The Truth of Lies

A friend told me the other day that 83% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Which got me thinking we is it that we feel the need to lie? I thought that the answer was pretty easy. I thought it went back to the garden when Adam lied about Eve giving him the apple but then I went back to the text (see below) but then i realized that Adam never lied, he is guilty of many sins but lying is not one of them. So I thought when was the first time that lying was introduced to humans, so I kept reading and it is not until chapter 4 with Cain and Abel (see below).

Now one thing that made this interesting to me is that i was always taught that all the sins that we go through where passed down through Adam but this means that we as humans we can come up with new was to sin all on our own. You see Satan is never mentioned as the one to insight Cain, the text suggests that Cain preformed this action all on his own. So if we can come up with sins on our own and they can become a part of us (ingrained into our lives) then where is the hope?

The place I found that hope is (guess where) in Christ. His sacrifice on the cross made a prevision for you and me to live this life and not be damned to hell. The whole book off romans talks about this and tells us how much we need Christ, it is only through him living his life through us that we can know the fullness of it. It is in the loss of our life that we can find it, it is only when we close our eyes that we can truly see and that is my encouragement.

In Christ
PJ

Genesis 3

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?" 2 The woman said to the serpent, " From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; 3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'" 4 The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! 5 "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." 6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.
8 They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, " Where are you?" 10 He said, " I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself." 11 And He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" 12 The man said, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate." 13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" And the woman said, " The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

Genesis 4

1 Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, "I have gotten a man-child with the help of the LORD." 2 Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 3 So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the LORD of the fruit of the ground. 4 Abel, on his part also brought of the first-lings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and for his offering; 5 but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. 6 Then the LORD said to Cain, " Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? 7 " If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it." 8 Cain told Abel his brother. And it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him. 9 Then the LORD said to Cain, " Where is Abel your brother?" And he said, "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?"

Hooked on Phonics

So I was reading a book for school that I really didn't like, it was just poorly written, the author didn't convey his ideas well. So I started to think about all the books that I have read over the years and how many of them have been terrible and then it dawned on me writing is an art it's not something that you go to school for four years and then you know everything there is to know about writing. Writing is an ever changing form of communication, you should constantly be learning how to convey your massage better to an audience (not just the audience that you feel comfortable with but a wide range of people).

In Christ
PJ

Prayer

I get really mad when I think about prayer in the church today. We only use it as something to begin or end a service with, only when we need something but almost never to hear God's word to us and if we do ask God what His will is for our life it is not because we want to know what His will is but we want to tell Him what our will is. We never treat prayer as a way to build a relationship with Christ to get to know Him better, to tell Him our frustrations. No... to us it is only something we do to start and finish off our Christian meetings, something we do before going to bed. We use it to get what we want (more money, a better car, ext). We pray for God to protect us, like if we don't pray for that He will just let us get hurt.

But prayer wasn't meant to be that, it was meant to be a means for our hearts to become one with Christs and for us to fall in deeper love with Him. We can pray for all of the other stuff but that isn't God's first purpose for prayer and we need to realize that.

In Christ
PJ

The End of the Apocalypse

This blog was written on my computer (as are most of my posts) at an earlier date

So tonight I went to a small group that I go to when I am in Tucson and we talked about hurricane Katrina, and the conversation was good. We had great back and fourth about what people were feeling about the events and everything that took place afterwards. In this group it was really great to see these students relate to one another and lift each other up.

In the conversation we started to talk about the apocalypse and how it was coming soon. Now it doesn't matter where you land on the whole pre-trib post-trib debate one thing that has always been is that people think that they are in the end times. People look at famines, earth quakes, killing, crime one of the biggest is Jerusalem being under attack and the middle east being unstable.

The things that no one ever looks at or says is there have always been famines, earthquakes, killing and crime ,this is nothing new. The thing is that we in America have been in relative safety and have enjoyed about 200 years of a morality that the rest of the world hasn't but now as America gets older those morals are going out the window and things are getting worse. The world isn't any better or worse we are just catching up.

As for Jerusalem and the middle east. The middle east has always been unstable with all the people and empires coming in and out of power, the only time that it came close was when David was king over Israel. As for Jerusalem, Israel is one of the most fought over peaces of land in the world. Over 100 wars have been fought over that one peace of land, more then any other country in the world.

Only God knows when the tribulation will be. So if you want to try to find out when it will be go for it (it can be a fun thing to think about) just know that you may theorize but people have theorizing for thousands of years and we are only one day closer then yesterday.

In Christ
PJ

Witnessing

Yesterday (10/1/05) I was walking on the river-walk here in town when two people asked me for directions to the best place to eat (of which I told them the two places that Ravencrest staff or staff family work). But then we got into a great talk about the church, religion and the Bible. One of the things that the conversation lead to was how the church was failing (failing these two in particular) and how Christians aren't reaching out to the community which is sad.

We always talk in our church's about how we need to reach the lost but we treat those people like their wrong and we are right, we are winning and they are losing, we act like we are better because we have been redeemed. Instead maybe we should look at people for who they are, loved children of God, people who need to be loved not condemned and damned. Instead of telling people what they have done wrong we should show them how to do it right. We should be worry about our relationships not our witnesses.

I see church's working and worrying about how their new programs which convince people to stay at that church and try to get people from other church's to come and join their “Fellowship” (LOL)¹ and all I can think about are the pharisees, people who only cared about keeping up experiences and wanted people to think that they were holy.

In Christ
PJ

¹In this post I used IM talk (aka LOL) for that I apologize. I do not condone that type of language but for the sake of not censoring my blog I left it in