I want to become
much better than I am but,
when I think about
the path required, I prefer
to take the one which makes me
worse than I already am
and try to convince
myself it magically leads
to my better self…
Author Archives: selfconfronter
Galaxies
The Hubble telescope, which has taken pictures over long periods of time of blank spots in the night sky, and it sends back thousands of little dots in photographs–each of which is not a star, but a full galaxy, each with an average of between 100 and 1,000 billion stars in it. And scientists estimate there are around 100 billion galaxies–all expanding outward, their red-shift demonstrates they are getting farther and farther away from each other all the time–far more stars in total than the estimated total number of grains of sand on all the beaches on earth combined.
How Big is the Sun?
All the planets and dwarf planets in the solar system, the asteroid belt, meteors, Oort Cloud, Kuiper Belt, the 146+ moons and everything else in between… only makes up 0.14% of the total mass of the solar system. The other 99.86% of the mass of the solar system is in the sun.
Death of a Blood Cell
In your body, every second, about 2.4 million red blood cells die and are replaced.
Mind Blowing Universe
History Book Scrolled Across the Sky
When we look at the visible stars sprinkled across the sky on a clear, dark night, we are seeing them, on average, as they were 347 years ago. We’re looking at a history book scrolled across the sky…
Ultrasound Machine
The ultrasound machine is here to stay, much to the chagrin of the pro-choice movement. Millions of Americans are seeing these images [year] after year. May God use even technology to cause the undoing of the Kingdom of Darkness and its reign of death over the unborn!
–Chad Ashby
It’s Not Enough
It’s not enough…
I could right all wrongs
Or ravage everything beneath the sun
It’s not enough…
Awake my soul!
Compromise
Two Sins
“My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me, the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”
Two sins–a turning away and turning toward. Is this not the story of all of our sins? A turning away from God and a turning to our own way? Is this not what the Teacher in Ecclesiastes 7 states when he says, “This only have I found: God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes”? God makes us upright, but we devolve and fixate on the dirt. Why is it that we do not cling to what God has given us? Why reach to steal those things which he has not?
He Is
Explore who God is for yourself, as He’s revealed Himself, not according to someone’s ideas of who he is:
John 1
Colossians 1
Hebrews 1
1 John 1
2 Thessalonians 1
Revelation 1
Holy
It is crystal clear to every people group on the planet that there is a being with eternal power and divine nature beyond our dimension, unlike any creature known.
Idol Makers vs Image Bearers
We ought not to be idol makers, but image bearers.
Inventing gods
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God,” then invents one of his own liking.
Boundless Creation
Out of the heart the mouth speaks, and out of God’s mouth comes boundless creation.
Breath
Give God His breath back–you owe Him!
— Rapper Propaganda – G.O.S.P.E.L.
Orgies
Today, the word orgies has a purely sexual connotation, but…It comes from the word komos and was used to describe the festivals of Bacchus where the participants took part in a nocturnal and riotous procession of half-drunken and frolicsome. Fellows who paraded through the streets with torches and music and sang and played before the houses of their male or female friends. It was the drinking parties that were protracted into the late night with loud and boisterous merry making. Sound familiar?
–Mike Owens
Our Chains Are Forged
Your chains are forged
By what you say and do
So, have your fun
When life is done
A nightmare waits for you.
– The Muppet Christmas Carol
Christmas Coming
His “coming forth is from of old, from ancient days” (Micah 5:2). Unlike every other human birth, Christmas is not a beginning, but a becoming. Christmas isn’t his start, but his commission. He was not created; he came.
–Piper
Eating Our Neighbor
–Voltaire, Candide, Chapter 13
Each had turned to his own way…
Adapting to Truth
An insanity of humanity is our demanding, incessant, anti-evolutionary cry that the environment must somehow adapt to our own desires rather than ourselves seeking–and adapting to–Truth.
Virtue and Masters
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
–Ben Franklin
And it goes beyond mere virtue–to that which the Spirit wroughts within hearts…
An Evolving Government
The order of the unalienable Rights in the Declaration of Independence is significant: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Each element’s value surpasses any subsequent. Life is granted above Liberties granted. And Liberty is greater than rights which guarantee a pursuit of Happiness. So when, in the course of an evolving government, these rights begin to become redefined and reordered, so too must the government itself.
Science’s Indictment Against Agnostics
Science may be, ironically, God’s biggest indictment against atheists and agnostics because of the sheer volume of its witness to and interaction with the created order.
Love Languages?
Inside-Out Love
How should you love your spouse? By fulfilling their love language? Depositing into an emotional bank account? Or how about filling up an air tank, complete with hoses which you try not to step on? This session will turn these and other popular ideas inside-out as we explore what Jesus calls us to in our relationships. Not for the faint of heart. Prepare your marriage to be turned inside-out. Better yet…prepare to die.
You may have heard of these:
his needs her needs
crazy cycle
emotional air tank
emotional bank account
love languages
But according to God’s Word, he requires a dying love not founded on feelings or manipulation of others to get what I really want as so much of psychology teaches. Consider truth:
God demonstrated his love (Rom. 5:6-11)
We love b/c He first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19)
Love is… (1 Cor. 13)
Love your neighbor… (Matthew 22:37-40)
Restore gently when in sin (Gal. 6:1)
Bear each other’s burdens (Gal. 6:2)
Build others up for benefit (Eph. 4:29)
Effective/Productive circle (2 Peter 1:3-11)
Husbands love, wives respect (Eph. 5:33)
Husbands respect, wives submit (1 Peter 3:1-7)
“The saving love of God, expressed in the death of Christ, does not speak anyone’s natural love language. And yet it is the greatest love and our most desperate need. In this way Christ fails the love language test!
“… As Powlison says, “I’ve found that one acid test of my heart is how I handle being misunderstood, caricatured, reviled, dissed—not how I handle being accurately known and loved! It’s when someone doesn’t speak my ‘love language’ that I find out what I’m made of, and by God’s grace begin to change what I live for.”
“It turns out that it was not that she wasn’t loving me, but that she was loving me in her own language. This had closed my ears (or heart—metaphors are getting mangled!) to those expressions of love. But once I understood her better, then I was prepared to receive love in different and unexpected ways. Now I am learning to understand new languages and to respond to them.
“Part of considering the interests of others is to do them tangible good. But then to really love them, you usually need to help them see their itch as idolatrous, and to awaken in them a far more serious itch! That’s basic Christianity. 5LL will never teach you to love at this deeper, more life-and-death level.
“It sounds more like opiates for the masses than The Revolution needed to bring in the kingdom of solid joys and lasting treasures”
-http://www.challies.com/christian-living/speaking-loves-languages
“Redemption is not less than what Chapman tells people to do. But it is so much more. And it does everything for such different reasons. Jesus’ couples do lots of other things in addition to seeking to love accurately. They seek forgiveness and forgive. They call things what they are. They aim to redemptively remake what others live for, even as God is remaking them. They live for God, not for getting what they want. Jesus offered Himself as the bread of life, when all that the hungry crowd wanted was more pita bread to fill their empty bread tank!
“The love of Christ speaks a “love language”—mercy to hellishly self-centered people—that no person can hear or understand unless God gives ears to hear. It is a language we cannot speak to others unless God makes us fluent in an essentially foreign language. We might say that the itch itself (an ear for God’s language) has to be created, because we live in such a stupor of self-centered itchiness. The love language model does not highlight those exquisite forms of love that do not “speak your language.” You and I need to learn a new language if we are to become fit to live with each other and with God.”
-http://mattadair.typepad.com/communitas/files/five_love_languages_critique.pdf
Picture courtesy of https://shetalkswithgod.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/love-cross-upside-down1.jpg