  They were going to receive 10 extra days leave from employers to help them cope with domestic violence.  What could go wrong?

This is where McIvor is able to help.  Her night time community and audience is replete with folk who have secrets, who would like to talk to someone, but are often private and ashamed.  They end up talking anonymously to late night radio talk-back hosts and audiences.  Included are secretive, ashamed victims of domestic violence.  So, McIvor--as a late-night talk show radio host--is probably one of the most knowledgeable people in the country on this subject.

Bucking the Trend

Long Live the Landline

By Graham Hillard
National Review Online


In the years spanning the turn of the millennium, the fixed-line telephone still dominated the small Baptist college where I’d gone to study theater and writing. One occasionally saw a cell phone, just as one occasionally saw a professor with a mullet or a sorority girl wearing fur, but for the most part we all scurried back to our rooms every hour to check our answering machines.

As the Class of 2002 approached graduation, however, something peculiar began to happen. One by one, usually after securing post-baccalaureate employment, my peers began adopting various signifiers of adulthood: a tucked-in shirt, a brisker stride, and, most perplexing of all, a rectangular chunk of plastic worn, Wyatt Earp–style, in what appeared to be a holster. Perhaps because of an inborn contrarianism — perhaps because my course of study ensured that there would be no job offers for me — I never purchased one of the devices that marked the campus’s emerging professional caste. Sixteen years later, I still haven’t. And life, I’m happy to report, has been grand.

To go without a cell phone in 2018 is to provoke both wonder and indignation. Snake handlers and pansexuals inspire less anthropological curiosity, lawyers and used-car salesmen less rage. Among the questions I’ve received (the most common — an astonished “How do you do that?!” — neatly illustrates the snugness of technology’s shackles) are inquiries into my trustworthiness (“You’re lying, right?”), my sociability (“Have you no friends?”), my sanity (“Are you psychotic?”), and the health and safety of my children (“They’re dead on the side of the road somewhere, aren’t they?”). The common denominator of these reactions is their implication that I have violated an unassailable 21st-century covenant — that, in my unwillingness to get with the mobile program, I have unfitted myself for polite society and, like Huck Finn’s father, can be reformed only with a shotgun.

That I have not yet been fired on, I consider purely a matter of happenstance.

Because, of course, “Thou shalt be connected” is one of the civil and economic commandments of our time. To break it produces serious annoyance.

Daily Meditation

Surveying the Crisis of Worship

Ligonier Ministries

There is a crisis of worship in our land. People are staying away from church in droves. One survey indicated that the two chief reasons people drop out of church are that it is boring and irrelevant.

If people find worship boring and irrelevant, it can only mean they have no sense of the presence of God in it. When we study the act of worship in Scripture and church history, we discover a variety of human responses to the sense of the presence of God. Some people tremble in terror, falling with their faces to the ground; others weep in mourning; some are exuberant in joy; still others are reduced to a pensive silence. Though the responses differ, one reaction we never find is boredom. It is impossible to be bored in the presence of God (if you know that He is there).

Neither is it possible for a sentient creature to find his or her encounter with God a matter of irrelevance. Nothing—and no one—is more relevant to human existence than the living God.

Coram Deo

Do you find worship boring and irrelevant? If so, pray for a renewed sense of God’s presence.

Passages for Further Study

Psalm 95:6
Psalm 34:1
Psalm 50:23

We Have Seen the Future . . .

It is Belgian

Belgium Euthanizes Hundreds of Disabled and Mentally Disabled People, Including Three Children

Alex Schadenberg
LifeSiteNews


The media is reporting that the Belgian euthanasia data has been released. The data shows that the number of euthanasia deaths continues to increase, euthanasia deaths for conditions related to aging have skyrocketed and three children died by euthanasia.

There is no sign that the problems of euthanasia without request and unreported euthanasia deaths has been reduced.

The basic data.
In 2016 there were 2028 reported euthanasia deaths up from 2021 in 2015.
In 2017 there were 2309 reported euthanasia deaths, a 14% increase from the previous year.
There were 954 reported Belgian euthanasia deaths in 2010 representing a 242% increase in 7 years.

Since 2010, Belgium has expanded euthanasia to include children, people with mental or behavioral conditions and people who are not dying but have chronic conditions. The data indicates that in 2016/17 there were, reportedly, 3 children who died by euthanasia, 77 people with mental or behavior conditions and 710 people with sight loss or incontinence or conditions related to disability or age.

When releasing the 2015 euthanasia data, Wim Distelmans, the chairman of the Euthanasia Evaluation and Control commission told the media that they cannot say for certain the actual number of euthanasia deaths. Distelmans stated: 

“Remember, there could be some euthanasia cases carried out but which are not declared so we cannot say for certain what the number is,”

Distelman’s comments were based on the research published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) (March 19, 2015) on the euthanasia practice in Belgium that found: