Resist The Devil Quotes

Inevitably it follows that anyone with an independent mind must become 'one who resists or opposes an authority or established convention': a rebel. ...And if enough people come to agree with—and follow—the REBEL, we now have a DEVIL. Until, of course, still more people agree. And then, finally, we have ... GREATNESS.

But sometimes normal just isn't happening. Sometimes crazy feels too good to resist.

Don’t be disheartened by the forces of evil. Nothing can happen that God hasn’t allowed. Even resistance is all part of grand orchestration. The devil always has you right were God wants you.

Slowly his resistance ebbed. She felt the change in his body, the relaxing of tension, his shoulders curving around her as if he could draw her into himself. Murmuring her name, he brought her hand to his face and nuzzled ardently into her palm, his lips brushing the warm circlet of her gold wedding band. “My love is upon you,” he whispered…and she knew then that she had won.

When some name dropping and eye-rolling chin-strokers are trying to snow us under with an avalanche of swollen narratives, we must never resist puncturing the blown-up balloons of their twisted too-good-to-be-true stories. The sound of bursting balloons may, then, ring like ravishing music in the ears.("Could the milk man be the devil?" )

I'm one of the freaks, the faggots, the geeks, the savages, rogues, rebels, dissident devils, artists, martyrs, infidels ... do we sit still under attack? or do we start pushing back? never back up never back down & FIGHT.

I am of a different mind ten times in the course of a day. But I resist the devil, and often it is with a fart that I chase him away. When he tempts me with silly sins I say, 'Devil, yesterday I broke wind too. Have you written it down on your list?

A working knowledge of the devil can be very well had from resisting him.

The most dangerous people in the world are not the tiny minority instigating evil acts, but those who do the acts for them. For example, when the British invaded India, many Indians accepted to work for the British to kill off Indians who resisted their occupation. So in other words, many Indians were hired to kill other Indians on behalf of the enemy for a paycheck. Today, we have mercenaries in Africa, corporate armies from the western world, and unemployed men throughout the Middle East killing their own people - and people of other nations - for a paycheck. To act without a conscience, but for a paycheck, makes anyone a dangerous animal. The devil would be powerless if he couldn't entice people to do his work. So as long as money continues to seduce the hungry, the hopeless, the broken, the greedy, and the needy, there will always be war between brothers.

This is where you first failed us. You gave us minds and told us not to think. You gave us curiosity and put a booby-trapped tree right in front of us. You gave us sex and told us not to do it. You played three-card monte with our souls from day one, and when we couldn't find the queen, you sent us to Hell to be tortured for eternity. That was your great plan for humanity? All you gave us here was daisies and fairy tales and you acted like that was enough. How were we supposed to resist evil when you didn't even tell us about it?

Let man but accumulate his materials of destruction and the devil within him will soon be unable to resist putting them to their fated use.

I’m not going to ask a thousand people for their opinions,” Phoebe said evenly. “Only one opinion is required, and it happens to be mine.” She went to the doorway and paused, unable to resist adding, “That’s leadership.

A Brief for the Defense Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants. Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they have known and the awfulness in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody in the village is very sick. There is laughter every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta, and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay. If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation. We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. We must admit there will be music despite everything. We stand at the prow again of a small ship anchored late at night in the tiny port looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning. To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth all the years of sorrow that are to come.

In fact, one might make the case that New York would not have shone without its legions of contrary devils polishing the lights of goodness with their inexplicable opposition and resistance.

The system loves resistance. Resistance is often creative and it feeds on creativity until the subversive becomes just another pre-packaged lifestyle on special offer. So Cease to Resist. Relax and enjoy the PandaemonAeon. Believe everything and anything. Seek not proof, but take pleasure in your choice of belief. Wipe that superior sneer of your face and try smiling (if only inwardly) at the people/institutions/beliefs that you've waged your personal war against. Wouldn't it be more fun if you didn't run around quite so hard trying to be an individual, or fighting to prove or uphold your chosen belief-system?

How could anyone resist you?" Phoebe asked, half-mocking, half-sincere. He gave her a dark glance. "Apparently she has no problem. The title, the fortune, the estate, the social position ... to her, they're all detractions. Somehow I have to convince her to marry me despite all those things." With raw honesty, he added, "And I'm damned if I even know who I am outside of them.

Jesus sees our primary war against the devil as a fight to believe truth over lies.

Stay submitted to God by not becoming offended; resist the devil, and he will flee from you (James 4:7). We resist the devil by not becoming offended. The dream or vision will probably happen differently than how you think it will, but His Word and His promises will not fail. We only risk aborting them by our disobedience.

BALLOT, n. A simple device by which a majority proves to a minority the folly of resistance. Many worthy persons of imperfect thinking apparatus believe that majorities govern through some inherent right; and minorities submit, not because they must, but because they ought.

It’s by Spirit and truth that we’re transformed into the image of Jesus, but the reciprocal is also true. It’s by isolation and lies that we’re deformed into the image of the devil.

You are not yet out of reach of the gunshot of the Devil. You have not yet resisted unto death in your striving against sin. Let the Kingdom be always before you, and believe with certainty and consistency the things that are yet unseen. Let nothing that is on this side of eternal life get inside you. Above all, take care of your own hearts, and resist the lusts that tempt you, for your hearts `are deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.'d Set your faces like a flint; you have all the power of Heaven and earth on your side." Christian

At the end of that class Demian said to me thoughtfully: "There’s something I don’t like about this story, Sinclair. Why don’t you read it once more and give it the acid test? There’s something about it that doesn’t taste right. I mean the business with the two thieves. The three crosses standing next to each other on the hill are almost impressive, to be sure. But now comes this sentimental little treatise about the good thief. At first he was a thorough scoundrel, had committed all those awful things and God knows what else, and now he dissolves in tears and celebrates such a tearful feast of self-improvement and remorse! What’s the sense of repenting if you’re two steps from the grave? I ask you. Once again, it’s nothing but a priest’s fairy tale, saccharine and dishonest, touched up with sentimentality and given a high edifying background. If you had to pick a friend from between the two thieves or decide which one you’d rather trust, you most certainly wouldn’t choose the sniveling convert. No, the other fellow, he’s a man of character. He doesn’t give a hoot for ‘conversion’, which to a man in his position can’t be anything but a pretty speech. He follows his destiny to it’s appointed end and does not turn coward and forswear the devil, who has aided and abetted him until then. He has character, and people with character tend to receive the short end of the stick in biblical stories. Perhaps he’s even a descendant of Cain. Don’t you agree?" I was dismayed. Until now I had felt completely at home in the story of the Crucifixion. Now I saw for the first time with how little individuality, with how little power of imagination I had listened to it and read it. Still, Demian’s new concept seemed vaguely sinister and threatened to topple beliefs on whose continued existence I felt I simply had to insist. No, one could not make light of everything, especially not of the most Sacred matters. As usual he noticed my resistance even before I had said anything. "I know," he said in a resigned tone of voice, "it’s the same old story: don’t take these stories seriously! But I have to tell you something: this is one of the very places that reveals the poverty of this religion most distinctly. The point is that this God of both Old and New Testaments is certainly an extraordinary figure but not what he purports to represent. He is all that is good, noble, fatherly, beautiful, elevated, sentimental—true! But the world consists of something else besides. And what is left over is ascribed to the devil, this entire slice of world, this entire half is hushed up. In exactly the same way they praise God as the father of all life but simply refuse to say a word about our sexual life on which it’s all based, describing it whenever possible as sinful, the work of the devil. I have no objection to worshiping this God Jehovah, far from it. But I mean we ought to consider everything sacred, the entire world, not merely this artificially separated half! Thus alongside the divine service we should also have a service for the devil. I feel that would be right. Otherwise you must create for yourself a God that contains the devil too and in front of which you needn’t close your eyes when the most natural things in the world take place.

Let man but accumulate sufficient engines of destruction and the devil within him will soon be unable to resist putting them to their fated use. It is well known that firearms go off of themselves if only enough of them are together.

To me, the masses seem to be worth a glance only in three respects: first as blurred copies of great men, presented on bad paper with worn out printing plates, then as the resistance against the great men, and finally as working implements of the great. For the rest, let the devil and statistics carry them off!

To what end the ‘world’ exists, to what end ‘man­kind’ exists, ought not to concern us at all for the moment except as objects of humour: for the presumptuousness of the little human worm is the funniest thing at present on the world’s stage; on the other hand, do ask yourself why you, the individual, exist, and if you can get no other answer try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting before yourself an aim, a goal, a ‘to this end’, an exalted and noble ‘to this end’ . Perish in pursuit of this and only this - I know of no better aim of life than that of perishing, animae magnae prodigus, in pursuit of the great and the impossible. If, on the other hand, the doctrines of sovereign becoming, of the fluidity of all concepts, types and species, of the lack of any cardinal distinction between man and animal - doctrines which I consider true but deadly - are thrust upon the people for another generation with the rage for instruction that has by now become normal, no one should be surprised if the people perishes of petty egoism, ossification and greed, falls apart and ceases to be a people; in its place sys­tems of individualist egoism, brotherhoods for the rapacious exploitation of the non-brothers, and similar creations of utilitarian vulgarity may perhaps appear in the arena of the future. To prepare the way for these creations all one has to do is to go on writing history from the standpoint of the masses and seeking to derive the laws which govern it from the needs of these masses, that is to say from the laws which move the lowest mud- and clay-strata of society. The masses seem to me to deserve notice in three respects only: first as faded copies of great men produced on poor paper with worn-out plates, then as a force of resistance to great men, finally as instruments in the hands of great men; for the rest, let the Devil and statistics take them!

Morpheus." I say it more as an accusation than a revelation. The winged devil flashes his white teeth in a stunning smile that draws me in as it puts me on guard. "Mmm." He moves his hand along the hookah as if it's a violin. "Your voice is a song. Say it again." He takes a drag of smoke from the pipe. I'm so entranced by seeing him alive and real, I don't even try to resist. "Morpheus." "Beautiful.

The men on the hills told her that she hated them, and they did everything they could to make it true. She did not fight very hard. It was an easy thing to do. She wonders whether it would have been possible to behave any differently. She hopes it is. She hopes that, somewhere in the city, there are people who are resisting the temptation to turn these men into devils, to say that all men are like them, to oppose their very existence the way they always said the people of Sarajevo did.

He sighed. “I’m out of my own control, Winter,” he said, not explaining any further. “There are no choices. We are who we are, and we do what we do. It’s nature. Like game pieces, I will play my part, because I can’t resist. I can’t be what I’m not.

But that’s precisely the devil’s trick,’ Robin insisted. ‘This is how colonialism works. It convinces us that the fallout from resistance is entirely our fault, that the immoral choice is resistance itself rather than the circumstances that demanded it.

    7So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

God opposes the proud, but  d gives grace to the humble.” 7Submit yourselves therefore to God.  f Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 g Draw near to

Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

It is easier to teach saints than to learn from sinners. It is easier to teach young students than to guide old fools. It is easier to chastise saints than to caution sinners. It is easier to shine in the dark than to glow in the light. It is easier to multiply enemies than to accumulate friends. It is easier to embrace your angel than to face your demons. It is easier to fight an army of opinions than a single truth. It is easier to rise with enemies than to fall with friends. It is easier to fall into sin than to rise into virtue. It is easier to rise from defeat than to rise from ignorance. It is easier to survive a blow from a friend than a kiss from an enemy. It is easier to conquer a thousand devils than a single angel. It is easier to rise from love than to soar from hate. It is easier to move mountains by faith than hills by your hands. It is easier for stars to shine than for truth to glow. It is easier to resist pain than to defy pleasure. It is easier to appease the strong than to wrestle the mighty. It is easier to tame the mind than to bridle the soul. It is easier to fight an army than to grapple with your conscience. It is easier to embrace the future than to understand the past. It is easier for the sun to shine than for the moon to glow. It is easier for small seeds to rise than for big trees to grow. It is easier to heal a wounded heart than a broken soul. It is easier to rule the mind than to conquer the soul. It is easier to conquer your enemies than to master your fears.

A line from The Picture of Dorian Gray kept running through my head- a line which, I thought, might have been written by the Devil himself: "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.

You belong with me, Azami. Your family will be my family. My family—the GhostWalkers—will be yours.” “You’re a very dangerous man, Sam Johnson,” she whispered. “You stand there, tempting me with your pretty words of a future together, the devil in his blue jeans, so good-looking you’re impossible to resist. I don’t know why I can’t say no to you.” His grin widened. His arms slid around her, pulling her tight against him. He didn’t want so much as a breath between them. “That will stand me in good stead in the future.” He bent his head once more to the temptation of her angelic mouth.

Once when the great slaver turned abolitionist John Newton was praised for what he had achieved, he responded quickly: “Sir, the devil already told me that.” In a similar situation, when the eminent Scottish preacher Robert Murray M’Cheyne was congratulated by a parishioner for his saintliness, he replied sharply, “Madame, if you could see in my heart, you would spit in my face.” In each case, they refused to let others think that they were what they weren’t. They resisted hypocrisy by exposing the gap that was its essence—the gap between the inner and the outer, appearance and reality.

Working theory of the devil’s strategy: deceitful ideas that play to disordered desires that are normalized in a sinful society Working theory of the law of returns applied to spiritual formation: sow a thought, reap an action; sow action, reap another action; sow some actions, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny, either in slavery to the flesh or freedom in the Spirit.

Therefore it says,  e “God opposes the proud, but  d gives grace to the humble.” 7Submit yourselves therefore to God.  f Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 g Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

Miss Smith, your suspicions wound me,' he said with a smile. He drew her, stiff and unwilling, against his side. Immediately her warmth seeped into his veins. He’d known he’d missed her, but only now did he realize how much. 'I mean no harm.' 'You lie.' 'Often,' he agreed amiably, feeling the resistance leaching from her. 'Not this time.' 'I’m in no fit state to fight you,' she muttered, curving into him as if created to fit his body. 'I know,' he acknowledged ruefully, wondering why of all the women in the world, she was the only one who ignited any glimmer of chivalry in his soul. 'But it’s no fun when you just give in. I’ll wait until you’re up for another bout.' She hid her face in his shoulder. She inhaled on a shudder, as if she hadn’t taken a full breath in days. 'You’re an evil devil, Ranelaw.' 'Absolutely,' he said softly, firming his hold as she shifted, not away as she should, but closer.

Do not be discouraged by people to whom Christ is just a joke and a laughingstock...they live on, certain of everything and untroubled by the devil. Why should he bother them? They already belong to him. You and I are the ones he would like to seize. Now how will he do that? He will continue attacking you with small things until he gets to your substance. But resist him. He who is with us is greater than he who is in the world.

The masses seem to me to deserve notice in three respects only: first as faded copies of great men produced on poor paper with worn-out plates, then as a force of resistance to great men, finally as instruments in the hands of great men; for the rest, let the Devil and statistics take them!

We can’t just hope we will think good thoughts. We have to actively seek them. We have to think purposely, not passively. A passive mind is a dangerous thing; passive people want good things to happen to them, but they just wait around to see what will happen. They do nothing to contribute to a positive result in their lives. The devil wants us to be passive because then he can work his plan without any opposition from us. But the Bible tells us to resist the devil, and he will flee. Be an active person who is always working with God toward the result that you desire to see in your life.

Still canna resist the draw of the devil." A tremor sliced through Farah at the old woman's words. Dougan had called himself a demon the first time they'd met. If that sweet boy had been a demon, then Dorian Blackwell certainly was the devil. And Farah was, indeed, helpless to resist his dark allure.

Doubt is from the devil. You have to resist doubts and rebuke them. You have to get your mind on the answer — on God’s Word. In order to receive answers to your prayers, you must eradicate every image, suggestion, vision, dream, impression, feeling, and all thoughts that do not contribute to your faith and that do not affirm that you have what you have asked God for. The word “eradicate” means to uproot or remove. Remember, Satan moves in the sense realm, in the natural realm, and he uses the tool of suggestion.

Small acts of resistance matter!

7Therefore submit to God. †Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8†Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. †Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and †purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9†Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10†Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

My God, Sweetness beyond words, make bitter all the carnal comfort that draws me from love of the eternal and lures me to its evil self by the sight of some delightful good in the present. Let it not overcome me, my God. Let not flesh and blood conquer me. Let not the world and its brief glory deceive me, nor the devil trip me by his craftiness. Give me courage to resist, patience to endure, and constancy to persevere. Give me the soothing unction of Your spirit rather than all the consolations of the world, and in place of carnal love, infuse into me the love of Your name.

God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”c 7Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Want to know the coolest thing about the coming? Not that the One who played marbles with the stars gave it up to play marbles with marbles. Or that the One who hung the galaxies gave it up to hang doorjambs to the displeasure of a cranky client who wanted everything yesterday but couldn't pay until tomorrow. Not that he, in an instant, went from needing nothing to needing air, food, a tub of hot water and salts for his tired feet, and, more than anything, needing somebody - anybody - who was more concerned about where he would spend eternity rather than where he would spend Friday's paycheck. Or that he resisted the urge to fry the two=bit, self-appointed hall monitors of holiness who dared suggest that he was doing the work of the devil. Not that he kept his cool while the dozen best friends he ever had felt the heat and got out of the kitchen. Or that he gave no command to the angels who begged, "Just give us the nod, Lord. One word and these demons will be deviled eggs." Not that he refused to defend himself when blamed for every sin of every slut and sailor since Adam. Or that he stood silent as a million guilty verdicts echoed in the tribunal of heaven and the giver of light was left in the chill of a sinner's night. Not even that after three days in a dark hole he stepped into the Easter sunrise with a smile and a swagger and a question for lowly Lucifer - "Is that your best punch?" That was cool, incredibly cool. But want to know the coolest thing about the One who gave up the crown of heaven for a crown of thorns? He did it for you. Just for you.

Oh, it's you," Sebastian said in a tone of mild surprise, seeming to ponder how he had ended up kneeling on a bathroom rug with his wife in his arms. "I was prepared to debauch a resisting servant girl, but you're a more difficult case." "You can debauch me," Evie offered cheerfully. Her husband smiled, his glowing gaze moving gently over her face. He smoothed back a few escaping curls that had lightened from ruby to soft apricot. "My love, I've tried for thirty years. But despite my dedicated efforts..." A sweetly erotic kiss grazed her lips. "...you still have the innocent eyes of that shy wallflower I eloped with. Can't you try to look at least a little bit jaded? Disillusioned?" He laughed quietly at her efforts and kissed her again, this time with a teasing, sensuous pressure that caused her pulse to quicken.

When your feet hit the floor each morning, do you make your enemy the devil, say, “Oh crap, he’s up”? When you step out your door each day, do heaven, earth, and hell take notice? When you protect the woman under your care, can she do little to resist you? Do your children look to you with confidence? Do other men look to you as someone to emulate? Does your church call on you for strength and leadership? Are you a preserver of culture and a champion of society, one who keeps out evil and ushers in good? Are you a man who is fulfilling your destiny and able to satisfy the woman in your life? More than all of that, though, when God searches for a man to advance His kingdom, does He call your name?

I think if you wanted a peaceful marriage and orderly household, you should have proposed to any one of the well-bred simpletons who've been dangled in front of you for years. Ivo's right: Pandora is a different kind of girl. Strange and marvelous. I wouldn't dare predict-" She broke off as she saw him staring at Pandora's distant form. "Lunkhead, you're not even listening. You've already decided to marry her, and damn the consequences." "It wasn't even a decision," Gabriel said, baffled and surly. "I can't think of one good reason to justify why I want her so bloody badly." Phoebe smiled, gazing toward the water. "Have I ever told you what Henry said when he proposed, even knowing how little time we would have together? 'Marriage is far too important a matter to be decided with reason.' He was right, of course." Gabriel took up a handful of warm, dry sand and let it sift through his fingers. "The Ravenels will sooner weather a scandal than force her to marry. And as you probably overheard, she objects not only to me, but the institution of marriage itself." "How could anyone resist you?" Phoebe asked, half-mocking, half-sincere. He gave her a dark glance. "Apparently she has no problem. The title, the fortune, the estate, the social position... to her, they're all detractions. Somehow I have to convince her to marry me despite those things." With raw honesty, he added, "And I'm damned if I even know who I am outside of them." "Oh, my dear..." Phoebe said tenderly. "You're the brother who taught Raphael to sail a skiff, and showed Justin how to tie his shoes. You're the man who carried Henry down to the trout stream, when he wanted to go fishing one last time." She swallowed audibly, and sighed. Digging her heels into the sand, she pushed them forward, creating a pair of trenches. "Shall I tell you what your problem is?" "Is that a question?" "Your problem," his sister continued, "is that you're too good at maintaining that façade of godlike perfection. You've always hated for anyone to see that you're a mere mortal. But you won't win this girl that way." She began to dust the sand from her hands. "Show her a few of your redeeming vices. She'll like you all the better for it.

I am about to reveal to you an arcane, unfathomable mystery that has never been whispered by mortal lips or displayed on the hallowed shelves where the venerable masters of science discuss their theories with uncompromising rigour. I am about to entrust you with a secret that will drastically alter your perception of existence, a knowledge so potent that upon its discovery, your human essence will resist its comprehension, fearful of the overwhelming luminosity and its permanence on this earthly plane; When, as if by magic, these words pass through the barrier of your heart and establish a link with your mind to revitalise your consciousness, it will be time to cast off the chains of moral slavery and tear your soul into a thousand fragments, allowing the divine light to recompose and transform it, Do you long to know the secret? Well, place your hand on the centre of your chest, inhale deeply at a slower than usual pace and whisper to your heart: "I AM FREE"--From The Devil's Writer

Throughout the social tumult of the 1690s, Mather obsessed over maintaining the social hierarchies by convincing the lowly that God and nature had put them there, whether it applied to women, children, enslaved Africans, or poor people. In A Good Master Well Served (1696), he presumed that nature had created “a conjugal society” between husband and wife; a “Parental Society” between parent and child; and, “lowest of all,” a “herile society” between master and servant. Society, he said, became destabilized when children, women, and servants refused to accept their station. Mather compared egalitarian resisters to that old ambitious Devil, who wanted to become the all-powerful God. This line of thinking became Mather’s everlasting justification of social hierarchy: the ambitious lowly resembled Satan; his kind of elites resembled God.

Most churches do not grow beyond the spiritual health of their leadership. Many churches have a pastor who is trying to lead people to a Savior he has yet to personally encounter. If spiritual gifting is no proof of authentic faith, then certainly a job title isn't either. You must have a clear sense of calling before you enter ministry. Being a called man is a lonely job, and many times you feel like God has abandoned you in your ministry. Ministry is more than hard. Ministry is impossible. And unless we have a fire inside our bones compelling us, we simply will not survive. Pastoral ministry is a calling, not a career. It is not a job you pursue. If you don’t think demons are real, try planting a church! You won’t get very far in advancing God’s kingdom without feeling resistance from the enemy. If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. Once a month I get away for the day, once a quarter I try to get out for two days, and once a year I try to get away for a week. The purpose of these times is rest, relaxation, and solitude with God. A pastor must always be fearless before his critics and fearful before his God. Let us tremble at the thought of neglecting the sheep. Remember that when Christ judges us, he will judge us with a special degree of strictness. The only way you will endure in ministry is if you determine to do so through the prevailing power of the Holy Spirit. The unsexy reality of the pastorate is that it involves hard work—the heavy-lifting, curse-ridden, unyielding employment of your whole person for the sake of the church. Pastoral ministry requires dogged, unyielding determination, and determination can only come from one source—God himself. Passive staff members must be motivated. Erring elders and deacons must be confronted. Divisive church members must be rebuked. Nobody enjoys doing such things (if you do, you should be not be a pastor!), but they are necessary in order to have a healthy church over the long haul. If you allow passivity, laziness, and sin to fester, you will soon despise the church you pastor. From the beginning of sacred Scripture (Gen. 2:17) to the end (Rev. 21:8), the penalty for sin is death. Therefore, if we sin, we should die. But it is Jesus, the sinless one, who dies in our place for our sins. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus died to take to himself the penalty of our sin. The Bible is not Christ-centered because it is generally about Jesus. It is Christ-centered because the Bible’s primary purpose, from beginning to end, is to point us toward the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the salvation and sanctification of sinners. Christ-centered preaching goes much further than merely providing suggestions for how to live; it points us to the very source of life and wisdom and explains how and why we have access to him. Felt needs are set into the context of the gospel, so that the Christian message is not reduced to making us feel better about ourselves. If you do not know how sinful you are, you feel no need of salvation. Sin-exposing preaching helps people come face-to-face with their sin and their great need for a Savior. We can worship in heaven, and we can talk to God in heaven, and we can read our Bibles in heaven, but we can’t share the gospel with our lost friends in heaven. “Would your city weep if your church did not exist?” It was crystal-clear for me. Somehow, through fear or insecurity, I had let my dreams for our church shrink. I had stopped thinking about the limitless things God could do and had been distracted by my own limitations. I prayed right there that God would forgive me of my small-mindedness. I asked God to forgive my lack of faith that God could use a man like me to bring the message of the gospel through our missionary church to our lost city. I begged God to renew my heart and mind with a vision for our city that was more like Christ's.

There are four agents that induce people to commit prohibited acts: the soul of the man, the devil assigned to him, his desire, and this world. In order to keep away from prohibited matters a man has to fight and resist all these. Needless to say, it is the most difficult and strenuous thing for the soul.

She felt a slight burn as he slipped a second finger inside her, stretching tenderly, and then he suckled the taut bud of her sex, licking slowly at first, increasing the pace as she twisted beneath him. He stayed with her, his long fingers working in controlled thrusts, his mouth compelling and demanding, until pleasure washed over her in faster and faster rushes, and suddenly she couldn't move at all. Arched tightly against his mouth, she cried out and gasped, and cried out again. His tongue gentled but continued its artful play, nursing her through the lingering peaks of sensation, bathing her sex with warm strokes as she began to shudder violently. A great weariness flooded her, and with it a physical euphoria that made her feel drunk. Unable to control her limbs, she squirmed tremulously beneath him, and she offered no resistance as St. Vincent turned her over to her stomach. His hand slipped between her thighs and his fingers entered her once more. The opening to her body was sore and, to her mortification, saturated with moisture. He seemed excited by the wetness, however, breathing against the sensitive nape of her neck in rapid pants. Keeping his fingers inside her, he kissed and nibbled his way down her back.

Look here!” he replied, pulling from his waist-coat a curiously constructed pistol, having a double-edged spring knife attached to the barrel. “That’s a great tempter to a desperate man, is it not? I cannot resist going up with this every night, and trying his door. If once I find it open he’s done for! I do it invariably, even though the minute before I have been recalling a hundred reasons that should make me refrain: it is some devil that urges me to thwart my own schemes by killing him. You fight against that devil for love as long as you may; when the time comes, not all the angels in heaven shall save him!

(She has read LOTR, and I don’t know if she read it identifying with all of the evil people and hoping the good ones wouldn’t resist their temptations, but I know she has read it because the first time I read it, it was her copy. This proves that just reading it isn’t enough. After all, the devil can quote scripture.)

Pandora, you're not living up to your reputation as the misbehaving twin. Take a risk. Have a little adventure with me." Pandora had never imagined being vulnerable to this kind of temptation, never guessed at how difficult it would be to resist. Meeting him in secret, at night, would be the most genuinely disgraceful thing she'd ever done, and she wasn't entirely certain that he would keep his promise. But conscience was putting up the flimsiest, most feeble possible defense against a desire that seemed shameful in its blind power. Weak with nerves and hunger and anger, she made her decision too quickly, the way she made most of her decisions.

How We Approach the New Testament We Christians have been taught to approach the Bible in one of eight ways: • You look for verses that inspire you. Upon finding such verses, you either highlight, memorize, meditate upon, or put them on your refrigerator door. • You look for verses that tell you what God has promised so that you can confess it in faith and thereby obligate the Lord to do what you want. • You look for verses that tell you what God commands you to do. • You look for verses that you can quote to scare the devil out of his wits or resist him in the hour of temptation. • You look for verses that will prove your particular doctrine so that you can slice-and-dice your theological sparring partner into biblical ribbons. (Because of the proof-texting method, a vast wasteland of Christianity behaves as if the mere citation of some random, decontextualized verse of Scripture ends all discussion on virtually any subject.) • You look for verses in the Bible to control and/or correct others. • You look for verses that “preach” well and make good sermon material. (This is an ongoing addiction for many who preach and teach.) • You sometimes close your eyes, flip open the Bible randomly, stick your finger on a page, read what the text says, and then take what you have read as a personal “word” from the Lord. Now look at this list again. Which of these approaches have you used? Look again: Notice how each is highly individualistic. All of them put you, the individual Christian, at the center. Each approach ignores the fact that most of the New Testament was written to corporate bodies of people (churches), not to individuals.

You are the proximate cause,’ insisted Professor Chakravarti. ‘You can make it stop.’ ‘But that’s precisely the devil’s trick,’ Robin insisted. ‘This is how colonialism works. It convinces us that the fallout from resistance is entirely our fault, that the immoral choice is resistance itself rather than the circumstances that demanded it.

We are not beyond the devil’s ability to tempt us, but we can always resist him in Jesus’ name. There are days when the battle of the mind seems relentless, but victory always comes to those who refuse to give up. Thomas Edison said, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.

For the first time I understood the dogma of eternal pain -- appreciated "the glad tidings of great joy." For the first time my imagination grasped the height and depth of the Christian horror. Then I said: "It is a lie, and I hate your religion. If it is true, I hate your God." From that day I have had no fear, no doubt. For me, on that day, the flames of hell were quenched. From that day I have passionately hated every orthodox creed. That Sermon did some good. In the Old Testament, they said. God is the judge -- but in the New, Christ is the merciful. As a matter of fact, the New Testament is infinitely worse than the Old. In the Old there is no threat of eternal pain. Jehovah had no eternal prison -- no everlasting fire. His hatred ended at the grave. His revenge was satisfied when his enemy was dead. In the New Testament, death is not the end, but the beginning of punishment that has no end. In the New Testament the malice of God is infinite and the hunger of his revenge eternal. The orthodox God, when clothed in human flesh, told his disciples not to resist evil, to love their enemies, and when smitten on one cheek to turn the other, and yet we are told that this same God, with the same loving lips, uttered these heartless, these fiendish words; "Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." These are the words of "eternal love." No human being has imagination enough to conceive of this infinite horror. All that the human race has suffered in war and want, in pestilence and famine, in fire and flood, -- all the pangs and pains of every disease and every death -- all this is as nothing compared with the agonies to be endured by one lost soul. This is the consolation of the Christian religion. This is the justice of God -- the mercy of Christ. This frightful dogma, this infinite lie, made me the implacable enemy of Christianity. The truth is that this belief in eternal pain has been the real persecutor. It founded the Inquisition, forged the chains, and furnished the fagots. It has darkened the lives of many millions. It made the cradle as terrible as the coffin. It enslaved nations and shed the blood of countless thousands. It sacrificed the wisest, the bravest and the best. It subverted the idea of justice, drove mercy from the heart, changed men to fiends and banished reason from the brain. Like a venomous serpent it crawls and coils and hisses in every orthodox creed. It makes man an eternal victim and God an eternal fiend. It is the one infinite horror. Every church in which it is taught is a public curse. Every preacher who teaches it is an enemy of mankind. Below this Christian dogma, savagery cannot go. It is the infinite of malice, hatred, and revenge. Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God. While I have life, as long as I draw breath, I shall deny with all my strength, and hate with every drop of my blood, this infinite lie.

They undertook to fight against the Turk under the name of Christ, and taught men and stirred them up to do this, as though our people were an army of Christians against the Turks, who were enemies of Christ; and this is straight against Christ’s doctrine and name. It is against His doctrine, because He says that Christians shall not resist evil, shall not fight or quarrel, not take revenge or insist on rights. It is against His name, because in such an army there are scarcely five Christians, and perhaps worse people in the eyes of God than are the Turks; and yet they would all bear the name of Christ. This is the greatest of all sins and one that no Turk commits, for Christ’s name is used for sin and shame and thus dishonored. This would be especially so if the pope and the bishops were in the war, for they would put the greatest shame and dishonor on Christ’s name, since they are called to fight against the devil with the Word of God and with prayer, and would be deserting their calling and office and fighting with the sword against flesh and blood. This they are not commanded, but forbidden to do.

You are not meant for heaven, says the Devil. Maybe it's because you love no one but yourself. Or maybe it's because you cultivate beauty instead of goodness. And don't use your father as an excuse. Plenty of people have worse fathers and have made something of their lives instead of acting hoity-toity and waiting for some prince to rescue them. Then again, your father is so noxious that I'm not surprised you wear the stench of his sins, like your mother did. Good woman on the surface, but to marry a man like your father... Well, that requires the kind of soul that ends in my clutches. I checked on her before I came. Somewhere in the fifth circle and on her way down. Still thinks she belongs in heaven, poor lass. Those kinds never fare well. The pain is twice as bad when you resist it. What I'm saying is that your soul is going to come to me one way or another like Mummy's did and like Daddy's will, so might as well play my game and try to snatch more time up here where you can keep pretending you're better than everyone else and your angels are guarding you. Do we have a deal? Lovely. Now tell me. What is my name?

Sister Aziza told us about the Jews. She described them in such a way that I imagined them as physically monstrous: they had horns on their heads, and noses so large they stuck right out of their faces like great beaks. Devils and djinns literally flew out of their heads to mislead Muslims and spread evil. Everything that went wrong was the fault of the Jews. The Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein, who had attacked the Islamic Revolution in Iran, was a Jew. The Americans, who were giving money to Saddam, were controlled by the Jews. The Jews controlled the world, and that was why we had to be pure: to resist this evil influence. Islam was under attack, and we should step forward and fight the Jews, for only if all Jews were destroyed would peace come for Muslims. I

MEPHISTOPHELES: What dreary, stale employment to keep watch on a philosopher! [...] These logicians are distrustful souls. One works like a spider around their cold brains to catch them in the web of dialectic, but the result is that they kick and catch the devil in threads of their own making. They use chicanery to resist the master who taught it to them! This one uses demonstrative reason to arrive at faith, and what ruins others saves him from my claws. You are a mystical pedant who gives me more pain than did your ancestor, Faust. [...] Behold, philosophers who want at one and the same time to understand and to feel. If we let them get away with it, man will slip between our fingers quickly enough. Hola, my masters! Believe and be absurd, we agree to that; but don’t complicate it by trying both to believe and to be wise.

There is no heaven with a little hell in it - no plan to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather! ... There is no clothing in a robe of imputed righteousness, the poorest of legal cobwebs spun by spiritual spiders. ... Christ is our righteousness, not that we should escape punishment, still less escape being righteous, but as the live potent Creator of righteousness in us, so that we, with our wills receiving His spirit, shall like Him resist unto blood, striving against sin; shall know in ourselves, as He knows, what a lovely thing is righteousness, what a mean, ugly, unnatural thing is unrighteousness. He is our righteousness, and that righteousness is no fiction, no pretense, no imputation. ... Any system which tends to persuade men that there is any salvation but that of becoming righteous even as Jesus is righteous; that a man can be made good, as a good dog is good, without his own willed share in the making; that a man is saved by having his sins hidden under a robe of imputed righteousness - that system, so far this tendency, is of the devil and not of God. Thank God, not even error shall injure the true of heart. They grow in truth, and as love casts out fear, so truth casts out falsehood.

At one point, he asked the old monk: “Do you still wrestle with the devil, Father Makarios?” The old priest sighed and replied: “Not any longer, my child. I have grown old now, and he has grown old with me. He doesn’t have the strength.… I wrestle with God.” “With God!” Kazantzakis exclaimed in astonishment. “And you hope to win?” “I hope to lose, my child,” the old man replied. “My bones remain with me still, and they continue to resist.

Halloween was a night when the dead came alive because the living were more alive: happy children high on candy, angry teenagers with eggs and shaving cream tucked into their hoodies, drunk college students in masks and wings and horns giving themselves permission to be something else—angel, demon, devil, good doctor, bad nurse. The sweat and excitement, the over-sugared punches loaded with fruit and grain alcohol. The Grays could not resist.

But like every good American, Truman knew he hated Communism. He also hated socialism, which may or may not have been the same thing. No one seemed quite sure. Yet as early as the American election of 1848, socialism—imported by comical German immigrants with noses always in books—was an ominous specter, calculated to derange a raw capitalist society with labor unions, health care, and other Devil’s work still being fiercely resisted a century and a half later.

Taking the ring from her, Sebastian slid it onto his own hand. His hands were so much larger that the circlet would only fit the tip of his smallest finger. Grasping her chin in an intractable hold, he glared into her eyes. “I’ll take your bet,” he said grimly. “I’m going to win it. And in three months, I’m going to put this back on your finger, and take you to bed, and do things to you that are outlawed in the civilized world.” Evie’s resolve did not shield her from the heart-thumping alarm that any rational woman would feel upon hearing such an ominous statement. Nor did it prevent her knees from turning to jelly as he jerked her against his body and fitted his mouth to hers. Her hands, suspended in mid-air, went to his head in a trembling butterfly descent. The texture of his hair, the locks so cool and thick on the surface, so warm and damp at the roots, was too alluring to resist. She slid her fingers into the gleaming golden layers and pulled him even closer, helplessly reveling in the urgent pressure of his mouth. Their tongues mated, slid, stroked, and with each slippery-sweet caress inside the joined cavern of their mouths, she felt a hot coiling deep in her belly… no, deeper than that… in the tightening, liquefying core where she had once taken his invading flesh. It shocked her to realize how much she wanted him there again. She whimpered as he pulled away from her, while frustration washed over them both. “You didn’t say that I couldn’t kiss you,” Sebastian said, his eyes bright with devil-fire. “I’m going to kiss you as long and as often as I like, and you’re not to utter a word of protest. That’s the concession you’ll give in return for my celibacy. Damn you.” Giving her no time either to agree or to object, he released her and strode to the door. “And now, if you’ll excuse me… I’m going to go kill Joss Bullard.

PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Comm. in Matt. Prolog.) Matthew has arranged his narrative in a regular series of events. First, the birth, secondly, the baptism, thirdly, the temptation, fourthly, the teachings, fifthly, the miracles, sixthly, the passion, seventhly, the resurrection, and lastly, the ascension of Christ; desiring by this not only to set forth the history of Christ, but to teach the order of evangelic life. It is nought that we are born of our parents, if we be not reborn again of God by water and the Spirit. After baptism we must resist the Devil. Then being as it were superior to all temptation, he is made fit to teach, and if he be a priest let him teach, and commend his teaching, as it were, by the miracles of a good life; if he be lay, let him teach faith by his works. In the end we must take our departure from the stage of this world, and there remains that the reward of resurrection and glory follow the victory over temptation.

Yet although I could not resist doing so, my sleep was not interrupted. The door opened and a dark figure entered whom I recognized to my horror as my own self in Capuchin robes, with beard and tonsure. The figure came nearer and nearer my bed: I lay motionless, and every sound I tried to utter was stifled in the trance that gripped me. The figure sat down on my bed and leered mockingly at me. “You must come with me,” it said. “Let us climb on to the roof beneath the weathercock, which is playing a merry tune for the owl's wedding. Up there we will fight with each other, and the one who pushes the other over will become king and be able to drink blood.” I felt the figure take hold of me and lift me up. With a strength born of desperation I screamed: “You are not me, you are the Devil!” - and clawed at the face of the menacing spectre. But my fingers went through his eyes as if they were empty cavities, and the figure burst into strident laughter.

Our defense against the devil, made possible by Jesus’ death and resurrection and the Holy Spirit’s presence in us, comes in three ways: 1. Preparation: In Ephesians 6:10f, the apostle Paul teaches us to grow in our faith similarly to a soldier putting on armor, so that we may stand firm against the schemes of the devil. Our defense is truth; a right relationship with God; the Gospel of peace, faith, and salvation; and our offensive weapon, the word of God. 2. Discernment: We are gifted by the Holy Spirit to “discern spirits” (1 Cor. 12:10). 3. Active resistance: James 4:7 says that if we resist the devil he will flee from us. Our ability to resist depends on our preparation and our discernment. Our resistance is not passive, but an active and intentional use of the “sword of the Spirit, the word of God.” Jesus modeled this, and the disciples followed suit, as they cast out demons by commanding them in the name of Jesus. We can do the same thing through the power of the same Holy Spirit.

The Lord’s Prayer Expanded Our Father, Holy Father, Abba Father, in the heavens, Hallowed, holy, sacred be your name. From the rising of the sun, to the going down of the same, The name of the Lord is to be praised. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts, The whole earth is full of your glory. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, Who was and is and is to come. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Thy government come, thy politics be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Thy reign and rule come, thy plans and purposes be done, On earth as it is in heaven. May we be an anticipation of the age to come. May we embody the reign of Christ here and now. Give us day by day our daily bread. Provide for the poor among us. As we seek first your kingdom and your justice, May all we need be provided for us. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Transform us by the Holy Spirit into a forgiving community of forgiven sinners. Lead us not into trouble, trial, tribulation or temptation. Be mindful of our frame, we are but dust, We can only take so much. Lead us out of the wilderness into the promised land that flows with milk and honey, Lead us out of the badlands into resurrection country. Deliver us from evil and the evil one. Save us from Satan, the accuser and adversary. So that no weapon formed against us shall prosper. So that every tongue that rises against us in accusation you will condemn. So that every fiery dart of the wicked one is extinguished by the shield of faith. So that as we submit to you and resist the devil, the devil flees. So that as we draw near to Jesus Christ lifted up, His cross becomes for us the axis of love expressed in forgiveness, That refounds the world; And the devil, who became the false ruler of the fallen world, Is driven out from among us. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen

It is significant that the process of deliverance quite often involves a season of inner conflict and turmoil. This is a good sign, signifying the individual's will desires to be free. We should expect a time where we must exercise our authority in Christ as we "resist" the devil (1 Peter 5:9). Paul speaks of the "struggle" of the church against principalities and powers. There will be a period of fighting involved in the process of pulling down strongholds, for you are breaking your agreement with a foe who will fight to remain in your life.

I wasn't in a moment's danger. Ravenel was the one who held off a belligerent bull while I fetched the boy." Evie closed her eyes briefly at the thought of it and reached for the crystal glass in his hand. She downed what little was left and set the glass on the floor. "You suffered no injuries?" Two long, wet fingers hooked the top of her neckline and tugged her closer to the side of the bathtub. Sebastian's eyes were pale, lucent blue, sparkling like winter starlight. "I may have enough of a sprain to require your services." A smile curved her lips. "What services?" "I need a bath maid." Catching one of her hands, he drew it down into the water. "For my hard-to-reach places." Evie resisted with a throaty chuckle, tugging at her imprisoned wrist. "You can reach that by yourself." "My sweet," he said, nuzzling into her neck, "I married you so I wouldn't have to do it myself. Now... tell me where you think my sprain is." "Sebastian," she said, trying to sound severe as his wet hands roved over her bodice, "you're going to r-ruin my dress." "Unless you remove it." He gave her an expectant glance.

As for me, I lived for more than three months in one of the cheapest of those spy-hole-ridden bedrooms. I completed my education there. Through three or four tiny holes, which must have been bored by some neglected genius of espionage, I watched people when they thought they were alone. I saw things which walls and the darkness were made to conceal; I heard things which no man was supposed to hear. It was degrading, but impossible to resist. I stooped. I stooped to the keyhole of hell, and I learned the secrets of the damned. - from "The Devil that Troubled the Chessboard

casting all your anxieties on him, because  z he cares for you. 8 a Be sober-minded;  b be watchful. Your  c adversary the devil  d prowls around  e like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 f Resist him,  g firm in your faith, knowing that  h the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. 10And  i after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace,  j who has called you to his  k eternal glory in Christ, will himself  l restore,  m confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 11 n To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

casting all your anxieties on him, because  z he cares for you. 8 a Be sober-minded;  b be watchful. Your  c adversary the devil  d prowls around  e like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 f Resist him,  g firm in your faith, knowing that  h the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. 10And  i after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace,  j who has called you to his  k eternal glory in Christ, will himself  l restore,  m confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 11 n To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Final Greetings

Subject: Some boat Alex, I know Fox Mulder. My mom watched The X-Files. She says it was because she liked the creepy store lines. I think she liked David Duchovny. She tried Californication, but I don't think her heart was in it. I think she was just sticking it to my grandmother, who has decided it's the work of the devil. She says that about most current music,too, but God help anyone who gets between her and American Idol. The fuzzy whale was very nice, it a little hard to identify. The profile of the guy between you and the whale in the third pic was very familiar, if a little fuzzy. I won't ask. No,no. I have to ask. I won't ask. My mother loves his wife's suits. I Googled. There are sharks off the coast of the Vineyard. Great big white ones. I believe you about the turtle. Did I mention that there are sharks there? I go to Surf City for a week every summer with my cousins. I eat too much ice cream. I play miniature golf-badly. I don't complain about sand in my hot dog buns or sheets. I even spend enough time on the beach to get sand in more uncomfortable places. I do not swim. I mean, I could if I wanted to but I figure that if we were meant to share the water with sharks, we would have a few extra rows of teeth, too. I'll save you some cannoli. -Ella Subject: Shh Fiorella, Yes,Fiorella. I looked it up. It means Flower. Which, when paired with MArino, means Flower of the Sea. What shark would dare to touch you? I won't touch the uncomfortable sand mention, hard as it is to resist. I also will not think of you in a bikini (Note to self: Do not think of Ella in a bikini under any circumstanes. Note from self: Are you f-ing kidding me?). Okay. Two pieces of info for you. One: Our host has an excellent wine cellar and my mother is European. Meaning she doesn't begrudge me the occasional glass. Or four. Two: Our hostess says to thank yur mother very much. Most people say nasty things about her suits. Three: We have a house kinda near Surf City. Maybe I'll be there when your there. You'd better burn this after reading. -Alexai Subect: Happy Thanksgiving Alexei, Consider it burned. Don't worry. I'm not showing your e-mails to anybody. Matter of national security, of course. Well,I got to sit at the adult table. In between my great-great-aunt Jo, who is ninety-three and deaf, and her daughter, JoJo, who had to repeat everyone's conversations across me. Loudly. The food was great,even my uncle Ricky's cranberry lasagna. In fact, it would have been a perfectly good TG if the Eagles han't been playing the Jets.My cousin Joey (other side of the family) lives in Hoboken. His sister married a Philly guy. It started out as a lively across-the-table debate: Jets v. Iggles. It ended up with Joey flinging himself across the table at his brother-in-law and my grandmother saying loud prayers to Saint Bridget. At least I think it was Saint Bridget. Hard to tell. She was speaking Italian. She caught me trying to freeze a half-dozen cannoli. She yelled at me. Apparently, the shells get really soggy when they defrost. I guess you'll have to come have a fresh one when you get back. -F/E

Let us remember this history, when we pray for ourselves. We are sometimes tempted to think that we get no good by our prayers, and that we may as well give them up altogether. Let us resist the temptation. It comes from the devil. Let us believe, and pray on. Against our besetting sins, against the spirit of the world, against the wiles of the devil, let us pray on, and not faint. For strength to do duty, for grace to bear our trials, for comfort in every trouble, let us continue in prayer. Let us be sure that no time is so well-spent in every day, as that which we spend upon our knees. Jesus hears us, and in his own good time will give an answer. Let us remember this history, when we intercede for others. Have we children, whose conversion we desire? Have we relatives and friends, about whose salvation we are anxious? Let us follow the example of this Canaanitish woman, and lay the state of their souls before Christ. Let us name their names before Him night and day, and never rest until we have an answer. We may have to wait many a long year. We may seem to pray in vain, and intercede without profit. But let us never give up. Let us believe that Jesus is not changed, and that He who heard the Canaanitish mother, and granted her request, will also hear us, and one day give us an answer of peace.

The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight for! — Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy

Third: Why are we playing? In a finite game, the Church’s objective would be to defeat a competitor. Except that Christians believe that the battle is already won: Unlike Adam, who gave in to the devil’s temptation and doomed mankind to an existence of sin and death, Jesus resisted Satan in the wilderness, conquered the grave, and in so doing extended redemption and eternal life for all of Adam’s descendants. Because of this, the objective of the Church is infinite: to shed our earthly selves, to become sanctified, to transform more into the likeness of Christ. “We don’t win at holiness,” Winans said. Instead, “We strive to become more mature and become better than ourselves.

Talking with Merritt was like slipping into one of those silk-lined borrowed coats from the Challons. Comfortable, luxurious. She was whip-smart, understanding the details, the unsaid words. She had a way of wrapping people in empathy that extended to everyone from the duke down to the young assistant groundskeeper. It was the kind of charm that made people feel wittier, more attractive, more interesting, in her reflected glow. Keir was doing his level best to resist her lure. But he was so drawn to her, so damn besotted. He adored her fancy words... "prevarication"... "resplendent"... her easy smiles... her perfumed wrists and throat. She was like a beautiful gift that begged to be unwrapped. Just being near her made the blood sing in his veins.

Rohit: I long to be with you, in the fullest most beautiful, complete expression of all that you are. I long to see you, hear you and love you in every way possible. When and how will that be possible? God: You will, in time. I will certainly reveal myself to you and all those who desire to have a relationship with me. For now, find me everywhere and in everyone. Love me in nature, in the land, the trees, the plants and the animals. Love me as all of the people you meet. Grab your boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife, child or friend. See me in them. Love them as you would love me and I will love you through them as well. I will show you the way. Rohit: What can I do to get closer to you? God: You need not do anything. I am always with you, always by your side, always ready to connect with you, always longing to be in love with you. Through this book and many like it, I have been reminding you of our long forgotten love. I am the soul mate, the one true love, the knight in shining armor, the King or Queen of your heart, the ideal lover that you have been searching for all your life. All your adventures in this world have added richness to the tapestry of your being and deepened your capacity to love and be loved. Our love is the greatest ecstasy, the sweetest bliss, the most intoxicating nectar that your soul has been longing for. It hurts me to see you resist, struggle and suffer. You are not alone. Make me a partner on your journey and let us walk together. Share your joys and sorrows, your struggle and your successes with me. Know that I have your back, that I am with you through thick and thin. I never let go of you.

What happened to your freckles?" he demanded. "Where are they?" His wife looked vastly pleased with herself. "Sylvia and I went to visit a celebrated Parisian cosmetician. She gave me a sp-special cream for my complexion." Sebastian was genuinely appalled. "You know how I loved those freckles." "They'll come back by summer." "This is an international outrage. I'm going to lodge a formal complaint with the embassy. There may be war, Evie." He took her face in his hands and gently tilted it this way and that, finding nothing but smooth, creamy whiteness. "Look what they've done to you," he grumbled. Her blue eyes twinkled with amusement. "I may have a few left," she confided. "Where?" "You can look for them later," she said primly. "I must have proof. Show me now." He tugged her toward the upholstered chaise, while she resisted with a burst of giggles.

Do you see this? He raises his right hand. This is the hand all good soldiers use with this gun. Hirut makes her left hand into a fist. It is the hand she is most comfortable using. It is the hand her mother is starting to tie down. She looks and sees he is right: the handle of the Wujigra does not favor left-handed fighters. So when she becomes a soldier, she thinks that day with her father, she must shoot with her right, the hand that resists when she tries to make it do anything. The left hand, her mother says, is the hand the devil uses. It is the hand a thief uses, and you are not a leyba. It is the hand to use for things no one should see you do, Hirut. You do not eat with it. You do nothing with this hand except for the most secret things. Hirut is too young for secrets, she is too young to be aware there are some things that should stay tucked out of reach of knowledge.

You needn't instruct me to think about my children's welfare," Phoebe said quietly. "I've always put them first, and always will. As for me being a child... I'm afraid I'm not nearly enough like one." A faint smile touched her lips. "Children are optimistic. They have a natural sense of adventure. To them, the world has no limitations, only possibilities. Henry was always a bit childlike in that way- he never became disenchanted with life. That was what I loved most about him." "If you loved Henry, you will honor his wishes. He wanted Edward to have charge of his family and estate." "Henry wanted to make sure our future would be in capable hands. But it already is." "Yes. Edward's." "No, mine. I'll learn everything I need to know about managing this estate. I'll hire people to help me if necessary. I'll have this place thriving. I don't need a husband to do it for me. If I marry again, it will be to a man of my choosing, in my own time. I can't promise it will be Edward. I've changed during the past two years, but so far, he doesn't see me for who I am, only who I was. For that matter, he doesn't see how the world has changed- he ignores the realities he doesn't like. How can I trust him with our future?" Georgiana regarded her bitterly. "Edward is not the one who is ignoring reality. How can you imagine yourself capable of running this estate?" "Why wouldn't I be?" "Women aren't capable of leadership. Our intelligence is no less than men's, but it is shaped for the purpose of motherhood. We're clever enough to operate the sewing machine, but not to have invented it. If you asked the opinions of a thousand people whether they would trust you or Edward to make decisions for the estate, whom do you think they would choose?" "I'm not going to ask a thousand people for their opinions," Phoebe said evenly. "Only one opinion is required, and it happens to be mine." She went to the doorway and paused, unable to resist adding, "That's leadership." And she left the dowager fuming in silence.

Flecks of light danced over her cheeks, scattered by the nearby perforated iron firepots at the stall. It made her appear to sparkle like a creature out of Scottish lore. Beautiful women were often dangerous in those stories: disguised as a water spirit or a witch, to ensnare a hapless male and lead him to his fate. No escape, no mercy. As a young boy, Keir had always wondered why the men hadn't tried to resist. "Ah, weel," his father had explained, "they're enchanters of men, bonnie women are, and when they beckon, we can't help but follow." "I wouldn't!" Keir had said indignantly. "I'd stay home and take care of Mither." There had come a chuckle from the stove, where his mother had been frying potatoes. "A good laddie, y'are," she'd called out. His father had grinned and stretched out before the hearth, lacing his fingers together over his middle. "Someday, lad, you'll ken exactly why a man falls to temptation, even knowing the better of it." And, as in most things, Keir thought ruefully, his father had been right.

I don't mind if you want to keep it. But... why did you?" Keir shrugged. "'Tis no' my way to take a feeling apart and examine the workings of it." Merritt tilted her head, regarding him intently. "Did you want it as a trophy, perhaps? To remind you someday of a conquest you once made?" Keir's smile vanished. He didn't think she really believed that, but the suggestion- the very idea of it- filled him with indignation. "No. I'm no' a brute who would think of you as a thing to be won." Seeming to realize he was genuinely offended, Merritt said hastily, "Oh, I didn't mean to imply-" "I may have rough ways, but I know how to be gentle with a woman-" "Yes. Of course. I shouldn't have put it that way-" "-and as for needing a reminder-" Keir's indignation deepened into outrage. "Do you think me so shallow-pated I'd need reminding of a woman I once held in my arms? How could I forget you? The most-" He was interrupted as Merritt took his face in her hands and kissed him again. There was more he'd meant to say, but her mouth was too luscious to resist.

D'you remember how Jesus was led into the wilderness and fasted forty days? Then, when he was a-hungered, the devil came to him and said: If thou be the son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But Jesus resisted the temptation. Then the devil set him on a pinnacle of the temple and said to him: If thou be the son of God, cast thyself down. For angels had charge of him and would bear him up. But again Jesus resisted. Then the devil took him into a high mountain and showed him the kingdoms of the world and said that he would give them to him if he would fall down and worship him. But Jesus said: Get thee hence, Satan. That's the end of the story according to the good simple Matthew. But it wasn't. The devil was sly and he came to Jesus once more and said: If thou wilt accept shame and disgrace, scourging, a crown of thorns and death on the cross, thou shalt save the human race, for greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Jesus fell. The devil laughed till his sides ached, for he knew the evil men would commit in the name of their redeemer.

St Alexander, his friends, and mentors opposed National Socialism primarily from the standpoint of their Christian faith. They perceived Nazi ideology as an assault on Truth. In the ambition of the Nazi creed to destroy the existing order of society, in its fierce determination to annihilate Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and all whom it deemed unworthy of existence, the White Rose saw an assault on the very concept of Man who was created in God’s image. It was an assault on God himself. The authors of the White Rose leaflets, Alexander and Hans, ascribe a spiritual significance to their resistance to Nazism, which they call “the dictatorship of evil.”255 In their fourth leaflet, they present this resistance as a struggle against “the National Socialist terrorist state … the struggle against the devil, against the servants of Antichrist.” It is of utmost importance, they continue, to realize that everywhere and at all times, demons have been lurking in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in the order of Creation as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, separates himself from the powers of a higher order and, after voluntarily taking the first step, is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating pace. One must therefore cling to God, as “of course man is free, but without God he is defenseless against evil. He is like a rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm, an infant without his mother, a cloud dissolving into thin air.” The accuracy of the young people’s perception of the fundamental antagonism of National Socialism to Christianity was corroborated by the Nazis themselves (although, like the Communists in Russia, they made efforts to disguise and deny this). In a secret circular of June 9, 1941, Martin Bormann, Hitler’s second in command, divulged the fact that the repressive measures against the Churches of Germany were aimed against Christianity itself. The circular opened with the following words: “National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable.”256 In a private conversation, the head of the dreaded SS, Heinrich Himmler, boasted that “We shall not rest until we have rooted out Christianity.

Ancestors To tell the truth, we should not exist. We, not any collective plural, just you and me. Let us use our imaginations to visualize for a moment the circumstances and conditions of the life of our parents, then our grandparents, then great-grandparents, thus further and further back. Even if among them all there happened to be wealthy individuals or men of privilege, the stench and filth in which they lived, as that then was the rule, would have astonished us who use showers and toilets. What was even more certain was among them the presence of starvelings, for whom a piece of dry bread in pre-harvest time meant happiness. Our ancestors died like flies from epidemics, from starvation, from wars, though children swarmed, for every twelve of them only one or two survived. And what strange tribes, what ugly snouts behinds you and me, what bloody rites in honor of gods carved in the trunk of a linden tree! Back to those who are stalking through the undergrowth of a murky primeval forest with chipped stones for their only weapons, in order to split the skulls of their enemies. It would seem as if we had only parents and that's all, but those other pre-pre-predecessors exist, and with them their afflictions, manias, mental illnesses, syphilis, tuberculosis, and whatnot, and how do you know they do not continue on in you? And what was the probability that among the children of your great-great-grandparents the one survived who would beget your ancestor? And what the probability that this would repeat itself in the next generation? Altogether, a very slim chance that we would be born in these skins, as these, not other, individuals, in whom the genes met those of the devil knows what whores and oafs. The very fact that our species survived and even multiplied beyond measure is astonishing, for it had much against it, and the primeval forest full of animals stronger than humans may serve till now as a metaphor for man's precarious situation - let us add viruses, bacteria, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, but also his own works, atomic weapons and the pollution of nature. Our species should have disappeared a long time ago, and it is still alive, incredibly resistant. That you and I happen to be part of it should be enough to give us pause for meditation.

A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants. Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they have known and the awfulness in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody in the village is very sick. There is laughter every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta, and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay. If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation. We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. We must admit there will be music despite everything. We stand at the prow again of a small ship anchored late at night in the tiny port looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning. To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Lifting a goblet of wine to her lips, Evie glanced at him over the rim as she drank. “What is in that ledger?” “A lesson in creative record keeping. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that Egan has been draining the club’s accounts. He shaves away increments here and there, in small enough quantities that the thefts have gone unnoticed. But over time, it totals up to a considerable sum. God knows how many years he’s been doing it. So far, every account book I’ve looked at contains deliberate inaccuracies.” “How can you be certain that they’re deliberate?” “There is a clear pattern.” He flipped open a ledger and nudged it over to her. “The club made a profit of approximately twenty thousand pounds last Tuesday. If you cross-check the numbers with the record of loans, bank deposits, and cash outlays, you’ll see the discrepancies.” Evie followed the trail of his finger as he ran it along the notes he had made in the margin. “You see?” he murmured. “These are what the proper amounts should be. He’s padded the expenses liberally. The cost of ivory dice, for example. Even allowing for the fact that the dice are only used for one night and then never again, the annual charge should be no more than two thousand pounds, according to Rohan.” The practice of using fresh dice every night was standard for any gaming club, to ward off any question that they might be loaded. “But here it says that almost three thousand pounds was spent on dice,” Evie murmured. “Exactly.” Sebastian leaned back in his chair and smiled lazily. “I deceived my father the same way in my depraved youth, when he paid my monthly upkeep and I had need of more ready coin than he was willing to provide.” “What did you need it for?” Evie could not resist asking. The smile tarried on his lips. “I’m afraid the explanation would require a host of words to which you would take strong exception.

When the bullhorn signaled that he'd met the qualifying time,he struggled to gather his wits,waiting until Devil was right alongside the gate before he freed his hand,cutting himself loose. He flew through the air and over the corral fence,landing in the dirt at Marilee Trainor's feet. "My God! Don't move." She was beside him in the blink of an eye,kneeling in the dirt,probing for broken bones. Wyatt lay perfectly still,enjoying the feel of those clever, practiced hands moving over him.When she moved from his legs to his torso and arms,he opened his eyes to narrow slits and watched her from beneath lowered lids. She was the perfect combination of beauty and brains.He could see the wheels turning as she did a thorough exam.Even her brow,furrowed in concentration,couldn't mar that flawless complexion. Her eyes, the color of the palest milk chocolate, were narrowed in thought.Strands of red hair dipped over one cheek, giving her a sultry look. Satisfied that nothing was broken, she sat back on her heels,feeling a moment of giddy relief. That was when she realized that he was staring. She waved a hand before his eyes. "How many fingers can you see?" "Four fingers and a thumb. Or should I say four beautiful,long,slender fingers and one perfect thumb,connected to one perfect arm of one perfectly gorgeous female? And,I'm happy to add,there's no ring on the third finger of that hand." She caught the smug little grin on his lips. Her tone hardened. "I get it. A showboat.I should have known.I don't have time to waste on some silver-tongued actor." "Why,thank you.I had no idea you'd examined my tongue.Mind if I examine yours?" She started to stand,but his hand shot out,catching her by the wrist. "Sorry.That was really cheesy, but I couldn't resist teasing you." His tone altered,deepened,just enough to have her glancing over to see if he was still teasing. He met her look. "Are you always this serious?" Despite his apology,she wasn't about to let him off the hook,or change her mind about him.

He gripped the sides of her body carefully, keeping her in place as he parted her with his tongue and stroked the sides of the soft furrow. Entranced by the vulnerable shaper of her, he lapped at the edges of softly unfurled lips and tickled them lightly. The delicate flesh was unbelievably hot, almost steaming. He blew a stream of cooling air over it, and relished the sound of her moan. Gently he licked up through the center, a long glide through silk and salty female dampness. She squirmed, her thighs spreading as he explored her with flicks and soft jabs. The slower he went, the more agitated she became. He paused to rest the flat of his tongue on the little pearl of her clitoris to feel its frantic throbbing, and she jerked and struggled to a half-sitting position. Pausing, Keir lifted his head. "What is it, muirninn?" Red-faced, gasping, she tried to pull him over her. "Make love to me." "'Tis what I'm doing," he said, and dove back down. "No- Keir- I meant now, right now-" She quivered as he chuckled into the dark patch of curls. "What are you laughing at?" she asked. "At you, my wee impatient bully." She looked torn between indignation and begging. "But I'm ready," she said plaintively. Keir tried to enter her with two fingers, but the tight, tender muscle resisted. "You're no' ready," he mocked gently. "Weesht now, and lie back. 'Tis one time you won't be having your way." He nuzzled between her thighs and sank his tongue deep into the heat and honey of her. She jerked at the feel of it, but he made a soothing sound and took more of the intimate flavor he needed, had to have, would never stop wanting. Moving back up to the little bud where all sensation centered, he sucked at it lightly until she was gasping and shaking all over. He tried to work two fingers inside her again, and this time they were accepted, her depths clenching and relaxing repeatedly. As he stroked her with his tongue, he found a rhythm that sent a hard quiver through her. He kept the pace steady and unhurried, making her work for it, making her writhe and arch and beg, and it was even better than he'd imagined, having her so wild beneath him, hearing her sweet little wanton noises. There was a suspended moment as it all caught up to her... she arched as taut as a drawn bow... caught her breath... and began to shudder endlessly. A deep and primal satisfaction filled him at the sounds of her pleasure, and the sweet pulsing around his fingers. He drew out the feeling, patiently licking every twitch and tremor until at last she subsided and went limp beneath him. Even then, he couldn't stop. It felt too good. He kept lapping gently, loving the salty, silky wetness of her. Her weak voice floated down to him... "Oh, God... I don't think... Keir, I can't..." He nibbled and teased, breathing hotly against the tender core. "Put your legs over my shoulders," he whispered. In a moment, she obeyed. He could feel the trembling in her thighs. A satisfied smile flicked across his mouth, and he pressed her hips upward to a new angle. Soon he'd have her begging again, he thought, and lowered his head with a soft growl of enjoyment.