Tag: god

Lessons from Lot’s Wife: A Call to Embrace Life

Luke 17:32...it's the second shortest verse in the Bible. It's succinct, but it's message looms large. Jesus is speaking the apostles about his second coming to prepare them. It's consequential; failure to heed its warning could result in the loss of one's soul. No other explanation was needed for the apostles because they were very aware of the story; they knew it well. That may not be true of us today, however.
We don't know Lot's wife's name, but we know that she disobeyed God's command to not look back when fleeing Sodom. For her disobedience she is turned into a pillar of salt. So what are we to gather from Lot's wife. My pastor, Robert Wauhop, gave us 4 reminders about her:
1. Her spiritual privileges: She was related to Abraham so she knew the way of righteousness through faith. Thus, she was associated with God's covenant people. Her husband, Lot, was a righteous man, but none of that mattered because she did not believe.
2. Her sinful preoccupation: Her disobedience revealed her sinful attraction to the world. She longed for the very thing that God hates--the world. The looked back at what she loved and what she was going to miss. We cannot love God and the world at the same time.
3. Her Sinful Autonomy: She became her own arbiter of truth. She refused to listen to God. Instead, she set herself up as the judge of truth and, looking back, revealed her sinful loyalty to the world.
4. Her severe punishment: Her punishment was instant and intense. She went straight to hell. The punishment was instructive. God holds her up as a beacon for everyone to see as a lesson to us all. Remember Lot's wife! This could be you!
    So, after this sermon on Sunday, I began to wonder about the potential for punishment for the most grievous sin of this nation--abortion. There is nothing more evil and it is something that has directly affected my life. I have not had an abortion (because I wouldn't), but I was born of rape. I am becoming actively involved in this movement to stop the rape and incest exceptions to abortion, because these exceptions would have had me murdered had they existed when I was born, and my brother as well.
    I was born in Mobile, Alabama, in October 1967, to a teenage girl who had an IQ of less than 70. She had been molested for several years by her non-biological grandfather who she and her sister had been residing with along with his wife, their biological grandmother. He never denied what he had done. Unfortunately, her grandmother blamed her granddaughter rather than her husband for the situation and she kicked the child out of the home, sending her to a foster home. My biological mother never waivered in her plans to place me for adoption, although she fled the hospital prior to completing the paperwork which left me in foster care for five years. Take this situation and place it in 1973. I have no doubt that it would have been completely different outcome. Because of my mother's diminished capacity, I believe that her step-grandfather would have convinced her to go with him and to have a medical procedure, not telling her that she would be having an abortion to hide what he had done. It would have been so easy because she believed anything he told her. But, because abortion was illegal in 1967, he couldn't do it, and he got away with what he did. Even the DA in Mobile chose not to prosecute him for the rape saying that because of his age it wouldn't do any good. I don't believe that my grandfather put forth much effort to have him prosecuted because of his mother who would have struggled financially without his step-father. He sacrificed his daughter for his mother.
    Five years later, she was in the same predicament again, this time take advantage of by an employer--an older man with control over her livelihood. He was married with children. It was September 1972, just four months before Roe v. Wade. Four months and it could have been a completely different result. He took her to Birmingham, an hour from where they lived to place the baby boy for adoption, away from the eyes of his community and his family. Her family was disinterested in advocating for her. They had all but abandoned her to her situation. 
    Remember, my mother had no ability to consent to sex. She had an IQ less than 70, making her mentally disabled. I am told that her mental abilities were that of a 12-year old, and a 12-year old cannot consent to sex. This is the very sort of person that Plan Parenthood and other abortion rights advocates want exceptions for, but I will tell you that my mother never waivered in her belief that my brother and I deserved to live. She never blamed us for what these men did to her. She anguished over what was done to her, but she never connected those acts to us. She loved us and she wanted what was best for us. Certainly, she hurt for losing us, but she also understood that she could not be a mother. She understood her limitations. She had no one in her family to help her. In fact, her family was more of a hinderance than a help.
    I am angered everyday when I hear people claim that children of rape and incest should be aborted. I cannot tell you how many times I have been told that I was a leech on my mother's body. I cannot imagine saying this to someone because I believe that all life has value. Why is my life less valuable than those conceived in loving relationships? Why does the crime lessen my value? The crime had nothing to do with me. The crime that my biological father committed was his sin and his sin alone. It was not reflective of anyone else in his family, so why would it be reflective on me? I am also the victim of rape. Thankfully I did not become pregnant by my rapist, but had I, I would not have sought out an abortion. The child conceived in rape can be the most healing thing to come out of something violent. My brother and I are the greatest things to come out of what happened to our mother. We have value. No doubt if our mother was alive today, she would love to see the families my brother and I have and what we have accomplished in our lives. She would never regret the choices she made. However, having an abortion can never be undone. It is a permanent resolution to a temporary, emotional state. Adoption is always the best option to an unwanted pregnancy, and as a former foster kid, I'd choose that every time over being dead.
    In the preamble to the Declaration of Independence it reads: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The Founding Fathers believed, as they stated here, that our rights came from a Creator, not from man. This would, therefore, also mean that those rights cannot be taken away from man by man, but from that same Creator. Man has no right to take LIFE from man, only the Creator can do that. I am a child of God...a child created by God in His image with a purpose chosen by Him and no man has the right to circumvent God's plans. There should be no exceptions to abortion. The value of life must not be determined by how one is conceived, by location, by gestational age, or any other arbitrary condition. Life begins at conception and that is where value begins. Every child deserves the right to life. Life is the fundamental right of all people, without it there are no rights at all.

    Exploring Thin Places: St. Patrick’s Spiritual Journey

    I have always been a huge fan of St. Patrick’s Day mostly because of my Irish roots, but until a few years ago, I knew almost nothing about St. Patrick. I am not Catholic so I had no reason to know anything about him. Of course, I knew the legend about his running snakes out of Ireland, but that was essentially it. Then, my loving mother-out-law (don’t you love that!) went to Ireland and Scotland on a trip to visit the Thin Places and brought back a wealth of information to me about, not only the Thin Places, but also St. Patrick. I was amazed by Patrick’s story, and to be quite frank, I felt shorted by not having known all the information about him before. For myself looking back over my life, I would have found encouragement in his story. In those times when I thought things to be insurmountable, St. Patrick’s story would be one to turn to as a reminder that things never stay bad forever.

    So, who was St. Patrick? Patrick, born about 385 A.D. and died March 17, 461 A.D., came from a good family and lived in Roman Britain. His father, Calpurnius, was a deacon in the church. Patrick was not interested in God or the church as a young man. At the age of 16, he was doing what many boys of his age were doing; he was hanging out along the water when an Irish raiding party came along and kidnapped him. They took him to Ireland where he was held captive as a slave. While in Ireland, he was a sheepherder. While tending to the sheep, he began to pray and to seek out God. He chose not to be bitter about his predicament. It was at this time, after six years of captivity, that Patrick said God spoke to him. He ran away, running over 200 miles. He took a boat back to Britain and was captured, spending time in captivity once again. Once released he was reunited with his family and spent a few years with them.

    Then one night he had a vision of the people of Ireland calling to him saying, “We beg you, holy boy, to come and walk again among us.”(https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/02/19/who-was-st-patrick-heres-what-to-know-about-the-man-behind-the-holiday-march-17/79194446007/). He knew that he had to go back, but he did not return for 20 years. Between the time of his vision and the time he returned to Ireland, he received training and education in the Christian faith. When Patrick arrived in Ireland, the various pagan religions saw him as a threat to their way of life.

    Many scholars believe that the reason the Irish turned to the Christian faith was because Patrick possessed the ability to heal, to raise the dead, as well as other signs and wonders. Without these abilities, it may not have happened in such a large fashion as it did. Historians allege that he consecrated 1000 priests, 200-300 bishops, and converted 40 out of the 150 tribes to Christianity. He is often described as being a humble person, but also generous. He is noted for bringing gifts to chieftains, but also for refusing gifts for himself. Britannica indicates that “he was a humble-minded man, pouring forth a continuous paean of thanks to his Maker for having chosen him as the instrument whereby multitudes who had worshipped ‘idols and unclean things’ had become ‘the people of God.’”(https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Patrick)

    There are, of course, legends about St. Patrick. The snakes are just one, but it is probably the most glaringly untrue. It’s unlikely that there were ever snakes in Ireland for Patrick to run out because of the previous ice age which made Ireland too cold. The most popular is the shamrock which St. Patrick used to explain the trinity–three leaves with one stalk=three person in one God. The shamrock is the national flower of Ireland.

    Now, you might ask, what is that reference you made to the Thin Places? That’s a great question. I had never heard of the Thin Places until my mother-out-law went on her trip to Scotland and Ireland. I became interested after hearing about it from her, so I went to the YouTube video she told me about. I am going to link two videos on the subject here for you. The first one by Rebecca Friedlander has a full length movie associated with it that is available for a fee. Basically, the Thin Places are places where you can get very close to the heavens or other realms as Ms. Friedlander calls them…so close that it gets thin. Like being on the top of a mountain. Like Mt. Ararat, I would believe because that is where Noah’s Ark came to rest and it is sacred. It is in these thin places where we can go and we can pray and fast to be closer to God. Here is the link to the video. https://youtu.be/j2AftRs-QRc?si=4bvMXH9Egd_Nr0VH And here is another one called “Braving the Thin Places” by a different person. https://youtu.be/-n_IooHy6S0?si=txGcFjPSyMM8OmtM. Both of these ladies speak of the Thin Places in terms of Ireland and Scotland, though I believe that there are Thin Places around the world and not simply limited to Ireland and Scotland. You will notice that when Ms. Friedlander describes the Thin Places, she uses the word “fairies”. This is odd to me for someone who professes to be Christian and who is attempting to put this idea within a Christian context; the two don’t really go together. When I think of what they are talking about, I think of Thin Places as those places where we feel closest to God. I am a mountain girl. I love to stand a top a mountain and gaze out at the vastness of God’s creation. I feel close to Him there and I usually feel a strong urge to talk with God in those moments. Someone else might get that same feeling out on the sea. When I listen to what Rebecca describes, I get the feeling that Thin Places can be a physical place or they can be an emotional place. I also thought about how quantum physicists speak of multiple realities and portals to those realities when I listen to her describe these Thin Places. I would love to hear what you think about these descriptions of Thin Places.

    I hope you’ve enjoyed the information about St. Patrick. He is so much more than a singular day of debauchery and deserves our respect and honor for what he brought to our faith. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

    God Bless You All!

    Remembering the Reason for the Season: Finding Jesus in the Old Testament

    As a member of a Protestant denomination I did not learn as much about the Old Testament growing up as I did about the New Testament. The focus most often is, of course, about the life and teachings of Jesus because we want to make certain that we understand what we need to know in order to obtain salvation. However, once we have that secured by accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior, then we do need to learn all parts of the Bible.

    One of my favorite and memorable learning moments in my life came when I was in college and I attended a presentation by a group young adults from Jews for Jesus. Interestingly enough at the time, I had not found my biological family and I did not know yet that I was Jewish. I wish I had because I probably would have sought the group out so that I could have learned more about their organization so that I could learn more about the Jewish side of me. But that isn’t the purpose of this post.

    What was fascinating to me was to hear them point out all the scripture passages in the Old Testament that pointed towards Jesus, even specifically describing how Passover pointed to Jesus. It was amazing how each part of the Passover celebration pointed directly to Jesus. I thought I would share some of the scripture passages from the Old Testament with you and how those passages prophesied Jesus.

    1. The nations will be blessed through Abraham’s lineage.
      • PROPHECY: “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3).
      • FULFILLMENT: “And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.’ When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways” (Acts 3:25-26).
    2. The scepter will come through Judah
      • PROPHECY: “The scepter will not depart from Judah, not the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he to whom it belongs shall come and the obedience of the nations shall be his” (Genesis 49:10)
      • FULFILLMENT: Judah is part of Jesus’ genealogy. “The son of Amminadab, the son of Ram, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah” (Luke 3:33)
    3. The virgin will give birth, and he will be called Immanuel (God with us)
      • PROPHECY: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14)
      • FULFILLMENT: “The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35)
    4. The Messiah will end up in Egypt
      • PROPHECY: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea 11:1)
      • FULFILLMENT: “So he [Joseph] got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’” (Matthew 2:14-15).
    5. The Christ will be born in Bethlehem
      • PROPHECY: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” (Micah 5:2)
      • FULFILLMENT: “When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. ‘In Bethlehem in Judea,’ they replied, ‘for this is what the prophet has written: ‘“But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’” (Matthew 2:4-6)
    6. Jesus would become the perfect sacrifice
      • PROPHECY: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire—but my ears you have opened—burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require. Then I said, ‘Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will, my God; your law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:6-8)
      • FULFILLMENT: “Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire—but my ears you have opened—burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require. Then I said, ‘Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will, my God’”
        • “First he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them’—though they were offered in accordance with the law. Then he said, ‘Here I am, I have come to do your will.’ He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:5-10)
    7. Jesus would draw the Gentiles to himself
      • PROPHECY: “In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious” (Isaiah 11:10)
      • FULFILLMENT: “Many people, because they had heard that he had performed this sign, went out to meet him. So the Pharisees said to one another, ‘See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!’
        • “Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘we would like to see Jesus’” (John 12:18-21)
    8. The Messiah would be preceded by a forerunner
      • PROPHECY: “A voice of one calling: ‘in the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain’” (Isaiah 40:3-4)
      • FULFILLMENT: “John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, ‘I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Make straight the way for the Lord’” (John 1:23).
    9. Jesus would be despised and rejected
      • PROPHECY: “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” (Isaiah 53:3)
      • FULFILLMENT: “All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff” (Luke 4:28-29).

    These prophecies take us from prior to his birth all the way to his death showing us that Jesus was the Messiah God promised all along. I believe it is important for us to focus on Jesus at Christmas and less upon Santa Claus. There are those who feel Christmas is more pagan than Christian because of a perceived connection to an ancient Roman festivals known as Saturnalia, celebrated on December 17th, and Sol Invictus, which is celebrated on December 25th. Puritans argued that some Christmas traditions were borrowed from paganism and should be rejected.

    However, early Christian theologians like John Chrysostom (386 AD) wrote that Christmas was celebrated on December 25th long before any alleged pagan influences. Traditions of decorating trees, exchanging gifts, and hanging wreaths are more modern and don’t appear to have a direct historical connection to any pagan festivals. These claims of pagan connections seem to come from misinterpretations of historical sources, if not fabrications to suit an intended purpose.

    Certainly, there is no direct knowledge of Jesus’ exact birthdate, but that isn’t the point. Do we need to know anyone’s birthday in order to celebrate their birth? No, of course not! There is plenty of evidence for Jesus’ existence. We know from non-Christian sources like Tacitus, a Roman historian circa 56-120 AD who spoke of Jesus in his writings; Pliny the Younger, another Roman historian circa 61-113 AD who wrote about people worshipping Jesus; and Josephus a Jewish historian circa 37-100AD who wrote a book entitled Antiquities of the Jews and included two references to Jesus in said book. Moreover there were early Christian references to Jesus including the Pauline Epistles written by Paul and the Gospels, as wells a scholarly consensus as to the existence of Jesus. If we know he existed, then we obviously ought to celebrate the birthday of the Lord and Savior of the greater majority of the globe, right? Absolutely we should, no matter what time of year we decide to do it.

    I hope that you have a wonderfully blessed Christmas and the happiest of New Year’s!

    Stop & Give Thanks & Pray

    “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name.” Psalms 100:4 NIV

    So much has happened in the past couple of weeks. The election is over and we will have a new (old) president in the New Year. For over half of the country, that is terrific news and a burden has been lifted. For the others, they are unhappy, but they shouldn’t be any more worried than those over half were for the past four years were, right? After all they thought the past four years were awesome when the other over half thought it was horrible. Some of the behaviors I saw in videos after the election was over were absolutely ridiculous; adults having temper tantrums like 2-year old children. I do not recall any other time in my life seeing adults behave in this manner. What we really need to do right now is STOP! I mean really STOP! STOP all the noise, politics, bickering, division, anger, etc., and we need to GIVE THANKS for everything we have because WE HAVE A LOT TO BE THANKFUL FOR.

    If you consider everything you see and hear online and on video these days, we sound like the most ungrateful nation of people on earth. We complain about the most minuscule nonsense. We have taught our children and grandchildren to complain about things we would have never been allowed to complain about because these things would’ve never been issues in our homes. Our parents and grandparents did not cater to every whim we had. They did not ask us what we wanted to eat for dinner. Our mothers and grandmothers cooked and we ate what was on the plate in front of us. We either ate for dinner or we ate for breakfast (or the next dinner); it was our choice. There was no complaining about it, or that was a butt whooping.

    We also wore the clothes that were purchased for us, or that were given to us; many times those were “hand me downs” from older siblings or family members. There was no complaining about that either. You may or may not have liked your “hand me downs”. I didn’t mind mine so much because they came from my cousins who I thought were really cool. They didn’t live in the same town as me, so no one else saw them wearing those clothes. Now, if you had multiple siblings of the same gender and those clothes went through multiple kids, that could be embarrassing, but you couldn’t complain about it where your parents could hear it. You just got used to sharing…sharing everything clothes, bikes, books, everything. This just doesn’t happen today. Everyone has their own things and no one truly knows what real sacrifice is like, at least not the greater majority of this country.

    For the 37.9 million (11.5%) of the US population who lives in poverty, this is not about them. We know that they know about sacrifice and about saving every penny to do what you can for your family. This is about teaching our over privileged children the real value of what they have and to respect it because from where I sit, they do not.

    Recently, I was watching some videos on YouTube that reviewed videos by “influencers” on TikTok. The reviewer was criticizing the “influencers” for lying about their lifestyles in order to make money. It wasn’t news to me, but it did get me to thinking about this whole fake world that the Internet has created for “influencers” that generates millions, if not billions, of dollars of income. It truly boggles the mind because these young people create videos of fake lifestyles to sell products that they may or may not use to make money. The viewer, I assume, watches these videos believing that these “influencers” live like this, or do they really understand that the video may be false and they don’t really care? If they don’t care, what does that say about them? It all sounds like this creates, promotes, and sustains mental illness. Even more disturbing is when these videos involve families, especially those where children are forced to participate by their parents. I recall when my daughter watched a family with two children, a son and a daughter who reviewed toys, food, and games. I thought it was very strange. I thought the parents were strange. They did not have regular jobs. They had quit their jobs to YouTube full time with their children. That was strange to me. How could make money doing that, and why would you want to do that to your children? It did not seem healthy to me.

    This is not healthy. All of these unhealthy lifestyles being promoted via the Internet and going to drive us further into a very dangerous place. That is why I believe it is time for us to STOP! We need to take account of what our priorities are for our families, especially our children. Somehow we have to stop promoting these fake lifestyles and start promoting what is real, what is authentic, what truly matters to the heart and soul of human beings. The election was only one part of the needed change in direction for the United States. If we do not continue to pivot and repent, taking account of all we are doing wrong, nothing will truly change. This means not just looking at what’s wrong with the nation, but also with ourselves and our individual families. Some of us will have lots of work to do, and others not so much, but we will all have work to be done. My guide is found in The Word…The Bible. Everything we need to know is found there.

    As we gather around our tables this Thanksgiving, we MUST THANK GOD for all HE has done for us this year. We MUST ask him to continue to guide us in the RIGHT DIRECTION and AWAY from the dangerous path we have set ourselves on. We MUST ask for HIS protection for our families and our country and we MUST ask for HIS forgiveness for how we have gotten ourselves in this predicament. We cannot stop there, either. We MUST continue to pray and we MUST teach our children to pray and to find their strength in the Lord, not in the things of the world. Everything that this nation has comes from the blessings of the Lord, not from anything we have earned or could ever earn. Share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with your children. The more we pray, the harder the evil one will work against us, so that makes all the more important.

    “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Ephesians‬ ‭6‬:‭10‬-‭17‬ ‭NIV‬‬

    Happy Thanksgiving!

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