Do you love Christ?

“We can’t love Christ if we don’t know Christ, and we learn to know Him by the Scriptures that reveal Him.”–Alexander Strauch

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Good news of the gospel’s transforming power

Read it here.

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Money-saving tips

Here are some good ones from Free Money Finance:

Here are some of my money saving tips.

1) Decide on your education goals early on and work hard and diligently to meet them.

2) Get your career right the first time and stick with it.

3) Get your marriage right the first time and be faithful – that can save a real bundle over a lifetime.

4) Marry a saver and not a spender.

5) Learn about investing rather than trusting it to others, design a financial plan, start investing as early as possible and make it a very high priority.

6) Live well within your means and encourage your spouse to do likewise.

7) Be the best employee you possibly can by being conscientious, diligent, and always striving for self improvement.

8) Avoid paying interest except for homes and cars.

9) Don’t retire until you are debt free and have enough investments and income to maintain your lifestyle.

10) Avoid trying to keep up with the neighbors.

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A prayer for marriages

Scotty Smith publishes daily or almost daily gospel-saturated prayers.  Here is one from a few days ago as he is meditating on the coming marriage supper which will celebrate the marriage between Christ and His Church.

Jesus, until that Day… until the Day you consummate this already secured marriage, help me and my married friends enjoy everything you intend for us in our marriages. How can we as spouses offer one another small yet substantive tastes of your great tenderness, passion and delight?

Free us from unrealistic expectations of one another. Free us from having no expectations of one another. Especially free us from thinking you cannot renew… you will not refresh broken, boring, passionless, purposeless marriages. In these temporary marriages of ours, bring childlike wonder and grace-full kindness to bear once again. So very Amen, I pray, in your merciful and mighty name.

Read the whole prayer here.

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Grab and go: life on the run

In Maggie Jackson’s book Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, she shows how life today offers many more distractions than at any other time in history.

Tim Challies writes,

“One way this societal distraction manifests itself is in the way we eat. Meals are no longer times to be spent with family savoring good food. Rather, they are times to quickly and effeciently refuel. In 2006, she points out, 1,347 products with “go” on the label debuted on the global market, a nearly 50 percent increase from the previous year. We can get our coffee on the go, our cereal on the go and everything else that we find we need.

She writes about Dr. Rapaille, a French-born consultant with a doctorate in medical anthropology who says, “Americans say ‘I’m full’ at the end of a meal because … [their] mission has been to fill up their tanks; when they complete it, they announced that they’ve finished the task.”

Challies shares some other snippets from Maggie’s book worth pondering as you finish up eating your sandwich as you walk out the door:

We need handheld, bite-size, and dripless food because we are eating on the run-all day long. Nearly half of Americans say they eat most meals away from home or on the go. Forty percent of our food budgets are spent eating out, compared with a quarter in 1990.3 Twenty-five percent of restaurant meals are ordered from the car, up from 15 percent in 1988.

…

Now we’ve left the fork behind, the casualty of a time-pressed age. But while we again eat with our hands, we’re rarely touching our sustenance. Wrappers, packaging, cans, straws, and the pace of life keep us from directly connecting with food until it’s halfway down our gullets. And the food itself, of course, is many steps removed from the drippy, messy, and sometimes wholly recognizable fare that graced many a groaning table of the past. In the name of civilization, we’ve moved toward clean, processed, and unobtrusive foods. A quiet fill-up, that’s what people tell [researchers] that they want. Nothing smelly, crackling

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Would you pray if you were going to be arrested for it?

Here’s one child who did:

Bhaskar is a Christian in India. He wasn’t always a Christian. But a few years ago, he decided to give his life to Jesus.

Around Christmastime, a friend of Bhaskar’s got sick and had to stay in the hospital. Bhaskar went to the hospital to visit his friend and to pray for him. A few days later, he returned to the hospital and prayed for his friend again.

A radical Hindu at the hospital knew about Bhaskar’s visits. Many Hindus are peaceful, but many radical Hindus persecute Christians and use violence against those who disagree with them.

The Hindu man beat up Bhaskar because of the hospital visits and prayers. The police came. They arrested Bhaskar instead of his attackers!

India has a law against “promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion….” That means it is against the law to encourage people of different faiths to be enemies.

Of course Bhaskar did not do that. He was simply praying for his friend. But sometimes the police in India like to help the radical Hindus. So they charged Bhaskar with the crime of “promoting enmity.”

Other Christians heard about the arrest. They helped Bhaskar get out of jail a few days later.

To read other stories like this, go here.

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Overcoming our own overbusyness

I have been meditating on Luke 10:38-42 the last few days as this was one of the primary verses we discussed at our last men’s Bible study. It is the story of Mary and Martha when Jesus came to visit them.  Here’s the story:

“Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” ” (Luke 10:38–42, ESV)

Here are some takeaway points from our discussion and the book by Alexander Strauch in his book Love or Die.

• Emblazon in my mind and maybe elsewhere so I am reminded these words:  One thing is necessary!
• Ask myself, “What is distracting me me from spending time at Jesus’ feet and listening to His words?
• Beware of the busyness of a barren life
• What practical steps can I take to fight the Martha syndrome?

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Remember this when tempted to sin

“He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see? He who disciplines the nations, does he not rebuke? He who teaches man knowledge— the Lord—knows the thoughts of man, that they are but a breath. ” (Psalm 94:9–11, ESV)

There has, perhaps, never been a more devastating demonstration of the foolish thinking which men occasionally become guilty of when they imagine that the Lord is not aware of what they are doing.”  –H. C. Leupold.

“The rabbis said that the three safeguards against falling into sin are to remember:  (1) that there is an ear that hears everything,  (2) that there is an eye that sees everything, and that (3) there is a hand that writes everything into the Book of Knowledge which shall be opened at the judgment.”–Boice.

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