There are some who say that religion, or believing in God is a crutch. That is always an interesting metaphor. Those who say such things are declaring that you shouldn't need something to help you get through life, that only those who are weak should need such things. I always find that line of thought interesting. How many people who say such things smoke, or drink, or take medication, or see a therapist, or meditate, or have some other thing they use to help deal with stress and smooth the rough parts of a day or a life? The truth is we all need coping mechanisms because life is often hard and challenging and we need help, support, encouragement. When you are unsteady on your feet, or the ground is uneven, when the floor is slippery, you might need to grab hold of something. God provides stability. So don't think of God as a crutch, think of him as stability. That's how He reveals himself in the Bible. A solid rock, a sure foundation, something that helps you keep standing. I feel bad for those who think that they will never need help, that having a God who is there to give us strength to stand in life is a bad thing. Such people might want to consider this warning; "Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall." (1 Corinthians 10:12)

My post today is a direct quote from the book "The Reason for God" by Timothy Keller. It is a great book that I highly recommend. I am still reading it. If you have been hurt by someone, I ask you to please read this post and consider God's work in you. "Someone may have robbed you of some happiness, reputation, opportunity, or certain aspects of your freedom. No price tag can be put on such things, yet we still have a sense of violated justice that does not go away when the other person says, "I'm really sorry." When we are seriously wronged we have an indelible sense that the perpetrators have incurred a debt that must be dealt with. Once you have been wronged and you realize there is a just debt that can't simply be dismissed-there are only two things to do. The first option is to seek ways to make the perpetrators suffer for what they have done. You can withhold relationship and actively initiate or passively wish for some kind of pain in their lives commensurate to what you experienced. There are many ways to do this. You can viciously confront them, saying things that hurt. You can go around to others to tarnish their reputation. If the perpetrators suffer, you may begin to feel a certain satisfaction, feeling that they are now paying off their debt. There are some serious problems with this option, however. You may become harder and colder, more self-pitying, and therefore more self-absorbed. ... In addition, the perpetrator and his friends and family often feel they have the right to respond to your payback in kind. Cycles of reaction and retaliation can go on for years. Evil has been done to you-yes. But when you try to get payment through revenge the evil does not disappear. Instead it spreads, and it spreads most tragically of all into you and your own character. There is another option, however. You can forgive. Forgiveness means refusing to make them pay for what they did. However, to refrain from lashing out at someone when you want to do so with all your being is agony. It is a form of suffering. You not only suffer the original loss of happiness, reputation, and opportunity, but now you forgo the consolation of inflicting the same on them. You are absorbing the debt, taking the cost of it completely on yourself instead of taking it out of the other person. It hurts terribly. Many people would say it feels like a kind of death. Yes, but it is a death that leads to resurrection instead of the lifelong living death of bitterness and cynicism. ... When I counsel forgiveness to people who have been harmed, they often ask about the wrongdoers, "Shouldn't they be held accountable?" I usually respond, "Yes, but only if you forgive them." ... We should confront wrongdoers-to wake them up to their real character, to move them to repair their relationships, or at least to constrain them and protect others from being harmed by them in the future. Notice, however, that all those reasons for confrontation are reasons of love. The best way to love them and the other potential victims around them is to confront them in hope that they will repent, change, and make things right. The desire for vengeance, however, is motivated not by goodwill but by ill will. You may say, "I just want to hold them accountable," but your real motivation may be simply to see them hurt. If you are not confronting them for their sake or for society's sake but for your own sake, just for payback, the chance of the wrongdoer ever coming to repentance is virtually nil. In such a case you, the confronter, will overreach, seeking not justice but revenge, not their change but their pain. Your demands will be excessive and your attitude abusive. He or she will rightly see the confrontation as intended simply to cause hurt. Only if you first seek inner forgiveness will your confrontation be temperate, wise, and gracious. Only when you have lost the need to see the other person hurt will you have any chance of actually bringing about change, reconciliation, and healing. You have to submit to the costly suffering and death of forgiveness if there is going to be any resurrection." -Timothy Keller Words to take to heart. I hope they bless and challenge you today.

My post today was inspired by this story concerning how kids are snacking so much that they are moving towards "constantly eating" and that this is a big contributer to childhood obesity rates. Here's the quote I centered in on.

Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote a commentary calling for taxes on sugary drinks and junk food, zoning restrictions on fast-food outlets around schools and bans on advertising unhealthy food to children. "Government at national, state, and local levels, spearheaded by public health agencies, must take action," he wrote.

Sounds expensive and intrusive to me. Should this stuff be dealt with? YES. By the government? Well, I have a suggestion, PARENTS! Let's think about this. If parents would really parent; tell their kids no, restrict what they can watch, buy, eat, do. Given them bed times, meal times (around the family table), internet monitoring & restrictions, restrictions on how much they can watch of anything, study discipline and school involvement, etc, can you imagine how much money the government could save? Some ideas. FCC (Federal Communications Commission)would need to spend less time and money trying to control what garbage gets put on tv because the garbage's ratings plummet since parents aren't letting their kids watch it. Money Saved. Health care: Less obesity, more active kids, healthier eating habits, less time sitting in front of a screen watching/playing/surfing. There, we've started controlling health care costs without one senator or bureaucrat. In fact, all those people who are trying to regulate McDonalds, video games, and fight childhood obesity can find work as coaches, umpires, and gym attendants since many more will be needed. When we stop asking or making it seem necessary for the government to take care of us like a big overspending parent, we can save a lot of money. So let's spend less time railing against the government and more time parenting and helping/encouraging/teaching others to parent as well. Just a thought. :)

Sunday before last, Nate preached a great sermon titled "God's Lost Heart." In it, he talked about God's desire to reach the lost and how we should be moved by the Gospel to share God's message of salvation with those around us who do not know. God is motivated by love. When He reaches out to the lost, offering salvation, He does so out of love. "For God so LOVED the world that He gave His only begotten Son..." God reaches out from a position of love. When we reaches out to Christians who are straying or wrong, he again is motivated by love. "He whom the Lord loves, he disciplines" The lost sheep, the prodigal son, both are treated with love not based on themselves, but based on Himself. Is that our heart toward the lost, whether it be the unsaved, or those Christians who are not right with God? Do we reach out in love, motivated by love. There are Christians who seem more interested in condemning the lost (who are already under condemnation) rather than to reach them with God's love. Jesus didn't come to condemn the world, He came to seek and to save that which was lost. That is what we should be doing. And when we have someone who is not right with God, the Bible commands us to do it with a spirit of gentleness. Even if they are not being nice to us or receive us, we are not excused from responding in love. After all, according to 1 Cor. 13, love does not take into account a wrong suffered, but bears all things. Are you a man or woman after God's own heart? His heart is for the lost. Lord, fill us with your Spirit who reaches out to seek and to save those who are lost.

Check out this interesting article about darkness and light. It is interesting that those whose eyes were shaded or who were in dim rooms were more apt to be dishonest. It sheds new light (pun intended) on these verses from the Bible.

• Luke 11:34-36 "The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light; but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness. (35) "Then watch out that the light in you is not darkness. (36) "If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no dark part in it, it will be wholly illumined, as when the lamp illumines you with its rays."
• John 3:19-21 "This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. (20) "For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. (21) "But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God."
• Romans 13:12 The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.
• 1 Corinthians 4:5 Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts; and then each man's praise will come to him from God.