When one is an orator...---"Will He find faith on the earth?"

The Devil himself uses our own words to implicate and condemn us. Some of the danger of a Christian education is that our words and God's words overlap to strangle our faith. "Hath God not said?" The devil exalts us and the devil debases us and uses our excellence as his yoyo to drag us from self aggrandizement to complete exhaustion.

Sometimes I wonder if we are not the reincarnation of the worms that consumed Herod in the midst of his oration. Only eternity will say the veracity of that assumption. All I can say is that our words are very often more grand and exalted and we are not as guilty of giving God the glory as giving ourselves the glory. We use religion to justify our own pagan strongholds and we are sadly deficient in the graces and gifts that God has given us these words to develop.

How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? Hebrews 2;3

My own heart aches when I read the actual cross examination of William Jennings Bryan in that beautiful expression of the spiritual struggle played out in the courts during the "Scopes Trial" which was dramatized in the movie and book Inherit the Wind.

This is the degrading of Bryan in the media of 1900, as he is seen as a clown who tries to glue church and state to eachother.{a new phenomenon? No}

Participation in the political process and the compromise of scruples is not a new phenomenon, I can see. I don't think we can tell our children this enough. If you are a person of Christian convictions, they will all be challenged, throughout your life. A great Christian example of this is William Jennings Bryan, the politician and author and lawyer. I am sorry that I didn't research him more before my children were mostly grown.

He seems an example of fighting the good fight in the forum of secular and political contentions. How much of the world are we allowing into our hearts is far more significant than that of what is outside? But if we represent God, He just may allow us to be as Daniel and the Hebrew boys in the fiery furnace of politics and public discussion. Help us to remember that God is greater than our fears. Cursed are we when we make our own flesh or any other, our arm. God give us grace to stand and having done all to stand, in Jesus' Name. Amen

When my heart is overwhelmed...

Psalm 61:2 Hear my cry, O Lord, attend unto my prayer.

Sometimes, I am not overwhelmed as I ought to be about my sins. And then, all of a sudden the floodgates of memory of God's holiness and my continual circumstantial habits of flagrant sins sweep over me and I am overwhelmed. It seems like I am the only one in the universe and God's finger is sticking in my chest in condemnation for my own transgressions.
I remember my many penitential prayers. I remember that I promised God millions of times to stop it and here I am again engaged in the same muck and mire. I remember my catechism classes in second grade and third grade, learning "sin is any lack of conformity to or transgression of the law of God." I really thought I was going to forsake that sin altogether. I cried, I confessed to God. I went to confession. I had people and others praying with me about it. I told God, I love you more than this and I am finished with this sin. Just to be standing here again in the same problem. When will I be rid of this? When will the overwhelmingness that Your goodness and unfailingness has been spit upon in my stumblings? I can't get over it, Lord. I don't know whether to stop praying till I get this right or what? I know stopping praying isn't the problem. That is the lie of the enemy. It is the devil who tells me that. I know that it is not your finger in my chest that I feel. It is my own finger of condemnation and expectation of ascendancy to a "sinless existence".

God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

When am I gonna be Saved? When am I gonna act SAVED?
Everytime they get to that part of the service, I am on one side or the other of the pendulum. I am either pacifying myself saying, I am glad I am not like those people and redemption seems like a wall between me and those others who are struggling. I am deceived in my self righteousness or I am grovelling in the pity of my continual condition of inability to help myself in this or that area of life.

Where will I find a modicum of stability in the spiritual realm?

My Heart is overwhelmed!I am in the condition that David found himself in Psalm 61, in his honesty before God. I am very aware of my sinful condition before God. I am very sorry, but where is the solace and when will there be freedom from this state?

Jesus PAID it all!

An even greater comfort than that which David knew in his inherited blessing is ours in Christ. He is the Rock that is higher than I. He extends a greater compassion for our failings that flailings. He is the payment and the full price for sins. I can take it to Him, time and time again and know that He is the balm for my putrid condition. He is healing me and drawing me closer to Him, as I reach for Him in my sensitive state. That is actually a more real condition than I am sensorious of. My emotions can stretch the gammut. A sense of closeness to God at times that I know that I am His to a sense of comradery with the devil, himself and the fear that is his eternal state. When I remember that the price for my soul is set in Christ and my trust is not in my own trust, but in His completed work? I can carry my crippled soul to the only real help.

My contrition is real and it is not just an act. It has become the cry of my heart. It is not something that they taught me. It is a prayer that I have owned as my own remembrance of my condition and Christ's finished work

Oh My God, I am heartly sorry that I have offended Thee! I truly do detest all my sins because they offend Thee, my God! Amen.

Coming Back to the Center of the Court!

Ephesians 6:13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Whether the shot was a winner or a lob or into the net, the next thing to do is to go back to the center of the court.

Why? Where? What?

After we have fought and won or lost, we have to go back to the urgent call of service that is our lot in life. My call from God to care for my family is higher than any other attainment in this world.

When they placed that baby on my heart and I was aware that I was the mother in care for this new life, my ministry was confirmed. Many places along the way, God has placed a second wind into my loving promise to be what He has called me to be; their mother. Who am I when I win the highest prizes? Their mother. Who am I, when I lose the highest prizes? Their mother. After being a child of God and a human being and a woman and all of the other things that I am. I have seen this or these children from complete inability to the point where they are now. That is a really fulfilling accomplishment, whatever men or the world may relegate it to.

I can go back to the center of the court and look at my identity with the correct spectacles. I have accomplished alot in this world. God is pleased that I am going on from challenge to challenge with His help.