Students Murdering Students – A Different Perspective

We as a nation are shocked at witnessing yet once again another example of the fruit of the seeds we have sown (regarding the murders at Va. Tech). Why look so surprised America? We are actually partners with Cho who killed them…

At the heart of the matter, this tragedy is a moral issue.

A heart-gone-bad killed these kids.

This is not an issue of “more education needed”, or “more laws needed”. This isn’t our educators fault. This isn’t the government’s fault. This isn’t a gun law issue.

This is a heart issue. A moral issue.

This is about Seedtime and Harvest. The Bible tells us all about it… (Gen 8:22)

We’ve planted our seeds America. We are reaping the fruit.

For decades we have been allowing our own society to sow these seeds.

America says:

If it feels good, just do it. No restraint necessary”

“God doesn’t exist. Therefore these is no moral authority or moral absolute. No one to answer to. Thus, go do what you want.”

“My sin (now know as weakness) doesn’t hurt others”.

“We don’t need the Bible as it is no longer relevant”.

Well, I see a correlation here – less morality, more chaos, death and destruction.

The fact is that the Bible is THE source of truth on the topic of man’s moral depravity.

It tells us that sin leads to death. It defines what sin is. It tells us to choose life by choosing not to sin.

Pretty simple if you ask me.

But American’s want their own way. They don’t want their lusts and passions to be bridled or restrained.

The Bible says, “God will not be mocked, man shall reap what he sows”.

The fact is simply this: The religion of moral relativism has utterly failed us.

James 1:14-16 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.
Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.

We mourn these kids’ deaths, and rightfully so. It’s always sad when young and promising lives are cut short by murder.

But if we don’t change, we may as well turn our backs and stop mourning.

When something like this happens, America looks for someone or something to blame.

I say America, “Look at yourself”. Check the log in your own eye before you find the spec in someone else’s.

You and your forefather’s have made this day more likely by supporting the sin and moral depravity in this nation by the very conduct of your own lives.”

When it comes to our moral obligation, lack of action against something constitutes support for it.

Just listen to what our youth are glorifying in their music, or what is portrayed as “cool” on TV.  Drugs, orgies, violence. One popular movie “American Pie” tells our high schoolers that you aren’t cool unless you are sleeping with your best friend’s mom.

If you don’t think culture effects kids, think again. What we behold we become.  Poor company corrupts good character.  As a person thinks so shall he be.  These are truths that are taught not only in chruch but in business.  Pick up many of the top management books of the day and you will see these principals taught.  If this applies to business adults, how much more the fragile minds of our youth.

What are your kids watching?  What are your kids listening to?  What are you supporting in our culture via the use of your almighty dollar?  I can tell you much about your morality if you show me how you spend your money.

America – You kill your unborn young, and expect those who you allow to live to somehow value their lives, knowing they were only a decision away from aborted life?!? Wake up!

You decide that man is no longer created in God’s image and thus devalue us all.

You allow murder, lust, rape, idolatry, fornication, pornography and adultery on the TV Screen and in your hearts, and then expect the environment to not suffer.  You expect your children’s minds not to be influenced?  Awake O’ Sleeper!

You rape young children through child pornography and physical touch.  You have no restraint.  Your children are taking after you.  You’re actions are wasting away the generations of our youths.

You are insane for thinking the results of these actions are benign.

How many more die before we repent and turn?

America says, “We are created from an evolutionary Big Bang. There is no God to answer to.  No moral law.  No absolute truth.  No exact right or wrong to speak of…”

Keep believing that way and you will keep getting the same results – moral degredation.

Einstein said, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”

He also said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.“

You plant the seeds. Your children and children’s children suffer at your own hands.

You plant the seeds; they reap your harvest.

Truth hurts.  It also sets us free.  There is hope…

Corn to come from apple seeds?

Heaven to come from hell?

Righteousness to come from sin?

Peace to come from torment?

Do you think a sin-filled heart won’t effect those around it?

FACT – Hurting people hurt others.

FACT – The only cure for hurting people is Jesus Christ.  He is our hope!

Christ alone fills the moral void in our souls. How do I know? I accepted Him as my life and savior.  I know the difference He makes!

Am I now perfect?  No.  But I was blind and now I see.  I don’t accept sin as normal or a way of life anymore.  And not because anything good exists in me, but because Jesus Christ lives.  Now, I practice restraint and push away sin and weight which used to ensnare me.  Join me won’t you?

Christ alone.

Christ alone.

America – Repent to a God who loves you and wants the best for you.

Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Favorite Winston Churchill Quotes:

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

The Epic Battle – For Holiness

Resist the devil!

Stubbornly refuse to give in. How dare that slimy loser act as if he owns you! Dig your heels in.

Imagine your father buys you a sleek second hand car for your eighteenth birthday. Next day, the former owner arrives, demanding your car keys.

‘No way!’ you exclaim.

‘It’s my car!’ he shouts. He’s bigger than you.

The car’s mine!’ you protest, ‘My father paid for it!’

The veins in his neck bulge. ‘You know nothing! Hand me the keys!’

‘Get out of here, or I’ll call my Dad and he’ll have you for trespassing and for fraud!’

That’s resisting. It’s standing up for your rights. It’s refusing to be cheated out of something Father has given you. It’s preventing a con artist from walking off with things that cost your Father greatly.

Over and over, Scripture affirms our need to take action against sin. Here’s a sample:

Get rid of all moral filth – James 1:21

Rid yourselves of all malice . . . deceit, hypocrisy, etc – 1 Peter 2:1

Put on the new self – Colossians 3:10

Put aside the deeds of darkness – Romans 13:12

Put off your old self – Ephesians 4:22

Put to death . . . whatever belongs to your earthly nature – Colossians 3:5

Throw off . . . the sin that so easily entangles – Hebrew 12:1

And many more.

Notice, it’s not all God. We would have to cut our Bible to shreds to produce one that says God does it all. We ourselves are expected to put in an effort (a fight if you will; I’m givin’ ya everything I’ve got Captain!). This surprises many people, and others get it wrong, so let’s see what is involved.

Sin kidnapped us, and our effort does nothing to pay our ransom. Only Jesus could pay that exorbitant price. Innocence was nailed so that we, the guilty, could go free. All we do is stand up for the rights Christ paid for in blood. Resisting the devil is simply cooperating with God; choosing to enjoy the freedom Christ has won for us. All the hard work has already been done for us, and even then God is with us every step, to ensure we make it.

But there’s a spine tingling reason why God wants you to play a part. Like the proudest father, your God wants you to be like him. The Almighty actually wants to share his throne with you! This is serious, and glorious. You are being readied for a heavenly crown, not a party hat. That’s why God has entrusted you with a role in resisting Satan’s attempt to trespass on your turf. You are being trained to rule.

You’ve probably heard of people being effortlessly freed from sin’s grip, such as heroin addicts delivered from addiction without a single withdrawal symptom. That’s the mighty God we serve! For God to forever do everything for us, however, would be like a teacher never trusting us to sit for a test, but always taking the test for us. Eventually, like the devoted parent he is, our heavenly Father wants us to begin to grow up and start exercising the authority he has proudly entrusted to us. Maturity must never be confused with lack of intimacy with God, however. We exercise spiritual authority only by maintaining our power link with the Almighty, and letting his power flow through us.

If you’re looking for a soft religion, dump Christ right now. Hebrews urges us to look to Jesus for inspiration. He suffered enormously to make us pure. And he chose the agony, knowing it would be totally eclipsed by the joy it would finally produce. Your war with sin, Hebrews continues, hasn’t yet reached the point where your blood pours out. The Bible never promises that our fight with sin will be painless, just that surrender would end up being significantly more painful.

I’ve heard it said that holiness is reaching the point where you have no more longing to sin than you do to eat horse manure. Not likely. Remember Jesus, nearing starvation after eating nothing for forty days, being tempted to turn stones into bread. Remember Jesus, in the garden dripping blood-like sweat, praying ‘with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him’ (Hebrews 5:7) as he stammers, ‘Nevertheless not my will . . .’ Remember Jesus in agony on the cross, when he could have called legions of angels to his rescue. ‘He learned obedience by what he suffered,’ (Hebrew 5:8). Holiness is not reaching the point where temptation loses its attraction. Holiness is choosing God’s way when it seems every fiber of your being is crying out for the devil’s way. To be Christlike is to be willing to suffer for the sake of God. Strong temptation toughens us. When resisted, temptation acts like your personal training coach, building you up so that you will receive more glory on the Big Day. Ironically, the more prepared you are for a long, tough fight, the shorter it usually is. Once you uncover one of Satan’s schemes, and become determined to hold your ground no matter how strong the pressure gets or how long it lasts, the Enemy quickly senses he is wasting his time persisting with this tactic, and he usually backs off soon after.

Satan is furious at having lost you. He knows he has no hold over you, but if he fools you into thinking he can still boss you around, you’ll make his day. He’ll try every dirty trick he can dream up to bluff you out of all that is rightfully yours, and to cast doubt on the extent of Christ’s stupendous victory. To stand up to someone as persistent and conniving as Satan, you have to thoroughly know the rights Christ won for you, as spelled out in God’s Word.

Think of it this way. Through a life and death struggle, Jesus disarmed Satan and handed you a loaded weapon. Don’t expect Jesus to pull the trigger. That’s easy. He’ll let you have the fun of scaring off Satan. But if that diabolical cheat can fool you into thinking the weapon Jesus gave you is unloaded, he knows you won’t bother to use it. He then has nothing to fear, and he’ll walk all over you.

Because you have given Jesus control of your life, you have the upper hand whenever you meet evil. Resisting is simply realizing that your enemy is beaten, and acting accordingly. It is refusing to let a defeated enemy steal back your precious liberty and dignity that cost Christ everything. The almighty Son of God let the devil nail him, so that you could walk free. Live in that freedom. And no matter what happens, keep seeing yourself as God sees you – powerful, holy, victorious. It is this faith that makes you a conqueror.

Not to be sold. © Copyright, 1997, 2002, 2006 Grantley Morris. Not to be copied in whole or in part without citing this entire paragraph. Many more compassionate, inspiring, sometimes hilarious writings by Grantley Morris available free at the following internet site www.net-burst.net Freely you have received, freely give.

Sayet like it is…

Great Wisdom From Oswald Chambers!

From “My Utmost For His Highest”

Acts 26:16 “I have appeared to you for this purpose…”

The vision Paul had on the road to Damascus was not a passing emotional experience, but a vision that had very clear and emphatic directions for him.  And Paul stated, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision” (Acts 26:19).  Our Lord said to Paul, in effect, “Your whole life is to be overpowered or subdued by Me; you are to have no end, no aim, and no purpose but Mine.”  And the Lord also says to us, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go…” (John 15:16)

When we are born again, if we are spiritual at all, we have visions of what Jesus wants us to be.  It is important that I learn not to be “disobedient to the heavenly vision” – not to doubt that it can be attained.  It is not enough to give mental assent to the fact that God has redeemed the world, nor even to know that the Holy Spirit can make all that Jesus did a reality in my life.  I must have the foundation of a personal relationship with Him.  Paul was not given a message or a doctrine to proclaim.  He was brought into a vivid, personal, overpowering relationship with Jesus Christ.

Acts 26:16 is tremendously compelling “… to make you a minister and a witness…”  There would be nothing there without a personal relationship.  Paul was devoted to a Person, not to a cause.  He was absolutely Jesus Christ’s.  He saw nothing else and he lived for nothing else.  “For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2)

From The Prince of Preachers

Sin

Spurgeon, “The Smoke of Their Torments”
No. 602. Genesis 19:27, 28.

See the blackness of your sin by the light of hell’s fire!

Hell is the true harvest of the sowing of iniquity.

Come, lost sinner, I charge you to look at hell–
Hell is what sin brings forth.
Hell is the full-grown child.
You have dandled your sin.
You have kissed and fondled it.
But see what sin comes to.
Hell is but sin full-grown, that is all.

You played with that young lion; see how it roars and how
it tears in pieces now that it has come to its strength.

Did you not smile at the azure scales of the serpent?
See its poison; see to what its stings have brought those
who have never looked to the brazen serpent for healing.

Do you account of sin as a peccadillo, a flaw
scarcely to be noticed, a mere joke, a piece of fun?
But see the tree which springs from it.
There is no joke there- no fun in hell.

You did not know that sin was so evil.
Some of you will never know how evil it is until the
sweetness of honey has passed from your mouth,
and the bitterness of death preys at your vitals.

You will count sin harmless until you
are hopelessly stricken with its sting!

My God, from this day forward help me to see through the
thin curtain which covers up sin, and whenever Satan tells
me that such-and-such a thing is for my pleasure, let me
recollect the pain of that penalty wrapped up in it. When
he tells me that such a thing is for my profit, let me know
that it can never profit me to gain the whole world and lose
my own soul. Let me feel it is no sport to sin, for only a
madman would scatter firebrands and death, and say it is sport.