I was explaining Schrodinger’s cat to my wife last week.  I heard the back door slam and a moment later the car left the driveway.  I haven’t seen nor heard from her since.  What?

Zero to Hero: You

"He's still working on me."

What makes a Zero?  What causes a Zero to become a Hero?  Looking back over the characters we have studied in this series we ask, "What did these people have in common?"

1. Potential for good
2. Fear of God
3. Imperfection

What do I need to do to make sure I go down the right path?

What makes a Zero?

[The reading of the lesson from the Gospel of Matthew 12:22-33.]

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."  The Zero is torn inside, double-minded, unstable.

The underlying issue is whether one is divided or not.

It truly is about your soul.  It is more than what you do, how you think, or the details of your life.  It is the orientation of the heart that makes or breaks.

• The Hero ultimately depends on God.
• The Zero tries to accomplish good by his own strength; tries to be his own hero.

"Do it yourself."

The Hero always leans heavily on God; the Zero tries to do it himself.  The Zero goes after his own desires, puts God's plan on the back burner.

• Zero runs down a negative path, is overcritical of self and others.
• Hero gets to the point of recognition of his own need, looks to God's power.

Zero lives in active disobedience to God's will; Hero does the will of God.

Zero gropes for control; Hero lets go of control, implements God's plan in his life.

A Hero is flexible, goes with the flow of God's will.

 [Pastor related Christ's story of the houses built on sand and on rock, respectively.]

"The most important thing in your life is not what you do but who you become." --Dallas Willard

The potential for either Zero or Hero is in every one of us.  It is not about what you do, but who you become.  But.  Everything you do helps shape who you become.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW TO PUT YOU IN THE HALL OF FAITH?
What have you been building into your life?  Now is the time to allow the Holy Spirit to assess you building, allow Him to bring in the wrecking ball if you need to start anew.

Pastor Johnnie Blair

Sunday morning

Seems to me that the principal thing the:polls prove is that the people who respond to pollsters are too dumb to be allowed to elect their leaders.  Oh, you already knew that?

Zero to Hero: Gideon

The scripture lesson is found in the sixth chapter of Judges.

"Let it go."

All want to be free and happy, loosed from their baggage.

Gideon's baggage came through 1) his family history, and 2) his lack of faith.

He said, "I am the least of the least."  He had trust and self-esteem issues.

We say of our baggage, "This is our lives."  That is a lie.

Addictions may be brought on by insecurities ingrained to the point finally at which we can not get free.

"I won't put up with it anymore."  We reach the point at which we lash out at others.

We convince ourselves that this is life.

But

 God wants to free us from all our baggage.

God had a plan for Gideon.  He has a plan for you.

How to get loose.

1. Cry out to God.
2. Identify specifically and confess it.
3. Communicate your struggle to another person.  Who can you trust?  Ask God to help you find that right person.
4. Commit to turning around and living with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

It is in trusting God that we are free!

LET IT GO!

Breakthrough doesn't occur until there is a breakdown.

Want to be free? God can provide that.  He will free you. 

"Surely I will be with you." --God (Judges 6:19)

Pastor Joe Deckard

Sunday morning

Wannabees

From WaPo this morning.  Campaign funds raised in millions of dollars.

Perry------17

Jindal------ 9

Cruz-------51

Rubio-----45

Huckabee -8

2nd quarter only

Clinton ----47.5

Sanders----15

O’Malley--  2

Santorum -0.6

Menendez 1.5

Trump  --  1.8 borrowed from himself.

Totaling almost 200 million dollars.  And it is a year and a quarter before the election.

If this doesn’t make you sick, you probably don't much care about what is going on in our country.  If it doesn’t make you mad, you have better self-control than I.

Update 7/17  WAPO HIGHLIGHTS:
— “Clinton burns through millions as she assembles a political battleship,” by Matea Gold and Anu Narayanswamy: “Clinton’s organization has spent nearly $19 million — or 40 percent of the $47 million it raised in its first quarter, a year and a half before the 2016 election.

Zero to Hero: Samson

Judges 13: 1-5, 24-25

What does God want for us in our hearts?
Is there anything that can separate us from God?
How many act as though they are the Lord of their own life?

God expects more of us than what we give.

Samson was directed of God to take the Nazarite vow for his lifetime.
Review of those vows Numbers 6.

The long hair is to represent devotion to God.

Yet in spite of his vows and his love for God, Samson had three glaring flaws

1. a desire for women
2. a penchant for violence expressed in fits of rage 
3. a rebellious heart

[Pastor talked about the idiocy of both Samson and Delilah in the games they played with respect to the secret of Samson's amazing strength.]

Finally we see that Samson is more loyal to Delilah than he is to God. He gives in to her nagging, and here we read the saddest line in all the Bible: He did not know that the Lord had left him.

The choice between God and an ungodly and unhealthy relationship.

This time Samson's choice took him too far.  His captors gouged out his eyes and marched him to the mill to turn the stone.  He had taken the place of the donkey.

Sin will make a donkey out of you.

The sin of Samson brought him to his knees.  If sin is not dealt with it will bring you to desperation, and sooner or later to your demise.  Samson's sins are common today.  Samson loved God, but his issue was sin.

1.  Lust.  There has never been a greater battle to fight.  We must be careful not to succumb to this sin.  Pornography is rampant.
We love God, but we love our sin.

  God needs us to relinquish all that we have to Him.

2.  Violence, anger and rage.  We know the Golden Rule, but we are really bad at living it.  Like Samson, we want people  to "get what they deserve" for what they have done to us.  forgetting God's kingdom, we are trying to be Lord of our own lives.  As Jesus said to Peter,

Put your sword away.

3.Rebellious heart.  Every one of Samson's Nazarite vows was broken.  He sold his soul, and only in repentance and by the grace of God did he find redemption.

If we could but see the filth and decay and disgusting stuff that results from these sins we could but ask "How enticing is this?"

What kind of dangerous road are you on?

Pastor Johnnie Blair

Sunday morning

Old Man Watching Parade

2014

1942

Landline is Dead

Having an episode with hypotension?  Here's a way to get your blood boiling.

Call your telecommunications company to report a service outage.  Yes, of course, you have to borrow someone's phone.

"Communications" is a misnomer when applied to these companies.

Zero to Hero: Who's the Hero?

Pastor averred that if she were Jewish she might like to have the book of Judges removed from the Canon since it lays out not only the good in the history of the people but the bad and the ugly as well.

God's command to Joshua:

Drive out the inhabitants of the land; do not adopt their ways, do not worship their gods.

When God led his people into battle there were no casualties on His side

Yet a pattern developed.

1. The people fall into sin.
2. They become slaves to their enemies.
3. They cry out to God for mercy.

Why did God care?

"Israel is my people; they will make my name to be praised."  God, quoted in Jeremiah.

Jabin had ravaged Israel for decades.  God appointed Deborah Judge over Israel, ordered her to lead the people against the oppressor.  She enlists Barak, tribes of Benjamin, Naphtali, Zebulon respond. Jael drives the spike through General Sisera's temple.  Victory.

Who is the hero?  Was it Deborah?  Barak? The responding tribes? Jael?

So we ask, Who is the Zero?  Tribes of Reuben, Gad and Asher, city of Meroz.  (Judges 5)

What is our purpose?

 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.  --I Corinthians 6:20

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; Which in time past were not a people but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. --I Peter 2: 9-10

Our purpose is to proclaim His glory!

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.  --Romans 3:23

Coming short of God's glory is sin.

To do what is right in our own eyes, as the Israelites did, is sin.  Unlike them, we do not have a book in which is written all our junk.

[Pastor related a personal story in which she gave grace because of God's leading to a homeless person, Ed, whose gambling addiction stripped him of everything.]

"We are one decision away from the homeless person.  We are all Ed."

Save for the grace of God, there go I.

It is the grace of God that separates us from any person walking down the street.

Church is not within the walls.  We, the Church, are to go to the people.  We are going to be part of what God is doing, or we are going to be like Meroz who were cursed.

Where is our gathering?  Wherever God puts us with people and with the people He puts in our pathway.

We will be the Body of Christ, or we will stay home within the four walls with nothing to rejoice over.

Pastor Rita Koon

Sunday morning

Life is what you make it

I finished reading the post I had prepared for the blog.

Missus laughed, then said, "You're silly."

I responded, laughing, "Isn[t it great? I've lived more than eight decades and I can still be silly!

The Nose Knows

Rhinoplasty has advanced to the stage such that the surgeon can do anything with a nose except to make it stay out of other people's business.

TV Viewing Improves

Fifteen years ago then for a couple of years the series Battlebots aired on cable television, Comedy Central specifically.  Then it disappeared.

Battlebots is /are back!  And on ABC.  I shall have to return to ABC which I haven't watched in decades.

Yes, I am a simple person.  It does not take convoluted plots or blood and guts to entertain me.  Now robots fighting to the death, that's entertainment!