Be home for Christmas

The best presents… is your presence.

Don’t think you can buy your children happiness, hardworking absentee father/mother. You may be “too busy” and think to compensate with a splurge of cash. Nothing replaces your presence.

God splurged on buying us the ultimate Christmas gift: His only Son. And He is only a prayer away to being in our hearts and gifting us His presence.

God gave us family. It is a reward, an institution, a blessing and a happiness. Sometimes it goes dysfunctional, but you don’t throw out the institution because of failure. You fix it.

Original image from Google search.

Jordan Payton and Kate Sommer: record breakers, classmates, friends

Jordan Payton thanks God after a touchdown.

They were born together, played together, studied together and competed against each other. Whether it was Olympic Day or dodge ball, Jordan Payton, growing tall and strong even as a kid, always beat Kate Sommer.

Now at age 21, Kate finally beat Jordan.

Both students playing Div. 1 sports have broken their respective universities’ records – Kate for digs on women’s volleyball and Jordan for receptions on football. And though they broke records almost at the same time, Kate hit the new high first.

“She got me on this one,” Jordan said after practice recently. “She definitely did.”

Kate hit gold in mid-October with four years of digs for Washington State University, spiking the previous high mark of 1,744.

Jordan caught his 194^th pass on Nov. 21 – about three weeks later.

“It’s crazy that we both broke records at the same time,” Kate said. “I would always some in second. He would always win. I was always behind him. I actually wanted to beat him.”

The feat is indeed extraordinary, in part, because both record-busters came from a tiny school, Lighthouse, which averages 100 enrollment with its primary, middle and high school combined.

But not only did they both go to the same school, they were in the same classroom, which oscillated between 10 and 12 students year-to-year. After middle school, Jordan attended Oaks Christian for its high profile football program – and so inseparable friends started to wend separate paths into the world.

The story of Jordan’s and Kate’s friendship literally started in the womb. Both are youngest children, so their parents became friends as their older brothers and sisters played together in sports, in the Lighthouse Church and in the schools. Read the rest of this fascinating account about record breakers in this Christian school Los Angeles.

More than mumbo jumbo

from Aswan-Egypt

It’s so real that medical texts have a term for it: psychosomatic disease. The person feels every symptom, but there is no sign of infection. Call it mind tricks.

from blue pueblo

He believes it and has it, though no trace of logical cause can be found.

The patient first believes he is sick. It worsens when he begins to speak about it. Then he acts sick. The doctor gives him a placebo, a sugar pill, and tells him he’ll be well so that he can experience a reversal of symptoms through his belief.

What works to sicken, also works to make well: believe, speak, act. This is not hocus pocus. It is science. It is also Bible. Death and life are in the power of the tongue — Prov. 18:21 KJV. Apparently, it is such a powerful dynamic that it works without the intervention of God.

from Ben Rogers blog

How much more so with God’s intervention! Believe in your heart for your answer. Speak it in prayer. Act on your faith. To me, it makes no sense that the same skeptics who snigger at the positive confession quantify and scientifically classify the negative confession. Or do we only affirm the bad? A Christian affirms the good.

Faith can heal you. Faith can bring needed finances. Faith can answer prayer. If they tongue has the power to make a person psychosomatically sick, then it also has the power to heal.

Because he didn’t die…

… he didn’t make the news, but the mailman who fought off his assailant was a great story.

from Dani Mejias

I was an intern for the L.A. Herald Examiner. I observed the trail of blood that extended for about 15 yards on the sidewalk in South Central Los Angeles in 1988. The mail carrier was delivering General Relief checks, and some gang-bangers thought they could grab and forge. They shot him, and he bled, but he never surrendered his cargo. Instead, bleeding from the bullet wound, he fought them off. The story was incredible, but it never even made the newspaper because the mailman survived. Had he died, it would have gone viral (in age when there was no “viral”).

News outlets thrive on bad news, so if it’s bad news that you want, just read the offerings of the world anywhere. But if you want “good” news, read the Gospels. Jesus forgives your sins, God promises wonderful things, the Spirit restores your family. Prayer connects you directly to Almighty Power.

Prayer is rest

Let us LABOUR therefore to enter into that REST –– Heb. 4:11 KJV (caps mine). On the surface, this verse contradicts itself. On the one hand, there is labor (note the English spelling); on the other, rest. Instead of “labor,” the NIV says “make every effort” and the English Standard Version, “strive.”

Rest is no small theme in the Book of Hebrews. It receives more than an incidental mention. The author compares the Old Testament Sabbath rest to Christianity, in that we are no longer doing “works” toward salvation (i.e. no circumcision, no sacrifices). As Christians, we “rest” in salvation because we just receive it by believing. But he warns us against lack of belief, because in the desert some failed to enter the rest of the Promised Land.

Prayer is not worry. It is not labor. It is ceasing from labors and allowing God to do the labor. It is ceasing from worry and purposely deciding to live by faith. A diagram might be more exact: we have worry –> so we pray –> as faith fills us in prayer, we rest with quiet confidence that God will do what we cannot. No longer feverishly agitated, we calmly go about our daily labors, trusting that God will bring the breakthrough we cannot order ourselves through our own cleverness or hard work.

It is easy to fall back into worry. That is why we must constantly oblige our nervous minds to return to faith — and thus rest — in the Lord. So prayer is rest, but not laziness. Being unconcerned about life is not what I’m talking about either.

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. — 1 Pet. 5:7 NIV.

Early flailings

I first started praying — really praying — when I got involved in the Lighthouse Church in Santa Monica. They had 6:00 a.m. prayer for an hour every morning. I went because 1) it was expected of rising disciples, and 2) in theory, I knew prayer was effective.

However, my first prayings, I am ashamed to admit now, lacked faith. The first real answer to prayer surprised me. I was praying for Blanca, the middle of three sisters, who was in the world. I prayed six months for her to get saved. When she walked into the church, my jaw dropped to the floor. In my head, I said, “Blanca, what are you doing here? I thought you wanted to be in the world.”

To which, the Holy Spirit responded: “Weren’t you praying for her? Why now are you surprised by the answer?”

That’s when I stopped going to prayer out of obligation. From then on, I went because of conviction. I knew that prayer worked! Since I have seen thousands of similar answers. I am addicted to prayer like the junkie to drugs. I only wish I could help people to get the revelation for themselves. That is the purpose of this blog.