Desire God's Will

Philippians 2:13

“For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” 

King James Version (KJV)

Somethings have become quite clear to me over the past several months.  The main lesson is this. Personal desires are worthless and should be shunned. The only desire a person should have is to do God's will. Following your heart is possibly the worst thing anyone can do. It leads to pain and general malaise. Don't follow your dreams. Don't follow the wishes of any mortal person. Don't try to please any mortal person just for the sake of gaining favor with them. These are all false premises and lead to a person wasting their life. I've been there. All of these things have become crystal clear to me over the past few months.

Mankind's purpose is to do God's will. Mankind's purpose is to please God. Even if something seems good and isn't specifically against anything in the Bible, if God isn't leading you, purge the desire from your life. The desire will bring nothing but pain. Your prayer should always be to have God lead you to do what pleases Him. If that isn't your prayer, stop wanting what you think is good for you and just continue to serve Him.

I've come to these conclusions after years of learning and seeking. The desires of my own heart have led to nothing but emptiness and waywardness. Only when I am doing God's will and serving other people in His name, have I been able to find freedom from the oppression of my own worthless desires. It is quite clear that I am not worthy of His love, yet the fact that Jesus came to save me shows that His love knows no bounds. Putting aside my desires has allowed me to focus on serving people for His glory. Rather than desiring any earthly outcome, just desire to do God's will. You will be tested, but shrug off the desires that creep in if they conflict with your service of others. To serve yourself, even if not specifically against any rule or commandment set forth in the Bible, will end in emptiness. No good comes from serving yourself. The only good that can come from our mortal lives is to serve as His ambassadors while we live.

Don't be afraid to invite someone to church, but make sure that you are inviting that person for their sake and not your own. Don't be afraid to pass out a Gospel tract for the sake of the other person's soul, not your own glory. Don't be afraid to be of service to someone in need, but only for their sake. Don't do anything that may result in your self being elevated at the expense of anyone else. I'm done caring for what happens to me in the future. As long as I focus on staying in His will, my future will be just fine. I desire God's will, not my own.

James 1:5King James Version (KJV)

5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

James 4:8King James Version (KJV)

8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.

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From Skeptic to Advocate

I've been debating with myself on what to write over the past week or so. I have multiple angles on how to approach the cultural battle we are in the midst of right now, but this idea has been coming to the forefront of my mind since I took the plunge into leading a homeschool class every Thursday.

Just over a year ago, I would have considered myself a homeschool skeptic. My eyes have been opened. The biggest eye opener has been my friends(not just one family, either) and their dedication to homeschooling. My pastor and his siblings were homeschooled. My friends, the Bontrager Family, have all been homeschooled and several other close friends I've met over the past year were also homeschooled. They are the reason for the break through on this subject for me.

Over the past 14 months, I've been heavily involved with politics(who, me?) and I've had a chance to interact with people from all walks and ways of life. The singular element that I've seen that makes the difference in a young person's life is the way they have been cared for and educated by their parents. Looking back on my education, public school did a decent job of teaching me to do math and to write and read. What it didn't do was prepare me for life after school. What it didn't do was instill in me values I now hold dear. What it didn't do was give me a grounding in the Bible. I've had to do all of these things on my own, and sometimes, I failed miserably. I don't blame my parents because homeschooling really wasn't even a thing people did when I was a child in Nebraska. In some states, it was illegal. In many states, it is still frowned upon. Luckily, here in Iowa, many people celebrate homeschoolers. 

Here's where I'm going with this. The Bible says this in Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.  The more a parent can instill the ways a child should go from an early age, the less likely our society is to be filled with people like we have now, so uninformed/misinformed/ignorant(sometimes willfully so), they can't make decent decisions in areas of great importance. Nobody knows a child better than that child's own parents. Each child can be brought along at a pace suited for that specific child. Most public schools teach to the mushy middle. The kids who could excel are held back and the kids who need a lot of personal help are left behind. This is hurting so many children.

Not to discount everything else I've said above, but the main reason I see to take your kids out of public school is this; public schools teach things that are harmful to children. Secular humanism is now the default religion of the government school. Students are taught that the only absolute is that there is no absolute truth. Everything is gray. Nothing really matters except for how something makes them feel. This is killing our nation.   

Most public school kids, even with highly involved parents, will be fed a steady diet of secular thought and no respect will be given to a child's spiritual well being or to that same child's parents' wishes to have them brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Public school is incompatible with raising godly children. Do some godly Christian people make it out of public schools, yes. Is this the norm, most definitely not. In a study, released last year, the Pew Research Center found that 25% of people born after 1980 have no belief in God. This number is more than double the amount for any previous generation. It is no coincidence that public schools have been consistently moving toward outright hostility to those who believe in Biblical truth. 

The biggest over reach from the progressives running our government run indoctrination education systems has to be the new catch all for all things progressive and anti God: Common Core. The phrase is nebulous but it really just means a whole curriculum centered on making little progressive automatons, suitable for work in factories and service jobs. After much research, I found a piece that sums it up succinctly. 

  It’s easy to see Common Core appeals to those anal-retentive types who cannot function unless U.S. education has some sort of all-encompassing organizing principle.

But there’s more. Common Core supporters will admit that several states had better curriculum requirements than Common Core. Then they typically say it’s still better for those states to have lowered their expectations to Common Core’s level, because that way we have more curricular unity. That’s what the Fordham Institute’s Mike Petrilli told Indiana legislators when he came to our state to explain why, even though Fordham graded Indiana’s former curriculum requirements higher than Common Core, Indiana should remain a step below its previous level. One main reason was that we’d be able to use all the curriculum and lesson plans other teachers in other states were tailoring (to lower academic expectations, natch). Yay, we get to be worse than we were, but it’s okay, because now we’re the same as everyone else!

Tech companies are uber excited about Common Core because it facilitates a nationwide market for their products. Basically every other education vendor feels the same way, except those who already had nationwide markets because they accessed pockets of the population not subject to mind-numbing state regulations such as home and private schools. But the diversity of the unregulated private market far, far outstrips that of the Common Core market. There are, you know, actual niches, and education styles, and varying philosophies, rather than a flood of companies all trying to package the same product differently. The variety is one of substance, not just branding. In other words, it’s true diversity, not fake diversity.

What would you rather have: Fake freedom, where others choose your end goal and end product, but lets you decide some things about how to achieve someone else’s vision for education, which by the way has to be the same for everyone everywhere; or genuine freedom, where you both pick your goals and how to achieve them, and you’re the one responsible for the results? Whoops, that’s a trick question, moms and dads. In education, no one can pick the latter, because our overlords have already picked for us. Common Core or the door, baby.

The even greater impact for future generations is this; homeschoolers grow up with a healthy skepticism of government and a greater reliance on family and the Church. We must start to push back at big government. I see homeschooling as the primary way to remove government influence from the life of the American family. We must remove government from as many aspects of daily life as possible. When government doesn't matter, they stop being able to control us. When government doesn't matter, people will actually take care of their neighbor. When government doesn't matter, businesses will flourish.When government doesn't matter, the United States of America will be made great again(to borrow a misused phrase). Government must never be the solution. People must provide that solution or be prepared to fight a tyrannical government at a later date.

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The Fall of a Church

I grew up in a church family in Nebraska. Little did I know that the denomination that I called home for almost 30 years would decide that politics and political correctness would be a higher calling than teaching the Gospel and proclaiming its Good News. I was a member of a Presbyterian Church(USA). I am no longer involved with this denomination and I am searching for a new church. They have lost their way and have turned their back on God and the Bible.

The first transgression of the PC(USA) is their redefining of marriage to that of a union between two people rather than the Biblical definition of marriage. The Bible tells us this in Paul's letter to the Romans, Chapter 1:

22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:

25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;

29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers...

King James Version(public domain)

Paul's letter to the Romans spells out what God expects out of us. We are not to judge an individual person and Romans 8 tells us we are not to condemn any one person ourselves. God is the only one to judge us at the end. We are to judge sin, however, so that we will not repeat it ourselves. When the PC(USA) turns their back on this aspect of Biblical teaching, they turn their back on God. The Old Testament tells us that men and women were designed for each other and that any other relationship is outside of God's master plan. Why does this so-called church redefine what has been for eternity?Acting outside of God's plan only serves to destroy this once strong denomination. 

The second transgression of the PC(USA) is the General Assembly's choice to turn their back on Israel. They have chosen to divest themselves of all ties to Israel. Israel protects Christians in the Holy Land. With the rise of the Islamic State, Israel is more needed in the region that ever before. They are the only just and moral society in the Middle East. The PC(USA) shows a very sick view and has chosen to take the side of a religion that stones women and kills gays over the only state where Jews, Christians and Muslims live together in relative harmony in the Middle East. This is disgusting and should be shouted from the mountain tops. 

I urge all God fearing and Bible believing members of PC(USA) churches to break away and find a new church home or in the old Presbyterian way, vote for your church to dissolve all bonds with Louisville and the General Assembly. There are several other sects of the church that still hold true to the Bible and God's plan. Do so for the soul of each and every church. 

The Presbyterian Church(USA) has chosen apostasy over righteousness. Christians should not follow. Those that do follow this broken path should no longer be called believers. I pray for the the Church as Christ's body. The PC(USA) is trying to break that body. I will not be a party to such a disturbing time in the life of His Church.