Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Reason You Were Born

In an interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, Rick said: People ask me, What is the purpose of life? And I respond: In a nutshell, Life is preparation for eternity. We were not made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body-- but not the end of me.

I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity. We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense.

Life is a series of problems. Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort; God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.

This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.

You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems.

If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness, which is my problem, my issues, my pain.' But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.

We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her- It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people.

You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.

Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease. So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72.

First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases. Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church. Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation. Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.

We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)?

When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do.

That's why we're called human beings, not human doings.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Haiti: Man Rescued From Rubble After 11 days

Rescuers pulled a man alive from the rubble on Saturday 11 days after Haiti's devastating earthquake, raising hopes of finding more survivors even as the government called off search efforts.Skip related content

An international rescue team took the 23-year-old man away on a stretcher after frantically digging him out of the ruins of a hotel in Port-au-Prince, a rare tale of hope from the deadliest recorded disaster ever to hit the Americas.

He was saved just hours after the United Nations announced that Haiti's barely-functioning government had declared an end to search-and-rescue efforts so aid workers could focus on getting supplies to survivors.

"It's a real miracle. Let's hope it's not the last," said Lieutenant Colonel Christophe Renou, commander of the French contingent of the rescue team, which also included US and Greek aid workers.

"He was in a pocket in the debris in which he could move a bit and he was also able to find a little water that enabled him to survive."

French ambassador Didier le Bret, who was also at the scene, said: "Officially the rescue phase ended yesterday, but because our firemen are determined people they came when they were asked to."

Rescue teams have saved 132 people across the shattered city since the January 12 quake, according to the UN, most recently an 84-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man who were pulled from collapsed buildings on Friday.

A United Nations spokeswoman in Geneva said earlier Saturday that the Haitian government had called off the search and rescue phase at 4:00 pm (2100 GMT) on Friday.

But 62 teams remained in Haiti on Saturday, said Vincenzo Pugliese, a UN spokesman in Haiti, adding that while the government had switched focus to relief operations "this does not mean that search and rescue operations have stopped."

The miracle tale came as thousands of mourners gathered outside the ruins of the capital's cathedral for the funeral of the archbishop of Port-au-Prince, one of more than 110,000 people killed in the 7.0-magnitude quake.

President Rene Preval led a crowd who wept and sang songs at the funeral mass for popular Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot.

The 63-year-old's body was laid out in front of the city's destroyed Roman Catholic cathedral in an open casket wearing his ceremonial miter, with visible injuries to his face. He died when his office adjoining the cathedral collapsed.

"The Creator wants us to take part in the creation of a new country, a new Haiti, a new world," Joseph Lafontant, the auxiliary bishop who led the service.

Several thousand people also took part in group prayers on the Champ de Mars, near the wrecked presidential palace, led by energetic evangelists.

"All the bad spirits in the presidential palace must disappear!" shouted one preachers. Participants prayed, shouted and waved their hands toward the palace.

Aid workers increased the pace of deliveries to the more than 600,000 people living in squalid conditions beneath tents or in makeshift camps across the devastated capital, mostly with little food or water.

The UN World Food Program said it had distributed two million meals on Friday, up from 1.2 million on Thursday. A total of 150 health facilities were now running across the city, the World Health Organization said.

A US Marine unit had arrived off the coast of Haiti Saturday to bolster its aid contingent in the Caribbean nation, the US military said. A total of 20,000 US military personnel are due to be in Haiti or on ships offshore by Sunday.

Normal life was also returning to some parts of the capital, with some shops and street vendors back in business, traffic flowing in some parts of the city and people lining up to wait for private banks to reopen at last.

But elsewhere some pillaging continued in the main shopping street of Port-au-Prince.

A convoy of food aid being distributed by an unidentified NGO without an escort of UN peacekeepers was attacked and looted in the south of capital on Friday, the UN said.

Meanwhile a huge relocation of survivors out of the still-squalid capital continued.

More than 130,000 people have taken advantage of the government's offer of free transport to other cities where it is setting up new tent camps, the UN said. An unknown number of other people had left the capital by private means.

Hollywood heartthrob George Clooney meanwhile led a galaxy of stars Friday in a telethon fundraiser for quake victims broadcast across every major US television network.


Find here: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20100123/twl-haitian-man-rescued-from-rubble-afte-4bdc673_4.html


Seven-Year-Old Uses Pedal Power For Haiti

A seven-year-old boy has raised over £30,000 to help survivors of the Haitian earthquake.Skip related content

Charlie Simpson, from Fulham in south-west London, is cycling five miles around his local park to raise funds for UNICEF's Haiti Earthquake Children's Appeal.

He had hoped to raise £500 but as news of his challenge spread pledges flooded into his appeal.

On his JustGiving page, Charlie said: "I want to do a sponsored bike ride for Haiti because there was a big earthquake and loads of people have lost their lives.

"I want to make some money to buy food, water and tents for everyone in Haiti.

"I am going to cycle around South Park as many times as possible. Please can you sponsor me and all your money will go to UNICEF who are collecting for Haiti."

Charlie's mother Leonora told Sky News that the idea was her son's alone.

"He saw news of the tragedy on television and said he wanted to do something and the bike ride was born from that."

Charlie's father Dan is taking him round the track with sister Alice and mum cheering him on.

UNICEF is providing emergency relief on water, sanitation, education and nutrition as well as supporting child protection.

UNICEF's David Bull said: "This is a very bold and innovative gesture by Charlie that shows he connects with and not only understands what children his own age must be going through in Haiti but is also wise enough to know that he can help them.

"The little seed - his idea - that he has planted has grown rapidly and his is a place well-deserved in the humanitarian world.

"On behalf on the many children in Haiti, I thank Charlie for his effort."


Find here: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20100124/tuk-seven-year-old-uses-pedal-power-for-45dbed5.html


Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Pastor's Response

Yesterday I asked my pastor this question:

"Pastor, how true is this: wealth and prosperity may be costly spices and splendid decorations that embalm and entomb our spirituality."

This was his response:

Luk 12:15 And he said to them, Take care to keep yourselves free from the desire for property; for a man's life is not made up of the number of things which he has.

1Jn 2:15 Have no love for the world or for the things which are in the world. If any man has love for the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

1Jn 2:16 Because everything ... See Morein the world, the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father but of the world.

1Jn 2:17 And the world and its desires is coming to an end: but he who does God's pleasure is living for ever.

1Jn 2:18 Little children, it is the last hour;

1Ti 6:5 Bitter talk of men who, being evil in mind and dead to what is true, take the faith to be a way of making profit.

1Ti 6:6 But true faith, with peace of mind, is of great profit:

1Ti 6:7 For we came into the world with nothing, and we are not able to take anything out;

1Ti 6:8 But if we have food and a roof over us, let that be enough.

1Ti 6:9 But those who have a desire for wealth are falling into danger, and are taken as in a net by a number of foolish and damaging desires, through which men are overtaken by death and destruction.

1Ti 6:10 For the love of money is a root of all evil: and some whose hearts were fixed on it have been turned away from the faith, and been wounded with unnumbered sorrows.

1Co 15:19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most unhappy.
Rom 12:2 And let not your behaviour be like that of this world, but be changed and made new in mind, so that by experience you may have knowledge of the good and pleasing and complete purpose of God.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Haiti: The Underlying Tragedy

By David Brooks
New York Times
January 15, 2010

On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died.

This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.

The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.

The second hard truth is that micro-aid is vital but insufficient. Given the failures of macrodevelopment, aid organizations often focus on microprojects. More than 10,000 organizations perform missions of this sort in Haiti. By some estimates, Haiti has more nongovernmental organizations per capita than any other place on earth. They are doing the Lord’s work, especially these days, but even a blizzard of these efforts does not seem to add up to comprehensive change.

Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth — with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.

As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

Fourth, it’s time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism.

These programs, like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don’t understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don’t care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement — involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance.

It’s time to take that approach abroad, too. It’s time to find self-confident local leaders who will create No Excuses countercultures in places like Haiti, surrounding people — maybe just in a neighborhood or a school — with middle-class assumptions, an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands.

The late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington used to acknowledge that cultural change is hard, but cultures do change after major traumas. This earthquake is certainly a trauma. The only question is whether the outside world continues with the same old, same old.


Find here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/opinion/15brooks.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1263823214-M9kAbtRAHjc/Y+XzFJYE6Q

Monday, January 4, 2010

Rapture: May 21, 2011

By Justin Berton
Chronicle Staff Writer
January 1, 2010

Harold Camping lets out a hearty chuckle when he considers the people who believe the world will end in 2012.

"That date has not one stitch of biblical authority," Camping says from the Oakland office where he runs Family Radio, an evangelical station that reaches listeners around the world. "It's like a fairy tale."

The real date for the end of times, he says, is in 2011.

The Mayans and the recent Hollywood movie "2012" have put the apocalypse in the popular mind this year, but Camping has been at this business for a long time. And while Armageddon is pop science or big-screen entertainment to many, Camping has followers from the Bay Area to China.

Camping, 88, has scrutinized the Bible for almost 70 years and says he has developed a mathematical system to interpret prophecies hidden within the Good Book. One night a few years ago, Camping, a civil engineer by trade, crunched the numbers and was stunned at what he'd found: The world will end May 21, 2011.

This is not the first time Camping has made a bold prediction about Judgment Day.
On Sept. 6, 1994, dozens of Camping's believers gathered inside Alameda's Veterans Memorial Building to await the return of Christ, an event Camping had promised for two years. Followers dressed children in their Sunday best and held Bibles open-faced toward heaven.

But the world did not end. Camping allowed that he may have made a mathematical error. He spent the next decade running new calculations, as well as overseeing a media company that has grown significantly in size and reach.

"We are now translated into 48 languages and have been transmitting into China on an AM station without getting jammed once," Camping said. "How can that happen without God's mercy?"

His office is flanked by satellite dishes in the parking lot that transmit his talk show, "Open Forum." In the Bay Area, he's heard on 610 AM, KEAR. Camping says his company owns about 55 stations in the United States alone, and that his message arrives on every continent.

'I'm looking forward to it'
Employees at the Oakland office run printing presses that publish Camping's pamphlets and books, and some wear T-shirts that read, "May 21, 2011." They're happy to talk about the day they believe their souls will be retrieved by Christ.

"I'm looking forward to it," said Ted Solomon, 60, who started listening to Camping in 1997. He's worked at Family Radio since 2004, making sure international translators properly dictate Camping's sermons.

"This world may have had an attraction to me at one time," Solomon said. "But now it's definitely lost its appeal."

Camping is a frail-looking man, and his voice is low and deep, but it can rise to dramatic peaks with a preacher's flair.

As a young man, he owned an East Bay construction business but longed to work as a servant of God. So he hit the books.

"Because I was an engineer, I was very interested in the numbers," he said. "I'd wonder, 'Why did God put this number in, or that number in?' It was not a question of unbelief, it was a question of, 'There must be a reason for it.' "

Code-breaking phenomenon
Camping is not the only man to see truths in the Bible hidden in the numbers. In the late 1990s, a code-breaking phenomenon took off, led by "The Bible Code," written by former Washington Post journalist Michael Drosnin.

Drosnin developed a technique that revealed prophecies within the Bible's text. A handful of biblical scholars have supported Drosnin's theory, lending it an air of legitimacy, and just as many scholars have decried it as farce.

One of Drosnin's more well-known findings is that a meteor will strike Earth in 2012, the same year some people believe the Mayan calendar marks the end of times, and the same year the "2012" action movie surmised the Earth's crust will destabilize and kill most humans.

Meaning in numbers
By Camping's understanding, the Bible was dictated by God and every word and number carries a spiritual significance. He noticed that particular numbers appeared in the Bible at the same time particular themes are discussed.

The number 5, Camping concluded, equals "atonement." Ten is "completeness." Seventeen means "heaven." Camping patiently explained how he reached his conclusion for May 21, 2011.

"Christ hung on the cross April 1, 33 A.D.," he began. "Now go to April 1 of 2011 A.D., and that's 1,978 years."

Camping then multiplied 1,978 by 365.2422 days - the number of days in each solar year, not to be confused with a calendar year.

Next, Camping noted that April 1 to May 21 encompasses 51 days. Add 51 to the sum of previous multiplication total, and it equals 722,500.

Camping realized that (5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17) = 722,500.

Or put into words: (Atonement x Completeness x Heaven), squared.

"Five times 10 times 17 is telling you a story," Camping said. "It's the story from the time Christ made payment for your sins until you're completely saved.

"I tell ya, I just about fell off my chair when I realized that," Camping said.

James Kreuger, author of "Secrets of the Apocalypse - Revealed," has been studying the end of times for 40 years and is familiar with Camping's work. While Kreuger agrees that the rapture is indeed coming, he disputes Camping's method.

"For all his learning, Camping makes a classic beginner's mistake when he sets a date for Christ's return," Kreuger wrote in an e-mail. "Jesus himself said in Matthew 24:36, 'Of that day and hour knows no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my father only.' "

'It is going to happen'
Camping's believers will have none of it.

Rick LaCasse, who attended the September 1994 service in Alameda, said that 15 years later, his faith in Camping has only strengthened.

"Evidently, he was wrong," LaCasse allowed, "but this time it is going to happen. There was some doubt last time, but we didn't have any proofs. This time we do."

Would his opinion of Camping change if May 21, 2011, ended without incident?

"I can't even think like that," LaCasse said. "Everything is too positive right now. There's too little time to think like that."