Last Day of 2011

I Press Toward the Mark

   Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but [this] one thing [I do], forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13, 14  

     Another year of your life closes today. How can you look back upon it? Have you made advancement in the divine life? Have you increased in spirituality? Have you crucified self, with the affections and lusts? Have you an increased interest in the study of God's Word? Have you gained decided victories over your own feelings and waywardness? Oh, what has been the record of your life for the year which has now passed into eternity, never to be recalled?  
     As you enter upon a new year, let it be with an earnest resolve to have your course onward and upward. Let your life be more elevated and exalted than it has hitherto been. Make it your aim not to seek your own interest and pleasure, but to advance the cause of your Redeemer. Remain not in a position where you ever need help yourself, and where others have to guard you to keep you in the narrow way. You may be strong to exert a sanctifying influence upon others. You may be where your soul's interest will be awakened to do good to others, to comfort the sorrowful, strengthen the weak, and to bear your testimony for Christ whenever opportunity offers. Aim to honor God in everything, always and everywhere. Carry your religion into everything.
     Prepare for eternity with such a zeal as you have not yet manifested. Educate your mind to love the Bible, to love the prayer meeting, to love the hour of meditation, and, above all, the hour when the soul communes with God. Become heavenly-minded if you would unite with the heavenly choir in the mansions above....
     A new page is turned in the book of the recording angel. . . . Let a record be stamped there which you will not be ashamed to have revealed to the gaze of men and angels.
From My Life Today - Page 369

Something to Think About

A recent news article...

When Americans banned Christmas

By The Week's Editorial Staff | The Week – Tue, Dec 20, 2011

The first 'War on Christmas' was declared almost 400 years ago, courtesy of our Puritan forefathers

How did the first settlers celebrate Christmas? 
They didn't. The Pilgrims who came to America in 1620 were strict Puritans, with firm views on religious holidays such as Christmas and Easter. Scripture did not name any holiday except the Sabbath, they argued, and the very concept of "holy days" implied that some days were not holy. "They for whom all days are holy can have no holiday," was a common Puritan maxim. Puritans were particularly contemptuous of Christmas, nicknaming it "Foolstide" and banning their flock from any celebration of it throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. On the first Dec. 25 the settlers spent in Plymouth Colony, they worked in the fields as they would on any other day. The next year, a group of non-Puritan workmen caught celebrating Christmas with a game of "stoole-ball" — an early precursor of baseball — were punished by Gov. William Bradford. "My conscience cannot let you play while everybody else is out working," he told them. 

Why didn't Puritans like Christmas?
They had several reasons, including the fact that it did not originate as a Christian holiday. The upper classes in ancient Rome celebrated Dec. 25 as the birthday of the sun god Mithra. The date fell right in the middle of Saturnalia, a monthlong holiday dedicated to food, drink, and revelry, and Pope Julius I is said to have chosen that day to celebrate Christ's birth as a way of co-opting the pagan rituals. Beyond that, the Puritans considered it historically inaccurate to place the Messiah's arrival on Dec. 25. They thought Jesus had been born sometime in September.

So their objections were theological? Not exclusively. The main reason Puritans didn't like Christmas was that it was a raucously popular holiday in late medieval England. Each year, rich landowners would throw open their doors to the poor and give them food and drink as an act of charity. The poorest man in the parish was named the "Lord of Misrule," and the rich would wait upon him at feasts that often descended into bawdy drunkenness. Such decadence never impressed religious purists. "Men dishonor Christ more in the 12 days of Christmas," wrote the 16th-century clergyman Hugh Latimer, "than in all the 12 months besides." 

When did that view win out? Puritans in the English Parliament eliminated Christmas as a national holiday in 1645, amid widespread anti-Christmas sentiment. Settlers in New England went even further, outlawing Christmas celebrations entirely in 1659. Anyone caught shirking their work duties or feasting was forced to pay a significant penalty of five shillings. Christmas returned to England in 1660, but in New England it remained banned until the 1680s, when the Crown managed to exert greater control over its subjects in Massachusetts. In 1686, the royal governor of the colony, Sir Edmund Andros, sponsored a Christmas Day service at the Boston Town House. Fearing a violent backlash from Puritan settlers, Andros was flanked by redcoats as he prayed and sang Christmas hymns. 

Did the Puritans finally relent? Not at all. They kept up their boycott of Christmas in Massa­chusetts for decades. Cotton Mather, New England's most influential religious leader, told his flock in 1712 that "the feast of Christ's nativity is spent in reveling, dicing, carding, masking, and in all licentious liberty...by mad mirth, by long eating, by hard drinking, by lewd gaming, by rude reveling!" European settlers in other American colonies continued to celebrate it, however, as both a pious holiday and a time for revelry. In his Poor Richard's Almanac of 1739, Philadelphian Benjamin Franklin wrote of Christmas: "O blessed Season! Lov'd by Saints and Sinners / For long Devotions, or for longer Dinners." 

So Christmas was finally accepted at that time? No. Anti-Christmas sentiment flared up again around the time of the American Revolution. Colonial New Englanders began to associate Christmas with royal officialdom, and refused to mark it as a holiday. Even after the U.S. Constitution came into effect, the Senate assembled on Christmas Day in 1797, as did the House in 1802. It was only in the following decades that disdain for the holiday slowly ebbed away. Clement Clarke Moore's poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" — aka "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" — was published in New York in 1823 to enormous success. In 1836, Alabama became the first state to declare Christmas a public holiday, and other states soon followed suit. But New England remained defiantly Scrooge-like; as late as 1850, schools and markets remained open on Christmas Day. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow finally noted a "transition state about Christmas" in New England in 1856. "The old Puritan feeling prevents it from being a cheerful, hearty holiday; though every year makes it more so," he wrote. Christmas Day was formally declared a federal holiday by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1870.

 http://news.yahoo.com/americans-banned-christmas-124800795.html

Does it make you think? Or, are you just rolling your eyes?

**I am adding the following video clips after I originally posted this. I think it goes well with the above article.

Real Talk - The True Meaning of Christmas_Part 1 from OH TV on Vimeo.


Real Talk - The True Meaning of Christmas_Part 2 from OH TV on Vimeo.


Real Talk - The True Meaning Of Christmas_Part 3 from OH TV on Vimeo.

Your thoughts?

The Sabbath Designed to Bring Us Into Harmony With God

Sabbath blessings dear ones! I just wanted to share something I read today with you all. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a dear friend recently regarding the Sabbath. I pray that it speaks to you all, as the Lord has meant it to.

To Be Like Jesus, Page 146

And He said to them, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:” Mark 2:27, KJV.

When accused of Sabbathbreaking at Bethesda, Jesus defended Himself by affirming His Sonship to God, and declaring that He worked in harmony with the Father. Now that the disciples are attacked, He cites His accusers to examples from the Old Testament, acts performed on the Sabbath by those who were in the service of God.

The Jewish teachers prided themselves on their knowledge of the Scriptures, and in the Savior’s answer there was an implied rebuke for their ignorance of the Sacred Writings. “Have ye not read so much as this,” He said, “what David did, when himself was an hungred, and they which were with him; how he went into the house of God, and did take and eat the shewbread ...; which it is not lawful to eat but for the priests alone?” (Luke 6:3, 4). “And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). “Have ye not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless? But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple” (Matthew 12:5, 6). “The Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath” (Mark 2:28)....

Jesus did not let the matter pass without administering a rebuke to His enemies. He declared that in their blindness they had mistaken the object of the Sabbath. He said, “If ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless” (Matthew 12:7). Their many heartless rites could not supply the lack of that truthful integrity and tender love which will ever characterize the true worshiper of God....

It is the service of love that God values. When this is lacking, the mere round of ceremony is an offense to Him. So with the Sabbath. It was designed to bring men and women into communion with God; but when the mind was absorbed with wearisome rites, the object of the Sabbath was thwarted. Its mere outward observance was a mockery.

Grace

I'm sitting here, staring at a blank page. Sure, I'm typing words now but it's still blank. Empty really. Lately, I have felt withdrawn. Certainly not empty because I the Lord, my God is with me. Just withdrawn. I remember back a few years ago, life was different. I was in a different season then. I had 2 young boys and 1 baby boy. We were a one car family, and my husband had to be at work at 6am. So, we were stuck home during the day. Not so bad really, but at the time it was a bit nerve-racking. But, life seemed simpler then. Quieter, easier.

Now, I  know that wasn't really the case. My house has rarely ever been quiet with all of these boys running around. I'm just romanticizing the past. These days though, it really does feel like that's how it was. Because now I have 3 big boys running around the house and 1 little girl trying to keep up with them (and one resting until the Lord comes). And with these dear children that the Lord has blessed me with life is busy. We have play-dates, appointments, and classes to get to. Not to mention our home-school assignments to complete. With all of this I still need to find the time to keep up with my home business that I enjoy so much.

Time for 'me' is few and far between. But that doesn't really bother me. The Lord has always been good to me. Everyday He makes me new. I can't comprehend how He does this though. How graceful He is to me each and every day because I know I am not that graceful. How can He continue to love me, and show me grace, when I am so unworthy of it all? I am at awe every time I think about it. At awe, and very, very thankful.

Every day it is my prayer to be just as graceful to others, as He is to me. Graceful to the ones that God has put in my charge. Isn't it sad that the ones so close and dear to us are the ones that seem to get less grace? Why is is so hard to be graceful to our loved ones? Maybe it is because we are with them each and every day. Maybe because we see all of their faults continually. Even if this is true, it certainly doesn't make it okay. Jesus sees us as we are, each and every day. yet, He still gives us grace. He still loves us. Amazing. Simply amazing.
I want to have this kind of grace to others. Is it possible?

The answer, of course, is yes! We can have this kind of grace but only through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit dwells in us. We are to let Him be in complete control of ourselves. If we let Him live in us, He will shine through us. Any time we are graceful, it is because we are letting Him shine through. Anytime we are not graceful, it is because we ourselves are coming through. The light is not there. Just our dirty, sinful selves.

Oh that it wouldn't be that way! I want to be immersed in His love so that He just pours forth from me. I don't want people to see Ellen. I want people to see Jesus. Isn't that the way it is supposed to be? The only way I can gain this, is to be fully immersed in His Word daily, hourly. It seems impossible but I know that it is not. I know that with Christ ALL things are possible. We can be perfect but only through Him can it be true. By ourselves we can achieve nothing.

In this season of my life, I can finally accept this. Even through all of the busyness. I can make the time to ask Him for His help in giving grace, to ask for His light to shine forth from me in all things. Especially at home, where He has called me to be. This is where I struggle. Daily. Hourly. Who says I can't take a moment every hour to stop what I am doing, and ask Him for help? Certainly not God. The only one who says I can't is Satan. It's only when I give him a foothold in my life that I can not attain this.

For me, right now, I choose to NOT give him that foothold any more. I will pray without ceasing. I will do this because my family is more important to me. My love for Jesus is more important. I have the good news that God has already won. Jesus has already won. He triumphed on the cross of Calvary. He is returning very soon. We can see all of the prophecies being fulfilled right in front of our eyes. I don't know about you but I am going to wake up. Because I know that:

"wide [is] the gate, and broad [is] the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait [is] the gate, and narrow [is] the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." Matthew 7:13 & 14

*Just a note: This post started out going in one direction and took a turn somewhere. But isn't that the best way? To have your own thought, and then the Holy Spirit takes over and brings you somewhere even better? I certainly think so!