YAHOO report – Severe storms are causing chaos in the US, with a passenger capturing the moment a lightning bolt hit a plane on the runway.
Source : YAHOO
Survey: Only 1 in 7 Americans Think Divorce Is a Sin
Christian Post report – New surveys conducted by LifeWay Research have found that the majority of Americans do not believe that divorce is a sin, while the majority of Protestant pastors also believe that divorce is morally acceptable, under certain circumstances, except in scenarios when the couple has fallen out of love.
LifeWay recently conducted two surveys where they asked 1,000 lay Americans and 1,000 Protestant pastors whether they think divorce is a sin under certain circumstances.
Respondents were asked to clarify if they thought divorce was a sin in cases where the couple has fallen out of love, a spouse cheated on the other, physical abuse was apparent in the relationship, one spouse was addicted to pornography and when one spouse has abandoned the other.
When asked about the morality of getting a divorce when the couple “no longer loves on another,” only 38 percent of lay Americans consider divorce to be sin, while 61 percent of pastors also consider such a divorce a sin.
In the case of a spouse being addicted to pornagraphy, 35 percent of lay Americans label such a divorce a sin, compared to the 39 percent of pastors that also consider divorce in that case to be a sin.
In other scenarios, however, average Americans are more likely than Protestant pastors to consider divorce a sin.
When adultery is the cause for separation, 39 percent of lay Americans consider divorce a sin, while 32 percent of pastors feel divorce is sinful in that case.
Twenty-eight percent of pastors consider divorce when spousal abuse is apparent to be a sin, compared to the 37 percent of average Americans who also think divorce is a sin.
But when one spouse abandons the other, 27 percent of pastors think it is a sin to get a divorce, while 38 percent of average Americans consider divorce in that scenario a sin.
But when none of the aforementioned scenarios are the cause for divorce, 19 percent of pastors think divorce is sinful, while 37 percent of average Americans also think divorce is sinful.
“About one in seven Americans are saying divorce is a sin in all of these cases, more than a third don’t think any of these would be a sin, and almost half believe some circumstances would be sinful, but not others,” LifeWay Research Vice President Scott McConnell said in a statement. “Pastors make a distinction about the rightness of a divorce based on the reasons behind it. … They want to account for the parts of Scripture that speak of possible rationales.”
Although the majority of Protestant pastors think divorce is sinful when the couple no longer loves each other, the research found that 66 percent of Evangelical pastors consider divorce sinful in that scenario, compared to the 52 percent of Mainline pastors who consider divorce sinful when the couple falls out of love.
Although most pastors consider divorce sinful when the couple falls out of love, only 46 percent of Protestant church members feel divorce is sinful in that scenario.
Although church members are less likely to think divorce is sinful when the couple falls out of love, they are more likely to think divorce is sinful in the case of porn addiction. Forty-four percent of Protestant church members believe divorce is sinful in the case of pornagraphy addiciton, while 39 percent of pastors feel such a divorce is sinful.
“While most Protestant pastors view the sinfulness of divorce differently based on the reason for the divorce, this sensitivity is lost on their members,” McConnell said.
As no-fault divorce has made it possible for couples to get a divorce without a substantial reason behind the separation, McConnell argues that Americans have become accustomed to believe that divorce is free from sin because of the normality of it in today’s culture.
“[Since] our laws went to no-fault divorce across the country, that’s really the mindset of Americans: that there’s no fault, there’s no sin involved in a divorce in most situations,” OneNewsNow quoted McConnell as summarizing. “And so, something that we see as really a biblical value — whether something’s a sin or not — is something that the average American is not in tune with.”
Rev. David Gushee, professor of Christian ethics and director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University, wrote in an op-ed that Western society and the no-fault divorce culture has turned spouses into “consumer products.”
“In western culture today, individuals almost always are free to marry, or not marry, if and when they wish. They are free to choose their partner on the basis of their own entirely self-selected reasons. They are free to conduct themselves in marriage precisely as they choose to do. They are free to initiate divorce if and when they choose and for whatever reason might seem compelling to them,” Gushee wrote.
“In other words, a spouse has become a consumer product, to be bought, abandoned, or traded in for a new model at the will of the customer.”
Gushee contends that clergy need to instruct newlyweds that marriage is more than just a temporary pact to be thrown away on a whim.
“But such efforts swim against the tide of a culture in which such norms are increasingly incomprehensible. And we know that many of those who come to us for our wedding services are not all that serious about faith,” Gushee continued. “So the request for wedding services becomes an opportunity for clergy to make a serious pitch not just for a religious wedding but a serious life of faith within which vibrant lifetime marriage can be sustained.”
Source : Christian Post
Hilton Removes Porn From Hotel Rooms After Hearing Sexual Exploitation Concerns
Christian Post report – After meeting with anti-pornography advocates, major global hotel chain Hilton Worldwide announced that it will no longer include video-on-demand adult entertainment at their facilities.
Hilton, a hospitality company that boasts over 4,300 properties, recently made the announcement that there will be a gradual phasing out of pornographic entertainment at the hotels they own which offer it.
A spokesperson for Hilton provided The Christian Post with the official statement released by the company, which noted that they were “making immediate changes to our global brand standards to eliminate adult video-on-demand entertainment in all our hotels worldwide.”
“While the vast majority of our properties already do not offer this content today, this content will be phased out of all other hotels subject to the terms of their contracts,” continued the statement.
“We believe in offering our guests a high degree of choice and control during their stays with us, including Wi-Fi on personal devices. However, we have listened carefully to our customers and have determined that adult video-on-demand entertainment is not in keeping with our company’s vision and goals moving forward.”
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, an anti-pornography organization, celebrated the decision by Hilton to remove the on-demand access to adult entertainment.
Haley Halverson, spokesperson for NCOSE, explained to CP that thousands of NCOSE members and their allies have been lobbying Hilton to remove the adult entertainment since 2013, when NCOSE put the company on their “Dirty Dozen” list.
“Earlier this year, Hilton Worldwide reached out to us explaining that they were looking at making these changes and to set up a meeting to talk about these issues in person,” said Halverson.
“At the meeting, we learned that Hilton Worldwide is committed to helping curb sexual exploitation and certainly open to changing policies they have that contribute to exploitation.”
Halverson also told CP that NCOSE “expected this to take longer, even though they seemed favorable.”
“We are grateful that they moved this policy through rather quickly as they announced to us today that all Hilton Worldwide locations were notified today of this policy change,” continued Halverson … Read more
Source : Christian Post
Saved from Islam on September 11
Christianity Today reports – I ’ve heard that Christians are made, not born. How true that is, I don’t know. My wife, Jennifer, was born on a Thursday and baptized by her father, a Lutheran pastor, the following Sunday. She may not have been born a Christian, but she is about as close as one can get. For me, the path to Christian faith has been far rockier.
Both my parents were raised as Lutherans. But my mother never had much use for religion. And my father, who had taken religion seriously, lost his faith in God’s goodness in the jungles of South Vietnam.
My father hoped to make a career in the Army. So we moved a lot, five times during my first ten years. When he finally resigned his commission in 1977, we settled in a Southern California suburb.
It wasn’t home. It couldn’t be. And by that time, I had been on the receiving end of my father’s intense but sporadic violence for some years. I learned to both fear and hate him, and almost all authority. School quickly became unsafe as well: I was bullied, terrorized, and abused regularly, not just by classmates, but also by my fifth-grade teacher. There was no one to trust. I was frightened, incredibly alone, and increasingly angry.
But whatever I lacked in religious guidance, I never blamed God. I didn’t know how. Indeed, there was an intense God-hunger in my soul. I may not have known where I was going or even how to start, but I knew there was something out there worth finding.
Meeting God as a Muslim
At age 14, I launched my quest for God, attending a fairly generic dispensationalist church. It proved incapable of asking difficult questions about life’s meaning in the face of suffering, much less answering them. The people were kind, but I needed to know more than they could tell me. By the time I graduated from high school, I found myself wondering: Would anyone ever love and value me? Would I ever belong anywhere?
There was a miserable stint in the Army, mercifully shortened by a psychiatrist who thought I had no business being a soldier. There were a couple of romantic relationships with married women. Casting about for something to do, I eventually settled on studying journalism at San Francisco State University.
That’s where I found Islam. A friend introduced me to the Qur’an, and I was entranced by its words, which speak of a God who cares a great deal about the men and women he created. But it was also the people: the Palestinian and African American Muslims who first taught me what it meant to surrender. They welcomed me as no one else had before.
Some people look to faith for ideas of right and wrong, or some understanding of good and evil, or a set of principles with which to order the world. Not me. What I sought, what I ached for, was meaning and belonging. And Islam gave me both.
There is much I keep from that time as a Muslim. The Qur’an teaches that God gives freely to all creation, believers and unbelievers alike, and it is best to respond with thankfulness and wonder. And Muslims in America live their faith with tremendous courage in the face of a frequently hostile culture.
But Islam also provided religious and political fuel for my anger. At one mosque where I worshiped during the early 1990s, I fell in with a group of jihadis. We studied and discussed the texts of revolutionary Islam, mostly the writings of Egyptian intellectual Sayyid Qutb and Pakistani journalist Abul A’la Maududi. One brother went to fight in Bosnia, and I wanted to join him … read more
Source : Christianity Today
Slovakia agrees to accept 200 Syrian migrants – as long as they’re Christian. Reject Muslims
Daily Mail report – Slovakia has agreed to take in 200 Syrian migrants to help with the growing crisis – but only if they are Christian.
Bratislava officials claim Muslim refugees wouldn’t feel at home because the country has such a tiny Islamic population.
An Interior Ministry spokesman said: ‘In Slovakia, we don’t have mosques… we only want to choose the Christians.’
His comments, reported by the Wall Street Journal, highlight how the European Union’s ideals of multiculturalism are being challenged by the escalating migrant crisis which has seen more than 100,000 refugees make their way to Europe in just a month.
Eastern European countries, in particular, are showing growing resistance to helping out after facing a backlash from voters. New data has revealed 21,000 refugees and migrants arrived in Greece last week alone, leaving the country’s unprepared registration system struggling to deal with the growing crisis.
Almost 110,000 people crossed into Europe through unofficial channels in July, compared to just 70,000 people in June.
Germany has revealed it expects to register 750,000 refugees this year, compared to just 203,000 claims last year.
Hungary, which has seen an influx of about 130,000 migrants this year, is to send several thousand police officers to the southern border with Serbia in a new effort to stem the rising flow of migrants.
Source : Daily Mail, UK
Spouse cheating website, Ashley Madison hacked: A Group who stole information from website for cheating spouses make good on promise to post data online
Could this be judgement ? God at work
MSN report – Hackers who stole and leaked customer information from the Ashley Madison website for cheating spouses have apparently made good on their threat to post all of the data they took online.
A group calling itself the Impact Team compromised the site which encourages married users to cheat on their spouses and advertises 37 million members last month.
At least two other dating sites, Cougar Life and Established Men, also owned by the same parent group, Avid Life Media (ALM), also had their data compromised.
After the intrusion the hacked demanded that Ashley Madison and Established Men, which promises to connect beautiful young women with rich sugar daddies “to fulfill their lifestyle needs”, take down the two sites.
CougarLife, a sister site run by ALM that promises to connect older women with younger men was not targeted by the group which claimed to have complete access to the company’s database, including every single members user records.
Message from Christian Mail (CM) : Our advice – Be faithful to your spouse, stop cheating. Judgement day will always come
While the hackers took issue with the questionable morals of the sites, their main point of contention was the fact that Ashley Madison charges users a £15 fee to carry out a full delete of their information should they decide to leave it.
They claimed that ALM actually retained that date on their company servers.
“Avid Life Media has been instructed to take Ashley Madison and Established Men offline permanently in all forms, or we will release all customer records, including profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails,” the hackers wrote in a statement following the breach.
Their warnings were ignored by ALM who said they had beefed up security following the attack.
However, a data dump of 9.7 gigabytes was posted on Tuesday to the dark web using an Onion address accessible only through the Tor browser, according to Wired.com.
It appears to include all of the information they had threatened to release including member account details and log-ins for the social networking site.
“Avid Life Media has failed to take down Ashley Madison and Established Men,” Impact Team wrote in a statement accompanying the online dump Tuesday, Wired.com reported.
“We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of ALM and their members…. Chances are your man signed up on the world’s biggest affair site, but never had one. He just tried to. If that distinction matters.” … read more
More detailed information …. read here
Source : MSN UK
19-Year-Old Christian Girl Sentenced to 20 Lashes for Wearing Trousers
Christian Post report – A 19-year-old Sudanese Christian woman has been sentenced to endure 20 painful lashes for the crime of “indecent dress” for wearing trousers on the way home from a church service.
Fardos al-Toum, who is one of 12 Christian women who were arrested on June 25 for wearing trousers and skirts while on their way home from a Baptist church function in Khartoum, was the first of the young women to be tried on July 6 on charges of indecent dress. Along with a 500-pound fine, which was paid for by rights activists, CNN reports that her lawyer says she has also been ordered to receive a torturous punishment of 20 lashes.
After they were arrested, the young women, who are thought to range in age from 17 to 23, were brought to the police station where two of them were freed — the other 10 were forced to strip out of their clothes. They remained detained for over 24 hours and were charged with indecent dress.
Muhamad Mustafa, the lawyer representing the accused women, filed an appeal of al-Toum’s sentencing. Although the other young women were similarly dressed, they were spared from such a brutal sentencing. Four other women were fined, while four were cleared of charges. One is still awaiting a trial.
Although the young women were found guilty of violating Article 152 of Sudan’s 1991 Criminal Code, which can carry a punishment of up to 40 lashes, many human rights activists have asserted that Sudan’s constitution exempts Christians and other religious minorities from being held accountable to the indecent dress law because it is an aspect of Shariah law.
According to the human rights group Amnesty International, al-Toum was almost given a second indecent dress charge because she showed up to her court hearing wearing a dress, which could’ve been the reason why lashes were levied on her and not the others.
While al-Toum and Mustafa await word on her appeal, no date has been set for al-Toum to receive the lashes. Additionally, Mustafa filed a complaint about the judge’s behavior during the hearing.
Amnesty International has started an online campaign allowing concerned individuals to send pre-written letters to the Sudanese authorities urging them to drop the charges against al-Toum and the other nine young women. Additionally, the campaign calls for the Sudanese government to abolish flogging as a court-ordered punishment, and to repeal the country’s indecent dress law.
“Flogging and other forms of corporal punishment should never be used as punishment — they constitute torture, and should not be inflicted as part of a justice system,” the Amnesty International campaign states. “Moreover, these women have committed no crime – they have instead been subjected to random, vaguely worded, discriminatory laws.”
Although Sudan’s indecent dress law is broadly written and not supposed to apply to religious minorities, the enforcement of the law in the womens’ case is just another instance of the Sudanese government targeting Christians, Faith McDonnell of the Institute of Religion and Democracy previously told The Christian Post. …. Read more
Source : Christian Post
Superb Baby Wraps – exciting products. Meet the founders
In the midst of an exciting era where babywearing is getting very popular, a couple Bisi and Mayor, created Joy and Joe baby to radically rethink the way wraps carriers are designed and presented to customers.
Read their story
Joy and Joe baby wrap carrier was founded by husband and wife team. Mayor and Bisi, are dedicated parents to two special children, Joy and Joseph. In 2007, when Joy was born with Downs syndrome and some medical complications, she spent some time in the neonatal intensive care (NICU) receiving treatment. During this period, Bisi observed how much motherly touch and cuddles go a long way to help children recuperate and that was where the first inspiration for Joy and Joe baby carriers came from. At the time, the 24/7 medical care Joy needed didn’t allow Bisi the chance to develop on the inspiration immediately. 
Joy and Joe baby wrap carrier was founded by husband and wife team, Mayor and Bisi, dedicated parents to two special children, Joy and Joseph. In 2007, when Joy was born with Downs syndrome and some medical complications, she spent some time in the neonatal intensive care (NICU) receiving treatment. During this period, Bisi observed how much motherly touch and cuddles go a long way to help children recuperate and that was where the first inspiration for Joy and Joe baby carriers came from. At the time, the 24/7 medical care Joy needed didn’t allow Bisi the chance to develop on the inspiration immediately.However, she discovered that whenever she thought about the ideal work for her that would be flexible enough for her to be there for Joy, the more the idea of baby-wearing kept coming to her. A close family friend who is very enthusiastic about natural parenting gave Joy a pouch sling and a natural parenting book as a gift, and she later bought a baby carrier from the high street. That was such a succor as carrying Joy close to her constantly provided the much needed comfort both mother and child. Having personally experimented with two baby carriers, she found a soft baby carrier worked best.
So she went on to research the soft baby carriers on the market and baby wraps came out as the best for her due to their versatility, which also meant that both herself and Mayor could share the same baby carrier. Yet at this stage, she didn’t have the full confidence to start the business. It wasn’t until the year 2009, when her second child, Joseph, was born prematurely that she was fully convinced that she had to do something about her inspiration as life kept leading her back to the neonatal units and kangaroo care!
After six months in the neonatal intensive care unit, Joseph was now physically ready for the cuddles. The nurses then enlightened Bisi on kangaroo care and how it could help Joseph’s colic and temperature regulation, amidst other advantages. This fascinated her so much so that when not breastfeeding Joseph, she was in the hospital library reading literature on kangaroo care and baby wearing. Moreso, Joseph’s birth took Bisi back to her roots mentally because in Africa, baby wearing is more predominant and all the women in Bisi’s family are experienced in baby wearing, especially with the back torso carries.
After Joseph was discharged, it took a few years of further researching and allowing the kids grow up a bit more. Bisi was now ready to introduce her inspiration to the world. She took a series of business courses with business enterprise and a refresher course in fashion designing. She had previously done training 6 years ago in textile design and sewing, though she thought she was just developing a creative hobby. Little did she know that all these knowledge and experiences from different facets of life were preparing her to positively impact families. Around August, 2011, another baby was born into the family and it was named Joy and Joe baby wrap carrier!
This business was funded by Bisi and her very supportive husband, Mayor, and although it wasn’t easy funding the laboratory testing, insurance and other start up expenditures, Bisi is inspired her 5 and 3 year old children who constantly remind her that anything positive you do to better the lives of children is definitely worth it 100%.
Babywearing has lots of benefits and some of these were noted by the renowned American pediatrician Dr. Sears, and it’s been widely circulated on the internet. However, due to Bisi’s personal experience, she feels strongly that there are many more benefits that baby wearing has that are still yet to be unlocked. Hopefully with babywearing becoming more mainstream by the day, more research will be done. Bisi, with the her past scientific research experience, is currently working on her first book which will comprise of a well documented literature review of notable scientific journals backing the medical importance of babywearing and kangaroo care.
However, she discovered that whenever she thought about the ideal work for her that would be flexible enough for her to be there for Joy, the more the idea of baby-wearing kept coming to her. A close family friend who is very enthusiastic about natural parenting gave Joy a pouch sling and a natural parenting book as a gift, and she later bought a baby carrier from the high street. That was such a succor as carrying Joy close to her constantly provided the much needed comfort both mother and child. Having personally experimented with two baby carriers, she found a soft baby carrier worked best.
So she went on to research the soft baby carriers on the market and baby wraps came out as the best for her due to their versatility, which also meant that both herself and Mayor could share the same baby carrier. Yet at this stage, she didn’t have the full confidence to start the business. It wasn’t until the year 2009, when her second child, Joseph, was born prematurely that she was fully convinced that she had to do something about her inspiration as life kept leading her back to the neonatal units and kangaroo care!
After six months in the neonatal intensive care unit, Joseph was now physically ready for the cuddles. The nurses then enlightened Bisi on kangaroo care and how it could help Joseph’s colic and temperature regulation, amidst other advantages. This fascinated her so much so that when not breastfeeding Joseph, she was in the hospital library reading literature on kangaroo care and baby wearing. Moreso, Joseph’s birth took Bisi back to her roots mentally because in Africa, baby wearing is more predominant and all the women in Bisi’s family are experienced in baby wearing, especially with the back torso carries.
After Joseph was discharged, it took a few years of further researching and allowing the kids grow up a bit more. Bisi was now ready to introduce her inspiration to the world. She took a series of business courses with business enterprise and a refresher course in fashion designing. She had previously done training 6 years ago in textile design and sewing, though she thought she was just developing a creative hobby. Little did she know that all these knowledge and experiences from different facets of life were preparing her to positively impact families. Around August, 2011, another baby was born into the family and it was named Joy and Joe baby wrap carrier!
This business was funded by Bisi and her very supportive husband, Mayor, and although it wasn’t easy funding the laboratory testing, insurance and other start up expenditures, Bisi is inspired her 5 and 3 year old children who constantly remind her that anything positive you do to better the lives of children is definitely worth it 100%.
Babywearing has lots of benefits and some of these were noted by the renowned American pediatrician Dr. Sears, and it’s been widely circulated on the internet. However, due to Bisi’s personal experience, she feels strongly that there are many more benefits that baby wearing has that are still yet to be unlocked. Hopefully with babywearing becoming more mainstream by the day, more research will be done. Bisi, with the her past scientific research experience, is currently working on her first book which will comprise of a well documented literature review of notable scientific journals backing the medical importance of babywearing and kangaroo care.
Source : Joy and Joe website
When God hides His Face
God has His own peculiar way of apparently disappearing at the times when we seem to need Him the most–times when He seems to hide His face. I have experienced the Lord hiding His face from me.
Years ago when I first began a public ministry, it wasn’t long before thousands of people were coming to hear me speak. Within one year, we had 26 healing and revival services in Los Angeles, and wonderful things were being said about me. It didn’t bother me, though, because my humility was intact. I was very proud of my humility.
Believing I was immortal, I would pray for hundreds of people in a single service, having had little or no sleep. I would fast from food or water for long periods of time. Proudly boasting one night about the accuracy of my discernment, I said, “I can tell every one of you what’s wrong with you. I know your names; I can tell you who your children are and where you are with God; whether you have been converted or not, and whether you are a spiritualist or a New Ager.” I was so proud.
When I began the prayer line, I said to the first lady, “I know who you are.” But I did not! The anointing was gone. God had hidden His face from me, and it was terrible. I looked at all of those hungry people lined up for prayer and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I have made a terrible mistake. His anointing is gone, so I’m leaving. If He comes back, I’ll be back tomorrow night, but if He doesn’t, you won’t see me again.”
I stayed on my face before the Lord all night. He had withdrawn from me the intimacy of His conscious presence that I loved and along with it, the wonderful confidence and ability He had given me. He was there, but I didn’t have the benefit of knowing His presence or feeling Him. I think that John Newton understood this when he wrote these words in a hymn: “How tedious and tasteless the hours when Jesus no longer I see. Sweet prospects, sweet birds, and sweet flowers have all lost their sweetness to me.”
“Surely I Am with You”
In biblical terminology, the hiding of God’s face refers to this withdrawal of His conscious presence. Isaiah 45:15 says, “Truly you are a God who hides himself, O God and Savior of Israel.” David said in Psalm 13:1, “How long, O LORD, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” In Psalm 10:1, he said, “Why, LORD, do you stand afar off? Why do you hide yourself in time of trouble?” Psalm 44:24 says, “Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and our oppression?”
When there is no conscious presence of God, no visible means of support, no tangible way to see the Lord meeting our needs, then it is time for us to rejoice and acknowledge that this is an opportunity to trust the Lord to reveal Himself in an even a greater way when He shows Himself again. On such occasions, God is really there. Just because we cannot see Him does not mean that He is not present. He is with us all the time!
In order to survive the times when God hides His face, we need to know Scripture. The New Testament speaks of reaching out for God and feeling for Him so that we might find Him “not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27). Perhaps we may not feel Him at first, but when we persist in reaching out and seeking Him, we will find Him.
The accuser of the brethren will always try to separate us from the Lord by telling us that God is not with us: this is not the truth. The fact is that God is present with us all the time. He is testing us to see how we will react and what we will do under the set of circumstances in which He has hidden His face from us. The Lord has said in His Word to us, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). Even when we cannot feel and see and taste and handle the sweetness of God, He is still there.
In Joshua 1:5-6, the Lord told Joshua, “No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous.” He says in Matthew 28:20, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” God never withdraws His promises, His power or Himself from us; He may allow us to feel that He has withdrawn for a specific purpose. However, He is always with us even when we do not believe that He is there.
When I was a little boy, I would listen to “The Midnight Hour–Songs in the Night,” and God’s presence would fill the room. It was a wonderful feeling that reminded me of Psalm 77:7-9, when David said, “Will the LORD reject forever? Will he never show his favor again? Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion?” The answer is, “No!” Regardless of how bad we may feel, the Lord is still there. He is omnipresent: He is here, there, and everywhere, all at the same time.
When Moses told Aaron and his sons how they should bless the Israelites, he instructed them to say, “The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace” (Numbers 6:24-26). The “face of the Lord” became the symbol of a smile, approval, or a sense of His presence. When it does not seem that the Lord’s face is turned toward us, the best thing for us to do is acknowledge that He is there, even though we may not feel Him. When the sense of His presence is withdrawn, we may not know the reason why, but God does not have to reveal His reasons. He is omniscient; He knows why He is allowing us to have this experience.
When God Shows His Face
Our desire must be to have His presence remain and abide. When His presence and His power come, they are worth everything. His presence is like having Jesus right there with us, just like a husband or a wife. When the Lord reveals His face and shows Himself, it is like when the Holy Spirit decided to reveal Himself and came on the day of Pentecost: the disciples were there together, and suddenly the sound of a mighty rushing wind came from heaven (see Acts 2:1-2).
In Acts 3, there is a man, lame from his mother’s womb, whom they carried and placed at the Gate Beautiful every day. When God decided to show His face, He healed him. Rejoicing, the man leapt up and went into the temple, shouting and praising and magnifying God. A crippled, mangled body was straightened out immediately. This is what it is like when God decides to show His face.
However, there is a warning in II Chronicles 7:19 that we must remember:
But if you turn away and forsake the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, then I will uproot Israel from my land, which I have given them, and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name. I will make it a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples.
It should not surprise us when we commit blatant sins and lose the sense of God’s presence. When we sin, we must repent and turn our backs on evil if we hope to experience His presence with us again.
Trials and Disappointments Will Come
Each of us will go through trials. Paul said in I Thessalonians 3:3, “So that no one would be unsettled by these trials, you know quite well that we were destined for them.” In his letter to the Philippians, he writes, “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him” (1:29). The end of every trial is at hand, though, because every trial has a built-in time limit. “And no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11). God knows just how much we can bear. In I Corinthians 10:13 we read,
No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
The Lord is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love. He will not always withdraw Himself, nor will He harbor His anger forever (Psalm 103:8-9). We may think that God is never going to show up again or that He is never going to come through for us anymore. Trials or difficulties may seem like they will last forever, but they will not. We must understand that God our Father has compassion on us, His children. “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust”(Psalm 103:13-14).
Many people only want the brilliance of God’s presence–the fun, the spiritual food and the fellowship. Christians tend to want to be happy and jovial all the time. When we are not, we sometimes lie about it and don’t want others to know that we going through difficult times.
Let us be honest with each other. Trials and disappointments will come, but Jesus is always standing nearby, ready to step in. Just when it seems we cannot bear anymore, He will say, Your shoulders weren’t built for more than you could bear, and I am going to shoulder this for you. I am going to take your problems; I am going to take your burdens, and I will carry them for you.
This is what happens when He reveals Himself. In a moment, everything changes. Our Father is merciful and loving. “For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him” (Psalm 126:6). Seeing Christ will make everything we have suffered worthwhile–all the midnight of the soul, all the pain, all the trials. We will realize that all the suffering and adversity we experienced were for a purpose; they will pay innumerable dividends in these last days as we meet our Lord and our Savior.
With joy, we can thank the Father for times of pain, the times of not enjoying His conscious presence, nor seeing His face. In all things, we must seek His face and not His hand. When we take Him for granted and believe that we should never feel bad or have a dull moment, we are acting like spoiled children. We can thank Him even for painful times or dull times, for the times when we aren’t gushing with joy or filled with happiness. At the end of our journey, we will look back and be able to say, “It was all for a reason. It was all for a purpose. It was all for my benefit, all to the glory of God.”
– By Paul Cain
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Source : Paul Cain Ministries
The Power and Authority of the Tongue – Kenneth Copeland
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CX8zogmeHw[/youtube]
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Kenneth Copeland Ministries preaches on “The Power and Authority of the Tongue“
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