Musings of a Snickerdoodle

The title of this book, Dangerous Virtues: How to Follow Jesus When Evil Masquerades as Good by John Koessler, caught my attention when I was looking at Moody Publishers books offered to reviewers.  I looked at the description and realized that this was a book that might be a pretty interesting read.  I wasn't disappointed. Koessler makes the case that the 'seven deadly sins' have become the seven dangerous virtues of our day. Rather than moral ambiguity being the main problem of our day; our age actually has a standard of "morals" that they hold to quite firmly (though their justification of them is probably ambiguous).  The problem is that those 'morals' don't meet God's standard of morality and in some, or most cases, our age's morals are actually evils in disguise or, as the author puts it: "dangerous virtues". Things that used to be obvious sins are now praised and held up as high moral standards of our day.   Koessler talks abo...

  "To sin is to love yourself at the expense of your neighbor.  More than that, it is to love yourself at the expense of God. Sin-shaped love expresses itself primarily in the form of narcissism.  It is self-absorbed love. This affection is hate masquerading as love, compelling us to engage in self-destructive behavior. Sin promises freedom and delivers slavery.  It speaks the language of friendship while treating us like enemies.  Sin is a cruel master who promises good wages only to reward our loyalty with hard service, disappointment and death.  For some reason, we return again and again to this false lover and expect a different result. The answer to sinful lust is love - God's love, which comes to us from the outside, like the righteousness of Christ.  Adopting the language that Martin Luther used to speak of Christ's righteousness, we might call it 'alien love' because it does not originate with us. It is a love that begins with God and can come ...

  I haven't been writing as much lately as I haven't found any new books I want to read and review (yet), I seem to be growing pickier and pickier, at least when it comes to 'Christian' books. And I haven't yet found any more history books that I want to read and review. But in the meantime, I've been working on a lot of family history/genealogy research stuff for fun.   One of the resources that I use for that is MyHeritage, I utilize their free family tree building software. They came out with a special technology that really, really impressed me.   It impressed me so much that I wanted to share it here.   They have released a Photo Enhancer, which brings the faces of people in your old photos into sharp focus using a 'deep learning' technology….which, somehow, seems to be able to figure out what blurry faces looked like in real life…if that makes any sense…   Anyway, I tried it out when they first came out with it, and was kind of impressed, ...

 "True spiritual illumination comes from Scripture,  which is 'profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for every good work' (2 Tim. 3: 16-17).  As the man of God is equipped for every good work, we see that Scripture is not only indispensable, but also sufficient.  No other supposed sources of truth need be consulted to receive the spiritual illumination necessary for salvation. "  Victor Kuligin The Language of Salvation: Discovering the Riches of What it Means to be Saved Find more quotes on my quotes blog: http://snickerdoodlesquotes.blogspot.com/

A heart for others and their actual needs should be what stirs us 'to the heart' - we are to look on others, not for how they can encourage us, but how we may encourage the. The potential of lives forever changed should drive us, fulfill us, as it did our Lord - many did not respond as this group (later in Jesus' ministry), but it did not change His 'fulfilling sustenance' (doing the will of God and not allowing predictable norms to dictate the possibilities we look for) Our focus is to be looking for God's working (readiness for harvest) realizing He may have been "working on" someone long before we met them. - Don Lambert  excerpts from his studies on John 6 You may listen to the sermon here:  http://dbc.sermon.net/main/main/21629112 Find more quotes on my quotes blog: http://snickerdoodlesquotes.blogspot.com/

What is it to wait on the Lord? June 7, 2017 By:  Rick Lambert (When I was going through some of the most difficult trials I have ever experienced) Is it a blessing or is it berating? I'm talking about the trial of waiting; That heavy weight of God's neglect that is ever-stating, And the purposeless days that are so devastating. The endurance it demands is perplexing, And the energy it consumes is distressing. The long days and lonely nights that keep me guessing As I search and ponder what happened to God's blessing. Each day, joy crumbles and is replaced with mourning, And peace disappears into forlorning. But such an event must become the loud warning That my heart is being deceived into scorning. Is waiting really as bad as I am thinking? Perhaps it is a wonderful tool to stop me from shrinking As it stares in silence at me without blinking. Surely it cannot be present for my sinking. Waiting actually seems painless in the scheme of its framing, And maybe with God's...

Let me add in conclusion, that the passage which I have chosen for my text (Rev 1:3), in which a blessing is promised to all who read or hear this prophecy, has long appeared to me, to be utterly inconsistent with the popular historical or polemical interpretations.  If such interpretations, or even the principles upon which they proceed, be true, the Apocalypse can be read and understood by the scholar and the man of learning only: by him who has penetrated into the secrets of history, and traced the rise and progress and downfall of dynasties and doctrines; but to the poor, the unlettered, and to those who read the words of the prophecy alone, to those, who from their inability perhaps to read, are forced to content themselves with hearing it read by others; to such it is impossible, on the principles of the historical commentators, the Apocalypse can be any thing but an enigma and a riddle.  How can they keep those things that are written in this prophecy, to whom the thing...