a fierce heart

"Jesus is no pale-faced alter boy with His hair parted in the middle, speaking softly, avoiding confrontation, who at last gets Himself killed because He has no way out. He works with wood, commands the loyalty of dockworkers. He is the Lord of hosts, the captain of Angles armies. And when Christ returns, He is at the head of a dreadful company, mounted on a white horse, with a double-edge sword, His robe dipped in Blood (Rev. 19). Now that sounds a lot more like William Wallace than it does Mother Teresa.”

“No Question about it - there is something fierce in the heart of God.”

John Eldredge
Wild at Heart

are you bored?

“Walk into most churches in America, have a look around, and ask yourself this question: What is a Christian Man? Don’t listen to what is said, look at what you find there. There is no doubt about it. You’d have to admit a Christian man is….bored.” John Eldredge

Yet, our God is anything but boring. Our God is a God of judgment and war in Judges, a God of purpose and rebuilding in Nehemiah, a God of creativity in Genesis, a God of Kings in I & II Samuel, a God of Love in I Corinthians, and a God of Sacrifice on the Cross. He has risen up the most common and meek of men like Gideon and Jephthah to be Mighty Warriors delivering His people from bondage. He has decimated nations that have sought to destroy His chosen people. He delivered David from Goliath and blessed Solomon as the wisest King to ever live. He drove the money changers out of the temple, and called the Pharisees a “brood of vipers”.

Be proud, stand strong and live a life of adventure and purpose. Stand when your heart says stand. Speak out when you know it is right. Be bold and speak truth. Fight for the honor of your God. Be men of courage as Christ was courageous.

When you find yourself on the presuppose of decision, your heart is racing, your chest pounding, and you feel the Holy Spirit pulling, don’t hesitate, LEAP, for it is then that you will come alive and your heart will be re-born.

what is going on?

For every 10 men in the average church…

• 9 will have kids who leave the church
• 8 will not find their jobs satisfying
• 5 have a major problem with pornography
• 4 will get divorced - affecting a total of 1,000,000 children each year
• Only 1 will have a biblical worldview
• All 10 will struggle to balance family & work

Do these numbers impact you the way they did me the first time I read them?

My Prayer:

Father stir up from within us a generation of men who will courageously stand against the devastation of mediocrity and who will fight for their brothers, their sons and daughters, their wives, and their homes as called out in Nehemiah 14. Doing all of this so that you our Lord, our Savior, our Warrior, our Deliverer, might proclaim "The Lord is with you mighty warrior".

much more than a help mate

“It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” Gen. 2:18

As I sat hypnotized by the imagery and sensory overload of The Lord of the Rings “The Return of the King” I could not help but be moved by the magnificent metaphor of marriage as Samwise and Frodo reach the pinnacle of their journey on the ravaging coals of Mt. Doom. With the completion of their transcendent cause in reach, Frodo collapses in exhaustion. The next scene will forever be burned into my memory. With faces marred by dirt, sweat, and exhaustion, Samwise mustered every last bit of courage, love, determination, and strength he had, picked his friend up and uttered the following statement: “I can not carry your burden for you, but I can carry you”. WOW! How many times in my own life have I been down in desperate need of being carried? You see, our Father in His omniscience new that at the very least we as men needed a “helper compareable to him", as we seek to carry out the great calling He has placed on our lives. However it is in those times of desperation when we find ourselves in the wastelands of life that our wives become much more than a helper and in fact can carry us as Samwise carried Frodo. Our wives can not carry our burden for us but many times they have carried us.

In Proverbs 31 we are given an epilogue of a Wife of Noble Character or perhaps an outline for what God has ordained as His standard for a Godly Wife. Hidden in verse 23 are the truths of a man who has no doubt experienced some carrying; “Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.” Prov. 31:23

So the next time you find yourself in the wastelands of life, look down, for you might see two set’s of footprints, those of your savior and those of your wife as she carries you while you can not carry yourself.

a prayer for our nation

For many of you the following prayer may be old hat as it has been cycled and re-cycled via e-mail for the past couple of years. To give it context it was delivered at one states opening congressional session. In that light my intent is not to re-circulate, but to take from it a challenge, a challenge to SPEAK TRUTH. It is incumbent upon us as men to stand strong and to speak the truth boldly. The opposition has spat in the face of Christian men hedging his bet on our deafening silence. Will you continue to be silent?

I'm sorry I couldn't hear you!!!!

A Prayer for Our Nation

"Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.
We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem. We have abused power and called it politics. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.
We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.
Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Amen!"

Minister Joe Wright

Spread the Word

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no greater joy

I am a son, a friend, a colleague, a brother, a believer, a husband, a warrior, a fighter, a peace maker, a leader, a man, and a father. I AM A FATHER! It should be futile for me to attempt to describe through a rainbow of words the outflow from my heart that comes with being a FATHER. I suppose some might find peace in the notion that our children are not our own, but God’s, who has entrusted us with the stewardship and nurturing of His precious gift. For me however that stewardship comes with a great and burdeness joy, perhaps like that of Gideon as he stood at the Spring of Harod awaiting war, awaiting victory.

My children are my heart, a heart that yearns for authentic joy and love, the kind of love that can only be exemplified by our Lord and savior as He gave His only son to die because He loves me. What kind of love that must be that I have been given but a glimpse of through the eyes of love that my heart radiates for my son and daughter. So tonight as I cuddle with my son telling nighttime stories of trains and race cars, I will stop in a moment of meditation and thank my Lord for loving me, for creating me as man, and entrusting me with the hearts of his precious gifts that are my beloved. You see authentic joy lies in those moments of seed sowing in the fertile soil of family and those things of eternal consequence and significance. It is the pursuit of the temporal (career, money, car’s ect.) that breeds a temporary joy and an eternal thirst.

Nehemiah 4:14

the first ten laws

I was recently entrenched in a heated debate with a socialistic atheist who, as any good socialistic atheists would, threw out the following propaganda laden question with absolutely no education or knowledge to substantiate it’s insinuation:

"Answer me why then the ten commandments were not the first ten laws?"

My response is as follows. I will allow you as well to root out the details for yourself through scripture.

“For the sake of time I am not going to list the Ten Commandments from Exodus 20:2-17 (these were the Ten Commandments on the first set of tablets) and the Ten Commandments from Deuteronomy 5:6-22 (these were the Ten Commandments on the second set of tablets). I will let you do your home work and study your own bible to see, that contrary to your question, they are the same. Where I believe your confusion lies is quite common amongst atheist, agnostics, and secularists who try to dispute the inherency of scripture and the significance of the Ten Commandments as exampled by the following web site http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/whichcom.htm. Most people’s confusion is centered around Exodus 34. The problem with this argument is that what are written in Exodus 34 are not the Ten Commandments but rather the covenant or law that God made with the Jews. Most people skip right over Exodus 34:4 “And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone.” It was at this time Moses hewed/carved the Ten Commandments on the new tablets. The same as the first. The covenant or law was to be lived out through the Ten Commandments.”

secularist debunk

Within the secularist movement it is a common argument that because the word God is not found anywhere in the United states Constitution the framers did not want religion to influence public policy nor that God/religion was a decisive factor in the formation of the Constitution of the United States.

It is a fact that the WORD God is not found in the US Constitution. However that by no means substantiates that God is not found in the US constitution.

A simplistic response to the above assumption is that the framers of our Constitution did not want America to become a theocracy defined: (a form of government in which God or a deity is recognized as the supreme civil ruler, the God's or deity's laws being interpreted by the ecclesiastical authorities.) They did not believe in a theocratic state. The framers of our Constitution did not want clergymen to pick Presidents and set government policy. This in no way, however, is to say that they saw no role for God or religion in government.

To flush out the flaw in a secularist thought process, as stated in my first paragraph, we have to turn to science. Most people would not consider Charles Darwin, the author of “On the Origin of Species” 1859, to be someone important in order to understand the U.S. Constitution. The fact is it is Darwin that designed the framework for how secularists see the constitution. In fact a case could be made that he has had a greater or equal impact on the Constitution as the delegates at the constitutional convention! The reason is simple, Darwin changed the way many see the Constitution. The dominant legal philosophy in the United States today is secularism. To the secularist the existence of God is irrelevant when understanding government and therefore you read the Constitution in a way that is totally foreign to its framers. It is important to remember that when the Constitution was written, the only possible explanation for the existence of the Universe was special creation. Therefore, all of the delegates at the Philadelphia convention were creationists of one form or another. Secularism defined: (the belief that religion should not be involved with the ordinary social and political activities of a country) did not even exist in 1787. So to assume that because the WORD God can not be found in our constitution we are to conclude the framers never intended God or religion to be an influence government is fundamentally incorrect.

Generally, the word "God" will appear in two places in most constitutions, in the preamble and the religion clauses in the bill of rights. For example, the word "God" appears in the preamble in eight state constitutions. In four states, the "Supreme Ruler of the Universe" is used instead. By far, the most popular divine reference in a preamble is "Almighty God." This appears in the preamble of 30 state constitutions. So we must assume that based on secularist theory of if the word God can not be found in United states Constitution the framers did not want religion to influence public policy nor that religion was a decisive factor in the formation of the Constitution of the United States, the opposite is true, meaning that based on the above facts concerning the word God in 30 states preamble, they all acknowledge and accept the importance of God and religion as an influencer on government and policy. Secularists hang their hat on being of an open minded persuasion. If that is reality than they must not turn a blind eye to what the framers said themselves:

George Washington’s Proclamation to the American people after congress completed it’s work on the 1st amendment: "Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor”

John Adams: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Charles Carroll - signer of the Declaration of Independence
" Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure...are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments."

You can not summize that the absence of the word God is to conclude that God and religion were not instrumental in the construction of the constitution and our government as evidence by the Constitutional Convention of 1787, where James Madison proposed the plan to divide the central government into three branches. He discovered this model of government from the Bible, as he read Isaiah 33:22;
“For the LORD is our judge,
the LORD is our lawgiver,
the LORD is our king;
He will save us.”

what it's all about

Significance is not a destination but rather a journey. As men God has called us to Lead Courageously, Reject Passivity, Accept Responsibility, and Embrace His Supernatural Calling for our lives. It is within this Divinely Concocted Recipe that true Significance is derived. My journey is yours. Will you join me?

Questions?

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Construction

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