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.

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

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."

Find artcile here: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/01/BA8V1AV589.DTL

Unhappy in Bed

By Lynn North

Before I got married, I assumed sex would be great. Most people do. My parents were very affectionate with one another and did a good job of explaining the gift of married sex. Now that I'm married, however, I hear from friends that not all couples feel that way.

When he's not in the mood
Lisa, a friend from college, got married in her 30s. Though sexually active in her late teens, she spent the better part of a decade abstaining from sex and presumed her "secondary virginity" would pay off in a healthy sex life with her husband. Marrying a virgin made it seem even more likely.

But to hear her talk, it's far from ideal. "I have so much more of a sex drive than he does, and it's really tough. He's reluctant to talk about it, and I'm just frustrated and lonely." Married for three years, things haven't improved and their challenges have grown.

By their first anniversary, Lisa and Brad were expecting. Once the baby arrived, Lisa could honestly say, "Brad's a very loving husband and wonderful father." But their sexual disconnect continued. Despite their overall struggles with intimacy, Lisa got pregnant again when their newborn was just two months old. After his arrival — and two back-to-back pregnancies — she was eager to express herself physically. "Though my body's not back to what it was, I'm so ready to be intimate with Brad," she admitted. "But he's just not interested. I don't know what to do."

Though doing her best to find help, the dearth of information about low libido in men simply adds to her frustration. "Everything I read points to the woman as the sexual non-aggressor, the one with the headache, the one who's too tired. What's wrong with us?"

The past gets in the way
Another friend has the opposite problem. Meg's dissatisfaction is more typical: Her husband wants a lot of sex and she wants little. "I really love my husband," she says, "but sometimes I hate it when he kisses me; sometimes I actually hate it when he touches me."

Part of her struggle is hormonal. "Just three months after we were married, I got pregnant and my hormones started raging." After 4 years of marriage, she and Justin have two toddlers and are expecting number three. Add to that one miscarriage, and there have been only four months since their wedding when she was neither pregnant nor nursing.

Now that the kids are here, Meg gives the bulk of her affection to them. "I give so much to the kids physically and emotionally that a lot of times I don't have anything left for Justin at the end of the day. Often, I can't see sex as a need because I don't need it, or not that much. I'll think to myself, I don't believe you. How can you need it so much?"

The hardest thing for Meg to overcome, however, is her past. She grew up in a conservative Catholic home, but that didn't stop her brothers from displaying pornographic pictures on their walls and "reading" Playboy magazines.

Worse, her parents knew and didn't stop it. When Meg started dating, her mom encouraged her to come on to guys "or they won't like you." "That got me into trouble," says Meg. Not the least of which was being raped by a guy she dated — a police officer.

Like Lisa, Meg would like to fix her problem. "I feel like I'm a failure as a wife; it affects Justin's mood. When it's been too long since our last encounter, he gets grumpy and irritable, almost like having PMS. But when we have sex, he's a different person, he's content.

"I'm tempted to believe sex is all guys care about and I think it's way too important to them. I don't like to see that it makes Justin go from grumpy to elated. But I know his needs aren't just physical. When I'm sexually available to him, he feels accepted. It fills up his love bank. I really have to keep in mind that my love for him needs to be expressed this way because this is important to him."

Thankfully, sexual dissatisfaction does not necessarily mean a relationship is doomed. Meg says, "This issue can be so divisive in marriage and I am blessed that it is not in mine. Justin and I rarely get angry at each other, but sex has probably been the one issue that has caused the most tension. I think we cope with it well because, despite my own insecurities about sexual image issues, I can always trust that Justin will take me seriously, respect me and place my best interests before his own."

The courage to face it
My friend Kathryn didn't realize she needed help till her husband brought it up. He mentioned that her idea of what was permissible in the marriage bed seemed to be shrinking. He was right. "It had gotten to the point that what I thought was OK was little more than the missionary position," she recalls.

He suggested counseling. "I didn't want to go," she admits. "I dreaded it because I knew I would have to deal with issues in my past. But we both knew we were struggling. Neither one of us was happy with our sex life."

She agreed to go, but it wasn't easy. Not only did they address painful issues, but their counselor suggested an unconventional course of treatment: sexual abstinence. "At the time, I thought Tim would be horrified. But he wasn't, he simply said, OK, we'll do what we've got to do.'

"Our counselor explained that the purpose of abstinence is to remove the possibility of sex and therefore the tension so you can focus on other issues in the relationship. I was able to stop thinking, He's just after sex. It removed the suspicion of why he acted a certain way. It also helped me realize that suspicion only exists in an unhealthy relationship.

"In a healthy relationship, having sex is just as natural as reaching out and holding hands when you're in the mall. It's an extension of your love. It flows out of you naturally. That flow for us was blocked by a lot of issues we both needed to deal with."

Kathryn also discovered a physical hurdle to sexual freedom. "After reading about low libido, I decided to get a doctor's opinion. It turns out I had a testosterone deficiency." This may come as a surprise to many women who don't realize they have testosterone, too. "So many women think testosterone is a man's hormone," Kathryn says, "but men and women both have it and my body wasn't producing enough."

After analyzing the results of a blood test, the doctor diagnosed a daily application of testosterone gel. "It's a simple process. I just rub a measured amount of the gel into my skin as part of my morning routine. And it doesn't cause any weird side effects. I don't have a mustache or huge biceps. I'm still feminine.

"Our healing came through both treating my testosterone deficiency and being willing to look at deeper causes." After eight months of weekly sessions, Kathryn can say, "Counseling gave me freedom. We still have to work through occasional struggles like every couple, but now I'm free.

"I just want other women to know, you don't have to settle. If your sex life isn't good, don't be satisfied. Get help."

A secret problem
By now, you may have guessed that the names in this story are pseudonyms — even mine — because none of my friends wanted to be identified. Sexual dissatisfaction is too painful and too personal. It's not something you want others to know about. But it's also a very common problem and one that can improve, as Kathryn's story shows. My friends have learned and are learning that through counseling, and in some cases, medical intervention, healing is possible. Because sex is a vital part of a healthy marriage, it's worth doing the work to get well.


Find here: http://www.troubledwith.com/LoveandSex/A000000373.cfm?topic=love%20and%20sex%3a%20sexual%20dissatisfaction%20in%20marriage

Silent Night, Renewed

By Timothy Shriver

"Silent Night" may be the words to our most popular Christmas song, but they don't describe our Christmas season. The days leading up to our most action-packed holiday are dominated by a frenzy of gift-giving and the stress of travel, family and merrymaking. Living through Christmas is enough to make an entire country long, like Tiger Woods, for an "indefinite break."

If Christmas is to be meaningful today, it needs a spiritual makeover. It needs an inward turn.
First, hold the eggnog. We need some inner silence to hear transcendence calling. To reach inward is first to listen with all one's being -- to quiet the noise and distraction of the world and to open one's self at the simplest level to the presence of the divine. It is to let go of words and concepts. The mystic Teillard de Chardin wrote, "God needs to hollow us out, to empty us in order to make room for himself."

And in the empty lies the possibility of feeling full to overflowing--full of love, full of being. From stillness, one learns to see with the eyes of love. At the center, one discovers that God's first gift is within us and more, it is us.

There lies the message of a Christmas of the heart. It is among the most universal of all religious mysteries: it is an invitation to live in the presence of God. The traditional story announces what we are asked to experience: Good news! God is among us. Emmanuel.

The newborn baby may be insignificant and poor in the eyes of world, but with the inner eye of a love-drenched heart, the baby is a shower of light and eternity. He is Christianity's unbridled love letter to all humanity-- an invitation to all creation to live in the precious joy of transcendence in the here and now.

To welcome God as a gift is the beginning of welcoming every gift. To experience God as joy is the beginning of experiencing a joy that can last a lifetime. To sense God as love is to begin to see a universe bathed in love itself. To say "yes" to that indescribable, unnameable, absolute of creation is the first step in faith -- an existential "yes" to life itself -- restless, suffering, beautiful, awesome life. God, by whatever name, is God. And God is here.

So this year, I wish everyone, whether they be Christian or another religion or no religion at all, a silent night--or at least a few silent moments. Perhaps that silence will help create an opening where the joy of the divine presence will spring forth in song and celebration, maybe through hearing the soaring chords of a gospel choir or the speckled crackling of a dried wood fire.

What joy to hear the angels from within singing, "I bring you good news!" What joy to look anew at the life all around us and be able to say to each person we meet from the depths of our being, "Peace on earth. Good will to all."

A silent night is a holy night. Emmanuel. God is here.

Merry Christmas.

________________________________________________________________
Find here: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/religionfromtheheart/2009/12/silent_night_may_be_the_1.html

It's Ok to Ask God Why

By Bob Scorge

Trusting God isn’t easy when tragedy strikes. How do you respond when you face death, suffering or a life-crippling crisis?

War. Genocide. Suicide bombings. Divorce. Rape. Sex slaves in cages. Toddlers in refugee camps. Orphans on streets. Debilitating handicaps. Premature deaths. Natural disasters. Car accidents. Mental illness. AIDS. Cancer.

Our planet is a ball of pain.

We’ve been “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:14, NKJV). Wonderfully, in that we have an exhilarating capacity for glory; fearfully, in that we have a terrifying capacity for pain.

Nothing is more horrific than suffering devoid of purpose. Hell is so hellish because its torment does nothing to make the sufferer a better person or produce anything positive. Tragically, millions today live in their own “hell on earth,” coping miserably under the crush of senseless suffering.

Jesus, moved by man’s plight, came to change that. Now when we submit our wretched woes to Christ, He infuses all of life with divine purpose—hellish suffering included—and extends to us the promise of His redeeming power.

What Went Wrong?

The suffering all around us tells us there’s something terribly wrong with our world. How did things get this way?

The problem, in a nutshell, is sin. Mankind became subject to death through Adam’s initial sin (see Rom. 5:17). When Adam bowed to Satan’s temptation, Satan became “‘the ruler of this world’” (John 12:31). Things haven’t been working right ever since.

There’s a direct link between death and pain. Most forms of pain are expressions of incipient death; that is, taken to their ultimate potential, most forms of pain culminate in death.

No one appreciates the power of sin and death more than Satan. His No. 1 strategy is to tempt us to sin because he knows that sin produces death (see James 1:15). When we sin, we bring suffering and death upon our own heads.

When we ask the question, “Why does God allow suffering in the world?” we must first acknowledge that sin is our fault, not God’s. We brought all this pain on ourselves. God didn’t want Adam to sin or design him to do so. Sin was man’s choice, not God’s.

“How, then,” someone might ask, “could a God of love allow us to bring such horror upon ourselves?”

The answer, actually, is found in His great love for us. God wanted to give His Son a bride who would love Him with extravagant abandonment. For her love to be authentic, however, it had to be voluntary. And for her decision to be voluntary, her power to choose between her options had to be real.

Not even God would violate her right to choose death or life. It’s the fact that the bride chooses Jesus over her other options that makes her love so dazzling and stunning. The whole thing has to do with love.

God knew that the pearl of love He desired could be fashioned only in the war zone of cosmic struggle against the forces of darkness. A valuable pearl is the product of an oyster’s distress; similarly, God is using the pain of the world to produce a pearl of great price—a glorious bride who is lovesick for Jesus Christ.

We’re not the only ones in this war who are hurting. God Himself is hurting. Revelation 13:8 calls Jesus “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” According to this verse, from the very beginning God knew that if He created man, He Himself would endure unimaginable suffering. After pondering the cost of creating man, God concluded that the final glory was worth the price tag of the suffering. The destination would be glorious, but the journey would be a killer.

The Wisdom of the Cross

All the anguish of our world would seem utterly futile were it not for the cross—the one momentous event in history that revolutionized how we view suffering.

The cross changed everything.

The cross gives significance to the sufferings of the world. When we gaze at the cross, we don’t see a detached Creator who watches us writhe from afar; we see a God who has stepped into our struggle and hurts with us. No one has suffered as God has.

Now, no one can look at God and say: “You don’t understand. You have no idea what I’m going through.” On the contrary, He empathizes with our sufferings from firsthand experience. He who suffered in the body cares for all who suffer in their bodies, since He Himself is still in the body as well.

The cross demonstrates that it’s not sinful to be in pain.

It’s the cross that makes our gospel universally relevant. You can take it anywhere in the world. Take the gospel to the worst hellhole on the planet, and you have a message to lift the lowest life. Find the most destitute, sin-scarred, addiction-bound, demon-possessed, filthy human specimen you can possibly find, and you’ll find someone whom the gospel can take up in its arms.

Why? Because the One who suffered on the tree sank lower than any other person that He might raise up the chiefest of sinners and seat him at His table.

When man sinned, God lost the home-court advantage. In the cross, however, God was saying to the adversary, “I’ll meet you on your own terms, play by your rules, honor both your free will and that of man, and use the very suffering you have masterminded to defeat you on your own turf.” Truly, the cross is the wisdom of God!

Beholding Christ Crucified

I myself am writing this article from a place of suffering. I’ve been enduring chronic pain ever since an injury 17 years ago. The cross has been my mainstay. The cross both empowers me to endure in the crucible and assures me of God’s design to deliver me.

I expected to be healed years ago. I have only limited understanding about why I’ve suffered for so long. Often my emotions are like a roller coaster. When the going gets difficult, though, I have found strength in beholding the crucified Christ.

When I can’t make sense of my journey, I go back to the cross. When I don’t know how to process my pain levels, I go back to the cross. When it seems as if He’s withholding from me, I go back to the cross.

The accuser likes to hit me with that ancient accusation: “God’s withholding from you. He could deliver you right now, but He’s holding out on you.” But the cross nails that accusation.

When I look at the cross, I see a God with nails in His hands, a nail in His feet, a crown of thorns on His brow and stripes on His back. As He hangs there with arms spread wide, He says to me: “I give you My mind. I give you My soul. I give you My heart. I give you My flesh. I give you My strength. I give you My last breath. I give you My last drop of blood.”

The cross assures me that my God withholds nothing from me! He has given me His best. He has given me His all. It’s here, as I behold His outstretched hands, that I spread my arms and say, “I am Yours, and You are mine.”

Why You Can Ask ‘Why?’

The cross gives me permission to ask why, because even Jesus asked His Father, “‘Why have You forsaken Me?’” (Matt. 27:46). If Jesus can ask why, I can, too.

The cross not only allows us to ask why; it compels us to ask. Because when we’re asking why, we’re peering into purpose. It’s absolutely essential, in “tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword,” that we discover and cooperate with divine purpose so that we might be “more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Rom. 8:35,37).

The book of Job—the oldest book in the Bible—is the story of a man who sought desperately to find divine purpose in catastrophic suffering. As the cornerstone of Scripture, the book of Job demonstrates how God redeems suffering to vanquish the very perpetrator of suffering.

But if the book of Job left any room for controversy, the cross unequivocally confirms Job’s message: God redeems suffering in order to produce champions who perform exploits against the kingdom of darkness.

Jesus was one such champion. Referring to the cross, God said, “By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many” (Is. 53:11, emphasis added).

Jesus was able to endure the cross because He knew something. What did He know? Divine purpose.

God’s purpose in the cross was that Jesus prevail. As the apostle John wrote, “But one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals’” (Rev. 5:5).

Jesus came to earth with a divine mandate to overcome sin, to overcome temptation, to overcome the flesh, to overcome Satan and to overcome the world. But His greatest challenge was to overcome the sufferings of the cross.

Jesus knew that if He prevailed over the cross, He would qualify to unlock the Father’s destiny for His life as King of heaven and earth.

The cross carries the same promise for us today. As we endure and overcome the cross, we qualify to unlock the scroll of our eternal destiny in the age to come. “‘To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne’” (Rev. 3:21).

Jesus did not prevail until He was resurrected from the grave. In the same way, we have not prevailed over our crosses until we have been raised up by God. It’s not enough to suffer and be buried; we must be raised up if we are to qualify as overcomers. This is why I cannot live with the cross as the final chapter in my story; it must end with resurrection!

Those of us who suffer will never relent until we see the release of kingdom power and authority that looses the captives and establishes them in the freedom for which Christ died.

An Eternal Perspective

The Gospels give us an up-close visual on the horror of the cross. In Genesis, however, we can step back and gain something of an eternal vantage. It’s here, in God’s first reference to the cross, that we survey it from a panoramic, bird’s-eye view.

I’m referring to Genesis 3:15, which records God’s words to Satan: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He [Jesus] shall bruise your [Satan’s] head, and you [Satan] shall bruise His [Jesus’] heel.’”

God was contrasting what the cross would do to Jesus versus what it would do to Satan. True, the cross wounded Christ’s heel; but it absolutely crushed Satan’s head. By the time the warfare of the cross was over, Jesus came away with scars but Satan was completely destroyed (see Heb. 2:14). For as bloody a spectacle as the cross was, Satan was more bloodied by the cross than Christ.

When He hung on the cross, however, Jesus wrestled to maintain that perspective. His entire being was racked with untold agony. I promise you that it didn’t feel, in that moment, like a mere bruising of His heel; it felt as if every atom of His being was being crushed.

The same is true for you in your sufferings. When you’re in the vortex of your trial, you may feel as if you’re being utterly crushed. The pain makes it difficult to gain heaven’s view.

As you wait upon the Lord, however, you begin to mount up with eagle’s wings (see Is. 40:31) and gain God’s eternal perspective on your trial. By the time the battle is finished, God will have raised you up with a testimony that will empower multiple generations. Your cross thus becomes an invitation to a conflict that will do more damage to the kingdom of darkness than if your life were tranquil and comfortable.

Fight the good fight! Press into God’s purposes! Give yourself to fasting and prayer and abiding in the Word. Never relent until you have qualified to loose the seals on your eternal destiny. If you’ll endure, one day you’ll look back on your suffering and say, “I certainly did take it in the heel, but my adversary took it in the head!”

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Bob Sorge, author of 16 books, addresses the topics of suffering and intimacy with God from the crucible of his own trial. His works include The Fire of Delayed Answers and Pain, Perplexity & Promotion: A Prophetic Interpretation of the Book of Job (see oasishouse.net). Bob and his wife, Marci, are associated with the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Missouri.

Find here: http://charismamag.com/index.php/features/2009/september/22906-its-ok-to-ask-god-why

Why Christians S**k

By Tom Davis

Each Sunday, millions of Christians in America gather to worship the God who commands us to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” We belt out praises to the God who tells us that “pure and undefiled religion is caring for widows and orphans in their distress.” We kneel in pious prayer before the Almighty God of the universe who describes Himself as loving, gracious, merciful, and generous.

Then, we walk out the back door of the church, step into a world in need, and proceed to withhold the love, grace, and mercy that’s extended to us.

We might as well give God the middle finger. Outside of a tiny minority of Christians, we have become a self-centered group of priggish snobs.

In short, we s**k.

Before you pick up a rock and throw it at me, think about this: I could have used other words that aren’t as nice as “s**k.” Like “white-washed tombs,” “brood of vipers,” “fools,” or the ever ego-inflating, “Get behind me Satan!” Jesus used all of these choice phrases to describe religious leaders and some of his closest of followers.

But calling someone a white-washed tomb just doesn’t cut it anymore. "We s**k" is a much better choice for our cultural context. Poverty s**ks. Divorce s**ks. And, unfortunately, some Christians s**k, too.

Here are the facts:

Eighty-five percent of young people outside the church who have had connection to Christians believe present-day Christianity is hypocritical. Inside the church, forty-seven percent of young people believe the same thing.

And why wouldn't they?

- 80 percent of the world’s evangelical wealth is in North America.

And let's take a peek in on our neighbors:

- More than 1 billion people live in absolute poverty.

- 500 million people are at the edge of starvation.

- 200 million children are being exploited as laborers.

- Half of the human beings on the planet live on less than $2/day.

- 1.5 billion people do not have enough money to buy food.

This is information that anyone can collect from the Internet, just as I did. Any reasonable person could make this simple conclusion: Most American Christians do not care about what God says in the Bible. We pick out the scriptures we like, as if we were dining at a five-star buffet. We conveniently ignore the scriptures that talk about caring for the poor, giving away material possessions, and loving money. Scriptures like:

"Anyone who sets himself up as "religious" by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.” (James 1:26-27)

"Dear friends, do you think you'll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, "Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!" and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? Isn't it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?" (James 2:15-17)

"If you have two coats, give one away," [Jesus] said. "Do the same with your food." (Luke 3:11)

When Christians care about their political views, what sexual preference someone has, or their bank account more than they care about the millions of people who die in the world because they don’t have five dollars to buy the medicine that would cure them, something has gone drastically wrong.

These kinds of Christians s**k.

What can we do to stop s**king? I think the answer is relatively simple. It's found in the Bible:

“Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:22).

Give away material possessions to those in need, love the unlovely, take care of the widow and orphan. This is not rocket science. It just takes a heart committed to doing the things God said to do.

Want ten simple steps? You got it.

Christians, listen up: People are tired of being criticized, judged, and listening to the lip service we are so great at giving. Instead, why don’t we commit to making the changes we can make?

Christianity needs a renewal of the principles that made it great. It needs to be more like Jesus—compassionate, self-sacrificial, unconditionally loving, and caring for those who are most in need. That kind of lifestyle allowed twelve men to change the world. It will help you change yours, too.

Find here: http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2008/06/Why-Christians-Sk.aspx