Bible Protection Quotes

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.

Lieutenant Chatrand: I don’t understand this omnipotent-benevolent thing. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: You are confused because the Bible describes God as an omnipotent and benevolent deity. Lieutenant Chatrand: Exactly. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Omnipotent-benevolent simply means that God is all-powerful and well-meaning. Lieutenant Chatrand: I understand the concept. It’s just... there seems to be a contradiction. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Yes. The contradiction is pain. Man’s starvation, war, sickness... Lieutenant Chatrand: Exactly! Terrible things happen in this world. Human tragedy seems like proof that God could not possibly be both all-powerful and well-meaning. If He loves us and has the power to change our situation, He would prevent our pain, wouldn’t he? Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Would He? Lieutenant Chatrand: Well... if God Loves us, and He can protect us, He would have to. It seems He is either omnipotent and uncaring, or benevolent and powerless to help. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Do you have children? Lieutenant Chatrand: No, signore. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Imagine you had an eight-year-old son... would you love him? Lieutenant Chatrand: Of course. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Would you let him skateboard? Lieutenant Chatrand: Yeah, I guess. Sure I’d let him skateboard, but I’d tell him to be careful. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: So as this child’s father, you would give him some basic, good advice and then let him go off and make his own mistakes? Lieutenant Chatrand: I wouldn’t run behind him and mollycoddle him if that’s what you mean. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: But what if he fell and skinned his knee? Lieutenant Chatrand: He would learn to be more careful. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: So although you have the power to interfere and prevent your child’s pain, you would choose to show you love by letting him learn his own lessons? Lieutenant Chatrand: Of course. Pain is part of growing up. It’s how we learn. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Exactly.

But Anatole said suddenly, 'Don't expect God's protection in places beyond God's dominion. It will only make you feel punished. I'm warning you. When things go bad, you will blame yourself.' 'What are you telling me?' 'I am telling you what I'm telling you. Don't try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you are good, bad things can still happen. And if you are bad, you can still be lucky.

Trigger warnings aren't meant for those of us who don't believe in them, just like the Bible wasn't written for atheists. Trigger warnings are designed for the people who need and believe in that safety. Those of us who do not believe should have little say in the matter. We can neither presume nor judge what others might feel the need to be protected from.

What I noticed at Grace-Calvary is the same thing I notice whenever people aim to solve their conflicts with one another by turning to the Bible: defending the dried ink marks on the page becomes more vital than defending the neighbor. As a general rule, I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God. In the words of Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas, 'People of the Book risk putting the book above people.

We no longer need fur for warmth and protection. There are plenty of textiles that provide that today. It's pure whim and vanity to choose to wear fur. It shows a level of ignorance or lack of concern that reflects poorly on the wearer.

Now, this is what the Lord says, "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

It sounds really spiritual to say God is interested in a relationship, not in rules. But it's not biblical. From top to bottom, the Bible is full of commands. They aren't meant to stifle a relationship with God, but to protect it, seal it, and define it. Never forget: first God delivered the Israelites from Egypt, then He gave them the law. God's people were not redeemed by observing the law. But they were redeemed so that they might obey the law.

The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.

You know the story in the Bible?', Jacob asked suddenly, still reading the blank ceiling. 'The one with the king and the two women fighting over the baby?' 'Sure. King Solomon.' 'That's right. King Solomon.' he repeated. 'And he said, cut the kid in half... but it was only a test. Just to see who would give-up their share to protect it.' 'Yeah. I remember.' He looked back at my face. 'I'm not going to cut you in half anymore, Bella.

He saw no sign of their Bible, either. If the Lord had failed to protect even the book of his own Word, this proved to Grainier that here had come a fire stronger than God.

The wrath of God is never an evil wrath. God gets angry because he loves people like a mother would love her child if someone were to harm it. There is something wrong if the mother never gets angry; it is safe to say that that is the unloving mother.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

I know my rightful place as a child of God; I am blessed and highly favoured. I am protected and delivered from every evil. I am redeem and set free from all bondages in Jesus Name.

The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave. All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the auto da fe, and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and punishing blasphemy -- making it a crime to give your honest ideas about the Bible, or to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men. An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures. Certainly he ought not so to act that laws become necessary to keep him from being laughed at. No one thinks of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the threat of fine and imprisonment. It strikes me that God might write a book that would not necessarily excite the laughter of his children. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that a real God could produce a work that would excite the admiration of mankind.

In the spiritual life, the opposite of fear is not courage, but trust. Branch out. Not only do our beliefs define us, but so does the community of like-minded people who share those beliefs. Christian traditions, denominations, and congregations provide a group identity. We are social animals, so we should not judge our spiritual groups, or those of others, as necessarily a problem. Only when our communities become the defining element of our spiritual lives, packs that protect those boundaries at all costs, do problems begin. That leads to isolation, “us versus them” thinking, and the illusion that “we” are basically right about the Bible and God and “they” aren’t—the kind of wall-building that Jesus and Paul criticized. So much can be learned from

One more, final question came from the audience on my last night in Newtown, and it was the one I most did not want to hear: “Will God protect my child?” I stayed silent for what seemed like minutes. More than anything I wanted to answer with authority, “Yes! Of course God will protect you. Let me read you some promises from the Bible.” I knew, though, that behind me on the same platform twenty-six candles were flickering in memory of victims, proof that we have no immunity from the effects of a broken planet. My mind raced back to Japan, where I heard from parents who had lost their children to a tsunami in a middle school, and forward to that very morning when I heard from parents who had lost theirs to a shooter in an elementary school. At last I said, “No, I’m sorry, I can’t promise that.” None of us is exempt. We all die, some old, some tragically young. God provides support and solidarity, yes, but not protection—at least not the kind of protection we desperately long for. On this cursed planet, even God suffered the loss of a Son.

It sounds really spiritual to say God is interested in a relationship, not in rules. But it’s not biblical. From top to bottom the Bible is full of commands. They aren’t meant to stifle a relationship with God, but to protect it, seal it, and define it.

God has protected his anointed. And the wrath of Purgatory is certainly coming for those who run and are in need of its cleansing fire. You can run, but you can't hide. ~Father Abraham

I think of Krishna and his deep blue eyes. It is said, in the hidden scriptures in India, that to focus on the eyes of the Lord is the highest spiritual practice a human being can proform. It's suppose to be equal to the greatest act of charity, which Jesus describes in the Bible as sacrificing one's life to save the life of another. The Vedas, the Bible, it's true, they overlap a lot. Maybe gazing into Krishna's eyes... Pain...Pain...Pain... Is equal to Christ's sacrifice. I'm only suffering this pain to protect John. It doesn't matter that he won't see me. I still love him, I will always love him. And in this exquisitely agonizing moment, I realize he refused to see me because he wanted to force me to see him inside. Ah, that's the key! This practice of visualizing that I'm staring into Krishna's blue eyes, I've done it before. But this is the first time I see him staring back at me! The Agony comes, and it does not get transformed into bliss. If anything it is worse than before. Except for one thing. The pain does not obliterate my sense of "I." I'm still Sita, the last vampire.

You know the story in the bible? The one with the king and the two women fighting over the baby? Sure King Solomon. That's right, king solomon he said,  cut the kid in half... but it was only a test. Just to see who would give up their share to protect it... Well, I'm not going to cut you in half anymore. He was telling me that he loved me the most, that his surrender proved it.

Bible literacy matters because it protects us from falling into error. Both the false teacher and the secular humanist rely on biblical ignorance for their messages to take root, and the modern church has proven fertile ground for those messages. Because we do not know our Bibles, we crumble at the most basic challenges to our worldview. Disillusionment and apathy eat away at our ranks. Women, in particular, are leaving the church in unprecedented numbers.1

You are despicable and such cowards that you won't even share your dead bodies with the Earth, but put them inside wooden and metal coffins to "protect" them. From what?

They say love is eternal...They say love is enduring. It always protects,always trust,always hopes,always perseveres.Love never fails...It is one of my favorite passages in the bible...There is a quality about that kind of love that transcends our mortal understanding.

We must experience Heaven on earth; May your homes, surroundings and work places portray a safe clean environment.

Do not expect God's protection in places beyond God's dominion. It will only make you feel punished. I'm warning you. When things go badly, you will blame yourself.

Holding a worn Bible, he read from Paul's letter to the Corinthians about the true nature of love - what it is, and what it is not. It is not boastful, not proud, not self-seeking, not easily angered. It does not hold a grudge. It is patient and kind. It protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres, and never fails, even when we turn away from it. Love believes, and believes, and believes, even when it has been disappointed, and wounded, and thwarted by the weaknesses of the human soul.

dan brown\The televangelist began quoting verses from the Bible describing hierarchy of angels, demons, and spirits that ruled in heaven and hell. "Protect your souls from evil forces!" He warned them. "Lift your hearts in prayer! God and his angels will hear you!" He's right, Mal'akh knew. But so will the demons.

Our Lord has sovereignly ordained that our refining process take place as we go through difficulties, not around them. The Bible is filled with examples of those who overcame as they passed through the desert, the Red Sea, the fiery furnace and ultimately the cross. God doesn’t protect Christians from their problems — he helps them walk victoriously through their problems.”4

Brother Lemon and Abby looked at each other, eyes gleaming in the shadows, and then he stood up. Rummaging in one of his duffle bags, he pulled out an athletic cup and slid it down the front of his pants. He caught Abby staring. "First place they go for," he explained. He adjusted himself and picked up a well worn bible.

It is not fashionable to quote Stalin but he said once, "half a million liquidated is a statistic, but one man killed in a traffic accident is a national tragedy." He was laughing, you see, at the bourgeois sensitivities of the mass. He was a cynic. But what he meant is still true: a movement which protects itself against counter-revolution can hardly stop at the exploitation - or the elimination, Leamas - of a few individuals. It is all one, we have never pretended to be wholly just in the process of rationalising society. Some Roman said it, didn't he, in the Christian Bible - it is expedient that one man should die for the benefit of many.

When the LORD leaves us to captain our lives, giving us over to our reprobate mind, it is a clear sign of judgment. No more can we witness the protective hand of the LORD. All that we should remember is that we have unquenchable wrath ready to consume our being. The LORD is a gentle shepherd, at the same time, He is also the worst enemy.

But let all who take refuge in you rejoice;         let them ever sing for joy,     and spread your protection over them,         that those who love your name may exult in you.

Cynicism dressed like a security guard, making me believe that if I hoped for less, it would protect me and prevent more pain.

If the blood of Christ be sprinkled upon our consciences, it will be our protection from the wrath of God, the curse of the law, and the damnation of hell, Rom. 8:1.

God is in control of all events and is able to protect and provide for you His child.

Two great prayers; Yahweh, grant me grace for my daily activities. Yahweh, protect me from all evil, so that my life will be free of pain in Jesus name. Amen!

but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.

When you get what you want that is God's direction. When you don't get what you want that is God's protection.

He saw no sign of their Bible, either. If the Lord had failed to protect even the book of his own Word, this proved to Granier that here had come a fire stronger than God.

melanin absorbs and reflects ultraviolet light and provides protection from the sun, melanocytes also respond to biological, physical, and chemical stimuli and are part of the immune system.

It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects—education, building, missions, holding services. Just as it is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects—military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden—that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.

The noted Bible commentator Matthew Henry wrote: “She was not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.” Paul wrote that “the woman is the glory of man” (1 Cor. 11:7 NIV), for if man is the head (1 Cor. 11:1–16; Eph. 5:22–33), then woman is the crown that honors the head.

One can easily say that when God’s Word is heeded and obeyed, it has protective value. It protects us from evil thoughts and behaviors and helps shape our moral boundaries so that we know how to live a life that pleases God.

He is our Redeemer, Deliverer, Reconciler, Mediator, Intercessor, Advocate, Attorney, Solicitor, our Hope, Comfort, Shield, Protection, Defender, Strength, Health, Satisfaction and Salvation. His blood, his death, all that he ever did, is ours. And Christ himself, with all that he is or can do, is ours. . . . And God (as great as he is) is mine, with all that he hath, through Christ and his purchasing. —William Tyndale, A Pathway into the Holy Scripture

Anyone who buys and article of clothing for a purpose other than covering his body and protecting it from the elements is guilty of pride. Satanists often encounter scoffers who maintain that labels are not necessary. It must be pointed out to these destroyers of labels that one or many articles they themselves are wearing are not necessary to keep them warm. There is not a person on this earth who is completely devoid of ornamentation. The Satanist points out that any ornamentation of the scoffer's body shows that he, too, is guilty of pride. Regardless of how verbose the cynic may be in his intellectual description of how free he is, he is still wearing the elements of pride.

The Loneliness of the Military Historian Confess: it's my profession that alarms you. This is why few people ask me to dinner, though Lord knows I don't go out of my way to be scary. I wear dresses of sensible cut and unalarming shades of beige, I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser's: no prophetess mane of mine, complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters. If I roll my eyes and mutter, if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene, I do it in private and nobody sees but the bathroom mirror. In general I might agree with you: women should not contemplate war, should not weigh tactics impartially, or evade the word enemy, or view both sides and denounce nothing. Women should march for peace, or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery, spit themselves on bayonets to protect their babies, whose skulls will be split anyway, or,having been raped repeatedly, hang themselves with their own hair. There are the functions that inspire general comfort. That, and the knitting of socks for the troops and a sort of moral cheerleading. Also: mourning the dead. Sons,lovers and so forth. All the killed children. Instead of this, I tell what I hope will pass as truth. A blunt thing, not lovely. The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner, though I am good at what I do. My trade is courage and atrocities. I look at them and do not condemn. I write things down the way they happened, as near as can be remembered. I don't ask why, because it is mostly the same. Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win. In my dreams there is glamour. The Vikings leave their fields each year for a few months of killing and plunder, much as the boys go hunting. In real life they were farmers. The come back loaded with splendour. The Arabs ride against Crusaders with scimitars that could sever silk in the air. A swift cut to the horse's neck and a hunk of armour crashes down like a tower. Fire against metal. A poet might say: romance against banality. When awake, I know better. Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters, or none that could be finally buried. Finish one off, and circumstances and the radio create another. Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently to God all night and meant it, and been slaughtered anyway. Brutality wins frequently, and large outcomes have turned on the invention of a mechanical device, viz. radar. True, valour sometimes counts for something, as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right - though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition, is decided by the winner. Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades and burst like paper bags of guts to save their comrades. I can admire that. But rats and cholera have won many wars. Those, and potatoes, or the absence of them. It's no use pinning all those medals across the chests of the dead. Impressive, but I know too much. Grand exploits merely depress me. In the interests of research I have walked on many battlefields that once were liquid with pulped men's bodies and spangled with exploded shells and splayed bone. All of them have been green again by the time I got there. Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day. Sad marble angels brood like hens over the grassy nests where nothing hatches. (The angels could just as well be described as vulgar or pitiless, depending on camera angle.) The word glory figures a lot on gateways. Of course I pick a flower or two from each, and press it in the hotel Bible for a souvenir. I'm just as human as you. But it's no use asking me for a final statement. As I say, I deal in tactics. Also statistics: for every year of peace there have been four hundred years of war.

Those years of anger weren’t just directed inward and towards others, I was also angry with God. As a kid, when I sang songs in the children’s choir and memorized verses in bible study, I was told there was a God who loved and protected us. He was a jealous God and could be angered, yes, but He always showed grace and mercy towards His people. I must not have been one of His people. He never protected me. As a matter of fact, I remember crying and pleading to God to make it stop when I was in DC being raped at five years old. I thought he heard my prayers when I moved to New Jersey. But when the abuse became worse and more frequent, it was easy for me to conclude God’s protection didn’t apply to me.

During all those years of struggle and heartache, my mother never worried. She took all her troubles to God in prayer. Every night before we went to bed, Mother would read a chapter from the Bible; frequently Mother or Father would read these comforting words of Jesus: “In my Father’s house are many mansions…. I go to prepare a place for you … that where I am, there ye may be also.” Then we all knelt down before our chairs in that lonely Missouri farmhouse and prayed for God’s love and protection. When William James was professor of philosophy at Harvard, he said, “Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith.” You don’t have to go to Harvard to discover that. My mother found that out on a Missouri farm.

Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name. 15 When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them. 16 With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.

The LORD says, “I will rescue those who love me. I will protect those who trust in my name. When they call on me, I will answer; I will be with them in trouble. I will rescue and honor them. I will reward them with a long life and give them my salvation.

Clearly, it is not simply exegesis that determines how we read the Bible; rather, it is our vested interests, our hopes, and our fears that largely determine our reading. And because the reach of the gracious God of the Bible is toward the other, we ought rightly to be skeptical and suspicious of any reading of the Bible that excludes the other, because it is likely to be informed by vested interest, fears, and hopes that serve self-protection and end in self-destruction. Palestinians’ and Israelis’ fear of the other, said to be grounded in the Bible, has been transposed into a military apparatus that is aimed at the elimination of the other. It is wholly illusionary to imagine that such an agenda is congruent with the God of the Bible who is commonly confessed by Jews and Christians.

The best way I have learned over the years to be still is to dive into the pages of my Bible. Immersing myself in God’s Word provides protection. It snaps my heart back to attention and helps me to run to him for rescue rather than try to fix things on my own. Psalm

Biblical scholars, for example, are almost solely devoted to maintaining the cultural significance of the Bible not because any knowledge it provides is relevant to our world but because of the self-serving drive to protect the power position of the biblical studies profession.

Good people pass away;        the godly often die before their time.        But no one seems to care or wonder why.   No one seems to understand        that God is protecting them from the evil to come. 2 For those who follow godly paths        will rest in peace when they die.

For Isaac’s protection he had a blue Turkish evil eye and a painted tin hand of Fatima hanging from the bedpost; a candle was always lit on his chest of drawers, next to Hebrew and Christian Bibles and a jar of holy water that one of the domestic staff had brought from the Shrine of Saint Jude.

LORD is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us. Only do not rebel against the LORD. And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will devour them. Their protection is gone, but the LORD is with us. Do not be afraid of them.

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

As long as I am inside the gospel, I experience all the protection I need from the powers of evil that rage against me. It is for this reason that the Bible tells me to “take up”10 and “put on”11 the whole armor of God; and the pieces of armor it tells me to put on are all merely synonyms for the gospel. Translated literally from the Greek, they are: “. . . the salvation . . . the

The richest and greatest fulfillment of this prophecy is to be realized in a spiritual way. This promise ought to bring a great sense of joy to the believer who longs for the “future hope” of experiencing eternal life with God, a restoration that will be experienced in the fullest sense. It is there where we will experience prosperity and protection in abundance, as we are “gathered back” to him.

Gary and Betsy Ricucci point out, “Our Lord has sovereignly ordained that our refining process take place as we go through difficulties, not around them. The Bible is filled with examples of those who overcame as they passed through the desert, the Red Sea, the fiery furnace and ultimately the cross. God doesn’t protect Christians from their problems—he helps them walk victoriously through their problems.”1

Psalm 61 Assurance of God’s Eternal Protection To the Chief Musician. On aa stringed instrument. A Psalm of David. 1Hear my cry, O God; Attend to my prayer. 2From the end of the earth I will cry to You, When my heart is overwhelmed; Lead me to the rock that is higher than I. 3For You have been a shelter for me, †A strong tower from the enemy. 4I will abide in Your btabernacle forever; †I will trust in the shelter of Your wings. Selah

The ring-tone on one of my phones is the song: "Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing Blood, are you washed in the Blood of the Lamb..." One day, I was sitting somewhere and the phone rang; before I could answer the call, a woman had started to manifest and a strange voice spoke from her mouth, screaming: "Stop that music, stop that music!" The demon in her was affected by the song, because of the power in the Blood of Jesus. 19. Virtue-restoring power. 20. Burden-removingpower. 21. Bondage-destroying power: When you plead the Blood of Jesus into any situation, it will eventually bow. Many people do not understand the overcoming weapons that they have in the word of God. The Bible says: "And they overcame him by the Blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony." Today, you will watch that Blood in display, if you will pray the prayers I am suggesting below, from your heart. That Blood was not shed in vain; it was shed for forgiveness, deliverances, protection, etc. You would be cheating yourself, if you do not use that facility. A 26 year old sister, who was looking like an old woman, heard a message like this and decided to use it. She locked herself up for three days, pleading the Blood of Jesus into her situation. By the time she came out, her correct body, shape, face, had been restored to her. She now looked

Wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun. 12 For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it. 13 Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked? 14In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.

This is the perfect time to discuss the common deception that, “Everything God does must be found in Scripture.” I understand the good intention behind this belief—trying to protect oneself from being deceived by making sure that everything must be found in Scripture. But by believing everything must be found in Scripture, you can actually find yourself falling into deception and limiting what God can do through your own life. It is absurd to think that the God of all the universe and creation can be limited in His performance and deeds to one small, carved-out section of eternity compiled into one book. The Bible, on the other hand, is by all means the complete and all-sufficient source for salvation and walking out a relationship with God. But if you’re going to actually fall under the limited, deceptive mindset that everything God has done and will ever do by supernatural performance must be already recorded in Scripture, you are sadly mistaken, my friend. The

I've heard all kinds of explanations from Christian apologists for why the Bible includes such harsh laws about women: that the laws were progressive in comparison to the surrounding culture, that they were designed to protect women from exploitation, that they weren't strictly observed anyway. These are useful insights, I suppose, but sometimes I wish these apologists wouldn't be in such a hurry to explain these troubling texts away, that they would allow themselves to be bothered by them now and then.

The land, which we passed through to spy it out, is an exceedingly good land. 8If  rthe LORD delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us,  sa land that flows with milk and honey. 9Only  tdo not rebel against the LORD. And  udo not fear the people of the land, for  vthey are bread for us. Their protection is removed from them, and the LORD is with us; do not fear them.” 10 wThen all the congregation said to stone them with stones. But  xthe glory of the LORD appeared at the tent of meeting to all the people of Israel.

The Bible is not a set of rules and regulations that must be followed to earn a place near God. It is a picture, painted over thousands of years, of God’s pursuit of mankind. It is the story of the bridegroom seeking his bride. Is he going to strike you with lighting or pull all his blessings from your life if you sin? Probably not. But he gave you his heart to protect. Religion prevents you from seeing in the spirit because it puts a wall of regulation and duty where God intended to put love. It makes you a slave when he’s looking for a son.

I cannot protect my children from my weaknesses. As hard as I may try, at some point my sin will affect their lives. However, the way I deal with my failure can provide an example for them to follow. I am a sinner raising sinners. Each of my children will face the weight and sorrow of his or her own sins. Just as we teach daily hygiene habits like brushing teeth, our children need instruction on how to find cleansing for their souls. By teaching our children about confession and repentance as well as grace and forgiveness, we bless their lives for years to come.

PSALM 91 He who dwells in  a the shelter of the Most High         will abide in  b the shadow of the Almighty. 2    I will say [1] to the LORD, “My  c refuge and my  d fortress,         my God, in whom I  e trust.”     3 For he will deliver you from  f the snare of the fowler         and from the deadly pestilence. 4    He will  g cover you with his pinions,         and under his  h wings you will  i find refuge;         his  j faithfulness is  k a shield and buckler. 5     l You will not fear  m the terror of the night,         nor the arrow that flies by day, 6    nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,         nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.     7 A thousand may fall at your side,         ten thousand at your right hand,         but it will not come near you. 8    You will only look with your eyes         and  n see the recompense of the wicked.     9 Because you have made the LORD your  o dwelling place—         the Most High, who is my  c refuge [2]— 10     p no evil shall be allowed to befall you,          q no plague come near your tent.     11  r For he will command his  s angels concerning you         to  t guard you in all your ways. 12    On their hands they will bear you up,         lest you  u strike your foot against a stone. 13    You will tread on  v the lion and the  w adder;         the young lion and  x the serpent you will  y trample underfoot.     14 “Because he  z holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him;         I will protect him, because he  a knows my name. 15    When he  b calls to me, I will answer him;         I will be with him in trouble;         I will rescue him and  c honor him. 16    With  d long life I will satisfy him         and  e show him my salvation.

The Bible proposes an alternative storyline—a true storyline—that invites the community and the individual to find themselves in an already-existing story—the ongoing life of Christ. When Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, he responded with Scripture. But Jesus’ response was not just proof texts against false teaching. By citing the particular Scriptures he did, from Deuteronomy, Jesus was pointing to the fact that he knew what the devil was up to—because the people of God had already been in the place of testing—to seek food, protection, and glory from somewhere other than from God.

words ‘ebed and doulos has been undertaken with particular attention to their meaning in each specific context. Thus in Old Testament times, one might enter slavery either voluntarily (e.g., to escape poverty or to pay off a debt) or involuntarily (e.g., by birth, by being captured in battle, or by judicial sentence). Protection for all in servitude in ancient Israel was provided by the Mosaic Law. In New Testament times, a doulos is often best described as a “bondservant”—that is, as someone bound to serve his master for a specific (usually lengthy) period of time, but also as someone who might nevertheless own property, achieve social advancement, and even be released or purchase his freedom. The ESV usage

On a Sunday this January, probably of whatever year it is when you read this (at least as long as I’m living), I will probably be preaching somewhere in a church on “Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.” Here’s a confession: I hate it. Don’t get me wrong. I love to preach the Bible. And I love to talk about the image of God and the protection of all human life. I hate this Sunday not because of what we have to say, but that we have to say it at all. The idea of aborting an unborn child or abusing a born child or starving an elderly person or torturing an enemy combatant or screaming at an immigrant family, these ought all to be so self-evidently wrong that a “Sanctity of Human Life Sunday” ought to be as unnecessary as a “Reality of Gravity Sunday.” We shouldn’t have to say that parents shouldn’t abort their children, or their fathers shouldn’t abandon the mothers of their babies, or that no human life is worthless regardless of age, skin color, disability, or economic status. Part of my thinking here is, I hope, a sign of God’s grace, a groaning by the Spirit at this world of abortion clinics and torture chambers (Rom. 8:22–23). But part of it is my own inability to see the spiritual combat zone that the world is, and has been from Eden onward. This dark present reality didn’t begin with the antebellum South or with the modern warfare state, and it certainly didn’t begin with the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Human dignity is about the kingdom of God, and that means that in every place and every culture human dignity is contested.

PSALM 91 He who dwells in  athe shelter of the Most High will abide in  bthe shadow of the Almighty. 2 I will say [1] to the LORD, “My  crefuge and my  dfortress, my God, in whom I  etrust.” 3 For he will deliver you from  fthe snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. 4 He will  gcover you with his pinions, and under his  hwings you will  ifind refuge; his  jfaithfulness is  ka shield and buckler. 5  lYou will not fear  mthe terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, 6 nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. 7 A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. 8 You will only look with your eyes and  nsee the recompense of the wicked. 9 Because you have made the LORD your  odwelling place— the Most High, who is my  crefuge [2]— 10  pno evil shall be allowed to befall you, qno plague come near your tent. 11  rFor he will command his  sangels concerning you to  tguard you in all your ways. 12 On their hands they will bear you up, lest you  ustrike your foot against a stone. 13 You will tread on  vthe lion and the  wadder; the young lion and  xthe serpent you will  ytrample underfoot. 14 “Because he  zholds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he  aknows my name. 15 When he  bcalls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and  chonor him. 16 With  dlong life I will satisfy him and  eshow him my salvation.” How Great Are Your Works A Psalm. A Song for the Sabbath.

The problem, however, is that you inevitably find, as I did, something still missing. In fact, the spirituality of most current discipleship models often only adds an additional protective layer against people growing up emotionally. When people have authentic spiritual experiences -- such as worship, prayer, Bible studies, and fellowship -- they mistakenly believe they are doing fine, even if their relational life is fractured and their interior world is disordered. Their apparent 'progress' then provides a spiritual reason for not doing the hard work of maturing. They are deceived. I know. I lived that way for almost seventeen years. Because of the spiritual growth in certain areas of my life and in those around me, I ignored the glaring signs of emotional immaturity that were everywhere in and around me.

My mother told me that when she knew I was traveling, she would pray that the Lord would be with me. I would finish a meeting in California and then travel straight through until I got home. She would just stay awake worrying, waiting for the telephone to ring, announcing bad news. I told her that she was wasting her time, that she might as well not pray if she was going to keep on worrying. She would pray that God would protect me, and then she would stay awake worrying. That’s the way many people act when they pray. But worry can hinder you from receiving answers to prayers. Worry can stop God from being able to move on your behalf. Thank God, prayer means more than that. John 16:24 says, “. . . ask, and ye SHALL RECEIVE, that your joy may be full.” When you pray in faith, according to God’s Word, you are full of joy and rejoicing even before the answer materializes because you know God heard you. You have His Word for it.

...moral and religious education, and especially the education a child receives at home, where parents are allowed - even expected - to determine for their children what counts as truth and falsehood, right and wrong. Children, I'll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people's bad ideas - no matter who these other people are. parents, correspondingly, have no God-given license to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children's knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith. In short, children have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense, and we as a society have a duty to protect them from it. So we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children's teeth out or lock them in a dungeon.

Question Five: "Why is God such a huge proponent of slavery in the Bible?” We tend to look at slavery through the eyes of the cruel American slave trade, where races of people were kidnapped and sold for slaves. Kidnapping was a crime that God consider to be so serious, it was punishable by death (see Exodus 21:16). Biblical "slavery” (a bond-servant) wasn’t kidnapping, and it wasn’t determined by skin color. Those who were in debt paid off their debt through becoming a bond servant (see Leviticus 25:39). After six years, the servant was given his freedom (see Deuteronomy 15:12). However, rather than have their freedom, some chose to stay as bondservants because Hebrew law not only provided for them, it legally protected them. For example, if a slave was mistreated and died at the hands of his master, the master was to be put to death himself (see Exodus 21:20–21). The Law of Moses did allow the use of enemy slave labor, as did America with German soldiers captured during World War II.88 Not every ordinance in "the Law of Moses” should be considered to be God’s will, as in the case of divorce (see Matthew 19:7–8).

I have a covenant with almighty God sealed with the blood of Jesus. He has set me free from the waterless pit. Never again will I be unsatisfied with life. He has become my stronghold of safety and prosperity. He has restored to me double what was taken from me. He has bent me like a bow and filled me with His own power. He has stirred me up and made me like a warrior’s sword. Jesus, the warrior of warriors whose arrow flashes like lightning, is my supreme commander. I follow His every command and rally to His side when He sounds the battle horn. He is my very strength and shield of protection in the midst of the battle. Together, we destroy and overcome the enemy with heaven’s own artillery. I drink deeply of the Spirit and roar as one filled with wine. I am full to the brim with the anointing of God. The Lord has taken His stand at my side and sees to it that I rise victorious in every battle. I sparkle in His land like a jewel in a crown. He has made me as one to be envied—radiant and attractive to the eye—and I prosper and succeed in all that He has called me to do. (Hebrews 2:10; 8:6; John 10:10; Psalm 91:16; Job 42:10; Colossians 1:29; Ephesians 1:19; 5:18; 6:10-18; Genesis 12:1-3; 15:1; 1 John 2:20; 1 Corinthians 15:57; Romans 8:37; Daniel 1:4; Deuteronomy 28:12)

There is an instinct for rank which, more than anything, is already an indication of a high rank. There is a delight in the nuances of respect which permits us to surmise a noble origin and habits. The refinement, good, and loftiness of a soul are put to a dangerous test when something goes past in front of it which is of the first rank, but which is not yet protected by the shudders of authority from prying clutches and crudities: something that goes its way unmarked, undiscovered, tempting, perhaps arbitrarily disguised and hidden, like a living touchstone. The man whose task and practice is to investigate souls will use precisely this art in a number of different forms in order to establish the ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable innate order of rank to which it belongs: he will put it to the test for its instinct of reverence. Différence engendre haine [difference engenders hatred]: the nastiness of some natures suddenly spurts out like dirty water when some sacred container, some precious object from a locked shrine, some book with marks of a great destiny is carried by. On the other hand, there is an involuntary falling silent, a hesitation in the eye, an end to all gestures, things which express that a soul feels close to something most worthy of reverence. The way in which reverence for the Bible in Europe has, on the whole, been maintained so far is perhaps the best piece of discipline and refinement of tradition for which Europe owes a debt of thanks to Christianity: such books of profundity and ultimate significance need for their protection an externally imposed tyranny of authority in order to last for those thousands of years which are necessary to exhaust them and sort out what they mean. Much has been achieved when in the great mass of people (the shallow ones and all sorts of people with diarrhoea) that feeling has finally been cultivated that they are not permitted to touch everything, that there are sacred experiences before which they have to pull off their shoes and which they must keep their dirty hands off - this is almost the highest intensification of their humanity. By contrast, perhaps nothing makes the so-called educated people, those who have faith in "modern ideas," so nauseating as their lack of shame, the comfortable impudence in their eyes and hands, with which they touch, lick, and grope everything, and it is possible that these days among a people, one still finds in the common folk, particularly among the peasants, more relative nobility of taste and tactful reverence than among the newspaper-reading demi-monde of the spirit, among the educated. Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil

Jonathan Trumbull, as Governor of Connecticut, in official proclamation: 'The examples of holy men teach us that we should seek Him with fasting and prayer, with penitent confession of our sins, and hope in His mercy through Jesus Christ the Great Redeemer.” Proclamation for a Day of Fasting and Prayer, March 9, 1774' Samuel Chase, while Chief Justice of Maryland,1799 (Runkel v Winemiller) wrote: 'By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion...' The Pennsylvania Supreme court held (Updegraph v The Commonwealth), 1824: 'Christianity, general Christianity, is and always has been a part of the common law...not Christianity founded on any particular religious tenets; not Christianity with an established church, but Christianity with liberty of conscience to all men...' In Massachusetts, the Constitution reads: 'Any every denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves peaceably, and as good subjects of the commonwealth, shall be equally under the protection of the law: and no subordination of any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law.' Samuel Adams, as Governor of Massachusetts in a Proclamation for a Day of Fasting and Prayer, 1793: 'we may with one heart and voice humbly implore His gracious and free pardon through Jesus Christ, supplicating His Divine aid . . . [and] above all to cause the religion of Jesus Christ, in its true spirit, to spread far and wide till the whole earth shall be filled with His glory.' Judge Nathaniel Freeman, 1802. Instructed Massachusetts Grand Juries as follows: "The laws of the Christian system, as embraced by the Bible, must be respected as of high authority in all our courts... . [Our government] originating in the voluntary compact of a people who in that very instrument profess the Christian religion, it may be considered, not as republic Rome was, a Pagan, but a Christian republic." Josiah Bartlett, Governor of New Hampshire, in an official proclamation, urged: 'to confess before God their aggravated transgressions and to implore His pardon and forgiveness through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ . . . [t]hat the knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ may be made known to all nations, pure and undefiled religion universally prevail, and the earth be fill with the glory of the Lord.' Chief Justice James Kent of New York, held in 1811 (People v Ruggles): '...whatever strikes at the root of Christianity tends manifestly to the dissolution of civil government... We are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity... Christianity in its enlarged sense, as a religion revealed and taught in the Bible, is part and parcel of the law of the land...

What is the purpose of grace? Primarily, to restore our relationship with God. When God lays the foundation of this restored relationship, by forgiving our sins as we trust his Son, he does so in order that henceforth we and he may live in fellowship. And what he does in renewing our nature is intended to make us capable of, and actually to lead us into, the exercise of love, trust, delight, hope and obedience Godward—those acts which, from our side, make up the reality of fellowship with God, who is constantly making himself known to us. This is what all the work of grace aims at—an ever deeper knowledge of God, and an ever closer fellowship with him. Grace is God drawing us sinners closer and closer to himself. How does God in grace prosecute this purpose? Not by shielding us from assault by the world, the flesh and the devil, nor by protecting us from burdensome and frustrating circumstances, nor yet by shielding us from troubles created by our own temperament and psychology; but rather by exposing us to all these things, so as to overwhelm us with a sense of our own inadequacy, and to drive us to cling to him more closely. This is the ultimate reason, from our standpoint, why God fills our lives with troubles and perplexities of one sort and another: it is to ensure that we shall learn to hold him fast. The reason why the Bible spends so much of its time reiterating that God is a strong rock, a firm defense, and a sure refuge and help for the weak, is that God spends so much of his time bringing home to us that we are weak, both mentally and morally, and dare not trust ourselves to find, or to follow, the right road.

Olo-keZ G-- a tc There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven. -ECCLESIASTES 3:1 What would we do without our day planners? I have a large one for my desk and a carry-all that goes with me. I don't know how a person functions without some type of organizer. I just love it; it truly has become my daily-calendar bible. I take it with me everywhere. My whole life is in that book. Each evening I peek in to see what tomorrow has to bring. I just love to see a busy calendar; it makes me feel so alive. I've got this to do and that to do. Then I come upon a day that has all white space. Not one thing to do. What, oh what, will I do to fill the space and time? That's the way I used to think and plan. All my spaces had appointments written down, and many times they even overlapped. I now plan for white spaces. I even plan ahead weeks or months and black out "saved for me or my family" days. I have begun to realize that there are precious times for myself and my loved ones. Bob and I really try to protect these saved spaces just for us. We may not go anywhere or do anything out of the ordinary, but it's our special time. We can do anything we want: sleep in, stay out late, go to lunch, read a book, go to a movie, or take a nap. I really look forward with great anticipation to when these white spaces appear on my calendar. I've been so impressed when I've read biographies of famous people. Many of them are controllers of their own time. They don't let outsiders dictate their schedules. Sure, there are times when things have to be done on special days, but generally that isn't the case. When we begin to control our calendars, we will find that our lives are more enjoyable and that the tensions of life are more manageable. Make those white spaces your friend, not your enemy.

1. Commit to take the lead in the godliness of your relationship. Read the Bible's passages about how men and women and all Christians should treat one another. Especially take the lead in establishing boundaries that will keep you from sexual sin. Assume that this woman is going to be your wife or the wife of some other Christian brother (who might be currently dating your future wife). Treat her as the precious sister in Christ that she is. 2. Decide in advance whether or not you are willing to love a woman in the self-sacrificing, nurturing way the Bible describes. Until you are ready to faithfully hold a woman's heart in your hand, do not enter into a dating relationship. 3. Realizing that God wants you to learn to put her interests ahead of your own, ask her the kinds of things she likes to do and be eager to spend time doing them. 4. Be willing to talk about the relationship. Initiate honest dialogue about how you feel. Do not resent her desire to have the relationship defined, but protect her heart by making your level of commitment clear and thereby making clear the appropriate kind of intimacy to go along with that commitment. 5. Pay attention to her heart. Ask her about her burdens and cares. Seek ways to minister to her and to make her cares your own. Instead of being critical of her, speak words of encouragement and support. 6. Do not be shy in ministering the Word of God to her. Do not preach, but exhort her and call to mind God's promises and God's love for her in Jesus Christ. Make it a primary goal that she will be spiritually stronger by having been in a relationship with you. 7. If something about her bothers you, think about how you can encourage her in that area. Realize that none of us is without flaws. Pray for her weakness and try to strengthen her in that area. If your concerns are enough to deter you from wanting to marry her, let her know in a forthright manner while being as considerate as possible.

During the war, I was constantly afraid Chris would die. What made it worse was that he told me many times that he wanted to die on the battlefield. Let me refine that. He didn’t want to die, but if he had to die, then he couldn’t imagine anything better than dying on the battlefield. It was part of his sense of duty: dying on the battlefield would mean that he had been doing his utmost to protect others. There was no higher calling, and no higher proof of dedication, for Chris. So there was no sense fearing death in combat. It would be an honor. That idea hurt me. I knew my husband wasn’t reckless--far from it--but in war there is a very thin line between being brave and being foolish, and when Chris talked like that I worried the line might be crossed. I started going to church more during his first deployment, and eventually went to women’s Bible studies to learn more about the Bible. But fitting the idea of God and faith and service together was never easy. What should I pray for? My husband to live, certainly. But wasn’t that selfish? What if that wasn’t God’s will? I prayed Chris would make the right decision when it came time to reenlist or leave the Navy. I wanted him to leave, yet that wasn’t exactly what I prayed for. Yet I was disappointed when he reenlisted. Was I disappointed with God, or Chris? Had my prayers even been heard? If it was God’s plan that he reenlist, I should have been at peace with it. Yet I can’t say that I was. Right after he made his decision, I took a walk with a friend whose faith ran very deep. She knew the Bible much better than I did, and was far more active in the church. I cried to her. “I have to believe this is the best thing for our family,” I told her. “But I don’t know how it can be. I’m really struggling to accept it.” “It’s okay to be angry with God,” she told me. That caught me short. “I--I don’t think we’re supposed to be.” “Why not?” “Well…Jesus was never mad at God, and--“ “That’s wrong,” she said. “Don’t you remember in the temple with the money changers? Or in the garden before he was crucified, his doubts? Or on the cross? It’s okay to have those feelings.” We talked some more. “I do believe that if Chris dies,” I said finally, “God must be saying it’s still okay for our family, even if I don’t know how.” She teared up. “I’m in awe,” she confessed. “I don’t know if I could say that.

Your womb can’t never bear fruit.” Miss Ethel Fordham told her that. Without sorrow or alarm, she had passed along the news as though she’d examined a Burpee seedling overcome by marauding rabbits. Cee didn’t know then what to feel about that news, no more than what she felt about Dr. Beau. Anger wasn’t available to her—she had been so stupid, so eager to please. As usual she blamed being dumb on her lack of schooling, but that excuse fell apart the second she thought about the skilled women who had cared for her, healed her. Some of them had to have Bible verses read to them because they could not decipher print themselves, so they had sharpened the skills of the illiterate: perfect memory, photographic minds, keen senses of smell and hearing. And they knew how to repair what an educated bandit doctor had plundered. If not schooling, then what? Branded early as an unlovable, barely tolerated “gutter child” by Lenore, the only one whose opinion mattered to her parents, exactly like what Miss Ethel said, she had agreed with the label and believed herself worthless. Ida never said, “You my child. I dote on you. You wasn’t born in no gutter. You born into my arms. Come on over here and let me give you a hug.” If not her mother, somebody somewhere should have said those words and meant them. Frank alone valued her. While his devotion shielded her, it did not strengthen her. Should it have? Why was that his job and not her own? Cee didn’t know any soft, silly women. Not Thelma, or Sarah, or Ida, and certainly not the women who had healed her. Even Mrs. K., who let the boys play nasty with her, did hair and slapped anybody who messed with her, in or outside her hairdressing kitchen. So it was just herself. In this world with these people she wanted to be the person who would never again need rescue. Not from Lenore through the lies of the Rat, not from Dr. Beau through the courage of Sarah and her brother. Sun-smacked or not, she wanted to be the one who rescued her own self. Did she have a mind, or not? Wishing would not make it so, nor would blame, but thinking might. If she did not respect herself, why should anybody else? Okay. She would never have children to care about and give her the status of motherhood. Okay. She didn’t have and probably would never have a mate. Why should that matter? Love? Please. Protection? Yeah, sure. Golden eggs? Don’t make me laugh. Okay. She was penniless. But not for long. She would have to invent a way to earn a living. What else?

Psalm 34 * Theme: God pays attention to those who call on him. Whether God offers escape from trouble or help in times of trouble, we can be certain that he always hears and acts on behalf of those who love him. Author: David, after pretending to be insane in order to escape from King Achish (1 Samuel 21:10-15) A psalm of David, regarding the time he pretended to be insane in front of Abimelech, who sent him away.     1I will praise the LORD at all times.         I will constantly speak his praises. +     2I will boast only in the LORD;         let all who are helpless take heart. +     3Come, let us tell of the LORD’s greatness;         let us exalt his name together.     4I prayed to the LORD, and he answered me.         He freed me from all my fears.     5Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy;         no shadow of shame will darken their faces. +     6In my desperation I prayed, and the LORD listened;         he saved me from all my troubles.     7For the angel of the LORD is a guard;         he surrounds and defends all who fear him. +     8Taste and see that the LORD is good.         Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him! +     9Fear the LORD, you his godly people,         for those who fear him will have all they need. +    10Even strong young lions sometimes go hungry,         but those who trust in the LORD will lack no good thing. +    11Come, my children, and listen to me,         and I will teach you to fear the LORD. +    12Does anyone want to live a life         that is long and prosperous? +    13Then keep your tongue from speaking evil         and your lips from telling lies! +    14Turn away from evil and do good.         Search for peace, and work to maintain it. +    15The eyes of the LORD watch over those who do right;         his ears are open to their cries for help. +    16But the LORD turns his face against those who do evil;         he will erase their memory from the earth. +    17The LORD hears his people when they call to him for help.         He rescues them from all their troubles.    18The LORD is close to the brokenhearted;         he rescues those whose spirits are crushed. +    19The righteous person faces many troubles,         but the LORD comes to the rescue each time. +    20For the LORD protects the bones of the righteous;         not one of them is broken!    21Calamity will surely destroy the wicked,         and those who hate the righteous will be punished. +    22But the LORD will redeem those who serve him.         No one who takes refuge in him will be condemned.

There is an instinct for rank which, more than anything, is already an indication of a high rank. There is a delight in the nuances of respect which permits us to surmise a noble origin and habits. The refinement, goodness, and loftiness of a soul are put to a dangerous test when something goes past in front of it which is of the first rank, but which is not yet protected by the fear of authority from prying clutches and crudities: something that goes its way unmarked, undiscovered, tentative, perhaps arbitrarily disguised and hidden, like a living touchstone. The man whose task and practice is to investigate souls will use precisely this art in a number of different forms in order to establish the ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable innate order of rank to which it belongs: he will put it to the test for its instinct of reverence. Différence engendre haine [Difference engenders hatred]: the nastiness of some natures suddenly spurts out like dirty water when some sacred container, some precious object from a locked shrine, or some book with marks of a great destiny is carried by. On the other hand, there is an involuntary falling silent, a hesitation in the eye, an end to all gestures, things which express that a soul feels close to something most worthy of reverence. The way in which reverence for the Bible in Europe has, on the whole, been maintained so far is perhaps the best piece of discipline and refinement of habits for which Europe owes a debt of thanks to Christianity: such books of profundity and ultimate significance need for their protection an externally imposed tyranny of authority in order to last for those thousands of years necessary to exhaust them and sort out what they mean. Much has been achieved when in the great mass of people (the shallow ones and all sorts of people with diarrhoea) the feeling has finally been cultivated that they are not permitted to touch everything, that there are sacred experiences before which they have to pull off their shoes and which they must keep their dirty hands off—this is almost the highest intensification of their humanity. By contrast, perhaps nothing makes the so-called educated people, those who have faith in “modern ideas,” so nauseating as their lack of shame, the comfortable impudence in their eyes and hands, with which they touch, lick, and grope everything, and it is possible that these days among a people, one still finds in the common folk, particularly among the peasants, more relative nobility of taste and tactful reverence than among the newspaper-reading demi-monde of the spirit, among the educated.

Now, before you invade a foreign city. Here’s the law: Offer the fools a peace treaty. They can remain in their city as your slaves doing forced labor for you. And if they refuse your generosity? Kill every goddamned one of their men. And take their women, children, livestock, and wealth as plunder.” The same guy raised his hand and yelled, “Can we fuck these women, too?” It was a stupid question, but Moses replied patiently, “Of course. Fuck them—use them as footstools, punching bags, scarecrows—who cares? They’re slaves! Do whatever you want with them. “Just remember, all you have to do is obey Yahweh. Then you will have no worries and nothing to fear. He will take care of you. But be careful, because Yahweh will test you. He will send false prophets and phony dream interpreters. “If you encounter one? And his predictions come true? And he wants you to worship another god? Don’t be impressed! Beware! Yahweh sent him to tempt you. “So kill anyone who prophesies in the name of another god. “And kill anyone who pretends to be a prophet and is not! “And if you find a town worshipping another god—kill everyone in it! And kill their livestock! Plunder their homes! Burn that despicable town to the ground and never rebuild it! Make it a perpetual burnt offering to Yahweh. “And whatever you do, for god’s sake, do not imitate the detestable Canaanite religions! Do not incinerate your children, or practice sorcery, or witchcraft. And don’t interpret omens. These practices are detestable to Yahweh. “Above all, DO NOT worship their gods! Don’t worship the sun! Or the moon! Or the stars in the sky! Yahweh gave those to the suckers in other nations as their gods. If you worship just one of them—just one time…” Moses shuddered at the thought. “Well, let’s just say, Yahweh is jealous—real jealous! If he catches you worshipping another god, I have to tell you that the gigs up. He’ll kick your asses out of the Promised Land. And scatter you among the other nations like snake shit scattered about the desert.”   Obey Yahweh and you will live in paradise   “Just obey Yahweh. You hear me? Obey him, and you will live in paradise. He will protect you from your enemies. Send rain for your crops. Nurture your herds. You will have abundant food and wine. Maybe free dance lessons—who knows? There is no limit to Yahweh’s love! Obey him, and your lives will be perfect. Disobey him, and you are fucked! It’s just that simple.” Moses waited for the impact of this essential truth to resister in their brains. Regretfully, it did not. But he concluded, “Anyhow, I’m one-hundred and twenty years old. I cannot lead you into the Promised Land. Joshua will lead you.” He again found Joshua in the crowd. “Joshua, come on up here!” Joshua, startled awake, elbowed his way through the crowd and

9and never return evil for evil or insult for insult [avoid scolding, berating, and any kind of abuse], but on the contrary, give a blessing [pray for one another’s well-being, contentment, and protection]; for you have been called for this very purpose, that you might inherit a blessing [from God that brings well-being, happiness, and protection].

5. Paul, Silas, and Timothy left Thessalonica to protect the believers and traveled west for two days to Berea (Acts 17:10). But Jews from Thessalonica followed the apostle to Berea and forced him to leave town. Some believers escorted Paul to Athens, likely by sea. 6. Silas and Timothy joined Paul in Athens a short time later only to be sent back to Macedonia: Timothy to Thessalonica (3:1–5) and Silas possibly to Philippi. Paul tried but was prevented from revisiting Thessalonica (2:17–18).

24I pray that the [Lord] will bless and protect you, 25and that he will show you mercy and kindness. 26May the [Lord] be good to you and give you peace.

It is not fashionable to quote Stalin but he said once, “half a million liquidated is a statistic, and one man killed in a traffic accident is a national tragedy”. He was laughing, you see, at the bourgeois sensitivities of the mass. He was a great cynic. But what he meant is still true: a movement which protects itself against counter-revolution can hardly stop at the exploitation – or the elimination, Leamas – of a few individuals. It is all one, we have never pretended to be wholly just in the process of rationalising society. Some Roman said it, didn’t he, in the Christian Bible – it is expedient that one man should die for the benefit of many.

When you turn to the word of God, the Holy bible you receive only good news which gives us positivity, salvation, faith, healing, and protection, and when you see world news produces negativity, fear, anxiety, stress, worry, depression, and sickness.

Somewhere along the way, I came to believe that I didn’t need protection from my Bible. If you believe that too, you’re good to go.

33:26 There is no one like God, O Jeshurun, who rides through the sky to help you, on the clouds in majesty. 33:27 The everlasting God is a refuge, and underneath you are his eternal arms; he has driven out enemies before you, and has said, “Destroy!” 33:28 Israel lives in safety, the fountain of Jacob is quite secure, in a land of grain and new wine; indeed, its heavens rain down dew. 33:29 You have joy, Israel! Who is like you? You are a people delivered by the Lord, your protective shield and your exalted sword. May your enemies cringe before you; may you trample on their backs.

The stab that I'd take with this situation the moment I felt ready I spoke to my mother lately when I'm old be fore I marrid by that I didnt what i expected from her instead she didnt notice the pain that i'd eexperianced through. To heal myself I forgave her,accepted my situation learn to live positive in it.In the side of forgive the group of men that raped me continueosly I decided to live my home town to start new life another town where I meet with my soul partner God provided with handsome suitable guy as I had issued with men it took God's misterious ways to connect us he's my friend and prayer partner God blessed us with two sons and one doughter, he continue on helping us on raising our kids again i deed decision of raing our kids for myself by being house wife thanks God and my husband to be succed i 'm not perfect but i tried with God help and my closest friends,family it heppening.As i developed anger, sensitive and other unneeded personality throught my issue activities like body training,blogging,podcusting,reading bible and other booksk,being author,listing music special gospel help me to be in right position.The thing i can ask or say to other to other people is "Women Please love and protect your kids let stop this take quick action to help them if you see suspetious thing be close to them in a way that you manage to see if there's something not right heppen to them cause sometimes they will not tell you like on my case in any reason usualy strangers or rapist make them not say anything or your communication with them is not strong enough or any reason they make them shut To the community let protect each other be your sisters or brothers keeper on your neighborhood or in house report the susptious act cause tomorrow will heppen in your house.Men you are the master protector not rapist stand your ground as God do trusted you with kids and women protect them stop taking advantage who ever does that.To those who like me the victim of rape I'm your girl to use alcohol,drugs and sex edict throw shame and unclean feeling is not solution it only running away act ask yourself that how long you'll runing away with cancer that eating you alive,face by allowing God to be your sim card, rica him and let him operate in you by rebuid you make you a new creation spiritual by acepting Jesus Christ as lord and your savior, healer and believe that God raised him from death in your special prayer with your mouth loud as confesion as I deed you'll be safe 100% in his arms like I am your story will change completly as mine finely no one knows you better dont allow situation explain you you beautiful handsome valueble God love you more than every one and he cares about you I love you'll take care of yourself youre the hero &herous.

Pray help you,to communicate with God, boost energy in spirit and soul, protect in evil, powering mind and your spiritual world.The moment you pray the trinity of God dwell in you,automatical all above things heppen to you not only you through your things house hold through your generations that how Spirit and Soul become fit as bible says.

In the next chapters, you will find a collection of the most powerful persuasive and manipulative techniques used by advertisers, emotional predators, vendors, politicians and all those who are able to change the thoughts of an individual or a group of people. You can use these techniques both to protect

THE NINTH KEY The Ninth Enochian Key warns of the use of substances, devices or pharmaceuticals which might lead to the delusion and subsequent enslavement of the master. A protection against false values. ... THE NINTH KEY (English) A mighty guard of fire with two-edged swords flaming (which contain the vials of delusion, whose whings are of wormwood of the marrow of salt), have set their feet in the West, and are measured with their ministers. These gather up the moss of the Earth, as the rich man doth his treasure. Cursed are they whose iniquities they are! In their eyes are millstones greater than the Earth, and from their mouths run seas of blood. Their brains are covered with diamonds, and upon their heads are marble stones. Happy is he on whom they frown not. For Why? The Lord of Righteousness rejoiceth in them! Come away, and leave your vials, for the time is such as reqireth comfort!

The vision of the Center for Progressive Christianity is to encourage churches to focus their attention on those for whom organized religion has proven to be “ineffectual, irrelevant, or repressive.” They define progressive Christians as individuals who: (ProgressiveChristianity.org, “The 8 Points.” Accessed June 24, 2012) Believe that following the path and teachings of Jesus can lead to an awareness and experience of the Sacred and the Oneness and Unity of all life; Affirm that the teachings of Jesus provide but one of many ways to experience the Sacredness and Oneness of life, and that we can draw from diverse sources of wisdom in our spiritual journey; Seek community that is inclusive of ALL people, including but not limited to: a. Conventional Christians and questioning skeptics, b. Believers and agnostics, c. Women and men, d. Those of all sexual orientations and gender identities, e. Those of all classes and abilities; Know that the way we behave towards one another is the fullest expression of what we believe; Find grace in the search for understanding and believe there is more value in questioning than in absolutes; Strive for peace and justice among all people; Strive to protect and restore the integrity of our earth; and Commit to a path of life-long learning, compassion, and selfless love. To these guidelines, Borg adds two more key aspects of Progressive Christianity: Focus on this life more than on the next life; Accept a non-literal reading of the Bible.

Happy are those who hear the joyful call to worship, for they will walk in the light of your presence, LORD. 16 They rejoice all day long in your wonderful reputation. They exult in your righteousness. 17 You are their glorious strength. It pleases you to make us strong. 18 Yes, our protection comes from the LORD, and he, the Holy One of Israel, has given us our king.

We need weapons to protect ourselves.

and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. 5 And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see. ENGAGE 1:6-7 6 So be truly glad.[*] There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. 7 These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.

The site of the earliest city was well protected by the valleys to the east, south, and west, and seems to have been strongly fortified. Indeed, the biblical account of its capture by David suggests that the previous inhabitants, the Jebusites, considered it to be inviolable and defensible by ‘even the blind and the lame’ (2 Sam. 5: 6).

I can’t believe I almost forgot about this one.” Gran pointed to a galvanized steel trash can in the corner. The lid was sealed with conductive tape. “Gramps made it. It’s a homemade Faraday cage. The lid is super tight. He lined it with cardboard and extra aluminum foil on the inside for extra protection.” The Faraday cage would have protected the electronics inside from the EMP. It took a few minutes for Quinn to get it open. She set the lid aside and pulled out a hand-crank radio, a pair of walkie talkies, a couple of LED flashlights, and a Kindle e-reader. “That e-reader is full of reference and survival books. Medicinal herbs, edible plants, wilderness first aid, how to survive nuclear fallout, how to build a spring house and a latrine. And the Bible, of course. The usual beach read fare.

In a world that was even more chauvinistic than our own, the Torah mandates that the Israelite people love peaceful non-Israelites living among them no less than they love themselves. The German-Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen rightly identifies this law as the beginning of what is known as 'ethical monotheism': 'The stranger was to be protected, although he was not a member of one's family, clan, religion, community or people, simply because he was a human being. In the stranger, therefore, man discovered the idea of humanity.

We can depend upon God for help. Pilgrims must travel through lonely country to their destination; they are protected, not by anything created, but by the Creator of everything.

The idea that holiness is received, not achieved, shouldn’t come as a shock. Every one of us does the same thing with ordinary objects. Take a toothbrush, for example. It’s an ordinary object that has dozens of potential uses. Yet once you put it in your mouth, you’re protective of anyone else using it for anything else. Or take an ordinary bolt of white linen fabric, fashion it into a garment, drape it on a bride, and it becomes unthinkable to wear it on a morning jog. Why? Because when ordinary objects are sanctified for special service, they become “out of bounds”—or to use biblical terminology, “holy.” Just to ensure we’re on the same page before moving on, let me restate this as clearly as I can: You are holy not because of your performance but because of God’s proclamation. You don’t become holy though religious rites. You don’t develop holiness through sheer discipline. You become holy the millisecond God places his hand on you and says “Mine.

Great temptations can come from those who love us and seek to protect us. Be cautious of advice from a friend who says, “Surely God doesn’t want you to face this.” Often our most difficult temptations come from those who are only trying to protect us from discomfort.

We figured there were probably a couple of charity cases, or at least a sliding scale. David, a techie who dearly missed his advanced computer setup back home, had let slip that his parents rented. Received a demerit for that. Not for the lack of home ownership—we hated money snobs—but for getting soft and confessional over a purloined bottle of Jäger. Drink their liquor? Sure, yes, and by all means. Act like they acted when they drank it? Receive a demerit. For it was under the influence, when parents got sloppy, that they shed their protective shells. Without which they were slugs. They left a trail of slime.

Over the past couple of weeks I have noticed that some of your lady callers have had questions on a wife’s submission to her husband and how it deals with their Christian faith when faced with a moral problem. Nowhere in the Bible is a woman told to blindly submit to the will of her husband. In fact, the first act of submission is on the husband’s part! The husband is to submit himself to Christ and the will of God. When he does this he is not setting himself up as master, but rather as servant of the Lord. Only then is the wife to submit to the will of her husband—because the will of her husband will be obedience to the Lord. So the wife is not submitting to the husband, but to God. As soon as the husband steps outside this and acts contrary to scripture, the woman is under no moral obligation whatsoever to her husband to transgress the moral law! Women are not, and were never meant to be, set up as servants to men in the kingdom of God. A man is supposed to love his wife as Christ loves the church. That means that a husband is required to love, care for, nurture, protect, comfort, and even be willing to die for his wife. That is love.

The claim that tradition can be protected from error is false and dangerous. The belief that the Bible is free from error is no less so. Both lead to arrogance and bigotry, and both contradict the facts.

I would personally like to thank God for protecting me, my family, my friends and You ,during this Covid 19 pandemic . Psalms 23:4

Psalm 91 may be meaningful. From the start, we see that whoever takes refuge in God and makes God his house is under the protection of the Almighty. Contrary to what many might imagine, having an open Bible on Psalm 91 offers no protection. the sole thing that may guarantee that protection has a private relationship with God and an in-depth and trusting relationship.

Your vote should not be cast in fear. A fearful vote will lead to harm in two ways. First, it will ensure that your vote is made selfishly; from a desire to protect yourself and your interests rather than a desire to serve and bless others. Second, a fearful vote is usually won by a candidate that employed fear to gain support. Where the fires of fear are stoked, the warm glow of Christian love will not long endure. Those who think making people afraid will result in flourishing are deluded. They are not on a path paved by Christ that leads toward his kingdom, no matter how many Bibles they display or Christian endorsements they secure. A fearful vote is a vote for demagoguery not divinity.

Justice is the objective foundation of all reality. This justice is known, not primarily through philosophical speculation, but through observing God's actions to liberate the oppressed and through heeding God's word in the Low and the Prophets to protect an care for the weak. This means that our knowledge of justice spring ultimately from our knowledge of God, and that there can be no true knowledge of God without an appreciation of God's own unfailing dedication to justice.

We are happy to belong to such a shepherd, whose humanity communes with us and whose divinity protects us. Let us worship and bow down before Him as the people of His pasture.

Poetry and Genre The hallmark of rhetoric in ancient Near Eastern literature is repetition; in poetry, this takes the form of what scholars call “parallelism.” Frequently, the first line of a verse is echoed in some way by the second line. The second line might repeat the substance of the first line with slightly different emphasis, or perhaps the second line amplifies the first line in some fashion, such as drawing a logical conclusion, illustrating or intensifying the thought. At times the point of the first line is reinforced by a contrast in the second line. Occasionally, more than two lines are parallel. Each of these features, frequently observed in Biblical psalms, is represented in songs from Egypt, Mesopotamia and Ugarit. Unlike English poetry, which often depends on rhyme for its effect, these ancient cultures attained impact on listeners and readers with creative repetition. Psalms come in several standard subgenres, each with standard formal elements. Praise psalms can be either individual or corporate. Over a third of the psalms in the Psalter are praise psalms. Corporate psalms typically begin with an imperative call to praise (e.g., “Shout for joy to the LORD” [Ps 100:1]) and describe all the good things the Lord has done. Individual praise often begins with a proclamation of intent to praise (e.g., “I will praise you, LORD” [Ps 138:1]) and declare what God has done in a particular situation in the psalmist’s life. Mesopotamian and Egyptian hymns generally focus on descriptive praise, often moving from praise to petition. Examples of the proclamation format can be seen in the Mesopotamian wisdom composition, Ludlul bel nemeqi. The title is the first line of the piece, which is translated “I will praise the lord of wisdom.” As in the individual praise psalms, this Mesopotamian worshiper of Marduk reports about a problem that he had and reports how his god brought him deliverance. Lament psalms may be personal statements of despair (e.g., Ps 22:1–21, dirges following the death of an important person (cf. David’s elegy for Saul in 2Sa 1:17–27) or communal cries in times of crisis (e.g., Ps 137). The most famous lament form from ancient Mesopotamia is the “Lament Over the Destruction of Ur,” which commemorates the capture of the city in 2004 BC by the Elamite king Kindattu. For more information on this latter category, see the article “Neo-Sumerian Laments.” In the book of Psalms, more than a third of the psalms are laments, mostly by an individual. The most common complaints concern sickness and oppression by enemies. The lament literature of Mesopotamia is comprised of a number of different subgenres described by various technical terms. Some of these subgenres overlap with Biblical categories, but most of the Mesopotamian pieces are associated with incantations (magical rites being performed to try to rid the person of the problem). Nevertheless, the petitions that accompany lament in the Bible are very similar to those found in prayers from the ancient Near East. They include requests for guidance, protection, favor, attention from the deity, deliverance from crisis, intervention, reconciliation, healing and long life. Prayers to deities preserved

The LORD is my fortress, protecting me from danger,

Our Lord in His infinite wisdom and superabundant love sets such a high value upon His people’s faith that He will not protect them from those trials by which faith is strengthened.

Israel finds itself today facing a dilemma. In the longer term, there is only one alternative. It can embark on the path of binationalism, dismantling its colonies surrounded by barbed wire and constructing with the Palestinians a political community that belongs to all its citizens, without ethnic, linguistic, cultural or religious discrimination, without a ‘right of return’ reserved for Jews throughout the world but denied to the Palestinians who were expelled from their land. Or it can remain a ‘Jewish state’, with a democracy that will inevitably come to increasingly resemble the ancient millet system of the Ottoman empire: no longer an Islamist state committed to protecting its Christian and Jewish citizens, but a Jewish state that finds ever more awkward the presence within its frontiers of a growing Muslim minority.36 Its fate will then fatally follow that of South Africa under apartheid, and in the long run, neither the Bible nor the atom bomb will manage to save it.37

I look up to the mountains— does my help come from there? 2 My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth! 3 He will not let you stumble; the one who watches over you will not slumber. 4 Indeed, he who watches over Israel never slumbers or sleeps. 5 The LORD himself watches over you! The LORD stands beside you as your protective shade. 6 The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon at night. 7 The LORD keeps you from all harm and watches over your life. 8 The LORD keeps watch over you as you come and go, both now and forever.

Expressive association In the United States, expressive associations are groups that engage in activities protected by the First Amendment – speech, assembly, press, petitioning government for a redress of grievances, and the free exercise of religion. In Roberts v. United States Jaycees, the U.S. Supreme Court held that associations may not exclude people for reasons unrelated to the group's expression. However, in the subsequent decisions of Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston, the Court ruled that a group may exclude people from membership if their presence would affect the group's ability to advocate a particular point of view. The government cannot, through the use of anti-discrimination laws, force groups to include a message that they do not wish to convey. However, this concept does not now apply in the University setting due to the Supreme Court's ruling in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (2010), which upheld Hastings College of Law policy that the school's conditions on recognizing student groups were viewpoint neutral and reasonable. The policy requires student organizations to allow "any student to participate, become a member, or seek leadership positions, regardless of their status or beliefs" and so, can be used to deny the group recognition as an official student organization because it had required its members to attest in writing that "I believe in: The Bible as the inspired word of God; The Deity of our Lord, Jesus Christ, God's son; The vicarious death of Jesus Christ for our sins; His bodily resurrection and His personal return; The presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the work of regeneration; [and] Jesus Christ, God's son, is Lord of my life." The Court reasoned that because this constitutional inquiry occurs in the education context the same considerations that have led the Court to apply a less restrictive level of scrutiny to speech in limited public forums applies. Thus, the college's all-comers policy is a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral condition on access to the student organization forum.

Lord, by faith here’s what I’m doing right now to prepare myself for the coming day. I’m putting on the belt of truth. I ask You to make it very clear to me what I am to accept into my life and what I am to reject. Help me to see clearly the motives of others as they deal with me and converse with me. Let me walk in Your truth, making decisions and choices according to Your plans and purposes for my life. I am putting on the breastplate of righteousness. Guard my emotions today. Protect my heart. Help me to take into my life only the things that are pure, and nothing that is poison or polluting. Help me to live in integrity and to have a reputation based upon doing, saying, believing, thinking, and feeling the right things. Help me to live in right relationship with You every moment of this coming day. I am putting on my spiritual boots. Help me to stand and walk in Your peace and to move forward in ways that bring Your peace and love to others. Help me to have the full confidence and assurance that come from knowing that I am filled with the peace that only You can give to those who are Your children. Help me to be a peacemaker. Show me where to walk and how to walk as You would walk. I am picking up the shield of faith. Help me to trust You to be my Victor in every area of life today. Help me to trust You to defend me, provide for me, and keep me in safety every hour of this day. I am putting on my helmet of salvation. Guard my mind today. Bring to my remembrance all that You have done for me as my Savior. Let me live in the hope and confidence that You are saving me—rescuing me and delivering me—from evil. I am picking up my sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. Bring to my remembrance today the verses of the Bible that I have read and memorized, and help me to apply them to the situations and circumstances I will face. Let me use Your Word to bring Your light into the darkness of this world and to defeat the devil when he comes to tempt me. Father, I want to be fully clothed with the identity of Jesus Christ today. I am in Christ. He is in me. Help me to fully realize and accept that He is my Truth, my Righteousness, my Peace, my Savior, the source of my faith, and the ever-present Lord of my life. I want to bring glory to Your name today. I ask all of this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Bend down, O LORD, and hear my prayer; answer me, for I need your help. 2 Protect me, for I am devoted to you. Save me, for I serve you and trust you. You are my God. 3 Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am calling on you constantly. 4 Give me happiness, O Lord, for I give myself to you. 5 O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help. 6 Listen closely to my prayer, O LORD; hear my urgent cry. 7 I will call to you whenever I’m in trouble, and you will answer me.

The Soong-Chiang bunch used their Bibles to project their version of the Xian incident. In a Good Friday sermon, the Generalissimo claimed he had remained strong because of the example of “the forty days and nights Christ passed in the wilderness withstanding temptation.”17 Another story stated that when Mayling appeared at her husband’s prison door, Chiang claimed that her arrival had been predicted in a Bible passage he had just read: “Jehovah will now do a new thing, and that is, he will make a woman protect a man.”18 As Chiang explained,

1I look up to the mountains—        does my help come from there?     2My help comes from the LORD,        who made heaven and earth! +     3He will not let you stumble;        the one who watches over you will not slumber. +     4Indeed, he who watches over Israel        never slumbers or sleeps.     5The LORD himself watches over you!        The LORD stands beside you as your protective shade. +     6The sun will not harm you by day,        nor the moon at night. +     7The LORD keeps you from all harm        and watches over your life. +     8The LORD keeps watch over you as you come and go,        both now and forever.

I think Matthew wanted to protect you, even though being in a same-sex relationship is nothing to be ashamed of.” “It’s a sin.” “Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus say homosexuality is a sin.” “In the Old Testament—” “The Old Testament is crap. It’s full of misogyny, torture and inconsistencies. Jesus preached about love. All love.

Psalm 12 For the choir director: A psalm of David, to be accompanied by an eight-stringed instrument.* 1 Help, O LORD, for the godly are fast disappearing! The faithful have vanished from the earth! 2 Neighbors lie to each other, speaking with flattering lips and deceitful hearts. 3 May the LORD cut off their flattering lips and silence their boastful tongues. 4 They say, “We will lie to our hearts’ content. Our lips are our own—who can stop us?” 5 The LORD replies, “I have seen violence done to the helpless, and I have heard the groans of the poor. Now I will rise up to rescue them, as they have longed for me to do.” 6 The LORD’s promises are pure, like silver refined in a furnace, purified seven times over. 7 Therefore, LORD, we know you will protect the oppressed, preserving them forever from this lying generation, 8 even though the wicked strut about, and evil is praised throughout the land.

On November 22nd, 2018, my mother Vernita Lee passed away. I was conflicted about our relationship up until the very end. The truth is, it wasn't until I became successful that my mother started to show more interest in me. I wrestled with the question of how to take care of her - what did I owe the woman who gave me life, The bible says 'honor thy father and mother', but what did that actually mean? I decided one of the ways I could honor her would be to help care for her financially ... but there was never any real connection. I would say that the audience who watched me on television knew me better than my mother did. When her health began to decline a few years ago, I knew I needed to prepare myself for her transition. Just a few days before Thanksgiving my sister Patricia called to tell me she thought it was time. I flew to Milwaukee ... I tried to think of something to say, at one point I even picked up the manual left by the hospice care people. I read their advice thinking the whole time, how sad it was that I, Oprah Winfrey, who had spoken to thousands of people one on one should have to read a hospice manual to figure out what to say to my mother. When it was finally time to leave, something told me it would be the last time I'd ever see her but as I turned to go, the words I needed to say still wouldn't come. All I could muster was 'bye, I'll be seeing you' and I left for, ironically, a speaking engagement. On the flight home the next morning a little voice in my head whispered what I knew in my heart to be true: "you are going to regret this, you haven't finished the work". ... I turned around and went back to Milwaukee. I spent another day in that hot room and still no words came. That night I prayed for help. In the morning I meditated, and as I prepared to leave the bedroom I picked up my phone and noticed the song that was playing - Mahalia Jackson's 'Precious Lord'. If ever there was a sign, this was it. I had no idea how Mahalia Jackson appeared on my playlist. As I listened to the words, Precious Lord, take my hand Lead me on, let me stand. I am tired, I'm weak, I am worn Lead me on to the light, Take my hand, precious Lord And lead me home. I suddenly knew what to do. When I walked into my mothers room I asked if she wanted to hear the song. She nodded, and then I had another idea. I called my friend Wintley Phipps, a preacher and gospel artist, and asked him to sing Precious Lord to my dying mother. Over FaceTime from his kitchen table he sang the song a cappella and then prayed that our family would have no fear, just peace. I could see that my mother was moved. The song and the prayer had created a sort of opening for both of us. I began to talk to her about her life, her dreams, and me. Finally the words were there. I said, "It must have been hard for you, not having an education, not having a skill, not knowing what the future held. When you became pregnant, I'm sure a lot of people told you to get rid of that baby." She nodded. "But you didn't", I said. "And I want to thank you for keeping this baby". I paused, "I know that many times you didn't know what to do. You did the best you knew how to do and that's okay with me. That is okay with me. So you can leave now, knowing that it is well. It is well with my soul. It's been well for a long time." It was a sacred, beautiful moment, one of the proudest of my life. As an adult I'd learned to see my mother through a different lens; not as the mother who didn't care for me, protect me, love me or understand anything about me, but as a young girl still just a child herself; scared, alone, and unequipped to be a loving parent. I had forgiven my mother years earlier for not being the mother I needed, but she didn't know that. And in our last moments together I believe I was able to release her from the shame and the guilt of our past. I came back and I finished the work that needed to be done.

In The Archangel Raphael Leaving Tobias' Family, Rembrandt leaves dirt on the shadowed soles of Raphael's feet as he flies off, illuminated in glory. Passing by the painting, one sees the dramatic action, the melodramatic emotions, and the re-created narrative events of the Bible. Slowed down a bit, the viewer sees light across a large muscular calf, a strong and sharply shaped ankle, and then dirty feet. The angel who tells us he only pretended to eat - this to explain away all traces of his apparent earthliness as a fallen creaturely being - is here on the canvas with dirty feet, carrying soil, the created, to the creator. Van Gogh had rightly said there are mysteries in these paintings. They are mysteries of device and design, not of messianic significance. They require a docent and not a priest, a creative critic to guide the view of specific images, not a guardian of mysteries and master of their enigmatic authority. Dirty feet on the soles of an archangel famous for his annunciations give the viewer a point of view on the inescapably human nature of the narrated God. Raphael may no eat. He may believe he creates an illusion to satisfy the religious desire for mythological consistency, but even archangels deceive themselves as well as others. Humans sometimes do the same in inventing the transcendence they need or think they want - creating a regime from which the priestly classes rule, even theorizing the alienation of the divine. Deceit is an essential device of cultural adaptation. It constructs needed beliefs that at high and low levels of thought or action complement their existence with modes of self-defense, which protect them from not only needed analysis but also the importance of failure.

We need to pray for people who are going through a lot, because of their parents and who are being abused by their parents. Who are being abused by step parents and who are being abused by their family members. May God protect them , shield and richly bless them to be able survive and prosper on their own. May he hear and answer their prayers. Jerimiah 29:11 | Philippians 4:19 | Isaiah 41:10 

He will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection.

Perhaps the most powerful way in which daily prayer for your marriage not only has the power to transform your marriage, but to transform you as well, is this: prayer reminds you that you are never alone. Prayer reminds you that you are never left to your own righteousness, wisdom, and strength. Prayer reminds you that each location or situation where your marriage exists is not only inhabited by God but, even more encouragingly, that each is ruled by him. The one who controls the situations in which your marriage lives is not only a God of awesome power but is the definition of everything wise, true, faithful, gracious, loving, forgiving, good, and kind. But there is even more that the Lord’s Prayer confronts you with. It is that this God who is powerful and near is your Father by grace. If you are God’s child, there is never a moment when you are outside the circle of his fathering care. Like a father, he loves you and is committed to faithfully providing what is best for you. When you are facing those disappointing moments of marital struggle, when you’re not sure what to think, let alone what to do, prayer can rescue you from hopelessness and alienation. Prayer encourages you to say, “I am not sure how we got here, and I am not sure what we are being called to do, but there is one thing I am sure of—I am never, ever alone because I have a Father in heaven who is always with me.” Acknowledging God will protect you from yourself. It will protect you from discouragement and fear and the passivity that always follows. It will protect you from the pride of self-reliance and self-sovereignty. If you are ever to have a marriage of unity, understanding, and love, you must begin with this humble admission: you have no ability whatsoever to produce the most important things that make a wonderful marriage. The changes of thought, desire, word, and action that re-create, rebuild, mature, and protect your marriage are always gifts of God’s grace. As you choose to do things God’s way, he progressively rescues you from your own self-interest and forms you into a person who really does find joy in loving another. It is only a God of love who will ever be able to change a fundamentally self-oriented, impatient, demanding human being into a person who not only desires to love but actually does it. There is a word for this in the Bible—grace. Prayer reminds you that you have been graced with a Father’s love and that love will not let you go until it has changed you in every way that is needed.

During this time of pandemic. Treat your Church like distance learning, In order to get better results, protection, prosperity and blessings in your life. You need to put in more work than usually. You need read the bible more. You need to pray more. You need to intercede more. You need to be good more. You need to rely on God more than you do on your pastor, bishop or congregation. Colossians 3 : 16 Ephesians 3:16 1 Peter 2 : 5 1 Corinthians 3 : 9

I look to you for protection. I will hide beneath the shadow of your wings

These hands were made to defend those who cannot decent themselves. And tonight, that means protecting your sister by fleeing Ashdod.

I love you, LORD; you are my strength. 2 The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my savior; my God is my rock, in whom I find protection. He is my shield, the power that saves me, and my place of safety. 3 I called on the LORD, who is worthy of praise, and he saved me

God’s way is perfect. All the LORD’s promises prove true. He is a shield for all who look to him for protection.

Lord, sometimes the possibility of coming catastrophe can make our family terribly afraid. We’re tempted to ask you only to protect us from difficulty, but what we really want is to be a family who lives by faith in the midst of the worst of circumstances

Divine power . . . what mom would turn it down? Jesus, who is God, full of power and might has poured down and lavished on us everything we need to live and serve God. Everything? What kind of resources are we talking about here? The blessings Jesus gives transcend physical things, so take a look at the spiritual blessings He pours out. Start with faith. It’s a gift. How happy can you be if all your anxieties are lifted by Someone you can trust? Because God is good and full of glory, He tells us to give all our worries to Him (1 Peter 5:7) and to worry about nothing (Philippians 4:6); and He promises to pour down peace (Philippians 4:7). He calls us His own, and gives us “very great and precious promises”—gifts of His Spirit, blessings of greater worth than anything money can buy. He gives salvation, eternal life, and the ability, while we’re earthbound, to “share in God’s nature.” Jesus’ Spirit is our companion, so we are never without a friend. He also protects us from spiritual defeat that rises from the evil surrounding us. We have all this available to us daily as we focus on the Person of Jesus. Today, we can pray, “Lord Jesus, thank You that You pour on me everything I need to live the life that pleases You. I want to be infused with Your mighty strength and to stay under the faucet of Your provision today.

Sorrow for sin brings hope. God alone is the true source of healing and protection for those who confess their sins to him.

Helmet Use: Salvation Application: The devil wants to make us doubt God, Jesus, and our salvation. The helmet protects our mind from doubting God’s saving work for us.

Body armor Use: Righteousness Application: The devil often attacks our heart—the seat of our emotions, self-worth, and trust. God’s righteousness is the body armor that protects our heart and ensures his approval. He approves of us because he loves us and sent his Son to die for us.

Shield Use: Faith Application: What we see are the devil’s attacks in the form of insults, setbacks, and temptations. But the shield of faith protects us from the devil’s fiery arrows. With God’s perspective, we can see beyond

Conjurers, mediums, clairvoyants, soothsayers, those who hold black masses or seances, Tarot readers and Ouija board fanatics, those who practice witchcraft and majick are all practicing a form of prayer. After all, if you pray to a god of a religion such as Christianity or Hunduism, are you not asking your voice to be heard by a spirit or god from another world? Are you not asking them for something or giving thanks? I see no difference in a person attempting to contact ghosts looking for lost treasure and a person praying to their god to ask for health (and wealth!) or whatever it is they want. This being said, all forms of attempted communication with otherworldly beings have very strong similarities, and this is the sort of thinking I think people should get past. Putting the effort into solving your problems and creating a peaceful, co-habitable world, gaining the strength to get what you want, protecting you loved ones from harm should be YOUR responsibility instead of asking a god, spirit, your ancestors, or any other disembodied entity to do it for you.

Sometimes people ask me how I can be both a Catholic and a scientist, particularly a scientist who, at least for some research, studies evolution. I tell them that they are confusing us with Evangelicals. Catholics don't have anything against evolution. A literal interpretation of the Bible, the kind that says that the earth is six thousand years old, has never been a part of our religion, at least not since the Saint Augustine warned against preaching idiocy to Pagans in 415 AD. He said that if you tell people that they have to believe in things that they know are not true and that do not matter then they will never believe you when you tell them things that are true and that do matter, things about Christ and the resurrection. The Church's friendliness towards science is not to protect science. It is to protect Christianity.

He will give his angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways. PSALM 91:11 RSV A secret agent is one who seeks to protect his country, his king, or his president against evil forces that are opposed to the one he serves. The American Secret Service is charged with protecting the president of the United States. They do an excellent job, but even they will tell you that someone who is fiercely determined to assassinate the president could be successful. God has His own secret agents—the angels. Unseen and unrecognized by the world, they never fail in their appointed tasks. Much has been written recently about angels—often not based on the Bible but on popular legends. But angels are real, and God has commanded them to watch over us. Only in eternity will we know how many accidents they prevented or how often they kept Satan’s malicious spirits at bay. In the meantime, we can take comfort in their presence and thank God for the love He expresses for us through their service.

8. I have told you that it is I. Here we see how the Son of God not   only submits to death of his own accord, that by his obedience he may   blot out our transgressions, but also how he discharges the office of a   good Shepherd in protecting his flock.

Despite an icy northeast wind huffing across the bay I sneak out after dark, after my mother falls asleep clutching her leather Bible, and I hike up the rutted road to the frosted meadow to stand in mist, my shoes in muck, and toss my echo against the moss-covered fieldstone corners of the burned-out church where Sunday nights in summer for years Father Thomas, that mad handsome priest, would gather us girls in the basement to dye the rose cotton linen cut-outs that the deacon’s daughter, a thin beauty with short white hair and long trim nails, would stitch by hand each folded edge then steam-iron flat so full of starch, stiffening fabric petals, which we silly Sunday school girls curled with quick sharp pulls of a scissor blade, forming clusters of curved petals the younger children assembled with Krazy glue and fuzzy green wire, sometimes adding tissue paper leaves, all of us gladly laboring like factory workers rather than have to color with crayon stubs the robe of Christ again, Christ with his empty hands inviting us to dine, Christ with a shepherd's staff signaling to another flock of puffy lambs, or naked Christ with a drooping head crowned with blackened thorns, and Lord how we laughed later when we went door to door in groups, visiting the old parishioners, the sick and bittersweet, all the near dead, and we dropped our bikes on the perfect lawns of dull neighbors, agnostics we suspected, hawking our handmade linen roses for a donation, bragging how each petal was hand-cut from a pattern drawn by Father Thomas himself, that mad handsome priest, who personally told the Monsignor to go fornicate himself, saying he was a disgruntled altar boy calling home from a phone booth outside a pub in North Dublin, while I sat half-dressed, sniffing incense, giddy and drunk with sacrament wine stains on my panties, whispering my oath of unholy love while wiggling uncomfortably on the mad priest's lap, but God he was beautiful with a fine chiseled chin and perfect teeth and a smile that would melt the Madonna, and God he was kind with a slow gentle touch, never harsh or too quick, and Christ how that crafty devil could draw, imitate a rose petal in perfect outline, his sharp pencil slanted just so, the tip barely touching so that he could sketch and drink, and cough without jerking, without ruining the work, or tearing the tissue paper, thin as a membrane, which like a clean skin arrived fresh each Saturday delivered by the dry cleaners, tucked into the crisp black vestment, wrapped around shirt cardboard, pinned to protect the high collar.

Beyond Our Fears When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. O God, I praise your word. I trust in God, so why should I be afraid? Psalm 56:3-4 Have you ever found yourself in such a frightening situation that it pushed your “panic button”? Some people face that kind of fear because of a dreadful circumstance. Others may fear failure, rejection, illness, or death. Children often fear the dark and want their parents to hold their hand as they walk into a dark room. Whatever you fear, you don’t have to handle it alone by working harder, trying to control things, living in denial, or worst of all, backing away from God and his promises. Instead, these Scripture verses tell us we can turn to God when we are afraid. As we honestly admit what we’re afraid of, our fear can actually draw us closer to the Lord than we ever thought possible. Reading God’s promises in the Bible gives us assurance that we are not alone in this fearful place. God has promised to be with you in every situation and to never leave you, so you can put your trust in him. He is the source of our courage and security. He can turn your fear into faith. LORD, you have said that when I’m afraid, at the very point of my anxiety, I can put my trust in you and experience your protection. I thank you for your Word that promises your presence with me. You are my heavenly Father, so please hold my hand in dark and frightening circumstances, and help me to trust you and walk close to you today.  

7You, LORD, will keep the needy safe and will protect us forever from the wicked, 8who freely strut about when what is vile is honored by the human race.

In our Christian walk, we will face times in which we must stand firm for what we believe, no matter the cost. Whether we have a message from the Lord, like Joseph had, or we hold to the teachings in the Bible, others will mock and criticize our beliefs and actions. But we are called to stand firm in our faith, knowing that that Lord will use our stand to share the Gospel message with others. Heavenly Father, Show us the path of righteousness, so that we may stand firm in our faith. When others mock and scorn, protect us and use us to proclaim your message to the world. In your Son’s name, Amen.

T-1.IV.4. The emptiness engendered by fear must be replaced by forgiveness. That is what the Bible means by “There is no death,” and why I could demonstrate that death does not exist. I came to fulfill the law by reinterpreting it. The law itself, if properly understood, offers only protection. It is those who have not yet changed their minds who brought the “hell-fire” concept into it. I assure you that I will witness for anyone who lets me, and to whatever extent he permits it. Your witnessing demonstrates your belief, and thus strengthens it. Those who witness for me are expressing, through their miracles, that they have abandoned the belief in deprivation in favor of the abundance they have learned belongs to them.

You can wound another’s spirit or protect another’s dignity by the words you speak.

It’s not about saying you’re okay when you give daily empirical evidence that you are anything but okay. If you are doing, saying, or thinking religious things that are meant to protect you from reality, you are not living biblical Christianity. You may feel better, but your heart has not been quieted by biblical faith. The faith of the Bible will never call you to deny reality in any way. The faith of the Bible is so in awe of the grandeur and glory of God that it is able to look at the darkest of realities in life and not be afraid.

But realize, every “you shall not” in the Bible is a promise of God’s protection. He is not preventing you from enjoying life; rather, He is saving you—keeping you from destroying yourself. Every command in His Word is an expression of divine love to you, His beloved child. He wants to protect and preserve your life so you can enjoy all the blessings He’s planned for you.

Whether you are living in a wilderness of poverty or loneliness or sorrow, God's promises, love, and protection are just as available to you now as they were to Hagar.

The LORD of Heaven’s Armies will hover over Jerusalem        and protect it like a bird protecting its nest.   He will defend and save the city;        he will pass over it and rescue it.

Matthew 8:26, NLT Jesus responded, “Why are you afraid? You have so little faith!” Then he got up and rebuked the wind and waves, and suddenly there was a great calm. Mark 4:39-40, NLT When Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Silence! Be still!” Suddenly the wind stopped, and there was a great calm. 40Then he asked them, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” Setting the Scene Both Mark and Luke record the sequence of Jesus’ response to the impassioned plea of the disciples as miracle first, comment after. Matthew tells us Jesus questioned their faith and then spoke to the wind and waves. The order is probably not significant, since Jesus may have spoken with the men before and after the miracle. But Matthew, who was present in the boat, seems to capture more vividly the style Jesus usually used with his disciples. The thinking and the challenge came first, followed by the miracle. As we’ve already seen in the incident with the lame man lowered through the roof, Jesus said what needed to be said and then confirmed his words with a miracle (see Mark 2:1-12). Jesus asked a question and then made a statement: “Why are you afraid?” and “You have so little faith!” Fears deserve to be questioned. We ought to ask ourselves regularly, “Why am I afraid?” If we never doubt our fears, they will control us. As we have already learned this week, some fears are legitimate, and some fears are not. Sometimes we don’t need to be afraid. When we are with Jesus, we don’t have to fear. When fear is in control, faith is stifled. Acting fearfully is not acting faithfully. Jesus’ question wasn’t directed toward the disciples’ feelings but their actions. The problem arises when we give in to fear and make it the basis of our decisions—which is what the disciples were doing. They needed faith—as Jesus pointed out. Faith doesn’t ignore feelings; it simply refuses to obey them. Getting Personal What is your usual strategy for handling fear? To what degree are your choices determined by fear? When did you last act in faith in the face of fear? What was the outcome? Acknowledging fears can be an important first step in disabling their influence. The psalm writer had a great thought when he wrote, “When I am afraid, I will put my trust in you” (Psalm 56:3, NLT). What you do before and after you are afraid can be as important as no longer being afraid. Talking to God In prayer today, identify areas of worry and fear. Thank God that he is aware of each one and that, in love, he is working to protect and preserve you.

LORD, thank you for your promises of deliverance and protection. Because you’ve said, “I will be with you,” what have I to fear? Help me to trust in you, not only in the small details or battles of life, but also in times of great trouble. You are my Lord, my God, my Savior.

May God defend, protect, provide and redeem you.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, 5who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various atrials, 7so that the bproof of your faith, being more precious than gold which cis perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; 8and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and dfull of glory, 9obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of eyour souls. [6 aOr temptations 7 bOr genuineness cLit perishes 8 dLit glorified 9 eOne early ms does not contain your]

In the task God planned for mankind of tending and keeping, serving and protecting God’s creation, one gender wasn’t adequate.

Now here he was, with his hand on the Bible, promising to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. The joke, it turned out, was on us.

desire for God’s presence, provision, and protection. No matter where we are, our desire should be for God because only he satisfies fully. Author: David

Gracious God, how precious it is to know that you are sovereign and that you protect your people. In the midst of confusion, you provide insight. When facing danger, you are my shield and protector. No evil words or plots to destroy your people can separate me from your love that has been demonstrated in Christ Jesus, my Lord. I do not understand the forces of evil in our world or the suffering your people endure. I acknowledge that many around the world are killed because of their witness to your Son, Jesus Christ. But I trust the truth your are God and there is no other. You know the future, and you see the evil attempts of evil people to accomplish your purposes for your glory and your good. May I stand firmly on what I know and not be distracted or discouraged by what is unclear. In the name of Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior. Amen

Love is a fortress where everyone feels protected rather than exposed!

In the flood of the loss of humanness in our age—including the flow from abortion-on-demand to infanticide and on to euthanasia—the only thing that can stem this tide is the certainty of the absolute uniqueness and value of people. And the only thing which gives us that is the knowledge that people are made in the image of God. We have no other final protection. And the only way we know that people are made in the image of God is through the Bible and the incarnation of Christ, which we know from the Bible. If people are not made in the image of God, the pessimistic, realistic humanist is right: the human race is an abnormal wart on the smooth face of a silent and meaningless universe. In this setting, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia (including the killing of mentally deranged criminals, the severely handicapped, or the elderly who are an economic burden) are completely logical.... Without the Bible and without the revelation in Christ (which is only told to us in the Bible) there is nothing to stand between us and our children and the eventual acceptance of the monstrous inhumanities of theage.

Demons in the Old Testament The Old Testament is remarkably reticent about evil spirits, so much so that it seems to have no developed demonology. Even so, three facts stand out: • There are no incantations, rituals or amulets prescribed for giving an individual protection from spirits. Considering how much of the Torah is devoted to ritual and to sacred objects, this is a remarkable omission. • God is said to have complete authority over the spirits, which cannot operate in the world without his approval. If a “lying spirit” goes out it is only with divine consent (1Ki 22:23; cf. Job 1–2). • The main concern of the Old Testament writers was that people avoid seeking to avail themselves of magical powers through contact with spirits (e.g., Dt 18:10–12).

Demons and the Bible Many readers assume that the belief in demons attested in Scripture the superstitious beliefs of all ancient peoples. Yet anthropologists witness possession trances in most cultures today. Demons’ reality, of course, cannot be decided by archaeology. Researchers can demonstrate, however, that the notion that the New Testament writers simply reflect the prescientific views of their contemporaries is simplistic and misleading. Demons in the Ancient Near East Ancient Near Eastern society was awash in texts containing magical incantations and amulets intended to protect people from evil spirits (spells for defense against demons are called “apotropaic spells”).

Is it too bold to point out that there is nothing in the ten commandments about protecting children against cruelty? Nothing against rape and nothing against slavery, and nothing agains genocide. Could this be because these crimes are positively recommended in the rest of the bible?

For the question of abortion, perhaps the most significant passage of all is found in the specific laws God gave Moses for the people of Israel during the time of the Mosaic covenant. One particular law spoke of the penalties to be imposed in case the life or health of a pregnant woman or her preborn child was endangered or harmed: When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe (Exod. 21:22–25).1 This law concerns a situation when men are fighting and one of them accidentally hits a pregnant woman. Neither one of them intended to do this, but as they fought they were not careful enough to avoid hitting her. If that happens, there are two possibilities: 1. If this causes a premature birth but there is no harm to the pregnant woman or her preborn child, there is still a penalty: “The one who hit her shall surely be fined” (v. 22). The penalty was for carelessly endangering the life or health of the pregnant woman and her child. We have similar laws in modern society, such as when a person is fined for drunken driving, even though he has hit no one with his car. He recklessly endangered human life and health, and he deserved a fine or other penalty. 2. But “if there is harm” to either the pregnant woman or her child, then the penalties are quite severe: “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth …” (vv. 23–24). This means that both the mother and the preborn child are given equal legal protection. The penalty for harming the preborn child is just as great as for harming the mother. Both are treated as persons, and both deserve the full protection of the law.2

This law is even more significant when we put it in the context of other laws in the Mosaic covenant. In other cases in the Mosaic law where someone accidentally caused the death of another person, there was no requirement to give “life for life,” no capital punishment. Rather, the person who accidentally caused someone else’s death was required to flee to one of the “cities of refuge” until the death of the high priest (see Num. 35:9–15, 22–29). This was a kind of “house arrest,” although the person had to stay within a city rather than within a house for a limited period of time. It was a far lesser punishment than “life for life.” This means that God established for Israel a law code that placed a higher value on protecting the life of a pregnant woman and her preborn child than the life of anyone else in Israelite society. Far from treating the death of a preborn child as less significant than the death of others in society, this law treats the death of a preborn child or its mother as more significant and worthy of more severe punishment. And the law does not place any restriction on the number of months the woman was pregnant. Presumably it would apply from a very early stage in pregnancy, whenever it could be known that a miscarriage had occurred and her child or children had died as a result. Moreover, this law applies to a case of accidental killing of a preborn child. But if accidental killing of a preborn child is so serious in God’s eyes, then surely intentional killing of a preborn child must be an even worse crime. The conclusion from all of these verses is that the Bible teaches that we should think of the preborn child as a person from the moment of conception, and we should give to the preborn child legal protection at least equal to that of others in the society. Additional note: It is likely that many people reading this evidence from the Bible, perhaps for the first time, will already have had an abortion. Others reading this will have encouraged someone else to have an abortion. I cannot minimize or deny the moral wrong involved in this action, but I can point to the repeated offer of the Bible that God will give forgiveness of sins to those who repent of their sin and trust in Jesus Christ for forgiveness: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Although such sin, like all other sin, deserves God’s wrath, Jesus Christ took that wrath on himself as a substitute for all who would believe in him: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). b. Scientific

Crishna, the Hindoo virgin-born Saviour, was born in a cave, [156:1] fostered by an honest herdsman, [156:2] and, it is said, placed in a sheep-fold shortly after his birth. How-Tseih, the Chinese "Son of Heaven," when an infant, was left unprotected by his mother, but the sheep and oxen protected him with loving care. [156:3] Abraham, the Father of Patriarchs, is said to have been born in a cave. [156:4] Bacchus, who was the son of God by the virgin Semele, is said to have been born in a cave, or placed in one shortly after

A whole generation of adults has now been educated in public schools where prayer and Bible reading have been declared illegal. A whole generation of adults has watched abortion consume the lives of more than fifty-five million unborn babies in America. A whole generation of adults has watched sexual immorality come out of the closet, become non-criminal, move into being a fashionable special interest group, and is now on the way to becoming a constitutionally protected category demanding all the rights and privileges of marriage, adoption, and other legal benefits and privileges traditionally preserved for God-ordained marriage under the common law (one man/one woman).

If you see oppression of the poor and perversion of justice and righteousness in the province, don't be astonished at the situation, because one official protects another official, and higher officials protect them. 9 The profit from the land is taken by all; the king is served by the field.

Her husband, a devout servant and follower of Christ, was reading his Bible and preparing his sermon, at church, when he was murdered. Why couldn’t God protect him, of all people? Upon deeper reflection, this often led to the more troubling question, one she never asked aloud: Is there really a God? The mere consideration of this as a passing thought frightened her, but she could not deny its existence.

The idea of government separate from religion was floating around during the Enlightenment. John Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, and the greats of the day discussed it. But while other ideas in political science had real-world antecedents on which the founders could rely, there was no example of a truly secular government. No other nation had sought to protect the ability of its citizens to think freely by separating the government from religion and religion from the government. Until the theory was put into practice, true freedom of thought and even freedom of religion could not have existed. The United States realized those concepts because it embarked “upon a great and noble experiment…hazarded in the absence of all previous precedent—that of total separation of Church and State,” according to President John Tyler.46 America was the first nation to try this experiment; it invented the separation of state and church. Pulitzer Prize–winning author Garry Wills put it nicely: That [separation], more than anything else, made the United States a new thing on earth, setting new tasks for religion, offering it new opportunities. Everything else in our Constitution—separation of powers, balanced government, bicameralism, federalism—had been anticipated both in theory and practice…. But we invented nothing, except disestablishment. No other government in history had launched itself without the help of officially recognized gods and their state-connected ministers.47 Americans should celebrate this “great American principle of eternal separation.”48 It’s ours. It’s an American original. We ought to be proud of that contribution to the world, not bury it under myths. The founders’ private religious beliefs are far less important to the Judeo-Christian question than their views on separating state and church and the actions they took to divorce those two institutions. They were as close to consensus on separating the two as they were on any subject. In the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published the same year that America declared independence, historian Edward Gibbon wrote that “the various forms of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people to be equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.”49 Most of the founders agreed with Gibbon and recognized that religion can be exploited for political gain and that religion, when it has civil power, is often deadly. These beliefs were common among the founders, but not universal. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration, believed that “the Christian religion should be preferred to all others” and that “every family in the United States [should] be furnished at public expense…with a copy of an American edition of the BIBLE.”50 However, in spite of, or likely because of, their divergent religious beliefs and backgrounds, the founders thought that separation made sense.

There are many religious people who believe if they act or believe in accordance with God’s will, God should and will protect them from calamities such as bad health and early death. Many pious people have been afflicted with disease and many non-religious and evil people have lived long and healthy lives. It should be obvious to anyone there is simply no correlation between religiosity and being protected from illness. (There are measurable health benefits to leading the purposeful, family-centered, and community-centered life healthy religious practices provide, but that is another matter.) How could there be such a correlation? As Harold Kushner has observed, does the belief God protects the righteous mean a good religious person can go out in freezing weather without a coat and never get sick? If God really did protect religious people from all illness, why would any rational person not be religious? Moreover, faith would no longer be faith. It wouldn’t take any faith to believe in God and to lead a religious life. It would be a completely empirically based decision: Observe x and you will never get cancer; believe y and you will never get heart disease. That’s not faith, it’s a health care decision. The belief God protects those with proper observance or faith from all disease must ultimately lead to an unsympathetic, even judgmental, response to people who get sick: ‘If only they were more observant [or] if only they had a deeper faith—they wouldn’t have gotten cancer or had that heart attack.’ The victim of cancer or a heart attack is then doubly victimized.

Psychologists have proven that children feel more protected when they are given boundaries. If they are allowed to run wild, they become nervous, insecure and fearful, as well as rowdy and erratic. (Later, when they enter the teen years, they can develop serious rebellion and immoral behavior patterns.) God designed us with a need for moral limitations, and parents have a responsibility to provide this through loving discipline. You

6:10–18 Spiritual Warfare, FAITH’S WARFARE. Paul admonishes us to put on the whole armor of God in order to stand against the forces of hell. It is clear that our warfare is not against physical forces, but against invisible powers who have clearly defined levels of authority in a real, though invisible, sphere of activity. Paul, however, not only warns us of a clearly defined structure in the invisible realm; he instructs us to take up the whole armor of God in order to maintain a “battle-stance” against this unseen satanic structure. All of this armor is not just a passive protection in facing the enemy; it is to be used offensively against these satanic forces. Note Paul’s final directive: we are to “pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion” (v. 18). Thus, prayer is not so much a weapon, or even a part of the armor, as it is the means by which we engage in the battle itself and the purpose for which we are armed. To put on the armor of God is to prepare for battle. Prayer is the battle itself, with God’s Word being our chief weapon employed against Satan during our struggle. (*/2 Kgs 6:8–17) D.E.

The reason is that the state has an interest in promoting the familial arrangement whereby a mother and a father raise the children that came from their union. The state has been in the marriage business for the common good and for the well-being of the society it is supposed to protect. Kids do better with a mom and a dad.1 Communities do better when husbands and wives stay together. Hundreds of studies confirm both of these statements (though we all can think of individual exceptions I’m sure).2 Same-sex marriage assumes that marriage is redefinable and the moving parts replaceable. By recognizing same-sex unions as marriage, just like the husband-wife relationship we’ve always called marriage, the state is engaging in (or at least codifying) a massive reengineering of our social life. It assumes the indistinguishability of gender in parenting, the relative unimportance of procreation in marriage, and the near infinite flexibility as to what sorts of structures and habits lead to human flourishing.3

Originally, the term “prophet” was applied to individuals who provided significant military and judicial leadership—for example, Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15) and Deborah (Judges 4:4). It was also used of persons who had ecstatic experiences of contact with God (Numbers 11:24–29; 1 Samuel 19:20–24; 2 Kings 3:15) and of individuals who were protected by God in some special way (Abraham, Genesis 20:7; see also Psalm 105:15).

Anticipating Jesus’s descent and executing his followers probably strikes most readers as odd. The Qur’an portrays Jesus as a messenger of God and his followers as those “nearest in love to the believers” (5:82). But the prophecies attributed to Muhammad outside the Qur’an foresee Jesus returning to fight alongside the Muslims against the infidels. As in the Bible, the appearance of Jesus heralds the Last Days. But instead of gathering the faithful up to heaven, he will lead the Muslims in a war against the Jews, who will fight on behalf of the Antichrist, called the Deceiving Messiah. Jesus will “shatter the crucifix, kill the swine, abolish the protection tax, and make wealth to flow until no one needs any more,” says one prophecy attributed to Muhammad and quoted by the first emir of the Islamic State.

my commands and live;  protect my teachings as the pupil of your eye.  3 Tie them to your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.

Happy is the one whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God,  6 the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them.  He remains faithful forever,  7 executing justice for the exploited and giving food to the hungry.  The Lord frees prisoners.  8 The Lord opens the eyes of the blind.  The Lord raises up those who are oppressed. The Lord loves the righteous.  9 The Lord protects foreigners and helps the fatherless and the widow,  but He frustrates the ways of the wicked. 

{49:2} And he has appointed my mouth as a sharp sword. In the shadow of his hand, he has protected me. And he has appointed me as an elect arrow. In his quiver, he has hidden me.

If the gospel lacks correspondence to reality, why is it that the majority of believers never comes to terms with this? As I expressed in my opening chapter, I am convinced it is not due to a lack of intelligence. Nor is it due to a lack of goodness or noble intentions on the part of most believers. Rather, from the perspective of one who has escaped the finely tuned clutches of the Christian machinery designed to keep me in the fold, I see it primarily as a lack of courage, at least for those who have encountered good reasons for doubting. I, like most believers, experienced serious doubts as a young Christian, but I lacked the courage to pit my reservations against the authority of the church and against its fallible, humanly authored scriptures, finding it safer to submit to the supremely well-crafted, guilt-inducing tactics of apologists who assured me that all the fault lay with me and not with the divinely inspired Bible. I capitulated and managed to hold my doubts at bay for over a decade longer while serving God on the mission field. Many if not most of you have faced similar questions and misgivings about the Bible and the Christian faith, even if not to the same extent. You might be like me during my initial short-lived crises of faith: I could not bring myself to face with courage the possibility that life might not have any cosmic Meaning; that there might be no higher power to guide, protect, and provide for me; that justice might not prevail in the long run; that I might no longer be able to hold sinners accountable with the words, "Thus says the Lord"; that life ends at the grave; or that I might have followed and lead others to follow a grand mistake. I lacked the courage to face my church, family, and friends whom I feared would look upon me as a reprobate. I lacked the courage to think for myself—to accept that the virtues of humility and meekness must not be used as an excuse for failing to challenge entrenched ideas that lack sufficient evidence. In short, I preferred to squelch the seed of doubt and label it as sin rather than as healthy, critical thinking, lest it flower and make life unbearable. That I viewed my incipient doubt and disbelief as sin was no accident: the church has a powerful vested interest in keeping believers in the fold, and it will not let them go without a fight. My courage-squelching guilt or angst was the result of a concerted effort developed over the centuries to make me feel like a depraved worm, a proud and willful rebel, a traitor, a God-hater, and an enemy of all that is good. I was programmed to consider that I would be better off if I were to commit adultery or murder than if I were to abandon the one who created me and redeemed me. Without Christ I would be worse than a good-for-nothing, and, like the traitor Judas, it would have been better for me had I never been born. No wonder most believers never muster the courage to break free from this cage!

{11:8} How will I provide for you, Ephraim; how will I protect you, Israel? How will I provide for you as for Adam; will I set you like Zeboiim? My heart has changed within me; together with my regret, it has been stirred up.   {11:9} I will

We ask no sympathy from others in the anxiety and agony of a 
broken friendship or shattered love. When death sunders our nearest
 ties, alone we sit in the shadow of our affliction. Alike mid the greatest 
triumphs and darkest tragedies of life we walk alone. On the divine 
heights of human attainments, eulogized and worshiped as a hero or 
saint, we stand alone. In ignorance, poverty, and vice, as a pauper or 
criminal, alone we starve or steal; alone we suffer the sneers and rebuffs
of our fellows; alone we are hunted and hounded through dark courts
and alleys, in by-ways and highways; alone we stand in the judgment
 seat; alone in the prison cell we lament our crimes and misfortunes; alone we expiate them on the gallows. In hours like these we realize the 
awful solitude of individual life, its pains, its penalties, its responsibilities; hours in which the youngest and most helpless are thrown on their own resources for guidance and consolation. Seeing then that life must ever be a march and a battle, that each soldier must be equipped for his own protection, it is the height of cruelty to rob the individual of a single natural right.

The idea of a personal God who protects us, loves us, and then punishes us by not allowing us into Heaven, but instead casts us into Hell for eternity if we haven’t met his standards of living, is so outlandish that it can only be taught to children who don’t know any better—which, by the way, is how it’s done. If a person hasn’t been introduced to this mythical idea about God in early childhood, he or she becomes increasingly hard to preach to.

Today, religious fanatics and scientific rejectionists flourish under the protective wing of postmodernism, claiming that theirs is just one more valid viewpoint—a form of mental aikido (using the opponent’s strength against him).

And if we must take historical blunders in our stride, how will we cope with flat-out contradictions? Did Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb of Jesus see an angel of the Lord [Matthew 28:2] or merely a young man in white [Mark 16:5]? Or was it two men in shining garments [Luke 24:4]? Or two angels [John 20:12]? And how do we deal with the omission of pivotal events? Did Mary see Jesus himself near the tomb, at first mistaking him for a gardener [John 20:14-15]? Surely a sighting of Jesus is critically important evidence of the resurrection, the central mystery of the Christian faith. Yet the encounter at the tomb is mentioned only in the Gospel of John. How could Matthew, Mark and Luke have missed such a crucial point? Historical scholars, and most theologians, recognize that the authors who penned the ancient documents were doing the best they could with the sources available to them, writing in the traditions and expectations of their time, more concerned with presenting a coherent message than with precise historical accuracy. Some biblical scholars, however, even to this day maintain the inerrancy of scripture. They see the Bible as the Word of God, divinely inspired and supernaturally protected from error down the centuries. Unless one reads without comprehension (a distressingly common affliction), a belief in biblical inerrancy demands considerable mental gymnastics. Adherents typically construct a unified account of the gospel stories, not by resolving conflicts, but by adding together all the elements from the different narratives. Thus, Mary Magdalene visited the tomb several times, seeing the different combinations of divine presences on different occasions. For some inscrutable reason, God chose to drop the accounts of those visits into different gospels instead of presenting them logically in a single document.

God, I thank You for all You have given me. I pray for Your continued blessings, provision, and protection. I pray Your presence will always be with me wherever I go and no matter what happens. Thank You that You are pleased to share Yourself and Your kingdom with me. Enable me to give back to You by helping and blessing others.

Proverbs 15:24-26 24 The path of life leads upward for the wise;        they leave the grave[*] behind. 25 The LORD tears down the house of the proud,        but he protects the property of widows. 26 The LORD detests evil plans,        but he delights in pure words.

Lord, speak to me about Your will for my life so that I can always walk in it. Your will is a place of safety and protection for me, and I need to know I am headed in the right direction. Help me to hear Your voice speaking to my heart telling me what to do, especially with regard to the decisions I need to make each day of my life.

Our God’s hand of protection is on all who worship him, but his fierce anger rages against those who abandon him.