human-rights

What did I do wrong?

English: Saint paul arrested

English: Saint paul arrested (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My failures and disappointments often move me to question God. Nevertheless, I never do. I am a man of faith and I have learned not to blame or question God. I heed the advice of the apostle Paul instead: “Count it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when face with trials of various kinds. Take comfort that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. So let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach. However, let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that the wind drives and tosses. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:2-8).

Still, when I am face with disappointments, I engulf myself in the mire of my failures and short comings. I keep asking myself, “What did I do wrong?” I have dotted all my I’s, and crossed all my T’s, yet there are times when I feel hopeless and incompetent and unworthy. Even a sense of emptiness creeps up on me when I least expect. What did I do wrong? Could it be that the old cliché, “What goes around comes around,” is catching up to me?

I need answers and fast. So I fall on my knees before the throne of grace and have a little talk with Jesus. He turned to me and said. “Son, I know why you have come”. You need to make peace with your guilty conscience. “For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger, and you did not invite me in your house. I needed clothes, and you did not clothe me. I was sick, and in prison and you did not look after me”.

“Then I say to Him, ‘Lord, when did I see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me’. (Matthew 25:42-45)

Do you neglect the poor and needy? If you do, the Bible says in Matthew 25:46 you will go away in everlasting punishment.

Where was God in Aurora Massacre?

It’s been one week since the Aurora theater massacre, and people are still searching for answers. Some are even asking,” Where was God in Aurora massacre?” CNN asked the question on twitter. The following is some of the responses. What do you think?

By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor

(CNN) – Where was God in Aurora?

It’s a fresh take on an age-old question: Why does God allow suffering, natural disasters or – if you believe in it – evil?

We put the question to Twitter on Tuesday and got some starkly different responses.

“In short, God was in complete control, exercising His will,” wrote @PastorRileyF, who leads a church in Bethune, Colorado.

That riled @TheTrivia Jockey, who tweeted, “If that was God’s will, God is definitely not deserving of my worship.”

Watch: Survivor of massacre says he forgives gunman

@trentpayne also took issue with the Colorado pastor: “I’m going to respectfully disagree with you Pastor. God gives free will to man, but it wasn’t his will that they die.”

The back-and-forth provoked other believers to chime in on the theological issue of God’s sovereignty vs. human free will, with many Christians seeking to explain how a sovereign God could preside over seemingly senseless bloodshed.

“It is not God’s will or want that people died in Aurora,” wrote @GospelBluesman20m. “God allowed man’s inhumanity to man, rather than intervene.”

The conversation and debate continued in the comments section of this post, with some insinuating that the massacre might be a kind of divine punishment, or at lease divine neglect:

Lenny
We as a country have been telling God to go away. We told him to get off our currency, get out of our schools, get out of our Pledge of Allegiance, take your Ten Commandments out of our courthouses, get those Bibles out of hotels and no graduation ceremonies in our churches. How can we expect God to give us his blessing and his protection if we demand that he leave us alone?

Jesse R
Liberals have made it impossible for God to be anywhere during the upbringing of a child. Can’t have any religious connotations in schools, libraries, government offices, etc., etc. Young men (and women) are growing up with no real sense of right and wrong. … We no longer have the right of religion, but rather the right from religion. Parents no longer have the ability to discipline their children. We are always looking for the excuses … violent video games and movies, bad teachers and schools … when we should be looking in the mirror. We as a society are the reasons these massacres happen. We have allowed our children to become social misfits that lead to the kind of carnage we have seen on several occasions since religion and God disappeared from what the Founding Fathers once said was a necessity of a successful democracy … faith.

Lots of readers used religious takes on the shooting to challenge the whole idea of God:

Who invited me?
How do you know the people that were killed didn’t go to hell?, and how exactly does any of this show there is a reason? Reason is obviously something that you have replaced with belief, and you threw out logic with it.

Kyle
“God doesn’t exist, so he wasn’t anywhere. Get over it. A man was evil, and he was evil because he was crazy.

Plenty of others said the shooting was the devil’s work:

Harleyxx
Evil things like this happen because Satan is the god of this world … for the time being. God will undo all the damage caused by Satan’s rebellion and man’s disobedience when the time is right. In the meantime we all experience trials and tribulation due to living in an ungodly world. That is why Jesus taught his followers the Lord’s Prayer … ‘to pray for God’s kingdom to come.’

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Whose side are you on?

English: Michmethath__which_is_before_Shechem

English: Michmethath__which_is_before_Shechem (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes I think it is terribly difficult to tell whose side some of my Christian brothers and sisters are on. The words we communicate with our mouths are quite different from the things we do with our hands. Furthermore, we often get engulf in the issue of the moment, and we frequently say and do things that we later regret.

For example, on May 31, 2009, abortion Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed, while he served as an usher in his Wichita church, by anti-abortion activist, Scott Roeder. Many anti-abortion Christians celebrated the heinous act, lauded the shooter and commented that Tiller got what was coming to him. Can two wrongs make one right? No. Fighting fire with fire is most certainly not the approach Jesus would use when attempting to resolve a conflict. Suffice it to say, Jesus did not respond in kind, when he was violently nailed to the cross. Instead, He said: “Father, forgive them, for they know what they do.”

So, whose side are you really on? Is it Jesus’, (whose life is the epitome of love and all its attributes? The man who says, “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,’) or is it the devil’s?

When the Patriarch Joshua was nearing the end of his life, he became worried for his people. Many of them fell back into their old ways. He felt afraid they would fall even further when he is gone. The Bible says, “Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders, leaders, judges and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God. Then he challenged them in the following words.

And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. However, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).

That day the people of Israel renewed their covenant with God and declared that they will serve the Lord. Will you do the same today?

Happy 4th America

Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jeffe...

Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration of independence (1776) were all of British descent. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a resolution earlier in the year which made a formal declaration inevitable. A committee was assembled to draft the formal declaration, to be ready when congress voted on independence. Adams persuaded the committee to select Thomas Jefferson to compose the original draft of the document, which congress would edit to produce the final version. The Declaration was ultimately a formal explanation of why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare independence from Great Britain, more than a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. The Independence Day of the United States of America is celebrated on July 4, the day Congress approved the wording of the Declaration.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world

Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

Pictures of the devastating fire in Colorado

The Waldo Canyon Fire started June 23 and has scorched 16,750 acres. It has burned 347 homes and killed at least two people.

Father in heaven I place the people of Colorado into your hand; especially those who have been affected by the Waldo Canyon Fire. Many of these people have lost everything they owned. These are difficult times Lord, but I hope someone will find a way to encourage hope. May they find solace in Jesus Christ. Amen!