Editor: Richard (Dick) Innes
Published by: ACTS International
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Vol. 10 – No. 2508 June 21, 2008
Thought for the week: "A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan." – Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think." – Benjamin Disraeli
"You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you." – Brian Tracy
Bumper Sticker: "If you pause to think—you'll have cause to thank!" – Unknown
"Pick and choose carefully what to fight for; but stand up, be counted and fight indeed for those causes that stir your heart." – Ray Lammie
"No one [else] is to blame for what you choose to do with the rest of your life as an adult—that is your choice." – Connie Podesta
"It doesn't matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going." – Brian Tracy,
"Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve." – Leonardo da Vinci
In Streams of Living Water, Richard Foster told of Billy Graham preaching at Cambridge in 1955. For three nights he tried to make his preaching academic and enlightened, but with no effect.
Graham finally realized that presenting the intellectual side of faith was not his gift and began preaching the simple message of Jesus rescuing us from our problem with sin. Foster wrote, "The results were astonishing: hundreds of sophisticated students responded to this clear presentation of the Gospel. It was a lesson in clarity and simplicity that he never forgot."
"One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again." – Abraham Maslow 1908-1970, Psychologist
Maggie Lena Walker was born during Reconstruction in 1867 when African American women often found themselves working as household servants. As a member of the first generation of African Americans born into freedom, Walker chose the path of the shepherd leader rather than the role of servant. At age thirty-two, the deeply religious Walker took over an ailing insurance company with $40 in the bank and debts of over $400 and transformed it into a highly successful enterprise with a $70,000 cash reserve and over 100,000 members, mostly minorities.
Before she died in 1934, Walker founded a bank, a newspaper, and a department store—all catering to the African American community in Richmond, Virginia. Her bank provided financing for homes in the black community and loans for minority-owned businesses. A revolutionary accomplishment in her day, the department store was owned by black entrepreneurs, staffed by black employees, and catered to black consumers. As a shepherd leader, Walker visibly stepped out in front, found a better path, and met the needs of her followers, never being so far out in front that she could not come alongside. Maggie Lena Walker's decisions and actions improved the quality of her followers' lives forever.
Excerpted from Shepherd Leadership by Blaine McCormick and David Davenport. Source: Leader Links, http://www.leaderlinks.com. Cited on WITandWISDOM by Richard Wimer www.witandwisdom.org.
A company founder needed to choose his successor. He studied resumes and talked to references, but he asked only one question during the final interview: "How much is 2 + 2?"
Ann, the first candidate, worried that there was a trick but answered straightforwardly. "There's only one correct answer: four."
Terry, who had an engineering background, was more creative. "Depending on whether you're dealing with positive or negative numbers," he said, "the answer could be plus four, zero, or minus four."
Chuck, the last candidate, looked the questioner in the eye and whispered, "How much do you want it to be?"
While Ann and Terry took different approaches, they both provided an honest answer. Chuck, on the other hand, wanted the questioner to know he was willing to say or do whatever it took to succeed. Some employers may find this combination of creativity and moral flexibility highly attractive. I'd show him the door.
You see, Chuck is a manipulator and rationalizer, and they don't make good employees. They search for excuses rather than solutions and are more concerned with looking good than doing things right.
People like Chuck who are adept at inventing justifications that sound good but aren't true are simply clever liars. Eventually they will be found out. Remember, an employee who will lie for you will lie to you.
Without conscience, there is no credibility. Without credibility, there is no trust. And without trust, there is no future.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world."1
In his book, My Search for the Ultimate, research scientist Lambert Dolphin Jr. writes, "Confronted every day with the mysteries of space and the atom, I continue to be amazed at the complexity and order of our universe. From the sub-microscopic realm of the atom to the expanding reaches of the galaxies, our universe runs like intricate and well-oiled clockwork according to great physical laws which never change or falter.
"Our sun, which is the nearest star, a hundred earth diameters across, is 93 million miles into space. Each day the sun supplies our solar system with heat, power and light at the rate of a million billion, billion horsepower! Yet it is only an average star.
"Our island universe of stars which we call the Milky Way is 100,000 light years across. If we could travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second), it would take us 100,000 years to traverse the Milky Way! Yet this is only one of a billion or more such island universes stretched out in every direction from our earth to distances measured in billions of light years."
Did all this happen by chance? I ask myself. For me it would take more faith to believe that than to believe that our world and universe were created by a Master Designer whose power and greatness are beyond human understanding.
Besides creation, God has shown himself through the human soul. As well as being a physical, rational, and emotional being, man is a spiritual being with a living soul in which is implanted a consciousness of God. This consciousness is made up of a "religious and moral instinct" which acknowledges a supreme being upon whom man is dependent and to whom he is responsible.2
Anselm, the famous Italian theologian who lived in the eleventh century, stated that the idea of God in the mind is proof that God exists. Pascal, the French physicist and philosopher who lived in the seventeenth century, spoke about the "God-shaped vacuum in every life that only God can fill."
Furthermore, if God didn't exist in the mind of the atheist, why would he feel compelled to disprove God's existence?
God has also revealed himself to us through his Word, the Bible. The Bible doesn't seek to prove God's existence. It accepts it as fact and simply says, "In the beginning God...."3
In the Bible God speaks with authority, stating that it is his Word and that he is the one and only God.4 It is God's written message to mankind. Fulfillment of scores of prophecies in accurate detail is sufficient evidence to prove its validity.
God can be seen in creation, in the human soul, and in the Bible, but his final and clearest revelation of himself to us is in his Son, Jesus Christ.5 Not only is Jesus the Son of God, but also God the Son. Referring to Jesus, John wrote, "In the beginning was the Word...and the Word was God...And the Word became flesh and lived among us."6
When Philip, a disciple of Jesus, asked to see God, Jesus said, "He who has seen me has seen the Father [God]."7 As Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes to the Father [God] except through me."8
In life we all see and believe basically what we want to see and believe. If we want to see and believe in God, we can. If we don't want to see him, we won't. Most people do believe in God but it is an entirely different experience to find and know him personally. The only way to do this is through Jesus Christ. For help to find and know God read the article, "How to Be Sure You're a Real Christian" at: http://tinyurl.com/8glq9
1. Psalm 19:1-4, (NIV). 2. See Genesis 2:7; Acts 17:22-28 and Romans 2:14-15. 3. Genesis 1:1. 4. See Timothy 3:16 and Mark 12:29. 5. Hebrews 1:1-2. 6. See Mark 1:1 and John 1:1,14. 7. John 14:9. 8 John 14:6.
NOTE: For the one who needs all the 'facts' Ray Lammie recommends Lee Strobel's book, The Case for Christ. Over two million copies have been sold in the past 10 years. Strobel is a Jew whose wife became a believing Christian. He was a famous criminal reporter in Chicago who then went about trying to prove to her Christ was not the Son of God. What he discovered along the way, in that year long journey, is a fact filled investigation of the Evidence for Christ. At the end of that mission Lee took a complete turn and became a Christian.
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