Paul Washer

Met my old friend Peter yesterday. It was such a tonic to see him again.

He was telling me about this guy Paul Washer who he listens to on sermon audio.

He is a powerful preacher.

Listen to some of his sermons here:

http://www.sermonaudio.com/search.asp?SpeakerOnly=true&currSection=sermonsspeaker&keyword=Paul%5EWasher  

Negativity

Truly, a negative person lives in a prison of his own making. Research clearly shows that negativity adversely affects a person physically. Steven M. Sultanoff Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in Irvine, California, shares dramatic findings which reveal that negative emotions lead to bad health, and make a person actually more susceptible to common everyday illnesses, such as colds or stomach pains. Specifically he writes, “People who are chronically angry and hostile are four to five times more likely to have a heart attack than people who are not.”

So-Called Born Again

Being “born again” means something very different than how many understand that phrase today.

Message preached by John Piper:

You must be Born Again

Medical Science Proves Abortion Is Killing of Human Beings

Simplifying Abortion

Pro-lifers fail to persuade when they don’t clarify the only issue that matters: the status of the unborn. Instead, they get sidetracked on discussions about choice and privacy, the risk of back-alley abortions, the hardship of teen pregnancy, the trauma of pregnancies due to rape and incest, or the abuse of unwanted children.

Responding to any of these issues, however, requires an answer to a prior question about the nature of abortion itself. On this question there’s an unusual silence.

The apparent “complexity” of the abortion issue can be cleared up by asking just one question. Imagine that your child walks up when your back is turned and asks, ‘Daddy, can I kill this?’ What is the first thing you must find out before you can answer him? You can never answer the question “Can I kill this?” unless you’ve answered a prior question: What is it?”

Abortion involves killing something that is alive. Whether it’s right or not to take the life of any living thing depends upon the answer to one question: What is it? The answer one gives is pivotal, the deciding element that trumps all other considerations.

Let me put the issue plainly: If the unborn is not a human being, no justification for abortion is necessary. However, if the unborn is a human being, no justification for abortion is adequate.

Going Out

Around Christmas, I start to have a social life. I’ve been out the past couple of Saturday nights in a row. Last week I went to my first ever formal. I rented a nice formal suit, and my wife bought an evening dress, and all the extras. We really enjoyed it. It was a charity dinner, with an auction and a dance afterwards. It was nice to meet up with a lot of my old friends. It was to raise funds for a school in Africa, and there was a slide show about the project. A good night all in all.

This Saturday night was a bit of a contrast. It was our company Christmas dinner (at least our departmental one). I haven’t gone the past couple of years, but now that I am a manager, I felt obliged. The meal was nice, and there was some friendly conversation with the team, but as the night went on, and people around me became more enebriated, and less coherent, I just felt like a fish out of water. I left early, as they were all talking about moving on to a nightclub. Not only, am I 10 years older than most of them, I am also from a different world as far as my way of life is concerned. I am happy and positive and content with my life, and I have no need or desire to use alcohol to overcome my inhibitions, or drown my sorrows, or be part of the club that says “we’re all out to get drunk and that’s how we enjoy ourselves”. I don’t have any major inhibitions, I don’t have any sorrows to drown, and I have no desire to let my Saviour down by spitting in his face that way.   

I came away sad, that the world is full of people behaving like this, on a regular basis, and wasting their lives, adding to the burden of sin they’re already carrying.

How do we communicate to them that there is a better way?

I hope I was able to be some sort of witness, by making clear that my enjoyment of people’s company, and my sense of humour were not in any way deminished by the fact that I wasn’t drinking. I also hope that they picked up on my silence, and my frowns when the conversation became unsavoury at various stages, but perhaps there was an opportunity to add more “salt” by speaking out and making it clear that what they were saying was wrong. It’s a hard judgement to make – when to speak and when to be silent. Perhaps if my attitude prompts a few questions afterwards, I may get a chance to explain a reason for the hope that is in me (1 Peter 3:15).  

What is Truth?

I am currently reading a new book - 

To Everyone An Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview.

Here’s a little paragraph from it which tries to sum up how we think about truth.

As Christians, what are we claimimg when we say our faith is true? This may seem like an unnecessary question if we ask it about most things. If someone said, “It is raining,” and someone else said, “That’s true,” most of us would know exactly what is being said about the rain. But for some reason, when it comes to subjects like religion, the meaning of terms like truth becomes confused. If unbelievers do not understand what we are saying when we say that Christianity is true, the confusion can hamper our ability to effectively communicate the claims of Christ. What they need to understand is that when we as Christians maintain that Christianity is true, we are not merely claiming that it fulfills a certain function in our lives. Our contention is that religion is more than something to give us peace of mind, a purpose for life and happiness. It should certainly do this, but there is something more. We believe that true religion must be grounded in reality – who we are as human beings, who God is, and how we relate to God. The religion that cannot truthfuly answer these questions is false, not because it fails to give one peace of mind, but because it makes false claims about the way things are.   

Career vs Calling

http://www.boundless.org/1999/features/a0000019.html

How Should We Then Work

 

Beattitudes In Business