Is the Christianity we have today what it was 2000 years ago? The barnacles of time have changed how we view Christianity. I have wanted to discuss this topic for some time now. I am just getting to the point where I am getting around to it.

"In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” St. Augustine

"It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery." NASB Galatians 5:1

“For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son.  And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed.  But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.” NLT John 3:16-21

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in union with the Messiah Jesus." ISV Romans 8:1

Crazy Love, what a crazy book! The book does a great job of focusing on the important things of life. I think Christians should spend more time focused on the Love of God and not all the other crap we get tied to. Francis Chan starts the book with this question, "How many of you have read the New Testament and wondered if we in the church are missing it?" He also brings up the story that he almost joined the Marines. He would have made a great Marine. 

I was on FaceBook the other day trying to group my friends into some type of logical order. While I trying to figure out an easy way to group them, by the way the controls in FaceBook for grouping friends needs help, I can across Dave’s profile and under religious views, he has “Jesus has set me free from religion”.

 

I wonder, how many times in my life, I have missed an opportunity to do something good. I can remember times when an opportunity has presented itself and I remember rationalizing why I should not help or get involved. I think that I have become very adept at rationalizing why I should not help or get involved. I wish God would take my excuses away. I can remember at the time thinking I should have helped. Should of… I remember it happening all too often. I think I have become too comfortable with non-involvement.

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:10 NIV

 

This is a continuation of my ongoing report. I recently decided to listen to the Bible in an effort to gain a closer relationship with God. I purposefully listen not with the intent to study. I have a hard time reading the Bible I just start looking things up and I don't make much progress. I am listening to the Bible Experience (http://www.inspiredby.com/) which is a dramatized NIV version with many famous African American leaders, singers, actors and artists. (Even Samuel L. Jackson) As I listen through the Bible, hopefully I will make it all the way through, I will post notes and thoughts I have.

"...severe sickness, a disease of your bowels, until your bowels come out…" NASB (2 Ch 21:15)

"He also said to the Levites who taught all Israel and who were holy to the Lord, “Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David king of Israel built; it will be a burden on your shoulders no longer. Now serve the Lord your God and His people Israel. " NASB (2 Ch 35:3)

The Marines have always been recognized at producing good leaders. Below are some of the things that Marines not only must know, but they must demonstrate if they want to be a leader of Marines. All of these can be applied to any leadership position, whether it be as a Fire Team Leader, Platoon Sergeant, a Battalion Commander, a Fortune-500 CEO, or parent.

• Know yourself and seek self-improvement.
• Be technically and tactically proficient.
• Develop a sense of responsibility among your subordinates.
• Make sound and timely decisions.
• Set the example.
• Know your Marines and look out for their welfare.
• Keep your Marines informed.
• Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions.
• Ensure assigned tasks are understood, supervised, and accomplished.
• Train your Marines as a team.
• Employ your command in accordance with its capabilities.

• Dependability - The certainty of proper performance of duty.
• Bearing - Creating a favorable impression in carriage, appearance and personal conduct at all times.
• Courage - The mental quality that recognizes fear of danger or criticism, but enables a man to proceed in the face of it with calmness and firmness.
• Decisiveness - Ability to make decisions promptly and to announce them in clear, forceful manner.
• Endurance - The mental and physical stamina measured by the ability to withstand pain, fatigue, stress and hardship.
• Enthusiasm - The display of sincere interest and exuberance in the performance of duty.
• Initiative - Taking action in the absence of orders.
• Integrity - Uprightness of character and soundness of moral principles; includes the qualities of truthfulness and honesty.
• Judgment - The ability to weigh facts and possible solutions on which to base sound decisions.
• Justice - Giving reward and punishment according to merits of the case in question. The ability to administer a system of rewards and punishments impartially and consistently.
• Knowledge - Understanding of a science or an art. The range of one's information, including professional knowledge and an understanding of your Marines.
• Tact - The ability to deal with others without creating offense.
• Unselfishness - Avoidance of providing for one's own comfort and personal advancement at the expense of others.
• Loyalty - The quality of faithfulness to country, the Corps, the unit, to one's seniors, subordinates and peers.

• Begin the planning - if you want to succeed at something you must plan
• Arrange for reconnaissance - decide what things need to be researched to make your plan work
• Make the reconnaissance - do the research
• Complete the planning - make final modifications to your plan taking the information you gathered in the previous step into account
• Issue Orders - delegate tasks and authority as needed (see SMEAC below)
• Supervise - make sure that orders are understood and followed

• Situation - describe what the current situation is
• Mission - describe what the current mission is
• Execution - describe how the mission will be carried out
• Administration and Logistics - describe how administrative duties and logistical support will be handled
• Command and Signals - describe who the persons in authority are and any special signals that need to be recognized

• Autocratic (Authoritarian)
• Democratic (Persuasion)
• Combination of both

 

One of the leadership traits that is all to often overlooked is customer service. I think it is a personal value as well, not limited just to leadership. Everyone respects and wants customer service when they are the customer. They will even complain if they service is not up to their standards, in fact you could be terminated or not retained in a job position for not having good customer service skills.

"Increase your sensitivity to issues of pride. Start to be aware of the things you do as a leader in your business or in your home anytime you are more concerned about promoting yourself than others." - The Servant Leader by Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges

"Omnia relinquit servare rempublicam" (He relinquished everything to serve the Republic.)

This is a continuation of my ongoing report. I recently decided to listen to the Bible in an effort to gain a closer relationship with God. I purposefully listen not with the intent to study. I have a hard time reading the Bible I just start looking things up and I don't make much progress. I am listening to the Bible Experience (http://www.inspiredby.com/) which is a dramatized NIV version with many famous African American leaders, singers, actors and artists. (Even Samuel L. Jackson) As I listen through the Bible, hopefully I will make it all the way through, I will post notes and thoughts I have.

 

"As the story goes, the Queen of Sheba, one of Ethiopia's first rulers, traveled to Jerusalem to partake of King Solomon's wisdom. On her way home, she bore the king's son, Menelik. After Menelik went to Jerusalem to visit his father, Solomon gave him a copy of the Ark and commanded that officials of his kingdom travel back to Ethiopia to settle there. But the royal entourage that was traveling to Ethiopia could not bear to be away from the Ark, so they switched the copy with the original and smuggled the real thing out of the country. Menelik learned of this only on his way home and reasoned that since the Ark's powers hadn't destroyed his entourage, it must be God's will that it remain in Ethiopia. " Pasted from <http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080705/news_1c05ark.html>

"Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said, “O Lord, the God of Israel, who are enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth." NASB (2 Kings 19:15)

Since the early days of Christianity, people have made a distinction between how God acts in the Old Testament verses how He acts in the New Testament. Marcion wrote his Antitheses (= contradictory statements) contrasted the Old Testament God of wrath with Jesus’ God of love and mercy. He says that the God of the New Testament and the God of the Old Testament are antithetical, that is They are in direct and unequivocal opposition.

Some people today see it as an irreconcilable difference and thus use it to question the existence of God.

“All Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he alone of Jeroboam’s family will come to the grave, because in him something good was found toward the Lord God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam." 1 Kings 14:13 NASB

“There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and  we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.” – NASB Num. 13:33

This is a continuation of my ongoing report. I recently decided to listen to the Bible in an effort to gain a closer relationship with God. I purposefully listen not with the intent to study. I have a hard time reading the Bible I just start looking things up and I don't make much progress. I am listening to the Bible Experience (http://www.inspiredby.com/) which is a dramatized NIV version with many famous African American leaders, singers, actors and artists. (Even Samuel L. Jackson) As I listen through the Bible, hopefully I will make it all the way through, I will post notes and thoughts I have.

I am learning new things every day. One truth I am learning is that we can't understand the Bible from a mono-cultural point of view. 

"Christianity more than any other faith or philosophy has been able to shed the cultural clothing with which it once seemed identified and reclothed itself in a new culture." - D.T. Niles

"To the weak I became weak, in order to win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I may by all means save some." Holman Christian standard version. (1 Co 9:22)

This is a continuation of my ongoing report. I recently decided to listen to the Bible in an effort to gain a closer relationship with God. I purposefully listen not with the intent to study. I have a hard time reading the Bible I just start looking things up and I don't make much progress. I am listening to the Bible Experience (http://www.inspiredby.com/) which is a dramatized NIV version with many famous African American leaders, singers, actors and artists. (Even Samuel L. Jackson) As I listen through the Bible, hopefully I will make it all the way through, I will post notes and thoughts I have.

“All Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he alone of Jeroboam’s family will come to the grave, because in him something good was found toward the Lord God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam." 1 Kings 14:13 NASB

I will keep this short.   

Why can't Muslims, Jews and Christians get along? For thousands of years there has been the unresolved conflict between the Arabs and the Jews. The Arab Israeli conflict defies a simple solution. Come to think of it; it defies a complex solution. The problem seems to be the control of the holy land. Now to look at this we need to get some context.

"He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt."¹

 

"He shows love to the foreigners living among you and gives them food and clothing. So you, too, must show love to foreigners, for you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. "²

 

$100,000.00	deposit amount individually that is insured
$13,300,000,000,000.00	total amount of all accounts insured
$38,000,000,000.00	total amount of money FDIC has to pay out
$0.76	amount you would receive per $100 deposited, if the FDIC had to pay out on all accounts

 

I recently watched Bill Maher’s movie ‘Religulous’. I was intrigued at the concept of the movie. Given it was a comedy I expected it to be completely irreverent. He has honest questions but he does not seek honest answers. He picks extreme examples and not mainstream examples. What does this movie promote:

• Not having faith is a luxury according to Bill Maher.
• According to Bill Maher, religion is detrimental to human society. 
• Religion is made up to answer tough questions. 
• He says he made fun of religious in his standup days. 
• He grew up Catholic and his mother was Jewish.  
• He thinks his father stopped going to Church because of catholic prohibition with birth control.
• Brings up issues that are religion not relationship.
• He shows extreme example of religious people whom even I have issues with. 
• He did not interview any serious mainstream Christians.
• He thinks it is about faith without facts. 
• Would you expect that multiple eyewitness accounts would be different?
• Compares Christians with extremist Muslim terrorist.
• He admits Sodom and Gomorrah exist but that is it.
• Exchange Ministries was an example and the pastor says no one is born s homosexual. I think everyone is born a sinner and thus has the potential to be gay.
• He interviews people who think religion is about themselves.
• Bill thinks anyone who thinks a miracle happen actually had something that was a coincidence.
• He picks 3 founding fathers who were not Christians and showcases them as a reason why this nation is not founded Christian.
• Picks on 10 commandments.
• He thinks humanism would come to the same conclusion. See my other posts, I don’t think so.
• He shows that Christians don’t agree on creation and evolution.
• He interviews an amusement park actor about Christianity. (Is this a qualified opinion?)
• Religion is a neurological disorder.
• Religion diverts man to a destructive course.
• Religion must die for humans to survive.
• Religion keeps man in bondage.
• Atheist should not be timid.

I would rate this movie 1 comedian out of 5.

President’s day is a day where we honor our Presidents. However, some people don’t like certain Presidents. Here is one of the greatest speeches given by what some say was the greatest president while other say he was the worst president.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

 

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

 

"But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free... It will become all one thing, or all the other." Lincoln in his acceptance speech as 1858 Republican nominee for U.S. Senate from Illinois

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan."

—Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address