Editor: Richard (Dick) Innes
Published by: ACTS International
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Vol. 10 – No. 0808 February 23, 2008
Thought for the week: "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must understand the fatigue of supporting it." – Thomas Paine
"Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst; he promises honor and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure and pays with pain; he promises profit and pays with loss; he promises life and pays with death." – Thomas Brooks
"Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative." – H.G. Wells
"Fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It's the mastery of fear. It's about getting up one more time than we fall down." – Arianna Huffington
"Who you are speaks so loudly, I can't hear what you say." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." – Aristotle
"A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus" – Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Give to the world the best you have, and the best will come back to you." – Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Do you know what your kids or grandkids are saying when they use instant messaging? Of course not! They have a code that's intended to leave you in the dark. For instance, if a child types a message that consists solely of a number, such as 5, that means his/her parent is in the room. When they double that number up, such as 55, that means the coast is clear.
Here are some other codes the kids use when instant messaging:
POS: Parent is over my shoulder, so watch what you say.
POP: Parent is on the prowl and could walk in any moment.
SOS: Sibling over shoulder who will tell on me.
ASL: What's your age, sex and location?
TTYL: Talk to you later.
BRB: Be right back.
HHOK: Ha, ha, only kidding.
MOATM: Music on at the moment.
LQ: Laughing quietly because someone is in the room.
G2G: Gotta go!
CTN: Can't talk now.
From Kim Komando Via Syman Says
Source: Smile a Day Humor e-Newsletter from
Net 153 Publications
8955 North Lewis Lane
Bloomington, IN 47408
In his Tuesday Mornings newsletter, Tom Barnard shares this: In her book, Especially for a Woman (Thomas Nelson), Ann Kiemel Anderson remembered a story told her by her sister, Jan. Here is a cutting from the story:
Jan taught 3rd grade once, a long time ago. One bright-eyed boy would stand at her desk, watch her, talk to her, and all the while wrapping his finger around a piece of her hair into a little curl. He thought Jan was the shining star in the night. Over and over, however, he did poorly in his work assignments and daily quizzes.
One day Jan stopped, looked at him, and said, "Rodney, you are very smart. You could be doing so well in school. In fact, you are one of my finest students ...." Before she could continue to tell him that he should be doing much better in school, he looked up at her with sober, large eyes. "I did not know that!"
From that moment on Rodney began to change. His papers were neater, cleaner and his spelling improved. He was one of her top students -- all because she affirmed him. She told him something no one ever had before, and it changed his life.
E. Howard Cadle's mother was a Christian, but his father was an alcoholic. By age twelve, Cadle was emulating his father, drinking and out of control. Soon he was in the grip of sex and gambling and in the clutches of the Midwest crime syndicate.
"Always remember, Son," his worried mother often said, "that at eight o'clock every night I'll be kneeling beside your bed, asking God to protect my precious boy." But her prayers didn't seem to slow him until one evening on a rampage, he pulled a gun on a man and squeezed the trigger. The weapon never fired and someone quickly knocked it away. Cadle noticed that it was exactly eight o'clock, and somehow he'd been spared from committing the crime of murder.
He continued headlong in vice, however, and presently his health broke. The doctor told him he had only six months to live. Dragging himself home, penniless and pitiful, he collapsed in his mother's arms, saying, "Mother, I've broken your heart. I'd like to be saved, but I've sinned too much."
The old woman opened her Bible and read Isaiah 1:18: "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." That windswept morning, March 14, 1914, E. Howard Cadle started life anew. The change in him was dramatic and permanent.
With Christ now in his heart, he turned his con skills into honest pursuits and started making money hand over fist, giving 75 percent of it to the Lord's work. He helped finance the crusades of the far-famed evangelist Gipsy Smith in which thousands were converted. Then he began preaching the Gospel himself on Cincinnati's powerful WLW, becoming one of America's earliest and most popular radio evangelists.
He once said: "Until He calls me, I shall preach the same Gospel that caused my sainted mother to pray for me. And when I have gone to the last city and preached my last sermon, I want to sit at His feet and say, 'Thank You, Jesus, for saving me that dark and stormy day from a drunkard's and a gambler's Hell.'"
Source: Pulpit Pieces Weekly. Net 153 Publications, net153@net153.com
6. The Formation of Character Lies in Our Own Hands
By Michael Josephson of Character Counts (517.1)
In his book, Character Is Destiny: The Value of Personal Ethics in Everyday Life, Pepperdine professor Russell Gough is emphatic about the virtue of personal accountability and the importance of recognizing our power and responsibility to shape our own character, and thus our future, by consciously choosing our words, deeds, and attitudes.
One chapter builds on the diary of Anne Frank, written while she was hiding from the Nazis. This precocious 15-year-old wrote that "the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands."
This is such a vital point. Everywhere we see evidence that we're becoming a nation of unaccountable victims, whiners, and wimps all too ready to pass off responsibility to someone else.
Satirist Ambrose Bierce poked fun at this tendency when he defined responsibility as "a detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck, or one's neighbor." The parade of recently indicted CEOs added a new object of blame to this list ("It was the people who worked for me!") as they claimed to be victims rather than perpetrators of frauds that enriched them.
Everywhere we turn, we see people blaming personal shortcomings and social ills on circumstances beyond their control or on an irresponsible media, greedy businessmen, corrupt politicians, irresistible economic pressures, and every manner of psychological syndrome.
Even while facing likely death from an unspeakably evil regime, Anne Frank knew no external power could make her become a bad or good person. She knew she had choices, including how to react—in actions and attitudes—to circumstances beyond her control.
What temptations we resist and surrender to are always a matter of choice. Each of us can be as good as we are willing to be.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
"How shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord [Jesus], was confirmed to us by those who heard him."1
One Sunday I was having lunch in a restaurant where a humming bird had flown in through an open door and couldn't find its way out. It flew to the highest window and was frantically trying to escape through the glass. The more it tried—and failed—the harder it worked at doing the same thing.
Little did it realize that a very simple way of escape lay one yard/meter below it—through a wide-open door.
It could see quite well but was trapped by its own blindness to the way of escape.
Fortunately one of the staff was able to climb on a ladder, caught the bird in a box and set it free. We all felt so good about its rescue that we applauded.
But how many people in today's world are struggling in a vain attempt to save themselves—spiritually—but are also trapped by their own blindness to the way of escape God has provided for their total and free salvation?
Would that we Christians would care about these lost souls all around us as much as the patrons cared about a "trapped" bird in a restaurant.
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, thank you for providing a way of escape from the penalty and judgment of my sin through the giving of your Son, Jesus, by sending him to die in my place on the cross so you could freely forgive me and give me the gift of eternal life in Heaven forever with you. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus' name, amen."
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