The Secret - A Good Post

If you found my earlier post regarding The Secret interesting, I suggest you check out what my friend Rebecca has posted on her blog (Blogging Obsession) - I Just Can't Let it Go.

She makes some really good points and I think anyone who is interested in The Secret should check out her post and really put some thought into what she has to say.

Remember there are no true "quick and easy" fixes in this world and anything that appears to be one, is probably not the Truth! The enemy is constantly twisting the truth into lies that he hides behind pretty packages. Trust in the Lord, it may not always be the easiest or quickest thing to do, but it is the best thing you can do. He is the Truth and you can't go wrong with that!

The Secret

The Call of God (Abraham's first sacrifice)

Imagine living in one of the great prospering cities of the United States with all the conveniences of our modern day technology. Anything you may ever need is at your fingertips and available 24 hours a day. Not only your basic needs, but also your wants, any types of entertainment, pampering or luxury that you may desire. You are living your life in comfort when you receive a call from God. He wants you to leave all of this to follow Him. Following Him means constantly moving from one place to another in temporary housing. In fact your only protection from the natural elements is a tent. Even more, the Lord tells you He is leading you to a land of great promise, but He is not telling you ahead of time where that land is located AND you won't actually see the land yourself. It is for your descendants. Oh yeah, you are also past the normal age for bearing children and are currently childless!

Now answer me honestly, what would your response be? I know we've all heard and/or read the story about Abraham being called by God to leave his land, but have we really thought about it. Have we thought about what Abraham gave up, especially conisdering he did not really know where he was going. Would we have responded the same way he did?

Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran they settled there.
~Genesis 11:31

The Lord had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you". . .So Abram left, as the Lord had told him.
~Genesis 12:1 & 4

In Genesis it tells us Abram left Ur with his father and they settled in Harran. From there God called Abram and told him to leave all that he knew to go to the land He (God) would show him. Not the land He had already shown him, but which He would show him.

Now, to hit this home a bit more lets understand what Ur and Harran were like at this time in history. They were not little, poor villages. They were both great cities at the time and about as modern as you could get at that time.

Ur was no small village. It was one of the oldest, most important cities of Mesopotamia, covering an area of about four square miles by the Euphrates River, which empties into the Persian Gulf. The citizens of Ur lived in walled safety. They enjoyed the advantages of the highest culture and civilization of their time.

From the comfort, advantages, and sophistication of Ur, Jehovah called Abraham and his family to a seminomadic way of life.
~Christ in the Passover - Ceil & Moishe Rosen

I did a search on Harran and found it was "a centre of Mesopotamian culture which in its prime controlled the point where the road from Damascus joins the highway between Nineveh and Carchemish." (courtesy of Wikipedia).

I know for me, I've seen Abram/Abraham leaving all he knew to live in tents for the Lord to be an amazing step of faith. However to put it into perspective and really understand what he was leaving behind really humbles me. I've always thought of his life before and after the call to be primitive. However, based on my recent studies I'm beginning to rethink this. Even though Ur and Harran may seem primitive compared to what we know now, to Abraham what he was giving up was no different than what we would be giving up in today's world. Could I do the same and willingly give up all that I know to follow the call of God? Could you?

He Did It! Potty Time

Okay, so some of you won't care that much, but it is a huge thing for us!

Austin came to me this morning saying he had to go potty. Usually this means we'll spend the time to undress him and put him on the potty, he'll sit there for less than a minute and and say "All done!". Usually there is nothing to show for his efforts, which are usually just him scrunching up his face and trying not to smile.

Today however, he sat down and actually went poo on the toilet. After mommy praised him profusely telling him what a big boy he was, he wanted to get up and see the efforts of his work. I was wondering how that would go over because I still remember the first time Tyler saw her poo in the toilet. She started screaming!

Austin got up, turned around and looked for a second in the toilet. Then he bent down a little and mommy got ready to stop him in case he decided to pick it up. Instead he looked up at me with his big ole dimpled grin and said "Look Mommy! Austin poo'd a hot dog!"

So now I'm hoping it is just a matter of time before we have only one in diapers instead of two! We'll see.

The pictures are ones I took with my camera phone of the proud Austin after the poo'd "hot dogs".

Leaven

Passover (Pesach) this year begins at sundown on April 2nd and ends at sundown April 3rd. On the Hebrew calendar this Feast falls on Nisan 14. With the upcoming Feast I figured now would be a good time to start posting what I’ve been learning about the Feasts of the Lord again. Today I’m gong to be posting about leaven and the symbolism of the unleavened bread eaten at Passover.

That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast.

Exodus 12:8

One of the traditions of the Passover meal is to eat unleavened bread. When the Hebrews left Egypt they were instructed by the Lord to eat unleavened bread that night with their Passover lamb and bitter herbs. In addition, they were not to eat leaven for another seven days (the Feast of Unleavened Bread).

Jews take this very seriously, in that they not only ensure they eat bread without leaven, they clear the entire home of leaven. Preparations for Passover usually begin up to a month prior to Passover in order to clean the home from top to bottom to ensure there is no leaven left. (For tips on preparing your home for Passover visit Preparations for Passover at Hebrew for Christians.)

While many know this tradition symbolizes the haste in which the Hebrews left Egypt, there is an even deeper meaning to be found.

Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast – as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.

1 Corinthians 5:6-8

This passage is powerful, however understanding the underlying concepts makes it come even more alive.

The Hebrew word for leaven is chometz which means bitter or sour. In the Bible, leaven is almost always a symbol of sin. The Hebrew word for unleavened bread is matzo which means sweet, without sourness.

Jesus even refers to leaven as false doctrine and hypocrisy. (see Matthew 16:11-12, Mark 8:15 and Luke 12:1)

Why is leaven so often used to symbolize sin?

Just a little amount of leaven (yeast) permeates the entire batch and causes dough to rise and become puffed up. It adds volume to the bread while remaining at the same weight. This is similar to when we become prideful and puffed up, thinking we are more than we really are.

During the time of the first Passover Jewish women used the sourdough method of making bread. This consisted of tearing off a chunk of the raw dough to be set aside in a cool moist place prior to forming the dough into loaves to be baked. The next time a batch was prepared for baking, this chunk would be mixed in with the new dough of flour and water and a new chunk would be torn off and set aside for the next batch. By doing this each “generation” of bread was linked by common yeast spores to the previous loaves.

This parallels our sin nature passed down from Adam, which connects each of us to the rest of the human race. Sin left unchecked will quickly flourish and multiply, permeating the entire batch of dough (our life, our community, etc). By becoming a new batch without sin we become like unleavened bread, which is sweet with sincerity and truth, no longer full of malice and wickedness.

For the Hebrews, the putting away of leaven symbolized breaking the cycle of sin and starting a fresh new walk with the Lord. They put away the leaven not to become redeemed (this occurred when they spread the lamb’s blood on their doorposts) but because they were redeemed!

_____________________

Information for this post was gleaned from Christ in the Passover by Ceil and Moishe Rosen and Hebrews for Christians at www.hebrew4christians.com

Leaven

Splat Experience - Woodside Bible Chapel

I received this link this week via email. It is a little long, but I thought it was amazing and wanted to pass it along. If you have sound make sure you have it turned on, as this is not going to be as powerful without the sound. Let me know what you think.

http://www.woodsidebible.org/splatvideo.htm

I'm Famous!? Read my Interview

Okay, so maybe I'm not totally famous, but my blog is now listed on 5 Minutes for Mom and they did an interview with me! Click on the picture above and you can read it!

Also, heads up! Quarter end at work is officially over now and I'm going to start blogging galore again! I have tons to share in the days to come, so stay tuned!

Created to Love by Pastor Cecil A. Thompson

I subscribe to a daily e-votional written by a pastor from Washington State named Cecil A. Thompson. He actually pastors a church which a couple of my high school friends attended for awhile. The other day the e-votional I received from him really spoke to me so I wanted to share it with my blog friends, with his permission of course! If you are interested in subscribing to this daily e-votional (called Blessings from the Heart) I've included the subscription information below.

DAILY-E-VOTIONAL
BLESSINGS FROM THE HEART
March 8, 2007
Pastor Cecil A. Thompson

"CREATED TO LOVE!"
Colossians 1:15-17
"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together."

The battle lines have been drawn and the Creation vs. Evolution debate has raged for years. It is no surprise that those who deny Christ, the Bible and the concept of God, are on the side of evolution. Even as every discovery in science has confirmed creation and disproved evolution, they continue to hold their mistaken position.

They are forced into this position, since to accept the creation account, they would be forced to admit there is a God, that the Bible is true, and that they need to accept the Lord into their life. How interesting to discover that a vast number of professed atheists and evolutionists, when they came to the last few moments of their life, cried out to the very God they had denied, to save them.

I will not get started on my proofs for creation as opposed to evolution - - - at least not today! I do want to share with you a thought provoking poem which was sent to me several years ago.

LOVE MEANS EVOLUTION DIDN’T

"They’d like for us to believe that//Mere matter in various forms
Combined in coincident order//Like particles driven by storms.

For millions and millions of ages//Without any reason or rhyme,
Those random events replicated//Until after eons of time.

Some cells became interconnected//Then life in its simplest occurred--
That even without a director/This process was never deterred.

They try to convince us that thousands//Of changes were forced to be made;
Adjustments then deemed as advancing//Yeah right-- only those made the grade.

The odds of the oddest occurrence//Were met during millions of years;
Each chance was allowed its own trial//And bested the best of its peers.
At some point some brain cells developed//They must have or none would survive;
Except for the strong or the many//Whose numbers kept species alive.

The dinosaurs perished as nature//Reached out for the best that evolved,
And unlike the previous failures//With brains all the problems were solved.

And then the intelligent triumphed//The smartest and best beat the rest;
The cave men lost out in the ice age//As men of our ilk passed the test.

The process continued for ages//Excluding the weak and the slow--
Each century ever evolving//Expanding man’s mental plateau.

If so, how does “Love” keep existing//When only the fittest survive?
It’s such an unselfish emotion//What accident kept Love alive?

You’d think that the first time a mother//Paused briefly to wait for her child,
That both of them would have been trampled//The case for extinction thus filed.

If only the fittest move forward//(Their sons lying cold in the dust)
The human race would have been stymied//That thought churns up utter disgust!

For Love took the lowest position//Though meek, science still can’t defy.
So, what fact negates evolution?//God does it, with Love that won't die."

Anonymous

May we live each day with love filling our heart and life. Love that originated with God was made perfect in His Son, given to us through the sacrifice of Jesus and empowering us by the Holy Spirit.

Blessings dear hearts. Walk with God today, trust Him completely, and be a blessing.
- - - Pastor Cecil
.......................
SUBSCRIBE: If this newsletter was forwarded to you and you would like to Subscribe, please click on the linked email to mailto:PastorCecil@Daily-E-Votional.com?subject=SUBSCRIBE

BLOG PARTY!!! Come Join

I don't have a lot of time to blog this week with the time I'm spending at work, but I wanted to make sure I participated in this blog party because I love the idea.

It is being hosted by one of my favorite blogs which I visit regularly . . . 5 Minutes for Mom

Take a moment and check it out. It is a great way to find some wonderful new blogs and you can even win prizes if you participate. Many of the prizes have been contributed by those participating in the blog party.

Let the party get started!!!

Snow Time!

Today was Jesse's first experience with the snow. I had to work today (quarter end) so Shaun decided to take a trip to the snow with the kids. Tyler absolutely loved it and he almost had to drag her out of there. She kept looking for bigger hills to take her brand new purple sled down!

Austin just got over a cold and was not quite feeling himself yet, so he was not as excited. Shaun said he kept falling down and would cry each time. He also cried everytime any snow stuck to his gloves. However, he did say he was amazed to see the snow on the way up. Last year I took him with me to Colorado Springs and so he'd been around snow before, but he was just over a year then and I'm not sure he still remembers it. Shaun told me he fell asleep on the way up to the snow today and when he finally woke up, the snow was about 4 or 5 feet high. He said he all of a sudden heard Austin say "Ohh!" and looked back to see him staring out the window with wide eyes.

Jesse loved the snow. Shaun said he just kept grabbing handfuls of snow and stuffing it in his mouth. He said he did not even care about how cold it was and had a "death grip" on his handfuls of snow.

We've decided we need to head up to the snow more often. Next time I'll be able to make it as well and maybe Tyler will let me try out her sled.

Curriculum - What is Appropriate?

I don't usually just link to someone else's posts, however this one I think makes some very good points and it does relate to my family. Our daugther is currently attending private school because we want to have a say in what she is taught and feel we do not have that right with public schools.

It is a bit frustrating when we think about the fact that we are paying taxes for the local public schools AND paying for private school because the state wants to teach our children morals that fly in the face of what we are teaching them. A voucher program as Jodi mentions is a good idea. We are fortunate enough right now to be able to afford to send our daughter to a private school, however once our boys are old enough for school I'm not sure how we'll be able to manage. I'm praying the Lord guides us in how to handle that when the time comes. I know quite a few families who are home-schooling now due to some of these issues.

Jodi has made some really good points regarding a recent ruling in Boston regarding appropriate curriculum. Check it out and let me know your thoughts.

Appropriate Curriculum - Jodi Cowles