An Urgent Reminder to Husbands

h/t Isaiah 53:5 Project.

From Husband Revolution:

There is a spiritual battle raging all around us. As Christian men and husbands, we would be fools to forget this fact as I believe many of us have done. I know I have. This is a battle for our minds, marriages, and ultimately our effectiveness for the gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to be aware now, more than ever and we need to be preparing ourselves so that we do not lose this battle.

David was supposed to be fully suited in armor leading his valiant men on the front lines in battle and not on the rooftop gazing at another mans naked wife. He wasn’t prepared and he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. So let us learn for King David’s example and not fall into the same pit as him and let us be lead by the one true King triumphantly into battle.

Be where you need to be.  Have your spiritual armor ready.  Somehow I begin to think that things are going to get harder for Christians in the so-called free world long before they get easier.

I’ll Bet There Was Some Good Prayin’ Done There

Source: Mike’s Look at Life

Pharmacists Can Refuse to Dispense Medicine for a Variety of Reasons

• the drug has a short shelf life
• the drug is not in that pharmacy’s niche
• the drug may attract crime.

A pharmacy can also refuse to fill prescriptions through Medicaid, Medicare or other some other insurance.

In Washington State, pharmacists cannot refuse because of religious objections.

Huffington Post:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday shunned a religious challenge to Washington state regulations requiring all licensed pharmacists to dispense emergency contraceptives when presented with a valid prescription.

In a one-line order, the court declined to review the rules, which also allow pharmacies to deny delivery of the drugs if a pharmacist has a religious objection, but permit another druggist to step in and provide the medication.

An appeals court ruled last summer that the regulations did not violate religious beliefs of pharmacy owners and individual pharmacists under the First Amendment’s free exercise clause. The court noted the regulations were written neutrally and didn’t single out pharmacists who had a specific belief.

Ralph’s Thriftway will have to either go to court again when there’s another justice, dispense abortion pills or close.

 

Then I Guess for Us, It Is Good That He is Not

“If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner.”   ― Malcolm Muggeridge

 

Since when is Jesus hate?

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (CBS4)– Some advertisements that have been on bus benches for three years are now under scrutiny in the City of Colorado Springs.

The ads read “Jesus is Lord” along with the name of the church that placed the advertising, Charis Christian Center.

“I asked them why we could no longer use the name of Jesus. They said because, ‘If you use the name of Jesus we must allow hate messaging,’” said Charis Christian Center Pastor Lawson Perdue.

The Mountain Metro Transit said a recent complaint put the advertising policy under review.

The words and actions of Jesus should never be considered hate. There are some poorly educated or confused ‘Christians’ who pretend to speak for Christ, and they are wrong in their hate.
A more fundamental question for America is how we allowed ourselves to be taught that government has a role in censoring hate. When others get to define what ‘hate is’ then they control all media.

Just broken

Matthew 8:26-27
“26 And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O men of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.  27 And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”
Matthew 22:37-40
“37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

In the news lately “Jesus is Lord” bus benches are to be stopped because if the Colorado Springs Transit Authority allows that, they’d have to allow hate speech.  Jesus is hate speech? In Sweden and Canada sermons have been branded hate speech.

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Is Pope Francis revolutionizing the Catholic Church — or just ad libbing?

I don’t worry all that much about what The Pope says from day to day.  But when this pope speaks, journalists tout the latest liberalization with cheers.

Damon Linker (great name for an online writer,eh?) asks what’s up with The Pope:

“There he goes again.”

That’s what some of my Catholic friends have taken to saying every time Pope Francis makes a statement — usually off the cuff in a public forum — that appears to break from or raise significant, perplexing questions about some aspect of church teaching.

Such declamations are becoming more frequent.

Less than two weeks ago, the pope stated that because the West is dominated by a “culture of the provisional,” the “great majority” of Catholic marriages are “null” — meaning nonexistent. They never happened. At the same time, Francis also observed that a great number of romantic relationships in which unmarried couples cohabitate display “a lot of fidelity,” which makes them “a real marriage.”

In sum: The pope appears to think that most marriages are not marriages and that many non-marriages are marriages.

The problem for non-Catholics is that folks will now say “even The Pope says…” and follow it up with some liberalizing statement of The Pontiff.  Linker seems to figure the Pope’s recent statements about Catholics apologizing to homosexuals is more ad libbing. He notes that the church still teaches that all homosexual  sex is a sin:

 Pope Francis’ suggestion of an apology to gays raises the question of whether he thinks it would be possible for the church to make such an expression of contrition while continuing to affirm and teach this view of homosexuality. I’m just going to go out on a limb and speculate that such an apology would not be especially well received in the gay community.

I put the word still in italics above, in part because you really never know where things are going.  Maybe on the next plane trip, Pope Francis will casually mention that sex with another man isn’t such a bad idea now and again, or that blasphemy is just another word for breaking new ground.

 

California Still Has Religious Schools?

California is taking steps to force religious schools to change their deeply held beliefs, or students will lose federal aid.  Once again, it is the people’s own money which is being used to blackmail.

From The Federalist:

California Bill Would Ultimately Erase Religious Schools

California Senate Bill 1146 (SB 1146), which is slated for a vote Tuesday, seeks to limit the religious exemptions from federal Title IX regulations that colleges and universities use for hiring instructors, teaching classes, and conducting student services in line with their faith. Under SB 1146, a college would be eligible for an exemption only for training pastors or theology teachers. – snip –

This threatens religious institutions ability to require that students attend daily or weekly chapel services, keep bathrooms and dormitories distinct according to sex, require students to complete theology classes, teach religious ideas in regular coursework, hold corporate prayer at events such as graduation, and so on. In other words, it threatens every practice that makes religious institutions distinct from secular institutions.

 

“The most troubling provision of this bill limits the religious liberty to integrate faith and learning throughout the educational experience,” said Dr. Kurt Krueger, president of Concordia University Irvine, in a letter about this bill. “The bill effectively eliminates the religious exemption under current law that allows Christian colleges and universities to operate in accordance with their beliefs, including the freedom to hire only Christian faculty and staff.

The Bill is SB 1146. More here.

The vote will be Thursday.  From Biola University:

 

UPDATE: June 27, 2016

The Assembly Judiciary Committee was scheduled to hear SB 1146 on June 28, but the bill was pulled today. The bill will be heard on Thursday, June 30. The time of the hearing has not been released.

If you are available to go to the State Capitol on June 30 to register your “oppose unless amended” position, please contact Brenda Velasco at pr@biola.edu.

God’s Masterpiece

From a recent visitor here, Johnathon Camac:

When you look at the canvas of your life, what do you see?

Maybe you see it riddled with mistakes. The lines might not be straight. Parts of the drawing have gone outside of the lines. The paper is torn, dirty. Stains splattered across the painting serve as a constant reminder of past mistakes [1]. People in the painting are blurry, once good friends have become un-recognisable.

No form of eraser or glue can fix the mess which you’ve created.

What would you give to start again? How much money would you pay to have your messy, torn up canvas turned into a masterpiece?

‘For we are God’s masterpiece.’ – Ephesians 2:9

We don’t become God’s masterpiece after we have fixed up the canvas of our life. Not God’s masterpiece once we’ve sorted out those messy lines and torn edges.  We are God’s masterpiece. Not in a few weeks, months or years. We already are.

His prized possession.

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Great insight and well written.  He has much, much more at this link.

Another Preacher Who Needs to Reread the New Testament

Before we begin:

 

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Luke 6:35

I don’t consider anyone my enemy.  I know some folks who I don’t like, but yes, I’d offer them help without expecting anything back.

Gay people are not my enemy.  They are fellow sinners.

NBCDFW.com (a north Texas TV station)

In Fort Worth on Sunday, dozens of LGBT activists and North Texas residents took to Jacksboro Highway to protest the controversial comments of a pastor of a small church.

Sansom Park Police, Fort Worth Police, Tarrant County Sheriff’s deputies, and even MedStar Ambulance service were present, in case the protest or any counter protest turned ugly or if anyone was overwhelmed by the heat.

Armed with signs, songs, and chants, the group expressed their displeasure with the hateful speech of a Stedfast Baptist Church Pastor Donnie Romero.

Pastor Romero said he agrees with Pastor Roger Jimenez, featured here.

“I agree 100-percent with Pastor Roger Jimenez,” Romero says in his sermon posted to YouTube. “These 50 sodomites are all perverts and pedophiles, they’re the scum of the Earth and the Earth is a better place now and I’ll take it a step further.”

Romero uses several gay slurs and then talks about those injured in the nightclub shooting. “I’ll pray to God like I did this morning, and I will again tonight, that God will finish the job that that man started,” Romero said. 

“That man,” I think is Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people for the crime of being in a gay nightclub.

What can we do? Two men who preach hate, but say they are with Christ. I say we pray for them.

I think I found my enemies.

Pope: Christians Must Seek Forgiveness for Mistreating the Gay Community

From Mediaite:

Pope Francis made a landmark statement while flying back to Rome from a visit to Armenia. He suggested that Christians should apologize to the gay community for mistreating them and seek forgiveness for treating them in such a way. The comment was made in reference to a question asking if the Pope agreed with comments made by German Cardinal Reinhard Marxsaying that the Catholic Church needed to apologize for the way it has treated gays and lesbians in the past.

These comments were made in the wake of the Orlando mass shooting at a gay nightclub, which The Holy Father had earlier condemned as “homicidal folly and senseless hatred.”

“We Christians have to apologise for so many things, not just for this (treatment of gay people), but we must ask for forgiveness. Not just apologise — forgiveness,” the Pope said, according to News24.

“The question is,” he continued, “if a person who has that condition, who has good will, and who looks for God, who are we to judge?”

Have they checked to make sure the Pope is Catholic?