Thought Quotient

Here’s some good news we learned of recently:

• Five million Iraqi students are back in school, with 51 million new Ba’ath-free textbooks in circulation
• Academics forced into exile under Saddam are coming back to teach in Iraqi universities
• There are now over 200,000 trained Iraqi security forces personnel
• The Ministry of Industry has issued 7661 licenses for new businesses
• A complete rebuilding and renovation of major telecommunications infrastructure
• A new sewer system is improving health conditions
• Public Health Centers are bringing family healthcare to Iraqi neighborhoods

Also, Campus Crusade for Christ is working on a project to distribute gifts to Iraqi children - to meet their physical and spiritual needs.

(more…)

Colossians 3:15-16 (The Message)

Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ–the Message–have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God!

I have sung so many songs about prayer because it is impossible to have a Christian life without praying and reading the Bible. Staying on fire for the Lord is dependent upon spending time in His presence. It is the Bible that helps us hear His voice. It is prayer that breaks bondage. Life must be about prayer or Christianity is just a label. That sounds harsh, but I did not say it. The Bible says it, in Luke 18:1. We are fooling ourselves if we think we can be strong without prayer. - CeCe Winans

Read more in the current issue of Christian Music Planet magazine.
Purity, prayer, and love: Life lessons on living in the spirit

Related Links:

• The Prayer of Jesus
• www.cecewinans.com

These are the sermon notes I took from an Adrian Rogers sermon this past June as he spoke at a pastor’s conference:

The Making and Ministry of a Man of God.

Judges 6
Gideon - afraid of the Midianites

“I’ve seen men too big for God to use, but I’ve never seen a man too small.”

Five factors in the life of Gideon:

1) Man of Vision - had an encounter, felt a call, given a challenge by the living God
Judges 6:12 -
There has never been a greater opportunity to preach the Gospel than today.
God is still the same God.
We need to put our eyes on God - and be transformed by Him.
What a great God we have!
Note: We have the N.T., Holy Spirit - something Gideon didn’t have.

God uses men of vision. (more…)

A clever disguise operates here among the cascading floods of media influence on our young people. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 11:14, “And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.” In this case, he’s disguised by the cool, the popular, the trendy themes the media tells us are the cultural norms. While very young, children begin hearing exactly what they should look like, act like, be like.

What Are the Effects?

The real issue is the cumulative effect of an environment, an atmosphere that now overflows with sex and gore. Consider the power of this unending stream of perversity.

Young people take in over eighteen thousand hours of television by the time they graduate from high school—over five thousand more hours than they spend in their 12 years of classes. In fact, American children spend more time watching television than they spend on any other activity except sleeping. Young people average 16 to 17 hours per week watching television. If we add video games and video movies, we find that teenagers spend as many as 35 to 55 hours per week in front of a screen. Despite the hectic pace of the average homes daily activities, families still have time to tune into over 50 hours of television per week, which is 10 hours more than the normal work week. With this level of media consumption, is it possible that teens are left unaffected? Could they really imbibe all that sex and violence and somehow fail to be shaped by it?

Our problem is that too often, we in the church honor the same people the world does. No wonder our Christian teens look just like any other teen! We invite the world to come into our living rooms and teach our kids who is honorable. As a result, these immoral shapers of culture and media have been given the authority to shape a whole generation.

What Can We Do?

Parents have a biblical mandate to guard the hearts of their children by teaching them to:

• Set their minds on the things above rather than earthly things (Col. 3:2);
• Love what is pure; hate what is evil; cling to what is good (Rom. 12:9);
• Avoid letting the world teach them to love what is evil or to envy the evil doer (Prov. 24:1);
• Stay away from the bins shoveling “beautiful garbage” (Ps. 101:3).

We can’t stand by and do nothing amidst this deluge of sounds and images…

Let us pray first, and then take action.

More to come…

Matthew 4:24
Then His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them.

How do people explain away the perfect track record of healings in the Gospels?

Here’s how the skeptic Julian the Apostate explained it…

‘Jesus has now been celebrated about three hundred years having done nothing in his lifetime worthy of fame, unless anyone thinks it is a very great work to heal lame and blind people and exorcise demoniacs in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany.’

Even greater than the physical healing is the spiritual healing that only He can do.

Acts 4:12
Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

Salvation - the greatest need of sinful man - is available for all who call on Jesus.