"A Breath of Fresh Air"

I have come very close to total despair as I watched the machinations and posturings of the various political candidates for President. The amount of money they are spending (more than one-quarter billion dollars) is obscene when you consider the good for which the money could be used. And they want to tell us how to lead this great country. Kansas State University, for example, could use some of that money to simply maintain the structures they presently have.

But yesterday with the arrival of Governor Sarah Palin on the scene I again began to see hope. My daughter in Alaska has met this women on a professional level and has told me about the work Gov. Palin has done to remove corruption from the Alaskan government. She is a highly respected person and an outstanding parent and wife. Her husband is hard-working and belongs to the Teamsters union. Of course the muck-raking Democrats will work to find something to discredit this fine lady. A pox be on their house for doing it!

My prayer would be that there more Sarah Palins appear on the scene and began the massive project of cleaning up the graft, pork-barrel spending, and corruption in our country. Alaska made a lot of money from oil this year and she put that money back in the pockets of the residents of Alaska. In Kansas we pay outrageous taxes while our politicians find new pet projects to spend them on. If I received a check from the state of Kansas I would assume a mistake had been made.

Finally, a breath of fresh air and a candidate I will be comfortable voting for!

Eric Liddell--champion of champions

Read Ben Witherington's blog for August on Eric Liddell. Pay special attention to the last paragraph in the blog that says, "Though what Michael Phelps accomplished at this Olympics will long redound to his glory, what Eric Liddle did both at the 1924 Olympics and throughout his life will redound to God's glory, and, as those bonny Scots would say, "that's more than a wee bit greater."

http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/

Alone with God—a life of prayer

Alone with God

I've seen the lightning flashing, I've heard the thunder roll.
I've felt sin's breakers dashing, which almost conquered my soul.
I've heard the voice of my Savior, bidding me still to fight on.
He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone!

Refrain

No, never alone, no never alone,
He promised never to leave me,
He'll claim me for His own;
No, never alone, no never alone.
He promised never to leave me,
Never to leave me alone.

The world's fierce winds are blowing, temptation sharp and keen.
I have a peace in knowing my Savior stands between—
He stands to shield me from danger when my friends are all gone.
He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone!

Refrain

When in affliction's valley I tread the road of care,
My Savior helps me carry the cross so heavy to bear;
Though all around me is darkness, earthly joys all flown;
My Savior whispers His promise, never to leave me alone!

Refrain

He died on Calvary's mountain, for me they piercèd His side.
For me He opened that fountain, the crimson, cleansing tide.
For me He waiteth in glory, seated upon His throne.
He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone!

RefrainWords:
Ludie D. Pickett, 1897. http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/n/e/neveralo.htm

I will confess that there are times in my life when I am alone and there have been times when I have been lonely. Being alone simply means that no one else is around. For a period of time you are in your own little world. Your thoughts are on that world and you can choose to focus on the beauty of a prairie flower or the movement of a dragonfly, the hummingbird who can hover for long periods of time. At such times we can get close to God because no noise, no television, no conversation, no computer beeps and whistles, interferes with our conversation with God.

Being lonely is when you feel that you have been abandoned, left alone, and a sense of no-one-really-cares.

Both being alone and being lonely can occur when there are all sorts of people around. The presence of people does not guarantee we will not feel we are alone.

For Christians it sometimes means that we must stand alone in the vast sea of evil that flows around us.

Prayer is one time when we can be alone with God. If we can be alone with God then there is no time when we will be lonely.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones once wrote: "Prayer is beyond any question the highest activity of the human soul. Man is at his greatest and highest when upon his knees he comes face to face with God"

 

No spiritual exercise is such a blending of complexity and simplicity. It is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try, yet the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high. It is as appropriate to the aged philosopher as to the little child. It is the ejaculation of a moment and the attitude of a lifetime. It is the expression of the rest of faith and of the fight of faith. It is an agony and an ecstasy. It is submissive and yet importunate. In the one moment it lays hold of God and binds the devil. It can be focused on a single objective and it can roam the world. It can be abject confession and rapt adoration. It invests puny man with a sort of omnipotence (Effective Prayer [Chicago: Moody, 1969], 7).

The essence of prayer

The ability to talk to God as you would to a beloved friend. But this is where many believers have trouble. Some people think you have use a prayer voice, one that sounds much more religious or holy, a Charleton Heston version of Moses. Some think that you have to use prayer language, language that will reach the heart of God better than other language. Some think you have to have the right theology, especially in your prayer requests, or God will not consider your prayers. Some think you have to be in the right position, on your knees, on your face, with your arms in the air. Others think they need to be prayer guardians and make sure everyone's prayers are only the prayers that should be offered.

Modern Jews do not use one biblical name for God—Yahweh. Sometime before the time of Jesus on earth, about 300 BC, the Jewish leaders decided that they could no longer pronounce the name of God. As with any name there was the risk of mispronunciation.

I cannot hear it myself, but when nine times out of ten when I give someone my name, it comes out to them Haddock. I have to carefully walk them through the name like you would a kindergartener. I think the fault is mine, but I have never been able to correct it.

The story is told of a young man who had trouble remembering names. So when he met someone he should know, he would say, "Now, do you spell that with an "I" or an "E"? That worked fine until one when the respondent said in an irritated fashion, "My name is HILL."

Every year I have to acquaint myself with a minimum of 100 new names of students. Ninety percent of the time I get it done correctly, but there will be those whose names I mispronounce and sometimes really butcher.

So the Jewish leaders concluded, "We dare not offend God by mispronouncing his name. "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain." Explanation—you can be in serious trouble if you mispronounce God's name, so the smart thing to do is not pronounce it at all.

Thus, when we place all kinds of requirements on how prayer ought to be done, we are doing the same thing to people the Jewish leaders did to their people. Needless to say all these phantom requirements causes some people to avoid prayer because they are afraid they will make an error and be eternally damned by God.

Meanwhile, back to the ranch. Prayer is our time of conversation with God. When we pray it should be as though we are talking to God like we would to a friend.

Why is prayer so hard for some people? We have to recognize that God has granted us great power through prayer and the enemy would like to disable us if at all possible. So the devil encourages us to:

Sleep

Watch TV

Enjoy personal pursuits

Read

Even read the Bible

Focus on good deeds

Anything that helps us avoid spending time in prayer

We often turn prayer into a task that we hate to do, but feel that it is necessary. Take cleaning house. We have two dogs and two cats, not counting human beings. We know that we can vacuum every day or even twice a day, but there is a sure guarantee that we will have to do it again the next day. We could clean for hours on one day and still need to vacuum again the next day. Why? Because dogs and cats have this wonderful ability to produce hair which they shed which goes everywhere and thus we need to clean every day. How exciting. "Hey, the vacuum cleaner picked up a pound of hair today. That was a little less than yesterday, but the record was set in January at 1 lb. 5 oz. I'm not sure we can beat that record."

I wear one of those pedometer gadgets to keep track of how far I walk. They tell us we need to walk 10,000 steps a day, which is about five miles. I am up to 7000, so I have a ways to go.

Is that our attitude toward prayer then? I have to put in so much time or else I will not be in good standing with God?

Instead look at it like visiting with a good friend. I have known of these conversations lasting for hours, yet we never really kept track of the time. We should be excited about our conversations with God. God is more than a good friend, but he allows us to treat him as a good friend.

I have a good relationship with the new president of MCC. Occasionally we will interact by e-mail and set a date when we will go somewhere, have a cup of coffee, and talk over various matters. He is still the president, my boss, but we are friends. I come to these events without any fear or trepidation. Rather, I know that he is concerned about me as well as my opinions. That is our relationship with God, but we don't have to use e-mail to make an appointment. All we need to do is pause in our driven, fast-paced lives, and say, "Here I am God. I came to talk to you today."

Prayer is not the place where we attempt to manipulate God into what we want. Here we take on the role of children. A child soon learns techniques by which he/she can manipulate parents. I see this in stores all the time. A child finds something he wants. Mother says No. And then the screaming begins, "You don't love me!" "Why can't I have what I want?" The good parent knows what is good for the child and so chooses not to give them what they think they want.

Finally, prayer is a barometer of our spiritual life. When we are alone with God we have to examine the person we really are.

Prayer is then according to Martyn Lloyd Jones:

It is the highest activity of the human soul, and therefore it is at the same time the ultimate test of a man's true spiritual condition. There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christian people so much as our prayer life. . . . Ultimately, therefore, a man discovers the real condition of his spiritual life when he examines himself in private, when he is alone with God. . . . And have we not all known what it is to find that, somehow, we have less to say to God when we are alone than when we are in the presence of others? It should not be so; but it often is. So that it is when we have left the realm of activities and outward dealings with other people, and are alone with God, that we really know where we stand in a spiritual sense (Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 2 vols. [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979], 2:45).

Thank you, Grandma Mary Clark

The end of an era

Today, August 19, I received an e-mail from an old family friend in Colorado. He wrote to tell me that Mary Clark, known to us as Grandma Clark, a Navajo, had passed away two weeks ago. This man and his brother collected her body at the funeral home and took Grandma Clark to Red Mesa Arizona where she would be buried. The young men's father had come to the Navajo Reservation in the 1960s and wanted to build a home on the Reservation. It was necessary to have tribal permission for such a move and such decisions often took several months. A long process of consensus had to take place. Everyone in the area would have opportunity to express how he or she felt about the decision. At the end of the process, the matriarch of the area, Mary Clark, announced the decision that the family could come to the Reservation.

In my home today I have pictures taken of Mary Clark back in the sixties. She was old then, but according to the records of the Cavalry, she must have been around 102 years of age when she died. Mary Clark never became a believer nor did any of her extended family even though they had contact with missionaries and Christian workers for fifty years. Mary Clark is one of those people whom God chose to accomplish his will but who never came to a saving relationship with the true and living God. Hundreds of Navajos came to Christ because of Mary Clark's decision.

I remember on one occasion that Mary Clark had been bitten by a dog. A missionary who had been a medic in Viet Nam offered to sew up the cut. He broke his needles on her leather-like skin. She screamed in pain when he tried to push the needles through. Eventually he had to take a pair of pliers to get the needle through. When the process was over Mary Clark thanked the young man.

Growing up Mary Clark experienced a very rigorous life. Her father had lived through the attacks of the U. S. Cavalry. Kit Carson came to the Navajo Reservation and massacred hundreds of Navajos. Thus whenever I hear of the great things Kit Carson did, I want to spit in disgust. Mary and her siblings had to run several miles through the snow, jump in an ice-covered pond and then run back to the Hogan while being soaking wet. Her father believed that the Navajos would only survive if they were tough.

As was done all over the United States the Native Americans were driven off their lands so that we good white folk could have the land and the wealth that it possessed. But the government decided that the desert land on which the Navajos lived was worthless. So the Navajos were allowed to keep their homeland.

Today oil, gas, coal, and uranium have been discovered. The wealth was not given directly to the people. Instead it was put into schools, roads, and scholarships for college. This wise use of the money helped the Navajos to be a prosperous people while other Native American tribes were facing serious crises. I felt a special thrill when I saw a huge LeTourneau earthmover being driven by a Navajo. He was in an air-conditioned cab and was hauling coal out of an open pit to fuel an electric power plant. The earthmover had electric wheels that received their power from a generator driven by a huge diesel engine.

Mary Clark lived to see all these changes. Many of the old ways that were good have probably passed away.

The Russians are at it again

On the seventeenth of August, 1960, Francis Gary Powers was convicted of espionage when his U-2 plane was shot out of the sky by a Russian missile. Here is the story from Encyclopedia Britannica.

(1960), confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that began with the shooting down of a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance plane over the Soviet Union and that caused the collapse of a summit conference in Paris between the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France.

On May 5 the Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev told the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. that an American spy plane had been shot down on May 1 over Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), referring to the flight as an "aggressive act" by the United States.

On May 7 he revealed that the pilot of the plane, Francis Gary Powers, had parachuted to safety, was alive and well in Moscow, and had testified that he had taken off from Peshāwar, in Pakistan, with the mission of flying across the Soviet Union over the Aral Sea and via Sverdlovsk, Kirov, Arkhangelsk, and Murmansk to Bodö military airfield in Norway, collecting intelligence information en route. Powers admitted working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

On May 7 the United States stated that there had been no authorization for any such flight as Khrushchev had described, although a U-2 probably had flown over Soviet territory. The Soviet Union refused to accept that the U.S. government had had no knowledge of the flights and on May 13 sent protest notes to Turkey, Pakistan, and Norway, which in turn protested to the United States, seeking assurances that no U.S. aircraft would be allowed to use their territories for unauthorized purposes. On May 16 in Paris Khrushchev declared that the Soviet Union could not take part in the summit talks unless the U.S. government immediately stopped flights over Soviet territory, apologized for those already made, and punished the persons responsible. The response of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, promising to suspend all such flights during the remainder of his presidency, did not satisfy the Soviet Union, and the conference was adjourned on May 17.

Francis Gary Powers was tried (August 17–19) and sentenced to 10 years' confinement, but he was exchanged for the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel on Feb. 10, 1962.

Those of us who remember those days recall the tension in the world between the United States and the USSR. Everyone was aware that one mistake could result in a world-wide apocalyptic conflagration that would truly bring the world to an end. Enough atom bombs had been produced to destroy the entire earth 25 times. The story of Powers demonstrates the extent the spy agencies went to in an effort to learn what the other side was doing.

We are facing a new showdown with the Russian bear. The affair in Georgia is just a testing of the waters. Several spoke up for the Georgians, but no one stepped forward to actually stand in defense of the Georgians. There is now a strong likelihood the Russians will invade Poland. WOW! Déjà vu. What will do then? Will we capitulate like Chamberlain did at the beginning of World War 2 and believe that the Russians have good intentions? It is my own belief that the Russians have been preparing for this for years under the radar and now they are ready to make test runs.

We may again wonder why no one listened to a wise military prophet named George Patton who said at the end of World War 2 that we needed to move into Russia and take care of that problem. Fortunately he died before he saw his prophecy come true.

British Proposal to take over America

This is a tongue-in-cheek sort of thing that only the British can come up with. Take time to go to Ben Witherington's blog and read it. For you theology types, this is a good blog to have on your list.

http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/

Fall is coming

About this time of year the spiders begin to weave their webs in earnest. This web is connected to a pine tree and then 12 feet away to a bush. How the spider made the trip is unknown. A brief gust of wind? flying? But the web is about 18 inches across. "Fearfully and wonderfully made."

More on Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn certainly was a Jeremiah in our own times. The shocking thing is that his predictions are coming true. Although Solzhenitsyn and Francis Schaeffer never met, they were men of kindred minds who saw what was coming. The unfortunate part is that what they saw was not beautiful. Take time to read the following article from Christianity Today.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/august/18.64.html

Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart

Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart, Atria Books, 2007 (Book 15)

Jodi Picoult is an excellent writer. I have not read all fifteen of her books, but the ones I have read have been excellent. Gripping would be another descriptive phrase for her work. Her quick change of pace keeps the reader on his/her toes to the very end of the book.

Ms. Picoult has a serious interest in people in jail and what they go through. On her webpage she notes how she has visited Death Rows where she interviewed wardens and inmates. As you read her book you can see the first hand information coming through. The latest book is Change of Heart.

The following description is found on the author's webpage for Change of Heart.

"Shay Bourne - New Hampshire's first death row prisoner in 69 years – has only one last request: to donate his heart post-execution to the sister of his victim, who is looking for a transplant. Bourne says it's the only way he can redeem himself…but with lethal injection as his form of execution, this is medically impossible. Enter Father Michael Wright, a young local priest. Called in as Shay's spiritual advisor, he knows redemption has nothing to do with organ donation – and plans to convince Bourne. But then Bourne begins to perform miracles at the prison that are witnessed by officers, fellow inmates, and even Father Michael – and the media begins to call him a messiah. Could an unkempt, bipolar, convicted murderer be a savior? It seems highly unlikely, to the priest. Until he realizes that the things Shay says may not come from the Bible…but are, verbatim, from a gospel that the early Christian church rejected two thousand years ago…and that is still considered heresy."

A none too subtle agenda present in this book is an open attack on the death penalty. Ms. Picoult is among the many who feel that regardless of the crime, no one should be executed. The anti-hero in Change of Heart is a person of questionable mental stability who molested a little girl, killed the girl and her father, a policeman. The crime was considered so heinous that the jury awarded Shay Bourne, the convicted killer the death penalty. As the story progresses he has been on death row for 10 or more years waiting for the judicial process to work through its procedures. But now all avenues of hope are gone and Shay does not want to live any longer. If you want more of the details of the story, read the book. It will be worth your time.

I wish to deal with the hidden agendas found in the book. The first is the failure of organized religion. As usual the target is the Roman Catholic Church. I do not approve of the abuses the Roman Catholics have committed, but I question why they should be the media's whipping boy. We have a media frenzy like a pool full of piranhas attacking the Roman Catholics. Ms. Picoult shows the Church as insensitive and unconcerned about people like Shay Bourne except for one renegade priest. How he became a priest is an interesting part of the warp and woof of the book.

Likewise there is an attack on conservative Judaism where a Jewish rabbi is portrayed as being out of touch with reality because of his religion.

With a little less subtlety Ms. Picoult takes up the banner of Gnosticism using the same arguments as were used by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code. At least Ms. Picoult did not make a claim at the beginning of her book that this was undeniable truth.

The church is portrayed as hiding or destroyed many of the gospels and other writings that did not agree with their position. At Nag Hammadi, a number of Gnostic gospels were found that date from AD 145, just 50 years after the Book of Revelation was finished. Of special interest is the Gospel of Thomas, which somehow Shay Bourne has incorporated into his life, but no one knows how. It is assumed that this gospel is just as accurate as the four traditional Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. One of the characters of the book is challenged because Shay Bourne is found expressing ideas out of the Gospel of Thomas. How could that be, since he never read the book? Is he the Messiah returned in the body of a common criminal condemned to die?

Ms. Picoult addresses the Jewish position on the Messiah. First, every age has a potential Messiah. Jesus was the potential Messiah for his age, but he failed to accomplish the task. What is the task? Simple. Elevate Israel to a world empire status whereby they will conquer the whole world in the fashion of David in the Old Testament. Certainly this attitude prevailed when Jesus walked the earth. John the Baptist was looking for this sort of Messiah. Jesus' own disciples were looking for this. Note James and John asking for positions of honor when Jesus came in his kingdom. Note Judas who betrayed him. I believe Judas betrayed Jesus because he believed that when Jesus was backed into a corner, he would strike with his God-power, strike the Jewish hierarchy and Romans alike and then the kingdom of which every one dreamed would come in.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn—December 11, 1918-August 3, 2008

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

One of the greatest writers from Russia in modern times is Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Go to the web links below and read about this remarkable man's career. His books are weighty, not easy reading, but he was a man of highest moral integrity and saw the necessity for the world to operate at the same level.

When he came to the United States as an exile from Mother Russia in 1974 he was instantly hailed as a hero. But when he began to speak out against the corruption he saw in America he soon lost his hero status. It was acceptable for him to denounce the Evil Russia, but not saintly America. Unfortunately this man was on target in regard to the corruption of the West. Only a fool will look at history and suggest that we are not preparing for our own self-destruction from within. Solzhenitsyn with keen vision saw where we are going. He spoke out like the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, who in like fashion were ignored.

I personally thank God for raising up this man whose brave pen earned him the Nobel Peace Prize and exile, but who was willing to sacrifice everything for the truth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2276650.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7540038.stm