Life Passing By ....

A rather to true quote I came across today ...

"Life is what is passing by while we are busy making other plans." ~Author Unknown 2 Me

Taking Time ...

A cool little piece to share on a beautiful Sonday ...

Take time to think;
It is the source of power.

Take time to read;
It is the foundation of wisdom.

Take time to play;
It is the secret of staying young.

Take time to be quiet;
It is the opportunity to seek God.

Take time to be aware;
It is the opportunity to help others.

Take time to love and be loved;
It is God’s greatest gift.

Take time to laugh;
It is the music of the soul.

Take time to be friendly;
It is the road to happiness.

Take time to dream;
It is what the future is made of.

Take time to pray;
It is the greatest power on earth.

–Author Unknown

What is your stress level?

Why not ... It has been a long week .... What is your stress level?

Click here: Quiz - What is your stress level? - YouThink.com My result:

My result:

Moderate stress for you. Stress level 3.

You can manage your stress levels but sometimes they get the best of you. You can sometimes become irritable, but that doesn't mean you're an angry person. Take a few minutes out of your day to relax and listen to music or do something you enjoy. You may find you'll sleep better.

Inundation of Information

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

T.S. Eliot

How much time have I spent thinking of the inundation of information that is at my fingertips every day? That has been at my fingertips for years, starting with Myspace and now with Twittering? Do you remember when Facebook became the new Myspace, then Blogs gained over Facebook, then Twittering became the new Blogging, and now everybody’s Tweeting? What’s next?

What do I do with the eleventy-two ways I have to connect with 750 of my “best friends” these days? Do I really know 750 people?! And if I vaguely remember them from ten years ago, am I supposed to write on their wall? Or is accepting their friend request enough of a hello? How do I sift through all of the chatter and noise? How do I find the depth? The life? The human behind the 140 characters? How do I cull out what’s important and leave the rest? How do I flippin’ know when to stop reading?

And, seriously, how do I know when I need to stop chattering?

Ever Have One Of Those days?

You know, the ones where…

The driver in front of you feels a steady 16-17 miles per hour will get them where they want to in plenty of time for the New Year’s celebration?

The people standing in line in front of you aren’t really sure why they are in line, but imagine they’ll figure it out, once they get to the front.

In the drive-through behind someone who just ordered lunch for their 32 co-workers, then has to change 9 of them at the second window?

Ah …. Today is a new day ….

Off The Rails

Kind of a downer subject..."The sadness will never go away."-Van Gogh suicide note

I would think that life without God would be kinda lonely, incomplete... Yet Van Gogh did know God... I have to wonder why some push the self destruct button, while others carry on? God made everyone in His image, but do some have more God than others? Is suicide EVER an option?

Depression on this level is something I really don't understand. Rather its only actually feeling it that I don't understand. I know enough to know that it isn't just having a "blue" day or something a person can just get over. God may just chose to heal someone of it, but to just dismiss it, as some do, as something that can just be cured or lost if someone seeks God enough doesn't seem realistic. Nor does it show compassion, which is something we, as a Christian, should have... The reason I bring this up as I've been thinking of a friend at work who committed suicide a couple of years ago. I wonder...where is he now?

I am comforted by Romans 9:39. "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord."

I think that as a Christian, we may step out of Gods will, but not out of His care. You know, I praise God I have not suffered serious depression, or feelings of suicide, but if I ever should, I know these will not separate me from the love of God. The victory and the glory of Christ cannot be snatched from Him because I go off the rails, in a matter of speaking.

Just some thoughts ... have a blessed day everyone!

Tim ..... On the other side

Since coming home fron the hospital, barely surviving a major heart attack with complications, doing the near death thing .... I have been asked often in various forms, "What was it like?" Here is how the question was put in the Yahoo group "a_savedsinglesgetaway":

Tim, what was it like ? what were you thinking and feeling during the whole time ? Did you think you were going Home ? Any Visions ? Any Voices ? Was there a Light in a tunnel ?

Would you be interested in sharing ?

As you know we all were praying for you, Melissa and your family did you ever think at some time during the whole time going to the hospital or in the hospital that things may have turned out different ?

I'm not really ready to answer this question yet but this is the answer I gave to the group:

I'm afraid I'm going to be disappointing answering this. My experience through the whole thing is so much different than for my family those around me. Never once did I think about death or dying ... It just never entered my mind! I don't really know what happened the first days other than I dialed 911 to have the Chiloquin ambulance to the hospital. I remember only very little of the emergency room and nothing after that until I woke up in Medford a few days later. All I can really say is that whenever I went through big anxiety or whatever (I was real sick for a couple of weeks in Medford and had to have 3 more surgeries) the Lord always provided this peace, a feeling of warmth and assurance no matter how much "faith" I had at the time.

The effect on Melissa, Ben, Xalina and Shay, was totally different. They were told I had next to no chance of living more than a few hours. I can only begin to imagine what that was like! Xalina in fact was told that if she wanted to see her Dad alive she better get in the car right now and make the trip to Klamath. She lives 6 hours away (I guessed it was 5 hours this trip) in Lincoln City. It was only a couple of days later after the "life flight" to Medford and many hours of surgery that the story changed and I was going to make it after all. My eyes still tear up thinking about all this ...

One thing I would like to point out is that a whole lot of Christians were involved in this which shows to me Gods hand in all this. My main surgeon Dr. Yondell, the greatest heart Doctor on the Left Coast, is very up front about his faith as well as the other surgeons. Many Nurses as well.

One last thing ... Please keep us all in prayer. Melissa and I are still sorting things out, My son Ben has lost it more than a couple times but is coming around with me and other issues in his life. The toll of Ben and his stuff on our marriage has been high. Xalina still calls me everyday to see if I'm alright. I have to see her again someday soon so she can see with her eyes I'm getting better. Its going to take awhile for things to return to normal ... In fact it never will as this has been such a life changing thing for all of us. Thank God for each new day ... I know now how precious they are ... troubles, hurt or not ...

Have a blessed afternoon everyone!

Tim

Divorce and the Woman at the Well

Awhile ago I was on a discussion site which was discussion the issue of divorce. It always amazes me how this subject gets so "heated". Suddenly there are those who are supposed to be apostles of grace get right into rule keeping, guilt and condemnation and I find it truly sad.

That said, I am a lot more interested in the big picture of the significance of Jesus than I am the details of any controversial passage. Let me give you an example:

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” (John 4:15-18)

I am not quoting all of this story, because the majority of the people here know it well. It’s one of the great chapters of the Bible, and it is a great “big picture” passage. The woman’s sexual past, marital history, Samaritan ethnicity and gender were of no particular interest to Jesus. What was important? This woman was filling up her life with substitutes for the significance and love of her true husband, Yahweh. She needed living water, and she needed the one who gives water without cost and without deserving it. She needed to believe in God’s messiah, and come to receive from him, eternal life in all its dimensions.

That’s how I understand Jesus. The primary thing is not that I have screwed up my life, and may continue to do so. That’s a given. The primary thing is Jesus himself, and the Gospel that comes to me in him alone.

I used to work at a store where several Christians worked. One of the guys we Christian folk witnessed to was a young man who was divorced and remarried. One evening, another Christian- a Church of Christ guy- and I were talking religion with this fellow, and the Church of Christ guy said that if Harold became a Christian, he would need to go back to his first wife and remarry her!

Yes, you read that right. Now, what was this person thinking of? He was thinking of Jesus’ words in Matthew 5 and 19. There had been no adultery. The guys marriage broke up, and he tried again. That did not matter to the Church of Christ guy. The marriage was illegitimate and needed to be abandoned, and the first marriage restored. Then God would be happy, of course, because that’s what God is all about: people repenting correctly.

I think that if the Church of Christ guy had been at the well with this woman and Jesus, he would have listened, and when Jesus left, he would have said, “Lady….let me add a few things to what Jesus said here. Your various arrangements have all been sinful, and if you become a believer in the messiah, you will need to go back to husband #1, if you can find him, and make that marriage work again, no matter what. Repentance is very important to real faith, and we cannot overlook these illegitimate sinful relationships. That would be a bad witness.”

Of course, that would be really stupid, but it would be taking the verses seriously. Not the Gospel, but the verses. The problem with divorce and remarriage is that there is no comprehensive writing on the subject in the bible. What I'm saying is that no writer sat down and wrote an entire discourse on the whole subject of marriage. What you get is bits and pieces in response to particular questions. We are left to put the whole together.

I not against people being convicted against remarriage for sure. I am convicted against drinking for example in my case, but I don't attempt to make it a law for others. But this is the conclusion I've come up with under guidance of the Holy Spirit ...

God hates divorce. Malachi 2:16

He also forgives. 1 John 1:9, John 8:1-11

If you seek answers to divorce according to the law, then you will be condemned by the law.

If you confess your sin…and seek His forgiveness, you will be forgiven by His Eternal Grace.

Your choice: Guilt or Grace!?

Christ died as our punishment. He who knew no sin, became sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21).

How cool is that?!

The Art of Being Accused

I think that we have all been falsely accused at one time or another. There is just no way to avoid it! Check out this verse in Corinthians ...

2 Corinthians 6: 3, "Giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed ..."

The thing is Paul's ministry was blamed and discredited by the Corinthian Christians! What Paul means is that our lives or our ministry may not be rightly be blamed. Paul, like the rest of us, could not do anything about false accusations; except live in such a way that any fair-minded person would see such accusations as false. So what are we supposed to do when falsely accused? Psalm 109:21 gives a good example echoed elsewhere in scripture.

But thou, O God my Lord, deal on my behalf for thy name's sake; because thy steadfast love is good, deliver me!

Well, what David does here is beautiful. He commits the whole matter to the Lord in prayer. But so often how we as people naturally want to respond is in kind. I remember back in the day of seeing two children fighting, one of whom happened to be my own! I broke up the fuss and asked of them, "Who started this?" The boy (my son) said, "She did! She hit me back!" How true that is to our nature. We love to blame the other. We accuse others of the very things for which we are guilty!

Let me close with this quote:

"We make a mistake in trying always to clear ourselves. We should be wiser to go straight on, humbly doing the next thing, and leaving God to vindicate us. "He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noon day." There may come hours in our lives when we shall be misunderstood, slandered, falsely accused. At such times it is very difficult not to act on the policy of the men around us in the world. They at once appeal to law and force and public opinion. But the believer takes his case into a higher court and lays it before his God." ~F. B. Meyer

For he stands at the right hand of the needy, to save him from those who condemn him to death. {Psalm 109:31)

It is God who stands at the right hand of the needy, God who makes their cause his own, God who knows a thousand ways to work it all out without violence, without the perpetuation of hatred, without the destruction of lives; to bring truth to light and to establish the facts in such a way that even the accusers will be ashamed of themselves that they ever attempted such a thing. How much better it is to commit our cause to God in times like this!

Some thoughts on a Tuesday ...Tim

A different kind of study ... lol

AN INTERESTING BUT NOT TOO SURPRISING STUDY

A study conducted by UCLA's Department of Psychiatry has revealed that the kind of face a woman finds attractive on a man can differ dependingon where she is in her menstrual cycle. For example: If she is ovulating, she is attracted to men with rugged and masculine features. However, if she is menstruating or menopausal, she tends to be more attracted to a man with a spear lodged in his chest and tape over his mouth while he is on fire.

No further studies are planned.

everything is gonna be alright!

One wakes up in the morning and there is news of war, abductions, breakups ... All sorts of stuff. One gets going in their day and there are the phone calls demanding this bill be paid, this be wrong or that is going off the deep end. There may be problems at work, a child does something completely off the wall, maybe problems crop up at home. One gets through the day and there is more bad news on the TV, or you meet an old friend with another story to tell. You know of those days everything seems negative? Nothing goes right .... Everything is going wrong!

There are just those days when we need to hear everything will be ok. Its so easy to get focused on problems! In the Word it becomes clear that our Lord knows the end of the story ... Everything is going to be alright. We have this glorious future! You see, we need not to let things overwhelm and consume us when we have Jesus in our lives. So this morning ... God is saying everything is gonna be alright!

Just felt led to share this ...

Is Sexting To Blame?

This story is incredibly sad. Teenagers can be so cruel to one another. I wonder how her ex-boyfriend feels now. How are all of the girls that called her vulgar names feeling at this moment ...

Teen Commits Suicide ~ Is 'Sexting' To Blame?

We're saddened by a story about a teen who hanged herself in her bedroom after an ex-boyfriend disseminated a nude cell-phone photo of her around their Ohio community. Jessica Logan, 18, was harassed daily by other girls calling her "slut" and "whore" and throwing objects at her.

Making It Through

She finished high school last year and went on national television with her face and voice distorted to warn other girls about the potential consequences of taking naked photos of themselves, a mistake Vanessa Hudgens later made.

But two months later, after attending a funeral for another teen who had committed suicide, Jessica went home and took her own life.

A Common Mistake

An oft-cited survey says that 39 percent of teens have sent similar photos of themselves ... and 15 percent of high-school boys say they disseminate the pics after a breakup.The "Today" show had an "Internet security expert" on hand to warn of the dangers of "sexting" and urge parents to check their kids' cell phones. But isn't the real problem old-fashioned high-school cruelty?

Full article here:

http://www.lemondrop.com/2009/03/06/teen-commits-suicide-is-sexting-to-blame/?icid=200100397x1219749344x1201339776

The thing that leaped out at me was that 39% of the teens have sent similar or nude photos of themselves! Wow!!! The problem isn't having cell phones, the problem is that somewhere along the way girls think that they have to use sex and their sexuality to keep a boy's interest. Somewhere along the way, girls are thinking their only marketable commodity is their bodies. It doesn't matter if your kids have cell phones or not, they will find a way to do other things that could ruin their lives. This is the problem with society, always looking for something to blame rather than taking responsibility for their own actions.

Life is a mixed bag -- you always have the bad stuff and the good stuff. I could go on, at length, about all the stupid stuff I did when I was a teenager. Or I could go on about the good stuff. With the bad stuff, hopefully, it fades away. It becomes like fragments. Little pieces of stories that don't always agree with each other. The good stuff we keep. The thing is that I think we need forgetfulness in order to function. "Forgive and forget." We all need grace for our "pasts." Even the Bible says that when God forgives us, He “remembers our sins no more" ( Jeremiah 31:34).

But we're running out of forgetfulness. Here's the thing: in the process of recording everything, we're making our lives more static than they've ever been before. I'm not that kid of 18 who was apathetic and hated school anymore. The teenagers taking pictures of themselves performing sex acts are going to have to live with those pictures their entire lives. There's no more forgetting.

God Loves You More Than Flowers

God Loves You More Than Flowers

Matthew 6:25-26 "If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don't fuss about what's on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds.
27-29 "Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.
30-33 "If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don't you think he'll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.
34 "Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

~The Message

This translation of this passage is so awesome isn't it!

Keep It 2 Myself

I have made a decision in life to see how long I can go without talking about the negative and stressful stuff in my life. A couple people at work informed me that they didn't want to hear about the things in my life (especially which involved them!) that give me stress or disappointment. So I've decided it would be an interesting test to see how long I could go without talking about it. Yesterday was day one!! It going great so far. It's fun to pretend that you're happy and having a great time when all you want to do is scream in frustration.

I don't think this is really gonna work ....