Week Forty-Six, 2019
A PLACE TO STAND
By Florida Senator John Grant, Retired
Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the LORD showed him the whole land – from Gilead to Dan. Deuteronomy 34:1
Moses did it and it was on my bucket list as well. Well, I finally did it a few weeks ago. I climbed to the top of Mt. Nebo and stared into the Promised Land. I use the word climb loosely. Actually, I walked up the path from the parking lot, but none-the-less I reached the pinnacle, elevation 2300 feet and looked to the West and saw what Moses saw.
The Dead Sea (elevation -1300) and the River Jordan were stretched out below to my left and to my right I looked up towards Jerusalem in the distance. I was awed by just being there. It was Moses’ last stand. God called him there. After years of leading God’s people in the wilderness, his mission was over, and God forbade him to cross into Canaan.
desert
Taking a stand is important. Archimedes credited with discovering leverage said: “Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth. Give me a fulcrum, and I shall move the world. Give me a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.”
There are commands to take a stand in Scripture that are repeated many times. The call to ‘stand firm’ is one of those commands. It appears all throughout the Bible. “Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” Ephesians 6:13
Like God called Moses to a place to stand, so too does He call us to take a stand… a stand for our faith. There is no doubt our great nation is at a crossroads, and the church of Jesus Christ needs to take a stand, individually and collectively. Being a Christian means taking a stand for Christ. Although undoubtedly sometimes difficult, the decision to stand up for Jesus is absolutely necessary, and any serious Christ-follower should make it.
Where would our culture be today if the Church and individual Christians stood up and stood firm for a Biblical world view? Does our walk match our talk? Do we take a stand for our faith when it is convenient and then waffle when it might cause us social or economic pain?
Are you willing to stand firm for Christ even if it hurts?
stand-firm
SOMETIMES TRUE STORIES
Why do optimistic people live longer?
You and I can neither predict nor control the future, but we can control how we respond to its unpredictability. Our response, in turn, plays a pivotal role in our personal future.
A new study suggests that people who tend to be optimistic are likelier than others to live to be eighty-five years old or more. Researchers from Boston University and Harvard found that the most optimistic men and women demonstrated, on average, an 11–15 percent longer lifespan.
How can we become more optimistic? A clinical health psychologist explained that she works with patients to “uncover systems of beliefs and assumptions people are making about themselves in their lives” so they can “begin to change those.”
When we begin making optimistic assumptions, our attitudes toward our experiences become more positive, our stress levels respond, and our physical health can improve as well. In other words, when we choose to view life positively, life often responds in kind. Jim Denison
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New Jersey has rapidly caught up with Nevada in the race to be the nation’s biggest sports-betting market. Online gamblers now account for about 80% of all legal wagers on games in New Jersey, which surpassed Nevada for the first time in May in monthly sports bets. But as other states have waded into sports gambling, some are restricting it to physical locations like casinos, hesitating on mobile betting. More states will be launching sports betting in the coming months, as the NFL season gets underway and baseball playoffs approach. The trend toward mobile betting, following in the footsteps of popular mobile betting in Europe, is clear.
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• Researchers predict that cancer will become the leading cause of death in the US by next year.
• Google, YouTube fined a record $171 million for violating children’s privacy.
• Hold up, diet soda drinkers. Regular consumption of soft drinks – both sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened – was associated with a greater risk of all causes of death, according to new research published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Participants who drank two or more glasses of soft drinks per day had a higher risk of mortality than those who consumed less than one glass per month.
QUOTES YOU CAN USE
Overcoming consumerism is an essential step in living a simplified life. Even more, it is an important step in living a focused, intentional life—one that is lived to our greatest potential. The Millenalist
Nothing we do impresses God except when we allow Him to be God in our life. Dr. Jim Smith
All you need to do is look at what we have in the world and look at it carefully, and you’ll see that there must be a God who is infinite, eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, personal, emotional, volitional, moral, spiritual, aesthetic, holy, just, loving, and living. It’s all there. And you pick up the Bible, and the Bible substantiates every bit of that. GOD IS!” John MacArthur
The real test of a saint is not one’s willingness to preach the gospel, but one’s willingness to do something like washing the disciples’ feet—that is, being willing to do those things that seem unimportant in human estimation but count as everything to God. Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
Jesus did not say that the whole world should go to church. But He did say that the church should go to the whole world. Pastor Greg Laurie
The hallmark of a healthy society has always been measured by how it cares for the disadvantaged. Author and Ministry Leader Joni Eareckson Tada
The ideas that shape politics and a culture are rarely advanced by argument. Rather, they are advanced by the stories that shape our imaginations. Warren Cole Smith and John Stonestreet, Restoring All Things.
R. C. Sproul has written, “God can use the smallest words that we speak, the smallest service that we give, and bring a kingdom out of it.
Albert Einstein once said, “Nothing happens until something moves.”