"Do not be anxious about your life." (Matthew 6:25)
"Why do we worry? Because we don't believe. We're not really convinced the same Jesus who can keep a sparrow in the air knows where our lost luggage is, or how we'll pay that car repair bill. Or if we believe he can deliver us through our difficulties, we doubt if he will. We let Satan sow seeds of doubt in our minds about God's love and care for us.
The great antidote to anxiety is to come to God in prayer about everything. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:6-7). Nothing's too big for him to handle or too small to escape his attention. Paul said we're to come to God "with thanksgiving." We should thank him for his past faithfulness in delivering us from troubles. We should thank him for the fact that he's in control of every circumstance of our lives and that nothing can touch us that he doesn't allow. We should thank him that in his infinite wisdom he's able to work in this circumstance for our good. We can thank him that he won't allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear (1 Corinthians 10:13).
The promised result is not deliverance, but the peace of God. One of the reasons we don't find this peace is that all too often we won't settle for anything other than deliverance from the trouble. But God, through Paul, promises us peace, a peace that is unexplainable. It will guard our hearts and minds against the anxiety to which you and I are so prone."
Our family just finished eating our version of a Passover meal on this Good Friday, and when I say "our version," I mean not a traditional Seder that is Done Just So, but rather a Passover meal that is a rather laid back version of a true Seder, but which still highlights the key elements, and draws our attention to that somber day more than two thousand years ago.
I served roasted leg of lamb, roasted vegetables, a salad of greens and herbs (one of them "bitter"), unleavened bread and wine. As we were having our dinner, we listened to an audio teaching about the Passover meal, and then we watched a very powerful video (which my husband found earlier today on Wretched Radio's Facebook page). The video is below.
Enjoy, and blessings to all my brothers and sisters in Christ on this Good Friday.
I love this guy, Lord Monckton. For those who don't know who he is, Lord Monckton is a renowned climate change skeptic who speaks often on this topic, with the aim of helping people recognize that there is an underlying agenda to the global warming movement (that is to say, an agenda beyond the obvious goals of forcing people to install toilets that don't flush and use lightbulbs that require hazmat procedures in the event that one breaks).
Sustainable development is apparently big business, and more than that, has at its heart the goal of the U.S. ceding its sovereignty to the Copenhagen Treaty, a United Nations climate change treaty that was signed in November 2009. According to an article in The Washington Examiner, the Copenhagen Treaty:
"mandates a massive transfer of wealth from the U.S. and Europe to pay our 'Climate Debt' to the Third World, and creates a new enforcement mechanism to make it all happen." (my emphasis)
As you can hear in the above video, Lord Monckton uses something of a shock tactic by comparing these global warming protesters to the brownshirts of Nazi Germany. To the best of my understanding, several of these young people had apparently gained access to a meeting at which Lord Monckton was speaking and had made a disturbance over the issue of global warming.
As eyebrow raising as it is to hear someone invoke the brownshirts of Nazi Germany, please understand that what Lord Monckton is doing is using the shock value of this phrase to help these young people (who have been trained from a young age to embrace the ideals of the Environment Movement) to see how they are simply pawns in a game much bigger than they, that they are being used as "useful idiots," to implement a global treaty with profound implications. In somewhat the same way, the brownshirts of Nazi Germany were children who were also trained from a young age to embrace the ideals of the Nazi party, and were the youthful, glowing "face" of the Nazi party. The young people in the above video have obviously been brainwashed by today's "science" that supposedly "has been settled," as the young man states, and which "proves" global warming. But I'm sure Hitler also gave his brownshirters "science" that "had been settled" as well, and which "proved" the "problems" with the Jews.....and why they must be exterminated.
Could it be that the Copenhagen Treaty, at its essence a massive, global wealth-redistribution program, ends up being far more dangerous than anyone could have imagined? Sure, the idea of sustainable development might look good on paper, especially to its noble-minded young supporters on board, all rosy cheeked and earnest. But let me ask you this: when have massive wealth-redistribution programs (think Karl Marx, Mao Tse Tung, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, etc.) ever "worked" for anyone but the few in power? Think on this: the best, the absolute best, that secular man can come up with is somehow creating a Utopia on earth. Isn't that what all political theory is about....coming up with ways for man to create Utopia, or literally, "heaven on earth?" Where people live in harmony and have all their needs met, there is no more war, the earth is "restored" to its pristine state, and every house is equipped with CFL lightbulbs?
"Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" (1 Cor 1:20)
But as Christians, we ought to be able to look at history and grasp that ideas like sustainable development, social justice, wealth redistribution, Utopia, etc. are very, very small ideas. And not only that, but there will never be a Utopia, a "heaven on earth," until Jesus returns to rule and reign. Never. Why is that? It is because the world is inhabited by unregenerated men and women who are born into sin and who choose to sin. The unregenerated are, as I've heard it said, sinful sinners who sin, and who will continue to sin, acting out of the depraved heart they are born with, and thus will always end up destroying themselves, their relationships and the world around them, no matter how lofty their ideals and hopes and dreams are for the world and for themselves. The ultimate problem is that man thinks that perfection can be achieved outside of himself - and apart from God - when in fact, perfection will never be achieved in this world because of the sinful heart of unregenerated man.
The unregenerated don't need a new treaty to push the world along toward sustainable development and going green.....they need forgiveness for their sins committed against a high and holy God. They need to bend the knee to their sovereign Creator God, the God who made them and who has a righteous claim on their lives, the One to whom all men are beholden, whether they recognize it or not, and whether they submit to it or not.
Thank you to Andy Olson of Echo Zoe Podcast for recently having me on his program.
I gave my testimony about being a New Ager for a number of years before becoming a born again Christian by the grace and mercy of God. During my years as a New Ager, I went deeply into various religious faiths and practices (Buddhism, Hinduism, paganism, theosophy, A Course in Miracles, etc.) before being saved. We also discussed how some of the New Age practices I once did, and beliefs I once held to, are now coming into today's church.
"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree." (1 Peter 2:24)
"While Jesus hung on the cross, darkness came over the land from noon until three o'clock. During those awful three hours, Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath in our place—the cup that we should have drunk. He drained it to its dregs.
We do not know all that transpired during those terrible hours. Scripture draws a veil over them for the most part. We do know that the physical suffering Jesus endured was only a feeble picture of the suffering of his soul. And part of that suffering was the very real forsakenness by his Father. Toward the end of that time he cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). The night before, he had been strengthened by divine assistance (Luke 22:43), but now he was left alone. God turned his back on his own dearly loved Son.
We can perhaps better understand what transpired that day by considering Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 5:21: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (NIV). Christ was "made sin" for us by a judicial act of God; he charged the guilt of our sin to Jesus.
However, we must always keep in mind the distinction between Christ's sinlessness in his personal being and his sin-bearing in his official liability to God's wrath. He was the sinless sin-bearer. Though officially guilty as our representative, he was personally the object of the Father's everlasting love and delight.
Should this not make us bow in adoration at such matchless love, that the Father would subject the object of his supreme delight to his unmitigated wrath for our sake?"
