The Midwestern United States are being hurt by high temperatures and low water levels. Crops are withering, fish are dying. Do I believe this has something to do with God's displeasure with killing the unborn and redefining marriage? As well as the harassment and persecution directed at those who object? Absolutely. The fact that I have not changed anything in the Prayer Calendar on this site does not mean I'm against praying for this drought to end. It's a national problem and calls for all Christians in this country to pray for it. The entire situation is simply more reason I need to develop the prayer habits I have tried to encourage by creating the Calendar. Yes, I miss days. Too many. But I have not given up, nor forgotten the concept. To that degree, it has taken hold in my life, and I hope it will take hold in other believers' lives also. (First I need to see more page visits in my statistics.) If we as Christians want to see America move in a particular direction, obeying God's Word by fulfilling His instructions to pray for "all who are in authority" will help our prayers to be answered, just to start. Far too many historic Christian writers who are widely accepted as knowing about prayer have spoken of how we must pray specifically. By directing specific prayer at specific leaders and even bureaucratic personnel in government, some of whom may have never been prayed for in their lives before, we will have an effect. As I've mentioned before, we all have our "betes noirs" in some level of government for whom it would be hard to pray for them to be blessed or relieved or helped, or whose change of heart or salvation seems like a remote possibility at best. To us, at least. They are still human beings. Few are worse, or even as bad, as the Roman emperors for whom Paul said his contemporaries should pray. Not just at, but for. In some cases, that is a tall order. If the best you or I can manage in some cases is "The Tsar's Blessing," [a reference to a scene in the musical, "Fiddler On the Roof" where a rabbi says that the appropriate blessing for the Tsar is, "God bless and keep the Tsar - far away from us!"], that's better than nothing. But if we are led by the Spirit to do better, which we may, let us pray better.
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In the controversy that has arisen over the words of Chick-fil-A's CEO, (who is the son of its founder), and the funding actions of its philanthropic foundation, concerning same-sex marriage, some seem to consider it a convincing argument that Jesus "said nothing about homosexuality." This is just one instance of an ongoing issue of many years' duration concerning the weight of New Testament scriptures other than the four Gospel accounts which contain things actually spoken by Jesus. In order to assert that Jesus "said nothing about homosexuality," or in fact that Jesus said "nothing" about other subjects, one has to overlook a number of things. First is the doctrine of the Trinity itself: that God is eternally one in substance but three co-equal persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If the argument that we should give Jesus' personal sayings more weight is based on His being God then the issue is whether God said it. If the Father or the Holy Spirit said something then that should have equal weight. In John 17:7-8, Jesus said in His "High Priestly Prayer" to the Father, "Now they have known that all things which You have given me are from You. For I have given to them the words which You have given Me..." So, the things which were spoken on earth by Jesus, Jesus Himself said were from the Father. Another place where he said this was John 14:24 - "...and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father's who sent me." In verse 26 He then said, "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you." In Paul's second epistle to Timothy, he said, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God," (II Timothy 3:16), and the apostle Peter included Paul's epistles among the Scriptures at the end of his second epistle, (II Peter 3:16). This would therefore include the things that Paul said about many specific subjects in his epistles to the churches in Corinth, Galatia, Philippi, Colossae, Thessalonica, and Rome, some of which are usually at issue when the argument is raised that Jesus "said nothing about" a subject. Thomas Jefferson in the 18th century asserted that the apostles had added these things onto the Christian religion without the input or consent of Christ so this is not a new argument. To assert that "Jesus said nothing about" any subject because the teaching is in the epistles rather than the four canonical Gospels or the short beginning segment of Acts prior to His ascension into Heaven, is to ignore or deny the authority of Scripture on these key issues and I am not going to listen to anyone who does. Are you?
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