Editor: Richard (Dick) Innes
Published by: ACTS International
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Vol. 15 – No. 3113 August 03, 2013
Thought for the week: "Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight." – Helen Keller
"The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just." – Abraham Lincoln
"Heroes are ordinary men and women who dare to see and meet the call of a possibility greater than themselves. People who, despite their doubts and fears, commit themselves to action. People who go beyond their limits in what they think is possible." – Joan Holmes
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." – Edmund Burke
"We can let circumstances rule us, or we can take charge and rule our lives from within." – Earl Nightingale
"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals." – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world." – Dr. Wayne Dyer
Why do doctors and lawyers call what they do practice?
Why is abbreviation such a long word?
Why is it that when you're driving and looking for an address, you turn down the volume on your radio?
Why is a boxing ring square?
What was the best thing before sliced bread?
How do they get the deer to cross the highway at those yellow signs?
How did a fool and his money get together in the first place?
When Robert B. Rowling bought the Omni Hotel chain, he ordered the pornographic magazines pulled from his hotels' gift shops and the pornographic films removed from the pay-per-view channels on the TVs in the hotel rooms. To do the latter, he had to switch movie-service providers and buy a new television for every room—some eighty-seven hundred sets! The change cost Rowling $4 million, including lost revenue.
But since the porn movies were yanked, occupancy has increased at the upscale hotels.
George Will writes in Men at Work: "Baseball umpires are carved from granite and stuffed with microchips...they are professional dispensers of pure justice."
"Once when Babe Pinelli called Babe Ruth out on strikes, Ruth made a populist argument. Ruth reasoned fallaciously (as populists do) from raw numbers to moral weight: 'There's 40,000 people here who know that last one was a ball, Tomato Head.' Pinelli replied with the measured stateliness of John Marshall: 'Maybe so, but mine is the only opinion that counts.'"Thought: We need to realize that God's opinion is the only one that counts in determining our conduct.
"Forever, O LORD, Your word is settled in heaven" (Psalm 119:89).
God speaks to people in radically different ways. In 1999, Debbie Joyce's son, Matthew, was dying from cystic fibrosis. Matt was once an athlete and avid surfer until CF damaged his lungs. Without a double-lung transplant from compatible donors, Matthew would die. Debbie, who works at a California supermarket, was sharing her situation with a regular customer, attorney Frederick Phillips, when Phillips suddenly volunteered to be a donor. He turned out to be perfectly compatible to Matthew. Phillips saw a need face-to-face and responded out of a compassionate heart.
U.S. Customs agent Dave Manglos was driving home from work one evening when he became drowsy. He pulled off the road and headed to a local beach to take a walk. While Manglos walked along the beach, he watched the surfers in the distance and he prayed. And as he prayed, Agent Manglos got the strangest feeling that God was calling him to do something urgent. But what was it? Manglos pondered these feelings as he drove home. The next evening, a local news station reported on a young man named Matthew Joyce who was dying of cystic fibrosis.
As Dave and Rhonda Manglos watched the evening news, Dave heard a voice inside him say very distinctly, "Didn't we talk about this yesterday?" And Dave announced to Rhonda that he was supposed to donate one lobe of his lungs to Matthew Joyce. With donated lobes from Phillips and Manglos, Matthew underwent a successful surgery in 2000. Since the surgery, Matthew Joyce has returned to a full and exciting life.
– "Every Breath He Takes" by Roland Merullo, Reader's
Digest, Dec. 2003, 74-77.
By Michael Josephson. Characer Counts, 387.4 (Written several years ago).
Tomorrow I turn 62. And it just doesn't feel right. It seems like yesterday when I was the young rebel with potential. I know I should say wise and soothing things, but despite upbeat rhetoric about the advantages of advanced age, it's really the pits to observe my body deteriorate and see how old my friends look. And I hate realizing how much I have forgotten.
But enough lamenting—or is it whining? I may not be smarter, but I am wiser.
I know that everything changes—including me.
I know that my dad was right when he told me that "where there's a will there's a way."
I know it's really dumb to carry a grudge and really hard to give one up.
I know now that the things I like to do least are often the things that need to be done most.
I know it's easier to give advice than to take it.
And I know now that neither the intensity of my feelings nor the certainty of my convictions is any assurance that I'm right.
I know that until I translate my thoughts into actions, my great ideas and good intentions are like unlit candles.
I know kindness is more important than cleverness.
I know now that it's not a sin to have an unexpressed thought and that there really are things that are better left unsaid.
I know it's a lot easier to tear down than to build up.
And I know now that some people will just never like me.
I know that there's a big difference between what I have a right to do and what is right to do.
And I know now that whether I like it or not I'll keep getting older—until I don't. And that's a lot worse.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
"All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty."1
A man bought a parrot at an auction after some heavy bidding. "I hope this bird talks," he told the auctioneer.
"Talk," the auctioneer replied. "Who do you think has been bidding against you for the past ten minutes?"
Sad to say, we seem to be living in a day when a person's word has less and less value. Once upon a time a man's word was his bond. Not any more I'm afraid. For many people today their word doesn't mean a thing. We're pretty adept at parroting what we think people want to hear.
I remember one of my college professors teaching us that a person's character could be measured by what value he or she put on their word. People who don't keep their word simply cannot be trusted.
Fortunately, however, of one thing we can be certain, God always keeps his Word and always keeps his promises. To be Christ-like, we need to do the same! For after all, it's what we do, not what we say, that says the most of all.
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, please make me a man/woman of my word so I can always be trusted to say what I mean, mean what I say, and do what I say I will do. And thank you that your Word can always be trusted. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen.
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