You are Unique

You are Unique. God had you in mind when He made you.

For You [God] formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb.
(Psalms 139:13 NKJV)

God made several choices for you to make you uniquely you. God chose your place in Time; your time of birth. You had no choice in this matter.

God chose your place of birth; in or out of a hospital; in a city, or town; in a rich or a poor county. In most cases, your birth place establishes your national heritage. You had no choice in this matter.

Your Mother & Father
God chose your parents. You may have great parents or they may have been lousy. Some people may not even know who their parents were. But their union provided your birth order, your gender, your physical features including eye, hair, and skin color, and your mental capabilities. You had no choice in the matter

Then there is you. You did not choose "You" to be you but you are you. You had no choice in this matter.

In summary, you received at birth
1.    Birth date
2.    Birth place
3.    Birth parents
4.    Birth Order (whether you have siblings or not)
5.    Gender
6.    Physical Features including  eye, hair, and skin color
7.    Mental capabilities

All of these are combined to make you uniquely you. None of these make any of us superior or inferior to anybody else.  We are all equal but unique in God's eyes.
But there is one thing you received at birth that is not unique to just you and God did not choose it for you: SIN! Adam and Eve disobeyed God and become sinners.  We have inherited this nature of sin from our parents all the way back to Adam and Eve.

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned--
(Romans 5:12 NKJV)

How do we know that we have sin? Have you broken any of God's commandments? What are His Commandments?

"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus said to him, 'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
(Matthew 22:36-40 NKJV)

But we also know that we are sinners because God's Bible tells us.

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (Romans 3:23 NKJV)

And Sin has consequences.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

(Romans 6:23 NKJV)

God condemns sin, a penalty must be paid.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
(Romans 5:8 NKJV)

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, (1 Corinthians 15:3-4 NKJV)

In this matter, God has given us a choice.

"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved," (Acts 16:31 NKJV)

He who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; he who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed the testimony that God has given of His Son. And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. (1 John 5:10-12 NKJV)

President Obama - Mr. Tough Guy

I think General McChrystal was right to resign.The NewsBusters link below indicates that some of the material was considered "off the record."

Were McChrystal and Staff Talking Off The Record to Rolling Stone? | NewsBusters.org: "

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

However, this did happen during the General's watch. He did the honorable thing. And the president accepted. That was the bigger mistake.

If President Obama wanted to show any true concern for our military and the objective in Afghanistan, he would have set aside his personal hurt, rejected the General's resignation, and sent him back to the field with what he needed to do the job. I guess that would have required some humility. Instead, the president had to show us how tough he is. At least he didn't have to fire him.

A Proverb on Oil

My pastor has been doing a series on Proverbs. We are currently in chapter 14 and we came across this:

Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; But much increase comes by the strength of an ox. (Proverbs 14:4 NKJV)

It suddenly hit me that we could substitute oil for ox and it might make more sense to the modern American.

Where no oil is drilled, the land is clean; But much increase comes by the strength of oil.

City dwellers are so isolated from farm animals. I remember hearing about the high school girl that was surprised that somebody had to kill a steer to make hamburger. She always thought that it just came from the grocery store. So what "increase" does an Ox's strength produce? Food of course.

Yes! We have to be good stewards and clean up after ourselves but no oil equals no production. Or shall I say limited and expensive production. While solar, wind, and wave energy may be cheaper, harvesting energy from them is not. We use energy to produce the things we need to take care of our families and maybe our friends. If we cannot use our own oxen (i.e. oil, gas, nuclear, etc...) for energy, we will have to buy it from others at a greater cost. Instead of paying Americans for our energy, we can buy it from dictators or dictator wannabe's. And while our trough or land may be clean and empty, so will be our factories, bank accounts, and maybe even our refrigerator's.

Drill here, drill now.

How can a Christian vote for a Republican?

It ain't easy let me tell ya. But, it would be harder to vote for a Democrat.

A Progressive recently challenged me stating the Jesus was all about compassion and the poor. In fact the New Testament has lots of verses about feeding and caring for the poor and only a few gay bashing verses. So we should vote for the poor before we vote against the gays. Huh?

How does voting for bigger government help the poor? And what do gays have to do with that? Then it hit me; these guys can't see the difference between Charity and Government. So I made the following chart to see if that would help.




My Progressive friend has not yet responded.
The scriptures, Old and New, tell us repeatedly to care for the poor. But no where does it tell us to turn this responsibility over to the government. We are still responsible. Have we not seen this philosophy in the giving patterns of the politicians? It's usually the conservative that gives more. The liberals must think they give enough through their taxes. President Obama was an anomaly in that he did give a respectable percentage of his income to charity. Good for him. But, I still wonder about his charities.

The United Way campaign is underway across the country. I prefer to give directly to the organizations that are doing the work like the Gospel Mission groups, Pregnancy Resource Centers, and others. A lot more poor people would be helped if more money went to the United Way instead of the United States Treasury. Our government's job is to protect the poor (and the rich and all of those in between) from aggressors, not feed them.

President Obama's Predator Drone Joke

I had heard that our President had made a joke about the Jonas Brothers. But I didn't know it was about using Predator Drones on them (see obama predator drone joke).

I am disgusted.

For our Commander and Chief to joke about using the U.S. military against U.S. citizens shows that while he may understand the power he has authority over, he has no clue of his responsibility for that power.

I do not hate him. And I have heard nothing at any Tea Party or on Talk Radio that could make me hate him. But he scares me. He's going to get somebody killed.