Be sober-minded

This week I’ve been mulling over the admonition in 1 Peter 1:13. It says this, “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

This verse was the topic of discussion last Sunday, then on Tuesday night I watched a great debate between an atheist and a Christian, and on Wednesday we discussed Sunday’s sermon in a group of 16 people….I might add one of my very favorite things to do.

For the most part I have been thinking about the admonition to be “sober-minded.” What does that mean? The opposite of sober is intoxicated, but the context of the verse is not dealing with alcohol intoxication. The context is concerning your thinking. What could I be intoxicated with that would prevent me from using my mind well? In a nutshell, me and my passions.

The gift I have been given in being able to believe God’s word is not for me and my comfort and my selfish ambitions. It’s for God’s glory and His service and that plays out in living for Him in an otherness ethic.

So to be sober-minded I should fill my mind with understanding of His ways. Some of the ways I do this is by reading…..reading some difficult and sound doctrine and really dealing with the meat of the word. I am ashamed to say that I have not read Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis. I have not read The Reason for God nor the book that it was written in a response to. There are times that I am not prepared to give a sound reason for why I think a particular way because I have not done my homework.

And the reason for a sound mind, one that is prepared to discuss the meat of the word, is not so I am be “intelligent” or even respected but so that I can serve. I can serve God by serving my brothers and sisters in Christ with love and compassion (as opposed to selfish motivation….you know a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” mentality) and I can serve those who don’t believe by lovingly and gently pointing to the cross as the way of peace of with God (as opposed to being haughty, embarrassed, or simply unconcerned). Though I might add, even when the convictions that come from God’s Word are said with love and with concern for the individual, they are not always welcomed by the listener.

Why does a sober mind promote this type of living? Because a sober mind works as a result of the principles of God’s word. I loved watching the demeanor of Douglas Wilson when Christopher Hitchens ridiculed his belief in an ancient text. He was not rattled at all. He answered with the quiet assurance of a man whose mind is sober.

I do not think that I live up to Scripture’s admonition because I am not exercising my mind enough and I want to improve. So……anyone want to start a “book club” with me? I am thinking..meet once a month to discuss a “book of the month.” I know everyone is busy….me too….but I think it will help me to actually read if I know I get to talk to someone about it!!!

Collision

Last night I was watched the documentary Collision with my husband and a whole host of college students. (Lots of fun!)

The movie is a documentary of a discussion concerning whether Christianity is good for the world. The debate is between anti-theist Christopher Hitchens and well-respected Christian Douglas Wilson. It was well-done for the most part. (My main criticism is in the actual filming….sound quality is poor in some scenes and camera movement is too busy at times.) Both men are well-educated and able to speak at a philosophical level that was intellectually invigorating. Neither was afraid to poke a little fun at the other’s beliefs which added some great comic relief. They spoke in different venues which provided an opportunity to see more of their personalities.

Things I liked about the debate:
1. I enjoyed the hard questions that were put to Douglas Wilson. I loved to hear him answer, not with an “all the answers” attitude but with factual discrepancies in the presupposition of the actual question and in the axioms from which the question was asked. In other words, the anti-theist has some holes in his logic!
2. I really like the demeanor of both men….very professional, very knowledgeable, very kind even when difficult things were said.
3. I loved that the Bible can stand the “heat” of criticism. The Bible is a complex set of literature. It cannot be easily tossed aside as an ancient “fairy tale” book. It can stand up under literary criticism. Douglas Wilson on more than one account was able to point out how quickly Hitchens dismissed a particular passage but in so doing missed the point altogether.
4. I loved that I was challenged to think better, to read more, to study harder, and to engage more. I really do enjoy learning and I love it when I am highly motivated to learn. I totally plan to read Hitchens’ books, some more C.S. Lewis, and some more of Wilson but most of all, I plan to study my Bible more!
5. I liked the last remarks!

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Who do you think?

I have not read the treaty, but this man. Lord Monckton, is convinced it is a huge deal. It is certainly worth checking into and I welcome informed comments. Oh and who is the man you might ask……read the quote below

“Lord Monckton served as a policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher. He has repeatedly challenged Al Gore to a debate to which Gore has refused. Monckton sued to stop Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” from being shown in British schools due to its inaccuracies. The judge found in-favor of Monckton, ordering 9 serious errors in the film to be corrected. Lord Monckton travels internationally in an attempt to educating the public about the myth of global warming.”

The following information is why Monckton thinks the treaty is dangerous to U.S. Sovereignty

“There has been considerable debate raised about Monckton’s conclusion that the Copenhagen Treaty would cede US sovereignty. His comments appear to be based upon his interpretation of the The Supremacy Clause in the US Constitution (Article VI, paragraph 2). This clause establishes the Constitution, Federal Statutes, and U.S. TREATIES as the supreme law of the land. Concerns have been raised in the past that a particularly ambitious treaty may supersede the US Constitution. In the 1950s, a constitutional amendment, known as the Bricker Amendment, was proposed in response to such fears, but it failed to pass. You can read more about the Bricker Amendment in a 1953 Time Magazine article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/art…,9171,806676-1,00.html

Ultimately I trust that God is in control but I do not use that as an excuse to be uninformed and unwilling to use my voice for what I believe to be the good of all. Praying for our leaders to use wisdom and discernment.

Just found a lot of pictures to share

More pictures of the devastation.

An Answer to the Call

Yesterday, at FBC, Norco, we took up an offering that, along with what came in the mail in response to the information about the tragic situation in the Philippines, was $6400.05. And we are not done yet. We have been told that the recovery will take about 4 months so we are going to try to send something every month for four months. And we have gone in search of medical donations that we can send!

I am attaching some pictures here and I am also attaching a link to a newsletter that was written just a few days after the flood. The newsletter has a collage of pics of the KIM (Kids’ International Ministries) food lines. In the bottom right hand corner is Jeff Long, with a hat on, obviously giving directions. I just thought some of you might like to put a face to a name. I could not capture that picture. But you can see it here.

Thank you so much to all who responded. Please continue to pray daily for them.
Angela

A Sincere and Desperate Call For Help

This summer my husband, my son, and fifteen other members of First Baptist Church of Norco went to the Philippines to work with Jeff Long, Director of Kids International. This ministry takes in children who have been orphaned because, unlike the U.S. where we have agencies to take care of children whose parents are not available for various reasons, the Philippines does not have strong agencies and children can end up homeless and hopeless. Our team went this summer to help build houses and play with children who love, want, and need adults in their lives. It was eye-opening and extremely educational spiritually just to be in a third world country. Our small fellowship of believers is now committed to this ministry in many ways, both physically and financially. We are preparing to send a team next summer for 9 weeks.

A couple of weeks ago the area close to where the orphanages are was hit by a typhoon, one of the worst in the recorded history of the Philippines. You can read about it in this news article here Our friend, Jeff Long, sent us a call for any help we can give. Every dime of the money we send him will go to provide food for people who have been devastatingly affected by the flooding. His team has been providing an average of 1500 meals a day. (Of course these are NOT the type of American meals we are used to…they are simple nutrition to prevent people from starving.) This week the members of FBC, Norco are doing all we can to raise as much money as we can to give next Sunday. We are looking to give up things, like eating out, comfort items, or to sell things or to simply ask those around us if they would consider giving.

So I plan to give from my emergency savings, sell some books on ebay, and now I am asking my blog readers and my facebook friends for help. Do you have an extra $10, $20, or more this week that you could send to FBC, Norco, 1417 Sixth Street, Norco, CA 92860? Label the money “Emergency Food money for the Philippines.” Please send the money as soon as possible. We have to pay to wire transfer the money. We want to send as fast as we can and we want to send it quickly in one payment. However, IF money comes in AFTER we have already transferred, we will send again.

I do not ask for money often but this time the need is astoundingly great. We will not meet every need in the Philippines but we will meet as many as we can. Can you please give and will you please pray? Pray for Jeff and his team to hold up physically as they are working very long hours. Pray for them to be able to give these people hope spiritually as they meet their needs physically. Pray for resources to be built up.

Thank you a million times over, thank you.

“But if anyone has the world’s goods and see his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”
I John 3:17-18

D.C. talk about socialized health care

The following video supports some of what I was trying to say in my last post about health care.

Again, I would like to say that I am not opposing the idea of helping people. I am opposing the idea of government control. I do not think the government can or will do a better job than what we have right now. I do believe the government can help; but I DO NOT think that what is being proposed right now is help.

Jeff Mooney, My Husband For 18 Years and Counting

On this day, Sept. 28, 1991, I married Jeff Mooney. It was an exciting day but I had no idea what exciting adventures lay ahead of us!

I married Jeff because I was crazy in love with him. I loved his zeal (though at that time it was without as much knowledge), his passion for God, his sense of humor, his ability to make me laugh. I loved it that he called me sweetheart and that he would listen to me for long periods of time. I loved his piano-playing, his open and honest approach to everything and that he would say he was sorry if he hurt my feelings. It did not bother me that we had no money, that the job we would be doing would just barely coverd our expenses and that we had no idea what we would do after that two year job. “Young, in-love, and ready to take risks with Jeff”; that would have been my facebook status 18 years ago!

As soon as we got married we headed out to Kansas to live for a couple of years as we worked on a project for the Southern Baptists. Other than missing my family and friends, we had a great first year. Kansas was very different and we explored it, enjoyed the snow, the prairie, the slow-paced lifestyle of small-town mid-west etc. However, Jeff became restless that second year. Not restless about being married to me, but restless theologically. He was getting anxious about not being able to answer some significant questions about the Bible and about God. He could not be happy with short, simple, Baptist-life answers. He struggled with eternal security, with understanding redemption and tons other topics.

This led us back to school. We moved back to AL for him to study at Beeson Divinity School. It was an oasis for a very thirsty man. He dived in with great eagerness and immediately began to change theologically. It was scary to me as he questioned every doctrine we had ever accepted without question. However, I began to see him strengthen like crazy…he was changing and growing stronger as he fed on strong theology but still somewhat restless as he struggled to figure out what he would do with all this knowledge. At that time he did not think he was “pastor material” nor did he think he had the “call” to pastor. Two years into his master’s degree, he was asked to substitute teach in a Hebrew class. The students really liked him and encouraged him. A new goal emerged…teaching at the university level. This led us to Louisville, KY for Jeff to work on a Ph.D. in Old Testament. We really had no idea what we were signing up for and by this time we had three kids in tow.

It took 6 1/2 years to complete the degree because of job responsibilities, family responsibilities and the amount of study required, but the end product was worth it.

My husband today is still the zealous, passionate, man that I fell in love with 19 years ago; the difference is that today he has much more knowledge to direct his zeal and tons of growth. He still makes me laugh, listens to me, calls me sweetheart, and apologizes when he hurts my feelings I still see the young man that took my hand at the altar 18 years ago today; but I also see what he has become; a man committed to the gospel, a man who loves Christ passionately, a man of integrity and principles, a man of quiet strength and sometimes not-so-quiet strength, a man who loves generously, invests regularly in people, a man who loves his children deeply, a leader, a teacher, a pastor, a friend, a counselor, …. the list goes on, but my favorite title for him is “Angela’s husband.” Today my facebook status is “not as young, more in-love, and absolutely willing to take risks with Jeff for another 18 years!”

I love you more today, Jeff, than I ever could have imagined possible 18 years ago!!!!!!!!!!

Reasons I Don’t Support Socialized Health Care

1. I don’t trust the government to run anything less efficiently than anybody. Examples of messes they have made are Social Security and Public Education.
2. The “plan” has not been sufficiently informed by people with knowledge of the industry. I feel like we have several in D.C. that live in “pipe-dreams.”
3. We have emergency care in the United States. No ER can turn someone away even if they are uninsured and medical bills have all kinds of mercy in them. You pay what you can afford even if you have to pay the rest of your life; they do not put you in prison for making medical bill payments.
4. WE CANNOT AFFORD IT. We have an MAJOR spending problem in this country… MAJOR…. It seems reasonable to me that if you cannot afford something that you do not buy it. If you choose to finance something, that’s fine but don’t expect your children and grandchildren to make the payments!!!!!
5. I think there are other ways to help that are not being considered. What makes medical insurance so incredibly high? Is is because doctors need high salaries to validate the amount of schooling they have to have….what about helping America’s brightest get free medical degrees in exchange for some “free” service for the poor? Is it the cost of malpractice? What about reasonable limits on settlements…I definitely mean compensation but not millions and millions of dollars. What about more gov’t money for research and development so that not as much is passed to the patient? What about asking the American people if they would like to give to a medical fund that could be tapped for poor in stead of FORCING THEM BY TAXING THEM? It could be surprising what happens. There are so many ideas that are not related to GOVERNMENT CONTROL.

In general I think history teaches us that we want less government control in our lives. Why? Because governments are run by people and people have thirst for power.

Just my thoughts.

Conversation to Consider

As usual I met with a great group of ladies last Thursday night for some great conversation about the book, Don’t Waste Your Life.

We are almost finished reading it and will only have one more discussion time…it has been so much better to discuss this book with others than to read it alone. (Though the first time that I read it alone I got alot out of it too!)

The chapter that we read was titled “Glorifying God 8 to 5″ and he could have added “Monday – Friday” because he is actually talking about glorifying God at the work place.  I think a subtitle could be “Don’t Waste an Opportunity” because really our inability to live for Christ as opposed to ourselves is what gets in the way of being a wittness at work.

The following is a summary of what we talked about:

The majority of Christians will not be vocational ministers and/or missionaries.  They will work in the secular workplace.  So much of our witnessing will actually be people witnessing who we are, what makes us tick, how we care, and how we think about life….we set Christ on display or we make light of the gospel in how we LIVE each day. Do we blend in to the culture or do we stick out?   And if we stick out, is it because we are compassionate people of godly character or because we are loud-mouths who don’t live what we believe?

We make much of Christ at the workplace by trusting His promises at work.  We trust that He will help us to discern how to do our work to the best of our ability.  We trust that He gave us this job and therefore do not complain that we have a job and that we have to work.  We trust that the money that it provides is from Him and spend it on things that are honoring to Him, helpful to our families, helpful to others in need etc.

We make much of Christ at the workplace by being a person of Godly character.  We do not gossip about our co-workers.  We care about those that are hurting.  We are willing to overlook offense for the betterment of a situation.  We clean up after ourselves.  We show compassion, gentleness, knowledge of what we believe without being angry at those who can’t see things the way we do.  In other words we earn the right to speak the name of Jesus by first being an obedient follower of Jesus.

We make much of Christ at the workplace by being a great employee.  We apply the God-given talents that we have in order to do the best that we can.  We complete work in a manner that shows we have integrity.  We accept criticism, learn from it and then improve.  We do not lie to, cheat or steal from our employer; not in the little things and not in the big things.  Ultimately, it is the Lord Jesus Christ that we desire is honored in our work.

Even in the most difficult of work situations the Bible says…” ….they are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.” Titus 2

There are other points in the chapter but we ran out of time!  If you are interested, read chapter 8!

Thanks ladies for an invigorating, convicting conversation!

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