lln’s blog

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Let’s face it: there are times in our lives in which circumstances are definitely less than desirable; you wish you were a few years older, a few years younger, you had more money, you had a girlfriend, boyfriend, or spouse, or you want a different president elect. During these times, you need to realize that God has a plan for why you were put on this earth during the time you were, why you’re single, and why Barack Obama is the president elect. We need to realize this, and trust God to reveal to us, or not reveal to us, why he has put us in the present circumstances. God has a purpose for every life he has chosen to save, and he will use them to his glory. The next time you approach a less than desirable circumstance, or if you are in one right now, remember that God knows why you’re in that circumstance, and you might eventually see and reap the blessings of those circumstances. If not, remember that God has his reasons, even if we don’t always understand them.

I’m going to begin a series on trust, and what this means for us as Christians. This would be the first one.

There can be many causes of fear. My personal fears are being bold, and even more than that, a fear of losing the ones I care about and love. Sometimes, I get quite overcome by these fears. This is not what God want us to do. Paul reminds us to “be anxious about nothing.” So, in essence, being afraid is a sin against God, because fear is a lack of trust in Him. We must lean on Christ at all times, and trust that he will provide for us. He knows exactly what you’re going through, and if you cast your cares on Him, He will bless you, in whatever way is most pleasing to Him. The next time you’re scared or worried, pause and thank God for the circumstance or relationship, and ask Him to help you trust in Him, no matter what. 

“Shall I take from your hand Your blessings, yet not welcome any pain? Shall I thank You for days of sunshine, yes grumble in days of rain? Shall I love You in times of plenty, then leave You in days of drought? Shall I trust when I reap a harvest, but when winter winds low, then doubt? Oh let Your will be done in me, in Your love I will abide. Oh I long for nothing else as long as You are glorified.”~Sovereign Grace Ministries, “As Long as You Are Glorified”

Have you ever thought about how strange death is? How, one moment, someone is full of life, can move, communicate, contain warmth, and blink, and the next moment, all of this goes away. How sticking something sharp in a single organ can cause everything you’ve ever had in your life to come to an end. 

I think for a Christian, death, in a very strange way, can be a beautiful thing. It shows even more than something does happen to us when we die. Otherwise, what is death? I think that when someone dies, their soul leaves their earthly body and goes to live with Christ with a brand new, perfect body for eternity. Though it’s still extremely sad to never have a person around again, we should be joyful that, if they are a Christian, they are with their Savior.

I have recently been thinking about what a reality death is. How, one day, sooner or later, we will face death, whether it be an instant one, or a long drawn-out, disease or injury-caused death. This really makes you pause and consider how you spend your days. When you reach the end, do you want to face it, thinking, “man, I totally wasted my life,” or, “wow, I really accomplished some great things for Christ in my lifetime.” I know I want to die with the peace that I’ve lived every moment for the sake of Christ. I know that sometimes I fail, and get lazy, but I really want to try to live out my life for Christ and His kingdom, and I encourage you to do the same.

Well, I’m a girl, so I’m going to talk about something I love: guy-girl relationships. Being in love is one of the most beautiful experiences in the world. What is the best way to pursue these relationships?

I am personally a huge fan of courtship. What better way is there than to your friends and family to get to share in watching your relationship unfold? Rather than dating, where only the two of you get to share in the relationship, many people do. Though I don’t believe it’s right for the guy and girl to never be alone (walks hand-in-hand down the road, conversations on the swing in the yard, ROMANTIC!), cause I think that if they’re never alone, that could result in problems when they finally do get alone. I do, though, think it’s really cool for the majority of the time to be spent with the family and doing stuff with groups. This leaves less opportunity to experience things that should be left for engagement and marriage.

Another thing I most definitely believe in about guy-girl relationships is to leave kisses for at the earliest, engagement, and sex for marriage. What could be better gifts than to give your fiance your first kiss, and then as your spouse, your virginity? It’s the way God meant for it to be. He didn’t mean for us to go around wasting special gifts that he’s given us on people we don’t want to marry. These precious gifts were meant to be shared between two people, and those two people alone.

Guy-girl relationships are so amazing. The last thing I want to point out is, when we are in a relationship, we are supposed to love each other as Christ loved us. That’s the way we were created. We are supposed to be enamored with each other’s beauty, respect each other, and love each other, and each other alone.

“Oh, you’re just a teenager.” I wish I could count every time I have cringed at the sound of this phrase. What does the word “teenager” even mean? Until the 20th century, the term wasn’t even used. It wasn’t uncommon for people to marry around 14. What has changed for us to have to make the legal marriage age 18?

I think a big part of this is the fact that we as teenagers have been told by the world that we are still children, and that we are to still act like children. Our responsibilities have gradually grown smaller. As “teenagers,” we are expected to be immature and goofy, make bad decisions, and have our hearts broken.

What about this? What if we rebelled from the world’s standards of a “teenager?” What if we chose to undertake the responsibily of being “young adults?” What if we took on responsibilites, look to grow more mature, in our actions and relationships, seek God’s wisdom when making decisions, and save our love for when we’re absolutely sure that they are the one we want to spend the rest of our lives with? I wonder how the world would respond to that…

Hi kids! (Sorry, too much I Love Lucy…lol) Well, this was a speech I gave today at school on Calvinism (my dad helped me a little bit).

Do you believe that God is sovereign over all things? Even over people’s souls? If so, you are a Calvinist! Calvinism is the belief that the Bible teaches God is sovereign over everything, even including over who is saved.

My goal is to clearly explain what is meant by the term Calvinism. Calvinism gets its name from John Calvin, the sixteenth-century theologian and church reformer. This is because he is generally considered to be the first to write n an organized way about the doctrines now known Calvinism.

Calvin died in 1564. About fifty years later, some followers of the theologian Jacob Arminius began to argue that Calvin had been wrong about five points of doctrine in particular. Out of the debate that followed there developed what came to be known as the five points of Calvinism. While the Calvinistic view of the Bible involves much more than these five points, they became known as a kind of shorthand for Calvinism. The five points of Calvinism are often remembered by the “TULIP” acrostic. TULIP stands for Total Depravity (also called Total Inability), Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement (also called Particular Redemption), Irresistible Grace (also called The Efficacious Call of the Spirit), and The Perseverance of the Saints (also called the Security of Believers).

I shall now explain all these points one by one. First of all, Total Depravity or Total Inability. This means that man’s nature is evil, sinful, and corrupt throughout. The word “total” doesn’t just mean man is sinful just in his words or actions, this word means that man is knitted in sin. I don’t know if you have ever seen someone knit, but they touch every single fiber that goes into whatever they are making. Every little cell in our body is saturated with sin. As a result of this “sin saturation,” man is completely unable to do anything spiritually good. This is not to say that unsaved people are unable to do anything outwardly good, for they most certainly are. But, judging by God’s standards, the unsaved person is completely incapable of doing anything spiritually good. The famous Westminster Confession of Faith puts this very well: “As a result of Adam’s transgression, men are born in sin and are by nature spiritually dead; therefore, if they are to become God’s children and enter his kingdom, they must be born anew of the spirit.”¹

The second point of Calvinism is Unconditional Election. This means God chooses or elects people to be saved. As I have said in my previous point, men are extremely sinful. As a result, we are not fit to be seen in the sight of God. It would have been perfectly just of God to provide no way of salvation. He was by no means obligated to provide salvation for sin.

The Bible gives the doctrine of election. The Bible states that God, before He even created the world, chose certain sinners to receive his undeserved gift. These people, and these people only, will be saved. God could have chosen to save all humans, or he could have chosen to save none of them, but God did not do either of these things. Instead, God chose to save some, and not save others. God’s choice to save these sinners was not a result of anything he knew they would do in the future, but it was a result of His own pleasure and His sovereign authority. Men have no authority to call this election unfair. As David Steele and Curtis Thomas explain, “It is not within the creature’s jurisdiction to question the justice of the Creator for not choosing everyone to salvation. It is enough to know that the judge of the earth has done right. It should, however, be kept in mind that if God had not graciously chosen a people for himself and sovereignly determined to provide salvation for them and apply it to them, none would be saved. The fact that he did this for some, of the exclusion of others, is in no way unfair to the latter group, unless of course one maintains that God was under obligation to provide salvation for sinners-a position which the Bible utterly rejects.”²

Next, I will discuss Limited Atonement, also known as Particular Redemption. I told you in the last point that God called his elect. But, we as Christians are chosen by the Father to be redeemed by the Son in order to be saved. God sent Jesus in the world to secure our redemption, and to be a substitute for our sins. This worked out perfect righteousness that is given to those when they are saved. Through what Christ did, we are made right with God. Christ received the guilt and condemnation that should have been ours, and now we are God’s children. Therefore, we are not saved by our works, but the works of God through Christ. Redemption was created to accomplish God’s election. As Steele and Thomas write, “It would have required no more obedience, nor any greater suffering from Christ to have secured salvation for every man, woman, and child who ever lived than it did for him to secure salvation for the elect only. But he came into the world to represent and save only those given to him by the father. Thus Christ’s saving work was limited in that it was designed to save some and not others, but it was not limited in value for it was of infinite worth and would have secured salvation for everyone if this had been God’s intention.”³

I will now cover the fourth point of Calvinism, which is Irresistible Grace or The Efficacious Call of the Spirit. First of all, it is not just the Father and the Son who work out salvation for the elect, it is also the Spirit. The doctrine of Irresistible Grace is that the Holy Spirit applies the grace of God to the hearts of all those who are chosen by God. The Spirit comes to God’s elect and fills them with an inward calling to salvation. The Spirit is the one that creates the “new heart” in the sinner; a heart for God and salvation. This working of the Spirit is what brings the sinner to have a spontaneous confession of faith of their own free decision. In God’s sovereign plan, this special call is given only to the elect. After all, how many times have you witnessed to someone, and they haven’t come to faith in Christ? This is because they have not received the inward call of God to His elect. To quote th Westminster Confession of Faith again, “All those whom God hath predestined unto life, and those only, He is pleased, in His appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by His Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God; taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them a heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by his almighty power determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ; yet so as they come most freely, being made willing by His grace.⁴

Finally, the fifth point of Calvinism is The Perseverance of the Saints or The Security of Believers. This doctrine means that the elect are not only redeemed by Christ and made new by the Spirit, but God keeps them this way for eternity. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate believers from the love of God. Those who profess to believe but fall away never truly believed in the first place, and were not of God’s elect. We are secure and save in our Savior.

Possibly the biggest misunderstanding about Calvinism is that it leads to the view that missions and evangelism aren’t necessary. Those who go to this unbiblical extreme are called hyper-Calvinists. Calvinism views this as a heresy. The Bible clearly commands us to share the Gospel with everyone (The Great Commission, Matt. 28:19-20). Moreover, Calvinists believe that while God indeed will save all his elect, his elect will be saved only through hearing the Gospel. And since only God knows who his elect are, we should take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world. We can say to every person in the world what the Bible says in Rom. 10:13, “Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” And since we know that God does have his elect people and that he will save them through the Gospel, we can have confidence that if we will keep sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we will see people truly saved. It was this confidence that caused Calvinists like William Carey to go to the mission field and begin what became known as the Modern Missionary Movement.

In conclusion, let me reiterate that Calvinists believe these things only because they are convinced the Bible teaches them. Calvinists should be careful never to believe something just because John Calvin believed it, or John Piper believes it, but only because it is found in Scripture. So in the end, Calvinists really want to be just biblicists, and to humbly honor and glorify God in everything they believe and do.

Too often are we wrapped up in ourselves. We’re into what we’re into, and, if we let it go, no one else really matters. It’s especially bad when we get so wrapped up in our lives that we fail to acknowledge the awesomeness of the God we serve.

One way we fail to do this is we often do not see the glory of God in what is natural. Every time we look at the beautiful green grass, the lovely spring buds on the trees, or a body of water, we should praise him! Also, the fact that two people can fall in love in another wonder of God. Who can explain love? Another thing is in the way that a man and a woman can create a child. Have you ever thought about how amazing that is? All these things should make us praise God anytime we think about or see them.

Well, I was having issues posting the video directly on here, so here’s a link, but you really need to see it. This is a truly amazing new song by the awesome Jon Foreman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E53qJxltyfI&feature=related

I’ve recently been writing a research paper on the history of Broadway, and found out some very disturbing things about homosexuals and the Broadway scene.

There was a musical entitled La Cage Aux Folles that opened in 1978 centered around a gay marriage. This was the first Broadway musical in which a love song was sung to another man. The musical finished with two men embracing each other, dancing into the sunset. It contained a song entitled, “I Am What I Am.” The lyrics were:

I am what I am
I am my own special creation
So come take a look
Give me the hook or the ovation
It’s my world that I want to have a little pride in
My world, and it’s not a place I have to hide in
Life’s not worth a d**n ’til you can say
“Hey world, I am what I am!”
I am what I am
I don’t want praise
I don’t want pity
I bang my own drum Some think it’s noise I think it’s pretty
And so what if I love each sparkle and each bangle?
Why not try to see things from a different angle?
Your life is a sham ’til you can shout out loud: “I am what I am!”
I am what I am
And what I am needs no excuses
I deal my own deck
sometimes the ace, sometimes the deuces
There’s one life and it’s no return and no deposit
One life, so it’s time to open up your closet!
Life’s not worth a d**n ’til you shout hey world “I am what I am!”

It’s truly painful how wrong these lyrics, that were sung by not only a gay character, but a gay man, are.

These were not the only gay men in the musical theatre scene. Lorenz Hart, of Rogers and Hart, the writers of Oklahoma!, was a homosexual. Noel Coward and Cole Porter were also homosexual, and many, many more followed.

This is yet another example of the acceptance of homosexuality in our culture. La Cage Aux Folles was accepted in society because it brought about AIDS awareness. What they don’t realize is that there is no sin awareness. Many people do not realize that homosexuality is sin. It hurts to see how homosexuals yearn to be accepted, when they need to understand that they need to repent of their sin. This should encourage us even more to witness to and pray for homosexuals living in their sin, trying to ignore the fact that it is sin.