Restoring Bible Quotes

It was for the purpose of restoring intimate fellowship with mankind that Jesus came.

Jesus is telling us that redemption is more than having our sins forgiven; it is an intimate relationship He came to restore between us and God. If we are going to live out the first and greatest commandment of loving God completely (Matt. 22:36-37), this is the type of experiential intimacy which ought to be the objective of our lives.

We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that he has power but also wonderful foretastes of what he is going to do with that power. Jesus' miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming.

Christianity's goal is not escape from this world. It loves this world and seeks to change it for the better.

So, is there an afterlife, and if so, what will it be like? I don't have a clue. But I am confident that the one who has buoyed us up in life will also buoy us up through death. We die into God. What more that means, I do not know. But that is all I need to know.

God is willing! God will save! God will rescue! God will restore! God will revive! God will empower! God willing and He will do it!

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand. Unless, of course, you can literally believe all that stuff about family reunions 'on the further shore,' pictured in entirely earthly terms. But that is all unscriptural, all out of bad hymns and lithographs. There's not a word of it in the Bible. And it rings false. We know it couldn't be like that. Reality never repeats. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back. How well the Spiritualists bait their hook! 'Things on this side are not so different after all.' There are cigars in Heaven. For that is what we should all like. The happy past restored.

That’s why the Bible is not a book about going to heaven. The action is here. The life is here. The point is here. It’s a library of books about the healing and restoring and reconciling and renewing of this world. Our home.

The gift of the Sabbath must be treasured. Blessed are you who honour this day.

It's a scary thing, a life-changing, paradigm-shifting thing, to honestly ask yourself this question: Am I moving with God to rescue, restore, and redeem humanity? Or am I clinging fast, eyeteeth clenched, to an imperfect world's habits and cultural customs, in full knowledge of injustice or imperfections, living at odds with God's dream for his daughters and sons?

The soul, in its loneliness, hopes only for "salvation." And yet what is the burden of the Bible if not a sense of the mutuality of influence, rising out of an essential unity, among soul and body and community and world? These are all the works of God, and it is therefore the work of virtue to make or restore harmony among them. The world is certainly thought of as a place of spiritual trial, but it is also the confluence of soul and body, word and flesh, where thoughts must become deeds, where goodness must be enacted. This is the great meeting place, the narrow passage where spirit and flesh, word and world, pass into each other. The Bible's aim, as I read it, is not the freeing of the spirit from the world. It is the handbook of their interaction. It says that they cannot be divided; that their mutuality, their unity, is inescapable; that they are not reconciled in division, but in harmony. What else can be meant by the resurrection of the body? The body should be "filled with light," perfected in understanding. And so everywhere there is the sense of consequence, fear and desire, grief and joy. What is desirable is repeatedly defined in the tensions of the sense of consequence.

People wrote these stories down because they found in them something that helped restore their dignity; the stories gave them a sense of identity; they helped give voice to their pain.

The jubilee then is about restoring to people the capacity to participate in the economic life of the community for their own viability and society's benefit.

The Bible is a work of art. Were it not art, were it simply an instruction manual, it would not satisfy or convince, and very likely would not have survived. So, to be faithful to the original work, which in Greek is normally chanted in churches, as the Torah is chanted in the temple and the Qu’ran is melismatically chanted in the mosque… the Bible here must resonate.

Prophecy will confirm and broaden the vision; it cannot create one if nothing is there. Vision is created through prayer, seeking God and sharing our hearts with people in the work. If these things are absent we need to be restoring people to God, not creating vision for empty hearts.

Yahweh had chosen to accomplish his ends through imagers loyal to him against imagers who weren’t. This commitment to humanity, his original imagers on earth, is one often-missed reason why, when humanity (Israel) failed to restore God’s rule, God took matters into his own hands by becoming human in Jesus Christ.

Weariness should never hinder us from wanting to see restoration in a friend who is in the midst of brokenness.

in faithfully acting to restore people, the Gospel writers tell us, Jesus continually appeared in the eyes of the religious leaders around him to be breaking God’s laws. Jesus was not particularly concerned with this, and instead was infinitely more concerned with caring for the least, even if this meant his reputation became one of a “blasphemer” and “law breaker” in the eyes of the religious authorities.

Did the Prophet Elijah really restore to life the dead child of the Widow? This story, along with all the other stories of the Bible, is a psychological drama which takes place in the consciousness of man. The Widow symbolizes every man and woman in the world; the dead child represents the frustrated desires and ambitions of man; while the prophet, Elijah, symbolizes the God power within man, or man’s awareness of being. The story tells us that the prophet took the dead child from the Widow’s bosom and carried him into an upper room. As he entered this upper room he closed the door behind them; placing the child upon a bed, he breathed life into him; returning to the mother, he gave her the child and said, “Woman, thy son liveth.

Paul suggests that gentiles can practice a law written in their hearts, which will be seen as not only equal to but also above the written Torah…It should be remembered that in Paul’s day the only religious law for Paul was that of the Jewish Bible, in Hebrew… Though Torah and the New Testament, including Paul’s letters, will eventually shape church law, the New Testament’s books are not in themselves composed as law. They are not a self-consciously composed constitution. They contain no Ten Commandments in form or statement.

When Pharoah restored the chief butler to his position as foretold by Joseph in his interpretation of the butler's dream, he forgot Joseph. "Yet the chief butler did not remember Joseph but forgot him." (Genesis 40:23). Why does the Bible use this repetitive language? It is obvious that if the butler forgot Joseph, he did not remember him. Yet both verbs are used, "not remembering" and "forgetting." The Bible, in using this language, is teaching us a very important lesson. There are events of such overbearing magnitude that one ought not to remember them all the time, but one must not forget them either. Such an event is the Holocaust.

There is a very important connection between the Church's worldview and the Church's hymns. If your heart and mouth are filled with songs of victory, you will tend to have an eschatology of dominion; if, instead, your songs are fearful, expressing a longing for escape-or if they are weak, childish ditties-your worldview and expectations will be escapist and childish. Historically, the basic hymnbook for the Church has been the Book of Psalms. The largest book of the Bible is the Book of Psalms, and God providentially placed it right in the middle of the Bible, so that we couldn't miss it! Yet how many churches use the Psalms in musical worship? It is noteworthy that the Church's abandonment of dominion eschatology coincided with the Church's abandonment of the Psalms.

From the beginning, Judeo-Christian principles have been the foundation for American public dialogue and government policy. They serve as the solid basis for political activism in support of a better socioeconomic environment. Found in American homes, truth from the Hebrew Christian Bible has enabled individual liberty to prevail over secular empires because it is a practical message about reality from man’s Creator. In their quest for liberty, Americans focused upon the conspicuously self-evident “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” It is the governing character of these principles (laws), such as humility, the Golden Rule, and the Ten Commandments, that leads to success. This is the sure foundation upon which man’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” rests. Called “virtue” by America’s Founding Fathers, the impartial and divine element frees man to do what is right. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17).

DEU28.31 Thine ox shall be slain before thine eyes, and thou shalt not eat thereof: thine ass shall be violently taken away from before thy face, and shall not be restored to thee: thy sheep shall be given unto thine enemies, and thou shalt have none to rescue them. DEU28.32 Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people, and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day long; and there shall be no might in thine hand. DEU28.33 The fruit of thy land, and all

He had no idea where they would go, or what they would do, or what dangers lay ahead. But with their love, and their Bible, with their absolute certainty in the power of the Lord and the protection of their guns, and with the plentiful vastness of America spread out before them like God's table - (...) - he had faith that they would make a future (page 458).

The weapon made me think of the Bible story I had been studying. “Wake up, Deborah! . . . Arise, O Barak,

Forgiveness and restoration are two difference acts. Forgiveness can lead to restoration but restoration is not hinged to forgiveness.

PSA51.12 Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation,         and uphold me with a willing spirit.

And I will restore your judges  bas at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward  cyou shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city.

When we know what we don’t want, we can give full attention to coming into alignment with what we do want.

To judge God solely by the present world would be a tragic mistake. At one time, it may have been “the best of all possible worlds,” but surely it is not now. The Bible communicates no message with more certainty than God’s displeasure with the state of creation and the state of humanity. Imagine this scenario: vandals break into a museum displaying works from Picasso’s Blue Period. Motivated by sheer destructiveness, they splash red paint all over the paintings and slash them with knives. It would be the height of unfairness to display these works—a mere sampling of Picasso’s creative genius, and spoiled at that—as representative of the artist. The same applies to God’s creation. God has already hung a “Condemned” sign above the earth, and has promised judgment and restoration. That this world spoiled by evil and suffering still exists at all is an example of God’s mercy, not his cruelty.

It’s a scary thing, a life-changing, paradigm-shifting thing, to honestly ask yourself this question: Am I moving with God to rescue, restore, and redeem humanity? Or am I clinging fast, eyeteeth clenched, to an imperfect world’s habits and cultural customs, in full knowledge of injustice or imperfections, living at odds with God’s dream for his daughters and sons?

The late Chuck Missler would often describe the sixty-six books of the Bible, penned by more than forty different people over a period of several thousand years, as a highly integrated message system from an extraterrestrial source outside of time. Like a hologram, a facet of the message is encoded on every page that, when illumined by the light of the Spirit, projects a multidimensional portrait of its divine Author and communicates his plan to redeem, reconcile, and restore the sons and daughters of Adam to the glory of their original estate in the family of God.

Jesus is building his Church, not only by constitutions and codes, but by shaping hearts and minds to his way of life. We are a family, not a firm, scattered and yet gathered. Biblical equality is not the endgame; it is one of the means to God’s big ending: all things redeemed, all things restored. Jesus feminism is only one thread in God’s beautiful woven story of redemption. Begin here: right at the feet of Jesus. Look to Love, and yes, our Jesus—he will guide you in your steps, one after another, in these small ways until you come at last to love the whole world.

The yardstick that we frequently use to determine if something can be restored is based on the handful of inches that we bring to the process, when God shows up with an infinite amount of miles.

Jesus didn’t talk about a God who wants to burn this place down and take us somewhere else; he talked about the renewing of this place, the only home we’ve ever had. Central to the story of the Bible is the affirmation of trees and seas and rocks and air and soil and blood and sweat and skin and all the materiality and diversity and creativity that we know to be central to our life in this world. Jesus talked about a coming time when God would restore and renew and reconcile and redeem and make things right, and he invites us to anticipate that day by doing our part to bring heaven to earth, here, now, today.

Earlier, in Hour 9, we examined Daniel 9 where the angel Gabriel told Daniel that from the commandment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem unto Messiah the King would be 173,880 days, sixty-nine weeks of 360-day years. If you do the arithmetic, you’ll discover that the number of days between the Decree of Artaxerxes Longimanus on March 12, 445 B.C., to the triumphal entry which happened on April 6, A.D. 32, is precisely 173,880 days.

14The cities that the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel, from Ekron to Gath, and Israel delivered their territory from the hand of the Philistines. There was peace also between Israel and the Amorites.

One of the reasons there are so many bitter, disenfranchised people who are angry at the church is because of bad theology. It’s really, really important to separate your theology of the kingdom from the church. These are two separate, autonomous entities. Yes, there is overlap and the lines blur and bleed, but they are two different ideas. Jesus’ ultimate goal for the universe is the kingdom, not the church. The kingdom is where the renewal of all things takes place. Where Eden is restored. Where the entire creation is made new.[1] The story of the Bible ends with heaven crashing into earth. The kingdom is a huge, elephantic theology with layers and texture and depth and dimensions. The problem is that most people erase or ignore the theology of the kingdom. In doing so, they pin all their hopes and dreams on the church. These unrealistic expectations are way too much to bear for the frail shoulders of God’s bride. She was never designed to bear the weight of changing the world, much less perfection. I hear people say things like, “The church is God’s plan to save the world.” No, it’s not. Jesus is God’s plan to save the world. He is bringing his kingdom crashing into this present age, and he is saving the world. Yes, the church is part of God’s plan to save the world. That is very true. We are the body of the Messiah. Meaning, we are the arms and legs, the appendages, the extensions of Jesus to the world. We join and partner and work with him for the kingdom; but he is the one saving the universe, not us.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,     And renew a steadfast spirit within me.   11 Do not cast me away from Your presence,     And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.   12 Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,     And uphold me by Your generous Spirit.

Create in me a  n clean heart, O God,         and  o renew a right [2] spirit within me. 11     p Cast me not away from your presence,         and take not  q your Holy Spirit from me. 12    Restore to me the joy of your salvation,         and uphold me with a willing spirit.

So could a woman be faithfully keeping her house, in exactly the way Paul tells her to, but also have “a job”? Well, the Proverbs 31 woman was doing it—so it would be ludicrous of us to say that women may not engage in any business ventures. Of course the Bible doesn’t prohibit a woman making money. On the other hand, as I’ve written before, that’s not really the problem of our generation. We’ve got bigger questions to answer. We are a generation that needs to recover a sense of the importance of the home, and the importance of wives and mothers who are invested in their people.

This is hard, because the church is made up of sinners. But God continually pours out grace to help us heal wounds, bridge gaps, and restore brokenness, just like with Paul and John Mark. He’s committed to the unity of His church, so He sends the Spirit as our Helper in aiming for unity and truth.

God can fill in every gap with His great love. If you feel unloved, choose to receive the Father’s affection; if you feel insecure, run into His strong arms; if you feel depressed because of abuse, remember that your heavenly Father was grieved when you were violated. And He can restore your broken heart.

Lord, I pour out my heart before You regarding the things in my life that cause me grief. I lift my hands to You because I know You are my hope and Your compassion for me never fails. Heal me of all emotional pain, and use the sorrow I have suffered for good. I pray that in Your presence I will find total restoration.

Rahab is mentioned eight times in the Bible.  Five of those eight times, she is called “Rahab the prostitute.”  Does God seek to remind us of her shameful sin?  Surely not.   God loves to display His grace in the lives of restored sinners.  He longs to turn each of our lives into expressions of His immense grace and boundless love.

the New Testament envisions followers of Jesus living alongside one another for the sake of one another. The Bible portrays the church as a community of Christians who care for one another, love one another, host one another, receive one another, honor one another, serve one another, instruct one another, forgive one another, motivate one another, build up one another, encourage one another, comfort one another, pray for one another, confess sin to one another, esteem one another, edify one another, teach one another, show kindness to one another, give to one another, rejoice with one another, weep with one another, hurt with one another, and restore one another.

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

If the true Church was really lost at some point, how can you know that your version of it is a true restoration? Falling back on sola scriptura does not solve this problem, since all the descendants of the Reformation, divided into hundreds of denominations and tens of thousands of independent congregations, all claim to be simply teaching the Bible.

So while it is true that he is thus fulfilling the law in the sense of bringing it to its ultimate goal, the way he is doing this is by overturning the very system of retributive justice embodied in the law, and replacing it with the superior way of God’s restorative justice rooted in the enemy love that Jesus came to demonstrate with his teaching and life.

The genius of the biblical story is what it tells us about God himself: a God who sacrifices himself in death out of love for his enemies; a God who would rather experience the death we deserved than to be apart from the people he created for his pleasure; a God who himself bore our likeness, experienced our creatureliness, and carried our sins so that he might provide pardon and reconciliation; a God who would not let us go, but who would pursue us—all of us, even the worst of us—so that he might restore us into joyful fellowship with himself; a God who in Christ Jesus has so forever identified with his beloved creatures that he came to be known and praised as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1:3).

I believe in the inherent dignity of all human beings. The Bible states clearly that God created men and women in His image from the very beginning. (see Genesis 1:27) No matter how damaged people become, they still bear that image. No matter how much people have been oppressed or how much they have oppressed others, the part of them made in His image is worth rescuing and restoring.

For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.

I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,         and  h they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;      i they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,         and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. 15     j I will plant them on their land,          k and they shall never again be uprooted         out of the land  l that I have given them,” says the LORD your God.

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.

But the Bible contains incredible good news. The Creator is also the Redeemer. In a radical act of compassion and grace, the Creator entered into His creation to redeem fallen man. This is the only way redemption could have occurred. Your Creator took upon Himself human flesh and gave Himself to pay the penalty for your sin so that you could be restored to an intimate relationship with Him (2 Cor. 5:21). You are a rational being. You can fully understand these wonderful truths. Further, you are responsible; you must make a decision to commit your life to Christ. Listen to Romans 10:9-10: “That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

Psalm 23 The LORD the Shepherd of His People A Psalm of David. 1The LORD is †my shepherd; †I shall not awant. 2†He makes me to lie down in bgreen pastures; †He leads me beside the cstill waters. 3He restores my soul; †He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake. 4Yea, though I walk through the valley of †the shadow of death, †I will fear no evil; †For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort

One sunny day, when Jung was twelve, he was traversing the Münsterplatz in Basel, admiring the sun shining on the newly restored glazed roof tiles of the cathedral. He then felt the approach of a terrible, sinful thought, which he pushed away. He was in a state of anguish for several days. Finally, after convincing himself that it was God who wanted him to think this thought, just as it had been God who had wanted Adam and Eve to sin, he let himself contemplate it, and saw God on his throne unleashing an almighty turd on the cathedral, shattering its new roof and smashing the cathedral. With this, Jung felt a sense of bliss and relief such as he had never experienced before. He felt that it was an experience of the "direct living God, who stands omnipotent and free above the Bible and Church." He felt alone before God, and that his real responsibility commenced then.

Inexplicably, Newton’s prediction lines up with the end of the biblical Shemitah in September 2015 and the beginning of the “Super-Shemitah” on September 23, 2015—Yom Kippur. If one takes the Newton’s riddle calculation—beginning June 7, 1967, with the restoration of Jerusalem—and adds seven, seven-year Shemitah cycles in biblical or prophetic years of 360 days, the date comes out to September 23, 2015—the beginning of the “Super-Shemitah” of 2015–16.

    Recognizing our internal weaknesses is the first step toward recovery. When we look beyond ourself, we see that there are others who have struggled with an addiction and recovered. We know that they, too, were unable to heal themselves, yet they now live free of addictive behaviors. We conclude that there must be a greater Power that helped them. Since we can see the similarities between their struggles and our own, we come to believe that our powerful God can restore us to sanity.

These two visions of Christianity—one emphasizing the next world and what we must believe and do in order to get there, the other emphasizing God’s passion for the transformation of this world—are very different. Yet they use the same language and share the same sacred scripture, the same Bible. What separates them is how the shared language is understood—whether within the framework of heaven-and-hell Christianity or within the framework of God’s passion for transformation in this world.

GALATIANS 6 Brothers, [1] o if anyone is caught in any transgression, p you who are spiritual should restore him in q a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. 2 r Bear one another’s burdens, and s so fulfill t the law of Christ. 3For u if anyone thinks he is something, v when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4But let each one w test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. 5For x each will have to bear his own load.

to the world. God created both body and soul, and the resurrection of Jesus shows that he is going to redeem both body and soul. The work of the Spirit of God is not only to save souls but also to care and cultivate the face of the earth, the material world. It is hard to overemphasize the uniqueness of this vision. Outside of the Bible, no other major religious faith holds out any hope or even interest in the restoration of perfect shalom, justice, and wholeness in this material world. Vinoth Ramachandra, a Sri Lankan Christian writer, can see

I don’t know how I didn’t see it for so many years of Bible reading, but I didn’t.  Paul didn’t teach the Gentiles not to follow the law, he didn’t teach people not to have their sons circumcised (in fact he himself had Timothy circumcised in Acts 16:3).  And Paul himself kept the law.  Otherwise, James would have been telling Paul to lie about what he was doing.   So we traded Christmas for Sukkot, the true birth of Messiah during the Feast of Tabernacles, which is a shadow picture of Him coming back to reign for a thousand years.  When we keep that feast, we are making a declaration that we believe He was, is, and is coming.  We keep Yom Kippur, which is a declaration that we believe that Yeshua is the salvation of the nation of Israel as a whole, that “all Israel shall be saved.”  We keep Yom Teruah, the day of Trumpets, which occurs on “the day and hour that no man knows” at the sighting of the first sliver of the new moon during the 7th biblical month of Tishri.  We traded Pentecost for Shavuot, the prophetic shadow picture of the spirit being poured out on the assembly, as we see in the book of Acts,  just as the law was given at Mt Sinai to the assembly, which according to Stephen was the true birth of the church (Acts 7:38) – not in Jerusalem, but at Sinai. We also traded Easter for Passover, the shadow picture of Messiah coming to die to restore us to right standing with God, in order to obey Him when He said, “from now on, do this in remembrance of Me.”  We traded Resurrection Sunday for First Fruits, the feast which served as a shadow of Messiah rising up out of the earth and ascending to be presented as a holy offering to the Father.  In Leviticus 23, these are called the Feasts of the LORD, and were to be celebrated by His people Israel forever, not just the Jews, but all those who are in covenant with Him. Just like at Mt Sinai, the descendants of Jacob plus the mixed multitude who came out of Egypt.    We learned from I John 3:4 that sin is defined as transgression of the law.  I John 1:10 says that if we claim we do not sin we are liars, so sin still exists, and that was written long after the death of the other apostles, including Paul.  I read what Peter said about Paul in 2 Peter 3:15-16 – that his writings were hard to understand and easily twisted.  And I began to see that Peter was right because the more I understood what everyone besides Paul was saying, the more I realized that the only way I could justify what I had been doing was with Paul’s writings.  I couldn’t use Yeshua (Jesus), Moses, John, Peter or any of the others to back up any of the doctrines I was taught – I had to ignore Yeshua almost entirely, or take Him out of context.  I decided that Yeshua, and not Paul, died for me, so I had to

Internal Bondage BIBLE READING: Mark 5:1-13 We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. When we are under the influence of our addiction, its hold may seem to have supernatural force. We may give up on living and throw ourself into self-destructive behaviors with reckless abandon. People may also give up on us. They may distance themselves from us, as though we were already dead. Whether our “insanity” is self-induced or has a more sinister origin, there is power available to restore us to sanity and wholeness.

Through reading the Bible, drunkards become sober, thieves become honest, prostitutes become pure, and drug addicts become clean. Anger, bitterness, and resentment yield to loving forgiveness, mercy, and graciousness. Selfish greed gives way to unselfish service. Crumbling marriages are rebuilt. Broken relationships are rekindled. Shattered self-esteem is restored. In God’s Word, the weak find strength, the guilty find forgiveness, the discouraged find new joy, and the despairing find hope. The same Holy Spirit who inspired the Bible writers inspires those who read it.

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.

After nineteen hundred years the Sermon on the Mount still haunts men. They may praise it, as Mahatma Gandhi did; or like Nietzsche, they may curse it. They cannot ignore it. Its words are winged words, quick and powerful to rebuke, to challenge, to inspire. And though some turn from it in despair, it continues, like some mighty magnetic mountain, to attract to itself the greatest spirits of our race (many not Christians), so that if some world-wide vote were taken, there is little doubt that men would account it “the most searching and powerful utterance we possess on what concerns the moral life.”2

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

Christ’s centrality in the plan of creation, and its restoration through redemption, is fundamental to understanding God’s plan and the end of the world. Angels and men received an intelligent and free nature. When I am told (by those who confuse predestination with God’s providence) that God already knows who will be saved and who will be damned, and therefore anything we do is useless, I usually answer with four truths that the Bible spells out for us: God wants that everyone be saved; no one is predestined to go to hell; Jesus died for everyone; and everyone is given sufficient graces for salvation.

Christians in this country (and elsewhere) are deeply divided by different understandings of a shared language. About half (maybe more) of American Christians believe that biblical language is to be understood literally within a heaven-and-hell framework that emphasizes the afterlife, sin and forgiveness, Jesus dying for our sins, and believing. The other half (maybe less) puzzle over and have problems with this. Some have moved on to another understanding of Christian language. The differences are so sharp that they virtually produce two different religions, both using the same Bible and the same language.

10:10 Abundant Life, GOD’S ABUNDANCE. God’s covenant to us is a covenant for abundant life. From the very beginning of time, Scripture shows us that God wanted us to be happy and prosperous. In Gen., we are told that God made everything and declared it to be good. Then He gave this beautiful, plentiful Earth to Adam; Adam was given dominion over all of it (Gen. 1:28). God’s plan from the beginning was for man to be enriched and to have a prosperous, abundant life. Here Jesus declares His intention to recover and restore to man what was the Father’s intent and to break and block the Devil’s intent to hinder our receiving it.

The LORD is my  d shepherd; I shall not  e want. 2 He makes me lie down in green  f pastures. He leads me beside still waters. [1] 3 He g restores my soul. He h leads me in i paths of righteousness [2] for his j name’s sake. 4 Even though I  k walk through the valley of  l the shadow of death, [3] I will m fear no evil, for n you are with me; your o rod and your staff, they comfort me. 5 You  p prepare a table before me in  q the presence of my enemies; you  r anoint my head with oil; my s cup overflows. 6 Surely [4] goodness and mercy [5] shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall  t dwell [6] in the house of the LORD u forever. [7]

Psalm 23 The LORD the Shepherd of His People A Psalm of David. 1The LORD is †my shepherd; †I shall not awant. 2†He makes me to lie down in bgreen pastures; †He leads me beside the cstill waters. 3He restores my soul; †He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake. 4Yea, though I walk through the valley of †the shadow of death, †I will fear no evil; †For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. 5You †prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You †anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over. 6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will ddwell in the house of the LORD eForever.

PSALM 23 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2        He makes me lie down in green pastures.     He leads me beside still waters. [1] 3        He restores my soul.     He leads me in paths of righteousness [2]         for his name’s sake.     4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, [3]         I will fear no evil,     for you are with me;         your rod and your staff,         they comfort me.     5 You prepare a table before me         in the presence of my enemies;     you anoint my head with oil;         my cup overflows. 6    Surely [4] goodness and mercy [5] shall follow me         all the days of my life,     and I shall dwell [6] in the house of the LORD         forever. [7]

10:13 Your situation is not unique! Every human life faces contradictions! Here is the good news: God believes in your freedom! He has made it possible for you to triumph in every situation that you will ever encounter! 10:14  My 1dearly loved friends! Escape into his image and likeness in you where the 2distorted image (2idolatry) loses its attraction! (Dearly loved friends, translated as  1agapetos; to know the agape love of God is to know our true identity! The word, agape, comes from agoo, meaning to lead as a shepherd guides his sheep, and pao, to rest, like in Psalm 23, ”he leads me beside still waters where my soul is restored; by the waters of reflection my soul remembers who I am! Now I can face the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil!”)

The LORD Is My Shepherd A Psalm of David.     PSALM 23 The LORD is my  d shepherd; I shall not  e want.         2 He makes me lie down in green  f pastures.     He leads me beside still waters. [1]         3 He  g restores my soul.     He  h leads me in  i paths of righteousness [2]         for his  j name's sake.     4 Even though I  k walk through the valley of  l the shadow of death, [3]         I will  m fear no evil,     for  n you are with me;         your  o rod and your staff,         they comfort me.     5 You  p prepare a table before me         in  q the presence of my enemies;     you  r anoint my head with oil;         my  s cup overflows.     6 Surely [4] goodness and mercy [5] shall follow me         all the days of my life,     and I shall  t dwell [6] in the house of the LORD          u forever. [7]

Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis is commonly regarded as one of the classics of cinema, and at the time it was probably the most expensive film ever made. Only in light of recent restoration work, though, can we see how explicitly it draws on apocalyptic themes in its prophetic depiction of modern society. Partly, Metropolis reflects the ideas of Oswald Spengler, whose sensationally popular book The Decline of the West appeared in 1918. Spengler presented nightmare forecasts of the vast megalopolis, ruled by the superrich, with politics reduced to demagoguery and Caesarism, and religion marked by strange oriental cults. Lang borrowed that model but added explicit references to the Bible, and particularly Revelation. In the future world of Metropolis, the ruling classes dwell in their own Tower of Babel, while the industrial working class is literally enslaved to Moloch.

No, Jesus is right by your side to encourage you and restore you to wholeness. You may say, “But I don’t deserve it!” That’s right. That’s what makes it His unmerited favor in your life. There is a beautiful psalm that says, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; for the Lord upholds him with His hand” (Psalm 37:23–24). When you fail, Jesus is there to uphold you. Unlike some of your so-called “friends,” He does not just take off. You can count on Him. He is a faithful, dependable and trustworthy friend. Even when you have failed Him, He is right there with you, ready to pick you up and restore you to wholeness. Amen! The Bible talks about a friend who “sticks closer than a brother.” That’s Jesus! Beloved, lean on His constant presence. Draw on His unfailing strength and support for you today.

Therefore  i let us leave  j the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance  k from dead works and of faith toward God, 2and of  l instruction about washings, [1]  m the laying on of hands,  n the resurrection of the dead, and  o eternal judgment. 3And this we will do  p if God permits. 4For it is impossible, in the case of those  q who have once been enlightened, who have tasted  r the heavenly gift, and  s have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5and  t have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6and  u then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since  v they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. 7For  w land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. 8But  x if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed,  y and its end is to be burned. 9Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation. 10For  z God is not unjust so

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)

As we trace the myth of the Goddess through her salvific guides, we are aware of a cohesive set of metaphors that suggest a family likeness, as though a great mirror has shattered, prismatically retaining the original image. Indeed, the way which wisdom appears in the Bible is by means of "reflective mythology"-not the representation of an actual myth, but by a theological appropriation of mythic language and patterns that have been repackaged from the pagan models. With the Goddesses Demeter and Isis, the myth of the Goddess takes on a greater urgency that resonates to our contemporary spiritual response to the Divine Feminine: we find a common theme of loss and finding, of seeking for pieces of the shattered mirror of the beloved. Only when the divine daughter or husband is found and reconstituted can earth function again. Kore and Osiris are lost and found again, but they cannot be reconstituted entirely as they were. It is with our own search for the Goddess. In the period of loss, exile, or death, something transformative has happened. In each of these saving stories, it is the urgency of love the enduring patience of the seeker that restores the beloved. These are the prime qualities of Sophia that remind us always that, though we do not see her face clearly because she is veiled or disguised, the Goddess accompanies us wherever we go.

IT is worth remembering that the rise of what we call literary fiction happened at a time when the revealed, authenticated account of the beginning was losing its authority. Now that changes in things as they are change beginnings to make them fit, beginnings have lost their mythical rigidity. There are, it is true, modern attempts to restore this rigidity. But on the whole there is a correlation between subtlety and variety in our fictions and remoteness and doubtfulness about ends and origins. There is a necessary relation between the fictions by which we order our world and the increasing complexity of what we take to be the 'real' history of that world. I propose in this talk to ask some questions about an early and very interesting example of this relation. There was a long-established opinion that the beginning was as described in Genesis, and that the end is to be as obscurely predicted in Revelation. But what if this came to seem doubtful? Supposing reason proved capable of a quite different account of the matter, an account contradicting that of faith? On the argument of these talks so far as they have gone, you would expect two developments: there should be generated fictions of concord between the old and the new explanations; and there should be consequential changes in fictive accounts of the world. And of course I should not be troubling you with all this if I did not think that such developments occurred. The changes to which I refer came with a new wave of Greek influence on Christian philosophy. The provision of accommodations between Greek and Hebrew thought is an old story, and a story of concord-fictions--necessary, as Berdyaev says, because to the Greeks the world was a cosmos, but to the Hebrews a history. But this is too enormous a tract in the history of ideas for me to wander in. I shall make do with my single illustration, and speak of what happened in the thirteenth century when Christian philosophers grappled with the view of the Aristotelians that nothing can come of nothing--ex nihilo nihil fit--so that the world must be thought to be eternal. In the Bible the world is made out of nothing. For the Aristotelians, however, it is eternal, without beginning or end. To examine the Aristotelian arguments impartially one would need to behave as if the Bible might be wrong. And this was done. The thirteenth-century rediscovery of Aristotle led to the invention of double-truth. It takes a good deal of sophistication to do what certain philosophers then did, namely, to pursue with vigour rational enquiries the validity of which one is obliged to deny. And the eternity of the world was, of course, more than a question in a scholarly game. It called into question all that might seem ragged and implausible in the usual accounts of the temporal structure of the world, the relation of time to eternity (certainly untidy and discordant compared with the Neo-Platonic version) and of heaven to hell.

Do you know what a humanist is? My parents and grandparents were humanists, what used to be called Free Thinkers. So as a humanist I am honoring my ancestors, which the Bible says is a good thing to do. We humanists try to behave as decently, fairly, and as honorably as we can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. My brother and sister didn't think there was one, my parents and grandparents didn't think there was one. It was enough that they were alive. We humanists serve as best we can the only abstraction with which we have any real familiarity, which is our community. I am, incidentally, Honorary President of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that totally functionless capacity. We had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, and I spoke and said at one point, "Isaac is up in heaven now." It was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now." That's my favorite joke. How do humanists feel about Jesus? I say of Jesus, as all humanists do, "If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?" But if Christ hadn't delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I'd just as soon be a rattlesnake.

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.

9A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness: 10 I said,  x In the middle [4] of my days I must depart; I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years. 11 I said, I shall not see the LORD, the LORD  y in the land of the living; I shall look on man no more among the inhabitants of the world. 12 My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me z like a shepherd’s tent; a like a weaver b I have rolled up my life;  c he cuts me off from the loom;  d from day to night you bring me to an end; 13 e I calmed myself [5] until morning; like a lion  f he breaks all my bones; from day to night you bring me to an end. 14 Like  g a swallow or a crane I chirp; h I moan like a dove.  i My eyes are weary with looking upward. O Lord, I am oppressed;  j be my pledge of safety! 15 What shall I say? For he has spoken to me, and he himself has done it.  k I walk slowly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul. 16  l O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these is the life of my spirit. Oh restore me to health and make me live! 17  m Behold, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness;  n but in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction,  n for you have cast all my sins behind your back. 18  o For Sheol does not thank you; death does not praise you; those who go down to the pit do not hope for your faithfulness. 19 The living, the living, he thanks you, as I do this day;  p the father makes known to the children your faithfulness. 20 The LORD will save me, and we will play my music on stringed instruments all the days of our lives,  q at the house of the LORD.

DEUTERONOMY 30  h “And  i when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and  j you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, 2and  k return to the LORD your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, 3then the LORD your God  l will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will  m gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you. 4 n If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there he will take you. 5And the LORD your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it.  o And he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. 6And  p the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring,  q so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. 7And the LORD your God will put all these curses on your foes and enemies who persecuted you. 8And you shall again obey the voice of the LORD and keep all his commandments that I command you today. 9 r The LORD your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your cattle and in the fruit of your ground.  s For the LORD will again take delight in prospering you, as he took delight in your fathers, 10when you obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that are written in this Book of the Law, when you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

51  wHave mercy on me, [1] O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your  xabundant mercy yblot out my transgressions. 2  zWash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and  acleanse me from my sin! 3  bFor I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4  cAgainst you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil  din your sight, eso that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. 5 Behold,  fI was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. 6 Behold, you delight in truth in  gthe inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. 7 Purge me  hwith hyssop, and I shall be clean; zwash me, and I shall be  iwhiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; jlet the bones  kthat you have broken rejoice. 9  lHide your face from my sins, and  yblot out all my iniquities. 10  mCreate in me a  nclean heart, O God, and  orenew a right [2] spirit within me. 11  pCast me not away from your presence, and take not  qyour Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will  rreturn to you. 14 Deliver me from  sbloodguiltiness, O God, O  tGod of my salvation, and  umy tongue will sing aloud of your  vrighteousness. 15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16  wFor you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. 17 The sacrifices of God are  xa broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 18  yDo good to Zion in your good pleasure; zbuild up the walls of Jerusalem; 19 then will you delight in  aright sacrifices, in burnt offerings and  bwhole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Sadly though, this side of heaven, we can only attempt to have a fore-shadow of the romance to come. Even the best marriages and the men and women who valiantly strive to follow the Bible’s model of marriage fall short. I am sure many of us have failed in obtaining the type of earthly relationship God planned and intended to display His love. Pre-marital sex, extra-marital sex, homosexuality, sex outside of a marriage covenant, and love-less, dysfunctional marriages are just the beginning. Many have been abused, sold, objectified, molested, even raped. All manner of perversion and depravity have marred the beauty God intended. We are broken, injured, hurt, marginalized, left feeling like so much less than what God requires. If you are one broken, please hear this: It should not have been. It was not God’s way or His will that you were treated like anything less than His highly valued, flawless beauty—His beloved. If you are one who lost your way and engaged in things beneath your royal standing, He died, arose and lives to forgive and restore. Yes, we know a good and solid Biblical marriage gives the closest representation of godly intimacy. But let’s get real for a minute. So few of us have ever experienced that for ourselves or grew up in homes where that was our example, we desperately need to trust God for our own healing and restoration in this area before we can ever hope to experience it in our relationships. I am convinced God’s priority for us is to learn about spiritual intimacy with Him. He can restore marriages, liberate from sexual addictions, save spouses, give us a godly man. But I think, for the most part, those things happen after we realize and accept our need for Christ. His priority will always be our spirit intimately one with His, because He puts the spirit above the flesh. We have to lay our souls bare and ask for His touch. God alone can reclaim our perception of intimacy for His holy and righteous glory. He can restore our hearts and minds to righteousness, clean and pure so we might experience holy intimacy through the Spirit until we see Him face to face in glory.

The Iran/Contra cover-up The major elements of the Iran/Contra story were well known long before the 1986 exposures, apart from one fact: that the sale of arms to Iran via Israel and the illegal Contra war run out of Ollie North’s White House office were connected. The shipment of arms to Iran through Israel didn’t begin in 1985, when the congressional inquiry and the special prosecutor pick up the story. It began almost immediately after the fall of the Shah in 1979. By 1982, it was public knowledge that Israel was providing a large part of the arms for Iran—you could read it on the front page of the New York Times. In February 1982, the main Israeli figures whose names later appeared in the Iran/Contra hearings appeared on BBC television [the British Broadcasting Company, Britain’s national broadcasting service] and described how they had helped organize an arms flow to the Khomeini regime. In October 1982, the Israeli ambassador to the US stated publicly that Israel was sending arms to the Khomeini regime, “with the cooperation of the United States…at almost the highest level.” The high Israeli officials involved also gave the reasons: to establish links with elements of the military in Iran who might overthrow the regime, restoring the arrangements that prevailed under the Shah—standard operating procedure. As for the Contra war, the basic facts of the illegal North-CIA operations were known by 1985 (over a year before the story broke, when a US supply plane was shot down and a US agent, Eugene Hasenfus, was captured). The media simply chose to look the other way. So what finally generated the Iran/Contra scandal? A moment came when it was just impossible to suppress it any longer. When Hasenfus was shot down in Nicaragua while flying arms to the Contras for the CIA, and the Lebanese press reported that the US National Security Adviser was handing out Bibles and chocolate cakes in Teheran, the story just couldn’t be kept under wraps. After that, the connection between the two well-known stories emerged. We then move to the next phase: damage control. That’s what the follow-up was about. For more on all of this, see my Fateful Triangle (1983), Turning the Tide (1985), and Culture of Terrorism (1987).

God has not given us the spirit of fear. He has given us the spirit of Love and a competent mind. Love conquers fear, because Love has Power, that creates a competent mind, that allows a person to make rational decisions and use righteous judgment to resolve or solve problems. Through this God-given process, we are able to endure and persevere in times of hardships, and when facing a crisis. When our spirit is broken by hate, and heavy loads are placed upon us, we turn to God for strength in our storms of life. And we seek his Love to restore us to wholeness. He restores us with Hope. From within him we receive Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance as it is noted in Galatians 5:22. Because of God's Love for us, we are able to have the patience to wait for his Power to restore us so that we are in control of our mind to over-power fear and to lead a successful life to meet our goals and create a greater opportunity filled with his blessings. He has created us to be a victorious people. Therefore, we are able to create far greater opportunities through Love. God gives power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increases strength. (Isaiah 40:29) When we are broken by the storms of life, God's Love restore us. We bow before him, in a humble spirit at his throne of grace, and ask in prayer for mercy and renewed strength. It is here that we find the needed strength to forgive those who have wronged us and the Power to Love. Those who wait upon the Lord, shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31) Fear is powerless. It torments the mind and paralyzes the thought process. It causes panic. Thereby, leaving the person, feeling a sense of hopelessness and unwilling to trust others. It closes possibilities to allow for change. The prophet Isaiah noted; Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. (Isaiah 40:30) And when Jesus disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, "It is a spirit," and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I, be not afraid. (Matthew 14:26, 27) Fear is a person's worst enemy; it causes panic, that results in making irrational decisions. Such behavior is based on poor judgment, that was made due to a lack of patience, to make an adequate investigation of the situation before proceeding. The outcome will create serious problems that can cause serious harm. LOVE is the chain that binds us together. Do not allow hate to separate us. There is One God One family One faith One world We are not defined by belief or by faith nor religion. We are the family of God. Written by: Ellen J. Barrier Source of Scriptures: King James Version Bible

When I Want a Gentle and Quiet Spirit Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel—rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. 1 PETER 3:3-4 IT’S GOOD TO TAKE CARE of yourself and make a consistent effort to always look good for your husband. But while you tend to your health and do what you should to stay attractive to him in what you wear and how you care for your skin and hair, you cannot neglect your inner self, where your lasting and ever-increasing beauty is found. The Bible says that the beauty of a gentle and quite spirit cannot be lost and is always pleasing to God. Having a quiet spirit doesn’t mean you barely talk above a whisper. God has given you a voice, and He intends for you to use it. But it is the quiet and peaceful spirit behind your voice that communicates you are not in an internal uproar. A gentle spirit doesn’t mean you are weak. It means that you aren’t brash, obnoxious, or rude. It means you are godly in nature and have love and respect for the people around you. What is in your heart shows on your face. The attractiveness of inner peace and gentleness in you will always manifest as beauty externally as well. And that is appealing to everyone—especially your husband. Pray that God’s Spirit in you will be the most important part of who you are, and that you will reflect the beauty of the Lord, which is beyond compare. His gentle and quiet Spirit in you will be more attractive to others than anything else. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would give me a gentle and quiet spirit, which I know is precious in Your sight. Enable me to have the inner beauty that is incorruptible, which comes from Your Spirit of peace dwelling in me. Only You can fill me with all I need in order to become as You want me to be. Show me how to always be attractive to my husband in the way I dress and look, but more importantly, help me to remember and understand where true and lasting beauty comes from. Enable me to be perceived by him and others as beautiful because of Your beautiful reflection in me. Help me to never be offensive or undesirable to be around. Keep me from allowing anyone to bring out the worst in me. Let the beauty of Your Spirit in me shine through and above all the fleshly parts of me that I am still dealing with and trying to allow You to perfect. Fill my heart with Your love, peace, and joy so that they are what always show on my face. Pour Your Spirit over me and in me so that what is seen on my face is not anger, concern, worry, or sadness, but rather contentment, calm, peace, and happiness. I depend on You to accomplish this in me because I know I cannot achieve this on my own. I worship You, Lord, as the Savior, Restorer, and Beautifier of my life. In Jesus’ name I pray.

Know Your Father’s Heart Today’s Scripture Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 JOHN 4:10 KJV Today, I want you to reread the parable of the father of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32). As you read, keep in mind that this son utterly rejected and completely humiliated and dishonored his father, then only returned home when he remembered that even his father’s hired servants had more food than he did! It was not the son’s love for his father that made him journey home; it was his stomach. In his own self-absorbed pride, he wanted to earn his own keep as a hired servant rather than to receive his father’s provision by grace or unmerited favor. God wants us to know that even when our motivations are wrong, even when we have a hidden (usually self-centered) agenda and our intentions are not completely pure, He still runs to us in our time of need and showers His unmerited, undeserved, and unearned favor upon us. Oh, how unsearchable are the depths of His love and grace toward us! It will never be about our love for God. It will always be about His magnificent love for us. The Bible makes this clear: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10 KJV). Some people think that fellowship with God can only be restored when you are perfectly contrite and have perfectly confessed all your sins. Yet we see in this parable that it was the father who was the initiator, it was the father who had missed his son, who was already looking out for him, and who had already forgiven him. Before the son could utter a single word of his rehearsed apology, the father had already run to him, embraced him, and welcomed him home. Can you see how it’s all about our Father’s heart of grace, forgiveness, and love? Our Father God swallows up all our imperfections, and true repentance comes because of His goodness. Do I say “sorry” to God and confess my sins when I have fallen short and failed? Of course I do. But I do it not to be forgiven because I know that I am already forgiven through Jesus’ finished work. The confession is out of the overflow of my heart because I have experienced His goodness and grace and because I know that as His son, I am forever righteous through Jesus’ blood. It springs from being righteousness-conscious, not sin-conscious; from being forgiveness-conscious, not judgment-conscious. There is a massive difference. If you understand this and begin practicing this, you will begin experiencing new dimensions in your love walk with the Father. You will realize that your Daddy God is all about relationship and not religious protocol. He just loves being with you. Under grace, He doesn’t demand perfection from you; He supplies perfection to you through the finished work of His Son, Jesus Christ. So no matter how many mistakes you have made, don’t be afraid of Him. He loves you. Your Father is running toward you to embrace you! Today’s Thought My Father God runs to me in my time of need and showers His unmerited, undeserved, and unearned favor upon me. Today’s Prayer Father, thank You that I can experience Your love even when I have failed. No matter how many mistakes I may have made, I don’t have to be afraid to come to You. I am still Your beloved child, and I always have fellowship with You because of the finished work of Jesus. I thank You that You don’t demand perfection from me, but You supply perfection to me through the cross. It blesses my heart to know that You just love being with me. Thank You for running to embrace me. Amen.

If the argument is, I speak English therefore I use an English name for the one I worship, then please provide the English name for Satan – because that name is Hebrew and it never changed in our English Bibles. Can you supply the English form of Abraham? This is another Hebrew name right out of the Hebrew Scriptures and carried over virtually unaltered into our English translation.

8Most importantly, be disciplined and stay on guard. Your enemy the devil is prowling around outside like a roaring lion, just waiting and hoping for the chance to devour someone. 9Resist him and be strong in your faith, knowing that your brothers and sisters throughout the world are fellow sufferers with you. 10After you have suffered for a little while, the God of grace who has called you [to His everlasting presence]* through Jesus the Anointed will restore you, support you, strengthen you, and ground you. 11For all power belongs to God, now and forever. Amen.

These are the days of Elijah Declaring the Word of the Lord And these are the days of your servant Moses Righteousness being restored And though these are days of great trials Of famine and darkness and sword Still we are the voice in the desert crying Prepare ye the way of the Lord! Behold He comes! Riding on the clouds! Shining like the sun! At the trumpet call Lift your voice! It’s the year of Jubilee! And out of Zion’s hill salvation comes! And these are the days of Ezekiel The dry bones becoming as flesh And these are the days of your servant David Rebuilding a temple of praise And these are the days of the harvest The fields are as white in the world And we are the laborers in your vineyard Declaring the word of the Lord! Behold He comes! Riding on the clouds! Shining like the sun! At the trumpet call Lift your voice! It’s the year of Jubilee! And out of Zion’s hill salvation comes! There’s no God like Jehovah! There’s no God like Jehovah! There’s no God like Jehovah!   Words and Music by Robin Mark

Jesus’s miracles in particular were never magic tricks, designed only to impress and coerce. You never see him say something like: “See that tree over there? Watch me make it burst into flames!” Instead, he used miraculous power to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and raise the dead. Why? We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken.

You have been restored to the harmony of your original design, made holy in Christ Jesus; no wonder then that you are surnamed Saints.

(KJV) King James Translation Important Facts An advantage of owning or reading a (KJV) King James Translation or Authorized Version, whether they are the older 1611 version or newer non-1611 version is that they are usually more accurate compared to many other bibles. They rank highly when translated from the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek manuscripts. However all bible translations have many faults with the translation as does the King James Version which is not perfect by any means It’s a difficult task to master translation of hundreds of scrolls and manuscripts and compile them into a single book. With that being said, when choosing a bible you will usually have to choose between the lesser of the two evils, and it is always advised to have at least three translations if not more when you want to get a more accurate idea of what the writer is saying. One major disadvantage that the King James Bible (KJV) has is that the translators have replaced the holy names of The Almighty Creator and His Son, as many other translators have also done with other bible translations. This is never a good thing to do. To replace a proper noun or name, especially when it happens to be the name of our Heavenly Father or His Son our Messiah is a serious thing to consider changing. The bible clearly states in many verses to make His name “known” and proclaim it. It does not say to “change it” or to proclaim a different name. Our Opinion about Name Changes The reasons of why the translators chose to make these name changes is “not” something that we at Heavenly Publishers want to focus on. Instead, we prefer to educate readers of this fact, especially those that were not already aware of it and make suggestions as to how to fix this. Many translations around these days have this same issue and even other serious changes on top of this one. We would also like to encourage all readers to consider restoring the holy names of our Savior and Heavenly Father back into the bible and back into our reading and vocabulary. The example of how our Savior taught us to pray by starting out in prayer by acknowledging and revering the holy name of “Our Father” is something we should remember. The prayer starts out with the words, Our Father who art in Heaven, “Hallowed be Thy Name” and is a great example of how important and holy His name is. This word “hallow” means to render sacred and consider holy. So my question to you is can you imagine doing something like changing our Father’s holy name to something else? Never should this be done, but the translators of many bible versions have done this. The KJV is only one example of this spiritually criminal act. The people that have done this for whatever agendas they had will be held accountable and judged accordingly one day by their maker as He sees fit. It’s not our job to judge but to make others aware of this and hopefully reverse this wrongdoing.