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Connecting man to man to God! Week of November 18, 2007 Issue 183
"Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song." Psalm 95 1-2
CONSIDER "If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future." Winston Churchill
A BATTLE FOR INTEGRITY by Charles R. Swindoll I must tell you that I have been troubled regarding the face of things in our country and within the family of God. My major battle has had to do with one word, one concept. My battle has to do with integrity. In America -- and in the church -- there has been a falling away, a breakdown, and a compromise in integrity. Recent headlines have taught us that the boom of the 1990s was built on a foundation devoid of integrity. But compromise isn't limited to CEOs who greedily sell out their employees or to pork-happy politicians. All too often we find a moral laxity behind our pews and, even worse, behind the pulpit.
Webster's tells us "integrity" means "an unimpaired condition." It means to be sound. The Hebrew word for integrity, "tom," also means to be complete or solid. "So he shepherded them according to the integrity [tom] of his heart, And guided them with his skillful hands. (Psalm 78:72)
Integrity is completeness or soundness. You have integrity if you complete a job even when no one is looking. You have integrity if you keep your word even when no one checks up on you. You have integrity if you keep your promises. Integrity means the absence of duplicity and is the opposite of hypocrisy. If you are a person of integrity, you will do what you say. What you declare, you will do your best to be. Integrity also includes financial accountability, personal reliability, and private purity. A person with integrity does not manipulate others. He or she is not prone to arrogance or self-praise. Integrity even invites constructive and necessary criticism because it applauds accountability. It's sound. It's solid. It's complete.... Read this in full at http://www.crosswalk.com/11557444/
THANKSGIVING In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a presidential proclamation calling for a national day of thanksgiving. Here is the text of that proclamation: "The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful years and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the Source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.
"In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
"Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the field of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than theretofore.
"Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
"It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.
"And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union."
SAY YES TO GOD "Everything I know about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ begins and ends with surrender -- with saying yes to God. That tiny, simple word initiates an exhilarating, life-altering adventure that will take you places you never thought you'd go -- both literally and figuratively." Kay Warren, Dangerous Surrender See an interview with Kay Warren at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/november/17.19.html
LEADERSHIP TIPS (BUSINESS, FAMILY, LIFE) America's Best Leaders as reported by US News & World Report Today's executives find that their capacity to meet challenges rests more and more upon partnerships with others. The best leaders are often willing to form unlikely alliances.
It used to be that the Center for Creative Leadership, the country's largest executive training program, taught its students to think of leadership in two concentric circles. The inner circle is you, it instructed its students, and to become a leader, first you must learn to lead yourself. The outer circle is your organization, and next you must succeed in leading there.
In recent years, though, the center has added a third circle, this one representing organizations and institutions outside the leader's own group. Now, it tells students, you must learn to collaborate and lead there, too. Other advisers are making the same argument: The most effective leaders are those who can cross boundaries, forming partnerships not just in their own sectors but with other sectors - worldwide -- as well. Read this in full at http://www.usnews.com/features/news/special-reports/best-leaders.html
VERSE TO PONDER "Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness." Colossians 2:6-7
CONSIDER "Your heart is not the compass that God steers by." Samuel Rutherford (1600-1664)
NEW BOOK SUMMARIZED ONLINE The Great Dance: The Church Vision Revisited by C. Baxter Kruger is now summarized in detail online. The book's message: There is something grand and wonderful running through the scenes of our lives. We are part of something magnificent like an invisible flowing river. We are part of a great dance. "The central passion of the human heart is to be filled with the great dance, and the chief and maddening riddle of human life is to understand what the dance is and how to live in it." Read the detailed summary at http://www.christianbooksummaries.com
PLUGGING THE PLANET INTO THE WORD Technology is vastly expanding the Bible's audience and Christianity's influence. Using technological devices ranging from simple cassette tapes to solar-powered audio players and an iPod-like gadget called the Bible Stick, Christian groups are spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to make one of the world's oldest books accessible in remote corners of the planet.... Read this in full at
SO LONG, GIDEONS? Across America upscale accommodations are doing away with the Bible as a standard room amenity. And in its stead have arrived a slew of "lifestyle" products that cater to a younger, hipper (and presumably less religious) clientele. Since 2001 the number of luxury hotels with religious materials in the rooms has dropped by 18%, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association.... http://www.newsweek.com/id/69049
ANSWERING THE ATHEISTS by Stan Guthrie Let's face it: Atheism is in. Not since Nietzsche have disbelievers enjoyed such a ready public reception to their godless message -- and such near-miraculous royalties. But even that hasn't put them in a good mood. Snaps Christopher Hitchens, who wrote God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (although not, presumably, the pronouncements of atheists), "Many of the teachings of Christianity are, as well as being incredible and mythical, immoral." A feuding Richard Dawkins suggests that believers "just shut up." Apparently, they didn't get the tolerance memo.
Other authors -- including Douglas Wilson and Francis Collins -- have quite capably refuted the new atheist shtick. But remembering Bertrand Russell's famous essay, "Why I Am Not a Christian," here is a Reader's Digest version of why I am.
Creation: The universe, far from being a howling wasteland indifferent to our existence, appears to be finely tuned through its estimated 13.7 billion years of existence to support life on this planet. Tinker with any one of scores of fundamental physical laws or the initial conditions of the universe -- such as gravity or the cosmological constant -- and we would not be here. As physicist Paul Davies has admitted, "I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact."
Beauty: Beethoven's Ninth, a snowflake, the sweet smell of a baby who has been sleeping, and a sunset beyond the dunes of Lake Michigan all point to a magnificent and loving Creator. And isn't it interesting that we have the capacity -- unlike mere animals -- to gape in awe, to be brought to tears, before them? Truly did David say, "What is man, that you are mindful of him?".... Read this in full at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/november/28.74.html
WHEN YOUR HUT'S ON FIRE The only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small, uninhabited island. He prayed feverishly for God to rescue him. Everyday he scanned the horizon for help, but none seemed forthcoming. Exhausted, he eventually managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to protect him from the elements, and to store his few possessions.
One day, after scavenging for food, he arrived home to find his little hut in flames, with smoke rolling up to the sky. He felt the worst had happened, and everything was lost. He was stunned with disbelief, grief, and anger He cried out, "God! How could you do this to me?"
Early the next day, he was awakened by the sound of a ship approaching the island! It had come to rescue him! "How did you know I was here?," asked the weary man of his rescuers. "We saw your smoke signal," they replied.
The Moral of This Story: It's easy to get discouraged when things are going bad, but we shouldn't lose heart, because God is at work in our lives.... even in the midst of our pain and suffering. Remember that the next time your little hut seems to be burning to the ground. It just may be a smoke signal that summons the grace of God.
GIVING HONOR Nov. 11 was Armistice Day. The previous week the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, addressed the U.S. Congress. Here are excerpts (read the entire address by France's president: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/11/the_frenchamerican_alliance_is.html
RENEWING THE FRENCH-AMERICAN ALLIANCE By Nicolas Sarkozy The United States and France remain true to the memory of their common history, true to the blood spilled by their children in common battles. But they are not true merely to the memory of what they accomplished together in the past. They remain true, first and foremost, to the same ideal, the same principles, the same values that have always united them.
Here, both the humblest and most illustrious citizens alike know that nothing is owed to them and that everything has to be earned. That's what constitutes the moral value of America. America did not teach men the idea of freedom; she taught them how to practice it. And she fought for this freedom whenever she felt it to be threatened somewhere in the world. It was by watching America grow that men and women understood that freedom was possible.
What made America great was her ability to transform her own dream into hope for all mankind.
The men and women of my generation heard their grandparents talk about how in 1917, America saved France at a time when it had reached the final limits of its strength, which it had exhausted in the most absurd and bloodiest of wars.
The men and women of my generation heard their parents talk about how in 1944, America returned to free Europe from the horrifying tyranny that threatened to enslave it.
Fathers took their sons to see the vast cemeteries where, under thousands of white crosses so far from home, thousands of young American soldiers lay who had fallen not to defend their own freedom but the freedom of all others, not to defend their own families, their own homeland, but to defend humanity as a whole.
Fathers took their sons to the beaches where the young men of America had so heroically landed. They read them the admirable letters of farewell that those 20-year-old soldiers had written to their families before the battle to tell them: "We don't consider ourselves heroes. We want this war to be over. But however much dread we may feel, you can count on us." Before they landed, Eisenhower told them: "The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you."
And as they listened to their fathers, watched movies, read history books and the letters of soldiers who died on the beaches of Normandy and Provence, as they visited the cemeteries where the star-spangled banner flies, the children of my generation understood that these young Americans, 20 years old, were true heroes to whom they owed the fact that they were free people and not slaves. France will never forget the sacrifice of your children.
To those 20-year-old heroes who gave us everything, to the families of those who never returned, to the children who mourned fathers they barely got a chance to know, I want to express France's eternal gratitude.
On behalf of my generation, which did not experience war but knows how much it owes to their courage and their sacrifice; on behalf of our children, who must never forget; to all the veterans who are here today and, notably the seven I had the honor to decorate yesterday evening, one of whom, Senator Inouye, belongs to your Congress, I want to express the deep, sincere gratitude of the French people. I want to tell you that whenever an American soldier falls somewhere in the world, I think of what the American army did for France. I think of them and I am sad, as one is sad to lose a member of one's family.
America's strength is not only a material strength, it is first and foremost a spiritual and moral strength. No one expressed this better than a black pastor who asked just one thing of America: that she be true to the ideal in whose name he--the grandson of a slave -- felt so deeply American. His name was Martin Luther King. He made America a universal role model.
The world still remembers his words -- words of love, dignity and justice. America heard those words and America changed. And the men and women who had doubted America because they no longer recognized her began loving her again.
Fundamentally, what are those who love America asking of her, if not to remain forever true to her founding values?
CONSIDER "Nothing is more stimulating than friends who speak the truth in love." Os Guinness
VERSE TO PONDER "Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Colossians 3:17
THIS WEEK'S HYMN: HOW GOOD IT IS TO THANK THE LORD How good it is to thank the Lord, And praise to Thee, Most High, accord, To show Thy love with morning light, And tell Thy faithfulness each night; Yea, good it is Thy praise to sing, And all our sweetest music bring.
O Lord, with joy my heart expands, Before the wonders of Thy hands; Great works, Jehovah, Thou hast wrought, Exceeding deep Thine every thought; A foolish man knows not their worth, Nor he whose mind is of the earth.
When as the grass the wicked grow, When sinners flourish here below, Then is there endless ruin nigh, But Thou, O Lord, art throned on high; Thy foes shall fall before Thy might, The wicked shall be put to flight.
Thou, Lord, hast high exalted me With royal strength and dignity; With Thine anointing I am blest, Thy grace and favor on me rest; I thus exult o'er all my foes, O'er all that would my cause oppose.
The righteous man shall flourish well, And in the house of God shall dwell; He shall be like a goodly tree, And all his life shall fruitful be; For righteous is the Lord and just, He is my Rock, in Him I trust. >from CyberHymnal at http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/h/g/hgii2ttl.htm
ON PRAYER "This is our Lord's will, ... that our prayer and our trust be, alike, large. For if we do not trust as much as we pray, we fail in full worship to our Lord in our prayer; and also we hinder and hurt ourselves. The reason is that we do not know truly that our Lord is the ground from which our prayer springeth; nor do we know that it is given us by his grace and his love. If we knew this, it would make us trust to have of our Lord's gifts all that we desire. For I am sure that no man asketh mercy and grace with sincerity, without mercy and grace being given to him first." Juliana of Norwich (1342?-1417), Revelations of Divine Love
PRAY FOR PERSECUTED CHRISTIANS TODAY http://christiansincrisis.net/
DAILY BLESSING PACT Use the following list as your daily prayer guide. Think of a brother or situation that applies and lift them up in prayer.
I am agreeing in prayer with you for God’s blessings to overtake you!
PERSONAL Marital harmony Family unity Children saved Faithful pastor Spirit-filled church Real friendships Relatives redeemed Educational benefits Recreational time Fulfilling career Favor with God and man Be in God’s will
FINANCIAL Better Jobs Raises or bonuses Benefits Sales & commissions Business Growth Settlements Estates & inheritances Investment increase Rebates & returns Checks in the mail Gifts & surprises Money to be found Bills decrease while blessings increase
"And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God" (Deut. 28:2).
[As you travel on business or vacation, let me know if you'd like the church guys to pray for your safety and spiritual effectiveness. I'll add your name to the list for the time you'll be away.]
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