A Former Messianic Jew Says....

This is very sad for me, and again it reveals a part of the falling away that is going on today, that falling away that Jesus did tell us would happen. This Jewish man says he was converted to Christianity, with Jews for Jesus and Messianic Judaism. I have heard that many of these congregations are very (as Mr. Levey says in the video) cultlike, so again of course the devil can use such things to say "this is what Christianity is, it is a cult"...and this young man now preaches to Jews to warn them about people that evangelize to Jews.

 Indeed, the devil DOES NOT want Jews to truly be born of His Spirit. Satan doesn't want anyone to come to Christ especially the Jews for whom satan has a special and particular hatred and finds all kinds of ways to lead people astray, as he did with this young man, and of course that hatred then gets blameshifted to be hatred that comes from the God of the New Testament and from Jesus. Sigh. It is satan that has sent people to hell, satan is the one that made the need for one a reality. Yes God created satan, yes satan became evil and God knew that would happen...but just as you and I can predict certain things with great accuracy, and perhaps even cause things to be put things into motion that turn out to lead to tragic events does not thereby mean that we made it to be so with that as our sole purpose in mind....even so, God knew that would happen therefore He also created the antidote, the one that is being mocked and jeered about in this video, and lots of other blogs and places as well...


At about the 12:30 mark he mentioned his mother's disappointment with his becoming a Christian: "had I become a Buddhist or an atheist it wouldn't have been as bad..." and there it is, it is better to believe in a fake God or no God at all than to believe in Jesus...and the devil couldn't be behind such a thing because there is no such thing as a devil...or so the devil says....


  Being born again is not just "an experience"... if God did it, it is a reality that doesn't go away.

A Little R & R

I recently returned from an amazing trip with my husband...I will share a few photos in this posting, maybe to go into more detail at a future date...or maybe not, God knows :)

This was taken at a rest stop, we did quite a bit of driving, it was good to get out and stretch our legs...

...it was a huge rest stop,

and the view was spectacular;

we were somewhere between Phoenix and Flagstaff...

these images don't do it justice

I don't know those people, 

they just happened to get in my shot...

the cacti are just beginning to blossom

I can only imagine how beautiful the desert will be

in a week or two...

Our little road trip was so amazing, we decided on the spur of the moment to go west, and it was so wonderful! I only wish we could do it more often...but oh so thankful we could do it at all...

Well, that's all I have time for today :)  <3

The Problem with Atheists...

https://www.recruiter.com/i/how-to-control-for-me-and-against-me-thoughts/

A few weeks ago I began reading a book...for me this is a tough assignment on several levels...The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky is translated from Russian to English (the version I'm reading is supposed to be one of the better ones, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volkhonsky) so perhaps part of the problem is the fact that words often do not translate directly from one language to another and often make for tedious reading. Another problem is the Christianity that is presented in the novel is Russian Orthodox, similar to Eastern Orthodox, it is very different from the Christianity we experience in the west. I go several days at a time in avoiding the reading of it, so after these weeks I'm only at the halfway point, sigh and groan. I hadn't heard or known anything about this story or it's author, I saw it on our bookshelf (my husband purchased it a couple of years ago) and decided to dive in. Interestingly the topic of what atheists believe and think are explored in this story and the hero of this story struggles with these amoral people from the context of his Russian Orthodox beliefs. Although I have encountered these (atheistic) beliefs before, and not just from atheists, but directly from my own mistaken and fallen understanding of what I wanted to believe prior to being saved...encountering them in this story is timely, considering the recent events and my own struggles with the blasphemous utterings from "former Christians turned atheists". I hope to give a blogpost or two in the future (after finishing this drudgery of a book reading) to explore a few things that come up in this assignment....in the meantime, I share a debate that I enjoyed between an atheist and a Christian:


Dinesh D'Souza: "It's not an intellectual revolt, it IS a moral revolt"

Spring!

Today I had to do a couple of errands so I took a walk and went downtown...and on the way I saw

crocuses!

and

a nice scene for a future needlepoint project? maybe...

and a reminder....

the beauty of the day was offset 

by

this reminder

that this world is cursed with 

death

and

corruption

and then in my own garden...

yellow crocuses

I hope I have purple ones also...

I planted bulbs last fall...

they were a mix of yellow, purple and white...

these are the first to bloom! 

I love them <3

There have been a few things that have been heavy on my mind and heart, but I am still ruminating

over them, perhaps they will be the subject of a post in the near future. In the meantime 

I'll be thankful for these blessings and reminders, and will pray about the other things....