Daily Article

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another. Shakespeare

Are you different?

As a wheelchair user, I’m probably hypersensitive to differences. Even after twenty-two years of rolling around, I still feel uncomfortably conspicuous.

My inability to stand up makes me stand out—or at least that’s how it seems to me.

Distinctions are interesting. They spark debate, generate controversy, and attract attention. Life would be bland and boring without the diversity that makes each of us unique and truly one-of-a-kind.

The Children of God (COG), a cult founded by David (Moses David) Berg, used sex as an intoxicant to keep the cult together. Homosexuality, lesbianism, incest, and group sex were all legitimized by the COG cult. Berg’s daughter, Deborah (Linda Berg) Davis, writes in The Children of God: The Inside Story, of how her father justified his perverted view of sex because he first perverted Scripture. He promoted “Flirty Fishing,” using sex to entice young people into the cult, a way to “win souls to Christ.” The Bible was used to support this immoral practice: “Just as Jesus laid down His life, so you must lay down your life (or wife) for these men.” As time went on, the question of lesbianism arose. “There is nothing in Scripture that forbids it,” Berg maintained.

… is most dangerous when you stare at it.

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. [1 Peter 5:8]

How often to you consciously think about evil?

When I learned to drive I developed the dangerous habit of staring at approaching cars and discovered that you tend to steer toward your focal point. A number of animated reminders from my parents convinced me that it’s good to be aware of traffic but I needed to concentrate primarily on my own path.

Like many of us on the path to recovery I was the ultimate party girl as a teenager. When I reached my late teens-early twenties friends started saying things like, "you're fun when you've had a few but not when you've had a few too many." Eventually, my friends stopped asking me out to the bars with them. Once in while a brave heart would invite me along and then proceed to "keep an eye on me" throughout the night. They feared I would do something atrocious to embarrass them or I would do something incredibly stupid to hurt myself. These people really loved me and genuinely wanted to enjoy my company. They were ever so hopeful this time would be different. It rarely, if ever, was. At the age of 21 I was introduced to crack cocaine and I incorporated that into my partying as well.

Helen Keller once said: “The world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming it.”

Perspective plays a role in how we view our current physical, emotional, spiritual, and attitudinal situations. Is the sum total a barrier or an opportunity? Like a kaleidoscope, we can tweak the patterns of what we see, what we feel, how we respond via our perspective.

Have you ever said something brilliant or even stupid and wondered where on earth those words came from? Want to hear something amazing? Your heart is connected to your mouth. Thoughts and experiences stored in your heart come out of your mouth and directly impact your life and the life of others.

But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart. Matthew 15:18 (The Message).

"Praying is like breathing; it is part of the Christian's life and basic to it. It is more than formal prayer, important as that is. It is a continual openness to God in all our being. Instead of talking to ourselves as we go through the day, we talk to God, sentence prayers, momentary calls for help, grace, or strength, quick words of thanks, or expressions of need, all this and more. Such constant sentence praying gives us the greatest freedom and advantage in prayer, because it is the practice of the presence of God, of our awareness of it. Its greatest reward is the growing awareness that God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. (Systematic Theology, p. 7204)

If your spouse leaves the marriage it can be a devastating time. Sometimes they may want to get a divorce and bring papers for you to sign. But God says we are not to divorce an unbelieving spouse. In marriage, even if only one spouse is a believer, God says the marriage is sanctified and set apart for His purpose. According to the state you are divorced, but according to God you are still married.

If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. (1 Corinthians 7:12-14 NIV)