Editor: Richard (Dick) Innes
Published by: ACTS International
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Vol. 11 – No. 3209 August 08, 2009
Thought for the week: "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." – Alfred Lord Tennyson
"If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul. – Rabbi Harold Kushner
"Those people who are down-to-earth are usually well grounded." – Gary Kallio
"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." – Victor Frankl
"Death for the Christian is a turning off the light because the dawn has come." – Leon Jaworski
"Who gossips to you will gossip of you." – Puerto Rican Proverb
"Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much." – Robert Greenleaf
"You never really know your full potential until challenged to give everything you have [and then some] for a worthwhile cause." – Ray Lammie
Hospital regulations require a wheel chair for patients being discharged. However, while working as a student nurse, I found one elderly gentleman already dressed and sitting on the bed with a suitcase at his feet, who insisted he didn't need my help to leave the hospital. After a chat about rules being rules, he reluctantly let me wheel him to the elevator. On the way down I asked him if his wife was meeting him. "I don't know," he said. "She's still upstairs in the bathroom changing out of her hospital gown."
In every forest, on every farm, in every orchard on earth, it's what's under the ground that creates what's above the ground. That's why placing your attention on the fruits that you have already grown is futile. You cannot change the fruits that are already hanging on the tree. You can, however, change tomorrow's fruits. But to do so, you will have to dig below the ground and strengthen the roots.
"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it—but all that had gone before."
In the old cowboy movies, you could tell the good guys from the bad by the color of their hats. Villains wore black; heroes wore white. It made things easy. Too easy.
I want to put black hats on all the people who discredit their professions and disgrace themselves and their families by acts of dishonesty or uncontrolled desire.
Unfortunately, the closer I look at athletes, school administrators, corporate executives, cops, politicians, and priests who continually fill the newspapers with scandal and fuel the bonfire of cynicism, the more obvious it becomes that most of them are a mixed bag of virtues and flaws—not so different from you and me.
I point this out not to minimize or excuse their bad conduct, but to heighten awareness of how vulnerable we all are to moral blind spots. The best defense against the seductive dark side is a strong sense of integrity and a sleepless conscience.
Poet Edgar Guest put it this way:
I have to live with myself, and so,
I want to be fit for myself to know.
I want to be able as days go by
Always to look myself straight in the eye.
I don't want to stand with the setting sun
And hate myself for the things I've done.
I don't want to keep on a closet shelf
A lot of secrets about myself
And fool myself as I come and go
Into thinking that nobody else will know
The kind of man I really am.
I don't want to dress myself up in sham.
I never can hide myself from me;
I see what others may never see.
I know what others may never know;
I never can fool myself, and so,
Whatever happens, I want to be
Self-respecting and conscience-free.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
"Instead, we will hold to the truth in love, becoming more and more in every way like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church."1
It is said that when Michelangelo, the great artist-sculptor, was walking one day outside the city of Florence, he saw a piece of marble, and looking at it, declared, "What God-like beauty you hide."
It is also reported that he said words to this effect: "I saw the angel in the marble and chiseled until I set it free."
What great illustrations of how God sees you and me. He sees our potential—and with his help what we can become, and what we can achieve with our life. He has a perfect plan for you and me. He also sees our wounded-ness and wants to heal us so we can be freed from the chains that bind us, and the unresolved issues that hinder our becoming all that he has envisioned for us to be.
And as the marble yielded to Michelangelo's skillful touch, everyday we need to yield and submit our lives to the even greater skillful touch of the Master Sculptor so that we, too, will become more and more like Christ in every way.
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, as best as I know how I commit, trust, and surrender my heart and life to you. Please work in my life so that I will become the person you want me to be. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."
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Books: Books by Dick Innes, Editor of Weekend Encounter You Can't Fly With a Broken Wing How to Mend a Broken Heart I Hate Witnessing—A Handbook for Effective Christian
Communications
Books by Bestseller and Popular Authors: The Miracle of Kindness His Needs, Her Needs by Willard F. Harley, Jr.
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CDs Healing, Wholeness & Happiness by Dick Innes
Loving & Understanding People by Dick Innes
I Hate Witnessing by Dick Innes
God's Formula for Success by Dick Innes
Cassettes: Healing, Wholeness & Happiness by Dick Innes
Loving & Understanding People by Dick Innes
I Hate Witnessing by Dick Innes
God's Formula for Success by Dick Innes
Damaged Emotions by David Seamands Healing of the Memories by David Seamands...
On SALE at:http://tinyurl.com/2unmmy
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Because the world is filled with strife,
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Because the world is filled with deceptions and lies,
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Because the world would die without,
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