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I am back

I got locked out of my account for a while. I finally had time to get back in. Sorry for the long absence! 

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YOU are ONE of ONE to God!

You are special to God!  He does not see you as one of the billion people on earth. He sees you as one of one.

You are so precious to Him that he has numbered the very hairs on your head. Luke 12:7 His thoughts of you outnumber the grains of sand, Psalm 139: 18 and as if all that is not enough evidence of your worth to him. He sent Jesus to die just to redeem you! John 3: 16

Before the very foundations of the earth were laid, He had you on his mind, and the plan he established for your life is good! Jer 29:11-12

May you rest and abide in his matchless love and care today and always! Be still and know that he is God! Psalm 46: 10  That he wants to be your God, your Abba Father! Romans 8: 15-16  Your Prince of Peace, Wonderful Counselor, Almighty God Isaiah 9:6  and so much more...

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Voting is the foundational act that breathes life into the principle of the consent of the governed.

DeForest Soaries

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It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.

Tom Stoppard

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Stand up and be counted today! Vote!

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Let the riches of my love (God’s love) flow through your heart as the wisdom of my spirit (God’s spirit) anoints your understanding in order to be a blessing to all my children (God’s children), especially the poor in your midst.

Rev. Dr. James Forbes

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You are perfect in all of your ways

Chris Tomlin

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It costs everything to be His disciple. Don't give us blessings-give us grace to be unquestionably obedient to Your every last command and desire. Don't give us status-give us a place to serve. Don't give us things for our use-use us. Don't give us good jobs-put us to work. Don't give us comfort-command us. Don't give us pleasure-give us perspective. Don't give us satisfaction-teach us sacrifice. Don't give us entertainment-enable us. Don't give us good salaries-give us strength to do your will. Our great joy in life is in pleasing our Lord-and there is no other joy comparable.

Gordon Aeschliman, World Christian Magazine 

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Give us this day our daily bread...

Pastor Randy challenged us last Sunday to keep a journal of what we are grateful for; I took us this challenge. As the week has unfolded the Holy Spirit has challenged me further to use that day’s date as the benchmark for the minimum numbers of reasons to be grateful. For example, today is October 14. Thus my challenge is to find at least 14 reasons to be grateful. 

I begin each day with examining my daily bread. What are my needs today? Do I have food for the day? Do I have any financial needs? Do I have any other needs to bring to God? Then I go from there. What I have found is that I am amazed to see how many days that God has provided entirely for my needs. (Not to say we do not have needs, oh I am currently unemployed and so have definitely been in a place of need! And likely will find me in a place of need again. I also realize that I cannot do life daily without the help and support of my heavenly father. Perhaps that is what is making these days of enough food, and not being concerned about my rent being paid so sweet!) But today, this day, I have enough, no needs, no bills that are outstanding, no concerns about what to eat, I have enough! 

I begin to count the things that I am grateful for big and small; somehow the little things are often the sweetest! The marvelous thing that God loves me, he really loves me! That he takes excellence care of me! He provides my needs! 

Might I encourage you to take up Pastor Randy’s challenge, even if he is not your pastor; apart from your regular journal or prayer time? Just spend time daily giving thanks for all that God has done for you! You will be amazed at how it fills your heart with peace and builds your confidence in the one who provides for you. Remember he clothes the lilies of the field which do not toil or spin, which are here today and tomorrow thrown into the furnace. HOW MUCH MORE WILL HE CARE FOR YOU!

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Give us this day...

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Voting from the Heart By Tony Stoltzfus 10/3/2016 In the last month of this crazy U.S. presidential election, how does a Christian decide who to vote for? I'd like to take a look at this from a completely different angle: voting from the heart. Spoiler alert: I won't be endorsing any particular candidate! Most of us vote or get involved in politics because we want to make a difference: we want to influence our country's direction. We are always talking about how this or that candidate will affect where things are going. What we don't often think about is how politics is influencing us. So let's look! Take a minute or two right now and envision the candidate—Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump—that you like least. Think about what they've done, the statements they've made that stick in your mind, the character qualities (or lack thereof) you see in them. Form a picture in your mind of what you think will happen in our country if this person is elected. Actually do that, right now. Now, while you have that picture in your mind, jot down the emotions you are experiencing. I've listed some contrasting emotion words below to help you: inspired joyful powerful connected proud secure hopeful calm numb sad helpless left out disgusted vulnerable afraid angry The Emotion Algorithm I found an interesting web site called leftright.news that analyzes political news articles with an IBM-designed algorithm to tease out their emotional content. The five emotions they track are anger disgust, fear, joy, and sadness. Want to guess which ones are most prominent? If you picked joy, you live on another planet . In today's scores, fear is in the lead at 68 (I've seen it as high as 92) out of 100, followed closely by disgust at 66 and anger at 55. Sadness clocks in at 20, while joy brings up the rear at a dismal yet consistent 3 out of 100. I think that is about right: negative emotions like fear, anger and disgust are what drive most people's choices in this election. They are probably the ones driving you, too. Americans in this era vote their fears, not their hopes. That's why the vast majority of the political ads we see on TV are negative, even though we all hate them: because they work. We will not stop seeing negative ads until we stop voting out of fear, disgust and anger. We are also more likely to tune in to news outlets that align with our negative feelings, validating our fears instead of reasoning with us that those fears are misplaced. So much political news coverage is designed to stoke fear and outrage instead of inform, because the more they inflame those feelings in us, the more we are drawn to watch—and for them, that's great for business. Your Emotions So what emotions did you experience when I asked you to think of the 'other' candidate? Let's start with anger. The pundits even call this an 'anger election.' If you are angry at this person and their party, grieved by their character flaws or want to 'throw the bums out,' what do you think will be the outcome of voting based on that anger? Scripture declares that 'the anger of man worketh not the righteousness of God.' In other words, no good, Godly outcome will come out of you voting out of anger. It doesn't matter if you think you are voting to end abortion or provide care for the homeless or safeguard American's freedoms—scripture guarantees that your anger will sabotage it. As the Message translation puts it, "If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?” (Gal. 5:15) Let's talk fear. Are you afraid of what will become of our country if this 'other' candidate is elected? Does what this person says scare you? Both left and right are happy to encourage you to feel that way—as if an American way of life you find yourself at home in might be lost. But when the thought of some political change makes you actually feel the emotion of fear, you are afraid for you. The emotion of fear comes when you believe something bad will happen to you personally, that you personally will lose out. What that means (if we are honest with ourselves) is that your fear isn't really about principle or protecting the constitution or the bigger issues of right and wrong—it's about your own skin: what you will lose. The good news is, that's a fear you can take to Jesus right now and get his peace instead. Jesus is lord of all, including this country and this election, and your peace depends on him, not on a political party. So let's take the opportunity to make him Lord all over again, and walk in his peace and not in fear. Take every security, opportunity or freedom your heart is worried it might lose or gain in this election and say, 'Lord, those things are only yours to give, and I give them back to you.' If we are afraid of losing what makes us feel at home in the world… well, maybe we've gotten too at home in the world. Are you disgusted at how dishonest, how criminal, how corrupt the system or the candidates are? Do you want to fight to take our country back? Well, the obvious question is, "Why do you feel the need to fight?” This is the world system after all—wouldn't we expect it to be worldly? The United States of America is a nation of this world. Jesus clearly stated that his Kingdom is not of this world, or else his followers would fight for it. If you are fighting for a kingdom in this world, you aren't fighting for Jesus' kingdom. I'm glad to live in a country with a Christian heritage and Christian influence. But the idea of America as a "Christian nation” as it is often espoused on the right is based on the Old Testament idea of the Jewish nation, one that Jesus' coming changed for us Gentiles as decisively as it eliminated the whole system of animal sacrifice. The Jews in Jesus day were explicitly looking a political messiah who would fight to free their nation from Rome and turn it back into a religious nation, and Jesus explicitly refused to be that messiah. Discerning Your Heart I'm am not saying it is wrong to participate in the political process, or to want civil servants who are honest and trustworthy. I'm not at all saying it is wrong to vote. What I am asking is that you discern how the way you engage politics is impacting your heart. If politics plants emotions like fear, disgust and anger in your heart, well, that's not exactly what we are shooting for as Christians. Think about what happened when Jesus encountered this kind of emotion in his own ministry. When the Samaritans wouldn't offer Jesus' disciples lodging because they were headed for Jerusalem (in today's language, because they were racist), James and John said, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” 'These other people are the worst,' the two disciples argued. 'They are even opposing you. And our rights as citizens are being taken away! Jesus, should we fight to get them back?' Jesus answer was a serious rebuke: "You do not know what spirit you are of.” To put that in modern language, Jesus is saying, 'What's going on in your heart right now is much more aligned with hell than with heaven.' And that's the fundamental problem in Christians' involvement in the U.S. political sphere: we don't know what spirit we are of. We have all these worthy political aims we support, but when we talk them, what often comes out of us is fear and anger and disgust: the emotions of hell, not the fruit of the spirit. We say things about a politician—a person Jesus died for—that we would never say to someone in our church. Somehow we've given ourselves a pass, that the biblical principles of relationship and love don't apply when we talk about public figures. Why is our political language so different than our religious language? Because our religious language comes from the bible, but the primary influencer of our hearts in the political realm is the media we choose to listen to—media that on both sides is full of fear and disgust and anger. Jesus asserts that the world will "know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” So what will they conclude about us from our anger and outrage in politics? Often, that we are hypocrites. That we are Democrats or Republicans first, and Christians second. What is Worthy of Praise My extended family is half liberal democrat and half conservative republican, so I've had to walk through this minefield for 30 years. I have relatives who think the primary election was stolen from Bernie Sanders by the Democratic establishment, and others who live off the grid with an arsenal of weapons and a year's worth of food because Obama is coming to take their guns away. Over the years I've watched brothers' relationships blow up over climate change, heard dear relatives comment in disgusted about 'the femi-nazis of the NEA' (not realizing that my mom, a teacher, was a life-long NEA member), and seen many more ugly and divisive incidents. So let's stop and check our hearts and our emotions, and realign them with scripture. Do you know that whoever is elected, scripture commands you to pray for that person's welfare and success? (That was written by someone living in a conquered land under a despotic Roman emperor.) Often, it seems like we believe that if a President is not of our party, we are free to speak curses and death over him instead of life and blessing. Can you do that as eagerly for Trump as for Clinton? Is that spirit of peace and unity coming from the media you watch and read, or are they teaching you to hate and undermine the one you don't agree with? If you post on politics on Facebook, go back and look at the comments you are getting. Is what you say causing your readers to think about "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute …anything worthy of praise?” I would guess that only about 1 out of 10 of the political posts from Christians that I see meet that standard. What to Do Here is what we need to do as American Christians. First, we must repent of the fear, anger and disgust we've allowed to take hold in our hearts in this area. Second, we need to make Jesus lord of our hearts in politics. Let go of everything your heart has believed it can get from a candidate or government (security, belonging, freedom, hope) and attach those desires to Jesus. I'm not saying we should expect nothing from Government at a rational level, but that we as Christians do not entrust our future to the government, in the same way that Jesus did 'not entrust himself to man, because he knew what was in man' (Jn. 2:24). Our hope for freedom and security is not Trump or Clinton, or even America, but Christ alone. Third, we need to discern the emotional content of the political news we listen to and adjust to guard our hearts. What emotions are you experiencing after you listen to a show by a certain commentator? If you are filled with anger, disgust, or fear, stop listening. Does what you read demonize one side of the political spectrum? Then what are you as a Christian doing being part of the demonization of anyone Jesus gave his life for? Let's call it what it is: in general, the farther you go to the left or right on the political spectrum, the more demonizing, the more focused on anger and fear and disgust the political commentary gets. You are fooling yourself if you think you can listen to Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow or the like every day and not have the sarcasm, outrage and offense they carry affect your heart. I've watched firsthand as it poisoned the hearts of dear friends and relatives over the years. If you are going to read the news, read stuff in the center. We need to do a cleanse and get the outrage out of our insides, so we can relate to anyone about politics with the spirit of Jesus. Hopefully this article makes you think—even more so, I hope it makes you pray! I'm happy to hear feedback, but if you want to write me a long screed about how wrong I am, don't bother. That would only prove my point! LikeShow more reactionsCommentShare Comments Jean Vilmenay

Tony Stoltzfus

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Remember They are Human!

Yesterday while at Walmart I was reminded of how important it is for us to remember that those who are serving us are human too. If we want to be served by machines, we should choose the self-check out lines. 

Here is my tale, while in line at the check stand, the gal waiting on us, tells one of the ladies behind me that she is closed after her. Unfortunately, the lady at the front of the line has a problem with her card that takes a while to resolve.

This results in the lady who was told she would be the "last in line" is now being asked to move over the next checkout that was just opened. She has not unloaded her cart, and there is only one person ahead of her, less than in the line she is currently in. This customer refuses to move. The reason she is not moving cannot be heard by anyone but she is sure she is the right, and the clerk is in the wrong for asking her to change lines. This dialog continues back and forth.  I step in, seeking to help strengthen the clerk's case, ma’am you have to change lines, she cannot stay, she has a dental appointment, you have to change lines. 

The customer continues to try to explain why she cannot change lines; we still cannot hear her. In the meantime, the clerk supervisor is telling her that she can only stay five minutes past the end of her shift. We (the clerk and I) add this information to the case we are making to get this lady to change line. She is not moving. 

Though I do not believe the lady intended to be mean or hardhearted, it was nonetheless frustrating to have had to work this hard to get her to change lines. I left the store feeling bad for the gal serving us; she was just trying to do her job, just trying to get off on time, just trying to get to her dental appointments. Needs you and I can relate too. I wanted to do something. 

So I am writing this article to remind us all, myself included, that we need to be mindful not only of the time we have spent waiting but of the time the person waiting on us has been on their feet. (We have spent moments waiting, they have spent hours on their feet.) 

During this time the clerk received pressure from the lady in her line to stay, pressure from her supervisor to go, and a co-worker complained that she had not had lunch yet and it was nearly 1:30 she wanted this gal to stay longer to give her lunch. There was no way this gal could make everyone happy. 

The next time you are tempted to be rude to someone in the service industry, do them and yourself a favor, think about their day too. Be angry and sin not! Just comply with their request and let their manager know what happened. THE MANAGER IS THE ONE WHO DOES THE SCHEDULING and therefore is the one who can make the change to your customer experience. 

But by all means, please let the dear clerk get to their appointment, eat their lunch, take their break in peace without having their day ruined because they are "simply doing their job and obeying company policy." 

 Remember dear reader perspective changes everything!

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...Gratitude Priceless

I am discovering the wonder of being profoundly grateful. The joy that is found in cultivating a grateful heart. Gratitude that depends not on ones circumstances, whether you have much or have little. But acknowledging whatever your circumstances, we always have reason to be profoundly grateful! The key to living a happy life, is framing ones circumstances through the lens of gratitude. Not necessarily for your present circumstances, but looking beyond them to find reason to rejoice.#choosegratitude #gratefulheart #rejoice #rejoice

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When you are going through a valley

If you find yourself in a valley today. I wanted to remind you that God sees your life end to beginning, therefore, can be trusted to see you through the storm you are in. 

That generally speaking you find yourself overwhelmed. Rather than try and face your entire life break it down, day by day, moment by moment breath by breath. You choose whichever seems more manageable. 

How do you eat and elephant? One bite at a time the adage goes. "If you eat an elephant one bite at a time, eventually you will eat the entire elephant. If you try to gobble it down you will surely choke." 

Slow it down, pray, seek God's face, trust his heart of love for you, lean into James' wisdom that the trial comes to make you perfect and complete lacking in nothing. That this too shall pass...

May you have faith to trust God to make it through the storm. May you keep your eyes on the author and perfector of your faith. Remember that while trials are indeed part of life misery in them is optional. I pray that you will choose wisely...

Remember my beloved reader that God goes with us even in the valley, and safely guides us to the other side.

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Who touched me?

In Luke chapter 8 Jesus asks this question when the women who had been bleeding for 12 years was healed as she touches the fringe of his robe. Have you ever wondered why Jesus asks this question? Today, as I was on my morning walk, was I was struck by this question. As I pondered this issue, I was touched by the Holy Spirit’s reply.

The women had been physically healing when she touched Jesus' garment. However, emotionally and culturally she was still unclean. Her bleeding made her unclean, and she lived in isolation for those 12 years. Now her body was healed, and Jesus wanted her mind to be healed. Jesus needed to change the way she saw herself. 

To accomplish this, Jesus needed to call her out of the shadows she had been living in and bring her into the light.  When the hemorrhaging women responded to Jesus' question "who touched me?" It gave Jesus the opportunity to publically declare that she was healed, that she was now "clean." In that one moment, this women's life was transformed from the inside out. Jesus had done what no one else for 12 years had been able to do!

For the woman, Jesus was her final hope. She turned to him in desperation. But because she was unclean she had done so in the shadows. Culturally she could not approach Jesus in her unclean state. So, in faith she came up with a plan, she would lose herself in the crowds, touch the fringe of his garments and be healed. Her faith and plan were flawless. But God, I love this phrase, because it tells us that God is going to do something more. But God was not content to heal her physically. He rewarded her faith by healing her completely.

What healing do you dear reader need from God today? What is holding you back from your life? Jesus is inviting you, like the hemorrhaging women to come to him in faith and to allow him to heal you. It may not be in the blink of an eye as in the case of the women. You may have to seek him for the 12 years before the healing comes like she did. Are you willing to begin the journey? Are you willing to reach out for the help you need? Are you willing to walk the long but meaningful road to recovery? There is still hope and healing available today in Jesus' name.

Celebrate Recovery is perhaps the best place I know to point you for such healing today. Many churches also offer a free counseling ministry called Lay-Peer Counseling. (You do not have to attend their church to take advantage of this ministry) You can use Google Celebrate Recovery and Lay-Peer Counseling to find a local group. 

You beloved reader are lavishly and astonishingly loved by Jesus. His heart is to restore his image in you. Restoring his image in us means healing us mind, body, and spirit. Day by day, moment by moment. We have but to open the door to the Savior to allow that healing to begin...are you ready? Will you say yes to Jesus? Yes to healing? 

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