Category: Archives

Note:

After I posted this, I caught something as I watched again — I said that we aren’t justified through faith. That’s not quite what I meant. To clarify, before someone else catches it:

Galatians 3:7-9 Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

Ephesians 2:7-9 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

My point was that faith by itself is meaningless. It’s what we have faith in that justifies us.

Have you ever gone through a hard time, read the Bible, and then felt more condemned than encouraged?

Here, I offer some thoughts on what to do in this situation based on the temptation of Christ as recorded in Matthew 4 .

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts and feedback.

Do you think this interpretation is correct? What do you do when scripture hurts?

Click HERE to see my guest post at The Dating Papers.

Here’s a quote:

“Do I look fat in this dress?”

Next to being asked to get snipped, this is the dreaded question that men fear most from women.

How can he answer this loaded, Catch-22? If he answers “yes,” he’s in the doghouse. If he says “no,” he’s “not being honest” and God forbid a girlfriend points out the obvious during a trip the ladies’ room.

Believe it or not, my husband Tom and I have had a “do I look fat in this dress” pact since the beginning of our marriage, when I was healthy size eight.

Ten years, five kids and an abdominal myomectomy later, I was considering starting a reclaim-my-body exercise regimen and I asked my husband the dreaded question.

Encouraged by this food-for-thought post from desiringGod.org this morning.

I don’t think that being overweight is only attributed to laziness and overeating, and I do think an occasional cigar is good for the soul.

It’s always a challenge to find the line between enjoying good things God has provided and not letting these things rule over us. I appreciate how Piper points out that self-control is a fruit of the Spirit. Realizing this helps us to pray and gives us strength when we’re feeling tempted to keep vice overindulgence in check.

How Much Does God Want Me to Care For My Physical Body?

Does having new life in Christ mean that I should expect and strive for better physical health? How much does God want me to care for my physical body?

Good question. He does want you to care for your physical body. A couple of texts come to my mind.

One is that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6). And the context there is not giving your body to a prostitute. But the implication is that these bodies are holy and are reverential.

It kept me from smoking as a teenager! It really did! My mother’s statement, “Son, your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and giving yourself lung cancer for that kind of pleasure would not treat the Holy Spirit rightly.” That worked for me! Still does.

But there’s another text that comes closer. Earlier in that chapter he is not dealing with prostitutes; he is dealing with food. The slogan in Corinth is—I think it’s a slogan in Corinth—”The stomach for food and food for the stomach, and both will be destroyed in hell,” which implied in their docetic way, “Eat all you want. It doesn’t matter what you eat.” And Paul said, “True statement, but I will not be enslaved by anything!” And the context there is food.

The reason people are unhealthy is because they’re enslaved. They are enslaved to laziness, and they are enslaved to food. So they eat too much and they exercise too little. And they have heart attacks and get diabetes. And God would consider that a spiritual issue.

So we should strive spiritually. What did Paul mean when he said, “I will not be enslaved by anything?” He meant, “Christ is your master!”

And a third text that comes to mind is, “The fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and …” What? “Self-control,” egkrateia (Galatians 5:22-23).

And again, largely sexual self-control is in view; but it’s the same thing. The word “self-control” is not the best translation maybe, because it’s really a work of the Holy Spirit.

So we should fight against anything that makes us unhealthy. If overeating makes us unhealthy, fight it by the Spirit. If laziness and lack of exercise makes us unhealthy, fight it with the power of the Holy Spirit. That is, believing the promises of God, praying down the Holy Spirit, and then biting the bullet and denying ourselves.

Christianity is self-denial … for a higher joy. And I don’t want my Christian hedonism to be taken to mean that everything is easy. It isn’t. Hardly anything worth doing is easy, until we get to heaven. Then it will all be easy.

He cares about our bodies. He gave them to us. He would like them to be healthy and last a long time, until he takes them.

By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

Take a moment to click through the buildfreedom link and read the article, there are step-by-step procedures, including a form letter, along with about a half-page of legal helps, to get rid of one’s SS#.

Follow the steps and see what happens. There isn’t going to be a sweet, gentle, cushy, painless way to do it. You’re probably going to get quite a fight, and probably be under surveillance of some sort, for the rest of your life. This is a choice you’ll have to make.

I would also recommend joining RestoreTheRepublic.net/ , where you can network with like-minded individuals.

FWIW, I’m not ready for this fight and still have my SS#.

(Originally Posted 3/6/2008)

I’m wondering what it takes to get rid of one’s social security number, and the implications of not having one.

From buildfreedom.com: “Secrets of the Social Security”.

This document covers:

* Individual Free-Market Economic Power.
* General information on Social Security.
* The Social Security Act.
* “Comment Upon Voluntary Nature of Social Security” – legal brief by Attorney Larry Becraft.
* Three kinds of TG #s: SSN (Social Security Number); EIN (Employer Identification Number); TIN (Taxpayer Identification Number).
* The structure of the SS# – significance of first three digits – ranges assigned to each state – ranges not used – significance of digits four and five – significance of last four digits.
* How to legally change your SS# – copy of relevant TG policy and procedures.
* How to get a new TIN from the IRS – sample SS-4 form – how to use your TIN number for credit applications.
* How Credit Bureaus identify you.
* How to establish a new credit file.
* The common law name principle.
* The Anthony Hargis method to terminate your SS#.
* Other organizations that help you terminate your SS#.
* General advice on operating without a SS#.
* Several ways to open a bank account without a SS#.
* Bibliography on SS# and identities.

This video from freedomtofascism.com also quite informative. It’s more about taxes than the SSN, so it’s a little off-topic for this post, but I found it during my SSN search and the testimony from juror Marcy Brooks made me want to include this clip. She’s my hero. Taxes and Social Security Numbers go hand in hand.

When we finally arrived in Indiana at 11pm Tuesday night, two-year-old Leah was sleeping.

My dad had never met her before. I asked if he wanted to carry her into the house – it’s so rare to hold her while she’s sleeping anymore. Thanks to many chats via webcam, Leah smiled and recognized him as “grandpa” when she woke up in his arms. While she usually is quiet and shy around strangers, she wasn’t afraid at all.

Our trip took four hours longer than Google Maps said it would, but then, they weren’t counting on us stopping at every other rest stop, hours spent crawling in 55 mph construction zones, or evening thunderstorms with blindingly torrential downpours.

One of the most memorable scenes from our trip, in addition to some spectacular, dragon-esque cloud formations and some crazy lightning, was watching a cop get run off the road.

Someone driving a light blue hatchback zoomed past the undercover state trooper on I-76. The cop, who was sporting a four-door maroon sedan, once belonging to someone’s grandmother but apparently refurbished for the police department with an engine fit for a race car, flashed his lights as the blue car passed.

In the distance, I could see the blue car pulling over to the right shoulder. The cop approached the parked car. Just as he went to pull in behind the zipster, a black car, who had been in caravan with the blue one, pulled into the very spot. The cop couldn’t swerve left because he’d hit the oncoming traffic. Instead, he swerved right and down a slight grassy hill on the side of the road. We passed by just as he regained control without flipping his car (wow!) and then turned his wheels up towards the two stopped cars. As we drove by, we watched as the cop threw his car into park and exited – red faced and screaming like he was going to kill someone – followed by the grannymobile lurching to a halt.

A few hours later, while in the middle of Ohio, Andrew and I could see menacing lightning striking through gushing rainclouds on our path in the distance. Can’t go around it, can’t go over it, can’t go under it, we’ve got to go through it! I was driving. I warned the kids. “We’re about to go through a really bad thunderstorm. It’s going to be hard for mommy to see and the roads are going to have a lot of water on them – it’s going to be easy for the car to slip. When we get to the storm, please sit still and be quiet,” I said. “Even if you’re scared, do NOT scream.” They obeyed and Jack Johnson and his peaceful guitar sang us through.

There were no less than 2,000 tab-A-into-slot-B bits of advice, tips and tricks being advertised on the covers of the women’s magazines at the entrance of my grocery store checkout lane this evening. I counted. There were enough bedroom pointers for a different one each night for almost five and a half years.

I find it funny that in each monthly issue, the same magazine finds 100 or so more of the “best” tips. It’s endless, and it sells.

Don’t get me wrong… I’ve been married for almost 10 years now, and I have z e r o complaints in this department. Sex is awesome, it should be frequent, and it’s a very integral element to a healthy marriage.

My gripe with the onslaught of shallow women’s magazines is this: Sex is presented is as the be-all-end-all shortcut to happiness. Yet the inundation of the act makes it as ordinary as a dinner menu. Hmm… what will we eat tonight? In fact, I bet that if the word “sex” was replaced with “casserole,” readers would never notice.

Let me just say, from a great deal of experience, that it is easier to have sex than a meaningful relationship with someone. Sex can be a substitute for real intimacy and oneness, rather than an extension of it.

Since most who read these types of magazines for advice don’t understand true intimacy, they will never have satisfying sex. Like a person who lacks cooking skills, they know there is something missing, but they don’t know what it is. It’s easy for them to think that if they just try new things every night for five and a half years, that one of them must be the winning combination to bliss. This mystery makes it very easy for magazines to appeal to the unsatisfied crowd – the same crowd who buys a cart’s worth of prepackaged foods each week.

Casseroles – with endless ingredient combinations of canned condensed soups, frozen veggies, ground meat, mushy noodles, par-boiled rice – are easier to make than the perfect steak (I like mine medium-rare with blue cheese crumbles or a fresh herby churrasco sauce, thankyouverymuch). However, they are not as satisfying.

If you have a deeply-in-love, committed, trusting relationship with someone, the rush of sex is infinitely more penetrating because it’s a mind + body + soul experience. If you’re not satisfied in your relationship, it’s probably not the fault of your sexual abilities as much as it is with the relationship itself. Delicious relationships are not built upon 15-minutes-to-the-table shortcuts.