September 16, 2019

HAPPY Monday Everybody! Hope You Have A Wonderful Day...💖

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 2:36 AM 0 comments

USA: The U.S. Campaign For Palestinian Rights, Which Advocates For Boycotts, Divestment And Sanctions, Is Financially Linked To Palestinian Terror Groups Including Islamic Jihad.

TabletMag.com
written by Armin Rosen and Liel Leibovitz
June 1, 2018

Over the past decade, as the prospects of peace between Israelis and Palestinians became ever slimmer, there has been a growing attention to—and, in some quarters, acceptance of—the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, or BDS. Those drawn to the cause have likely come across the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a Virginia-based nonprofit organization that serves as the American umbrella group of the BDS movement and is arguably the most prominent promoter of BDS in the United States. The US Campaign, which is officially called Education for Just Peace in the Middle East, coordinates the efforts of 329 different pro-BDS organizations “working to advocate for Palestinian rights and a shift in US policy … bound by commonly shared principles on Palestine solidarity as well as our anti-racism principles,” according to the group’s website.

But as Tablet confirmed , the group also helps facilitate tax-exempt donations to a Palestinian coalition that includes Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other groups the U.S. State Department designates as terror organizations.

The US Campaign, Tablet has learned, is the fiscal sponsor of a group called the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the main West Bank and Gaza-based cohort advocating for sanctions against Israel. The BNC was created in 2007 in Ramallah with the intention of serving as the Palestinian arm of the international BDS campaign. According to the BNC’s website, one of the group’s members is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, commonly known as PNIF. Among PNIF’s members are five different groups designated by the US as terrorist organizations, including Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Front – General Command (PFLP-GC), the Palestine Liberation Front, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Since its founding, the BNC has frequently and openly collaborated with known leaders of these terror organizations: In 2015, for example, the BNC held a press conference to pressure the Palestinian government not to import gas from Israel, featuring a speech by Khalida Jarrar, then a member of the Palestinian parliament for the PFLP and still an active official in the terror group. A video of the BNC-hosted press conference features Jarrar seated alongside BNC secretariat member Omar Barghouti.

Founded in 1967, the PFLP is responsible for numerous bloody attacks, including the 1976 hijacking of an Air France plane to Uganda and the 1980 assault on Kibbutz Misgav Am in northern Israel, during which PFLP terrorists took over the Kibbutz’s nursery and murdered 2 1/2-year-old Eyal Gluska. More recently, the PFLP took responsibility for the 2014 massacre of four Jews praying in a Jerusalem synagogue, and has emerged as a major supporter of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime in Syria. Last month, the group’s combatants were filmed entering the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, where they supported Assad’s murder of scores of Palestinians. The PFLP is also perennially at odds with Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority, making it difficult to argue that they represent a significant portion of Palestinians.

In November of 2017, the BNC’s website, BDSMovement.net, began allowing American supporters to make tax-deductible donations to the group. Rather than form an American based “friends of” organization, which is what American supporters of foreign groups often do in order to make tax-exempt donations to those organizations, the BNC and its fiscal sponsor in the United States engineered an unusual solution.

Make a donation to the group, as Tablet’s reporters did earlier this month, and you’ll receive the following automated email: “This is a receipt for your kind donation to the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the broadest coalition in Palestinian civil society that leads the global BDS movement for Palestinian rights. For your records, the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) is fiscally sponsored by Education for Just Peace in the Middle East, which is registered as a 501(c)3 charitable organization.” Education for Just Peace in the Middle East, again, is the legal name for the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. “Our fiscal sponsor’s EIN is 42-1636592,” ends the email from the BNC, listing the same IRS identification number as the US Campaign.

This arrangement is made possible due to what is known as fiscal sponsorship, which allows for an organization to temporarily extend their privileges as a nonprofit to a group that is in the process of getting tax-exempt status from the IRS. As the procedure for receiving 501(c)3 status can be intricate and time-consuming, an established non-profit can temporarily collect donations on another organization’s behalf until the newer group is awarded nonprofit status of its own. Fiscal sponsorship is also used to cover short-term projects or campaigns spun off from a larger tax-exempt charity.

In this case, the US Campaign is using fiscal sponsorship, its own nonprofit status, and its EIN to enable tax-exempt fundraising for a foreign political entity. U.S.-based charities have broad discretion to donate to foreign organizations that advance the American group’s mission. But there are rules: The U.S. group is responsible for ensuring that the money doesn’t go to terrorist organizations, and the group that receives the money can’t spend a substantial amount of its resources on attempting to influence legislation in the United States or abroad. There are also standards that are supposed to govern all tax-deductible organizations: Broadly speaking, in order for a donation to be tax-deductible, it has to be made to a group that is based in the United States and that is making the bulk of its spending decisions within the U.S. as well—which explains why Americans who want to support foreign organizations often set up U.S.-based “friends of” charities whose boards mostly consist of U.S. residents who are based in the United States itself.

The BNC is located far from U.S. soil, and it is unclear that the US Campaign has much say on how the money collected on behalf of its Palestinian sponsoree will be spent. There is no indication that any of the money raised through the fiscal sponsorship is going to terror groups, nor is there any clear way of ascertaining how the money collected is spent. All that is clear is that there’s a financial relationship between these two separate groups.

Efforts by Palestinian groups with links to terrorist organizations to influence American policy, however, are not confined to attempts to boycott Israel. Last year, Representative Betty McCollum (D-MN) introduced H.R. 4391, a resolution intended to curb American financing of Israel’s alleged violations of the rights of Palestinian minors. The bill currently has 19 co-sponsors, all Democrats. Introducing the bill in November of 2017, McCollum tweeted a photo of herself with several pro-Palestinian activists, and thanked a number of organizations for endorsing the bill, including the US Campaign and a group called Defense for Children International—Palestine (DCIP).

The DCIP is also cited in the bill itself, and Rep. McCollum’s government page directs readers to the DCIP’s website The group held several briefings on Capitol Hill, including one, in June of 2015, that the group claims “drew over 100 attendees, including staff from at least 30 different congressional offices.”

As publicly available resources in Arabic show, the DCIP has had several previous board members and staffers who have been involved with the PFLP. They include DCIP board member Hassan Abed Aljawad, a PFLP leader representing the terrorist organization at public events as recently as 2016; DCIP board member Mahmoud Jiddah, a former PFLP member who had been jailed for 17 years for carrying out grenade attacks against Israeli civilians in Jerusalem in 1968; DCIP board secretary and attorney Fatima Daana, who is the widow of Raed Nazzal, former commander of the PFLP’s armed wing in Qalqilya; DCIP former board member Shawan Jabarin, who was convicted of recruiting members to the PFLP in 1985 and identified in 1994 by Israel to the U.N. Commission of Human Rights as being a senior member of the PFLP; DCIP former board member Hashem Abu Maria, identified by the PFLP as one of its “deputy comrades” and a “fighting commander” in an obituary published on the PFLP website in Arabic and killed during a violent clash with IDF forces (the DCIP’s 2014 report is dedicated to Abu Maria); DCIP former board member Nassar Ibrahim, the former editor in chief of the PFLP weekly publication, El Hadaf; and DCIP former board member Dr. Majed Nassar, the deputy director of the Union of Health Work Committees, which was identified by USAID as a PFLP affiliate in 1993.

Emails and calls to the US Campaign; a liaison between the US Campaign and the BNC; the DCIP; and Rep. McCollum went unanswered.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 2:32 AM 0 comments

ISRAEL: New Palestinian Authority Islamic Run Elementary Schoolbooks ‘Teach Students To Be Martyrs’. You Know, Despise Jews And Murder Jews.

The Times of Israel
written by Staff
April 3, 2017

The Palestinian Authority’s new textbooks for first to fourth grades demonize Israel and glorify “martyrdom,” a report published Sunday claims, citing an “alarming deterioration” since a previous study.

The report, by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), says that the 2016-2017 elementary school curriculum in the PA “teaches students to be martyrs, demonizes and denies the existence of Israel, and focuses on a ‘return’ to an exclusively Palestinian homeland.”

The report by the Jerusalem-based group comes as Israeli officials continue to call on Palestinian officials to halt what they see as the demonization of Israel in textbooks and other materials aimed at children. They say the textbooks are a key source of incitement that drives terror attacks.

Among the textbook materials cited in the report are maps that don’t show Israel and passages that appear to glorify attackers.

The report notes that in addition to Israel not appearing on maps, Israeli cities such as Haifa and Jaffa are described as Palestinian, a frequently documented phenomenon in PA teaching materials.

Palestinian critics have noted maps in official Israeli textbooks also generally do not distinguish between the Palestinian territories and Israel proper; nor they do label Palestinian cities as such.

The report highlights what it says is a new emphasis on “martyrdom” in the schoolbooks.

To substantiate the claim, the report cites three examples, including two arithmetic questions in which martyrdom takes center stage.

“The number of martyrs of the First Intifada during 1987–93 totaled 2,026 martyrs, and the number of martyrs of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Intifada in the year 2000 totaled 5,050 martyrs while the number of the wounded reached 49,760. How many martyrs died in the two Intifadas?” one fourth-grade textbook asks.

Palestinians generally use the term “martyr” to refer to any Palestinian killed by an Israeli, no matter the context of the death.

Another example cited by the report is an image from a fourth-grade National Education and Socialization textbook, in which children look at their classmate’s empty desk at school, bearing a placard that reads, “Martyr.”

“There is little doubt of significant — even alarming — deterioration of the curriculum’s message when compared with our review of previous texts for these age groups. In this regard, that does not bode well for future peace prospects,” the report says.

Marcus Sheff, the CEO of IMPACT-se, told The Times of Israel on Monday that the new references to martyrs in the children’s schoolbooks “place the idea of a young person being a martyr in a public light.”

It sends the message “these children are potentially expendable,” he said.

Sheff did note, however, that the new curriculum also emphasized gender equality, as well as the importance of respecting authority and the environment.

The Israeli government has long argued that incitement in Palestinian textbooks is a main contributor to hatred and terrorism against Israelis. Palestinian officials counter that draconian Israeli measures and decades of occupation, not incitement, instill hatred and inspire terrorism.

The issue has taken on increasing significance of late, as members of Congress have threatened to decrease US aid to Palestinians if incitement is not curbed.

The report, according to Sheff, was discussed in 16 meetings with lawmakers and officials in Washington, DC, in March.

The Fatah movement, which currently governs the West Bank as the Palestinian Authority, has recognized Israel’s existence since the end of the 1980s — unlike its rival Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip. Yet, the PA has rebuffed Israeli demands that it recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Recognizing Israel’s Jewishness would mean the PA would effectively be renouncing its demand for a sweeping “right of return” that would inundate Israel with millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who often declares he is willing to accept a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, has called numerous times for the reinstatement of a US-Israeli-Palestinian anti-incitement committee. Israel has not answered the call.

Palestinian school curricula are inspected by the international donors who finance the Palestinian Authority and, by extension, its public education system.

Tharwat Zeid, curriculum chief at the Palestinian education ministry, flatly denied the Israeli report’s accusations of incitement.

“Our books are not for inciting hatred, but for teaching,” he said.

“Historical Palestine” — the Palestinian territories and Israel — is taught to children “because it is our history and it was our land,” Zaid said.

Sheff, the IMPACT-se CEO, said “Palestinian children should absolutely be taught national identity,” but took aim at the language Palestinian children were being exposed to.

Phrases such as, “the volcano of my revenge, the longing of my blood for my land, I shall sacrifice my blood to saturate the land… are these suitable messages for a 9-year-old?” he asked.

In February, at his first White House meeting with US President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said incitement was a key factor in the long-running conflict with the Palestinians.

“They continue to call for Israel’s destruction — inside their schools, inside their mosques, inside the textbooks. You have to read it to believe it,” he said.

“I think the Palestinians have to get rid of some of that hate that they’re taught from a very young age,” Trump said, responding to a reporter’s question about concessions each side needs to make.

A wide-ranging 2014 study published in Political Psychology, entitled “Portrayal of the Other in Palestinian and Israeli Schoolbooks,” claimed that “instances of dehumanization and demonization of the other” regularly alleged by each side are actually rarely found in either curriculum.

The study found that “Israeli and Palestinian books contain unilateral national narratives that present the other as the enemy.”

AFP contributed to this report.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 2:23 AM 0 comments

ISRAEL: I'd Like To Share An Exchange I Had On Twitter Regarding The Gaza Strip And Surprise Attacks From The So-Called Palestinian Islamist Refugee Territory.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 2:16 AM 0 comments

IRAN: Iranian Couple Arrested Over Public Marriage Proposal. An Internationally Renowned Human Rights Lawyer Sentenced To 38 years In Prison And 148 Lashes Which She Won't Survive.

BBC, UK
written by
March 9, 2019

An Iranian couple have been arrested after they got engaged in front of a cheering crowd at a shopping centre.

Video of the public proposal in the northern city of Arak was shared on social media and shows the pair standing in a ring of rose petals.

After the woman says yes, she can be seen hugging her partner as the crowd celebrates.

But they were soon arrested after police said they had contravened Islamic principles.

Mixing between the genders and displays of public affection are severely restricted under Iran's Islamic laws.

Mahmoud Khalaji, the deputy police commander of Markazi province, told Iran's Fars news agency that the couple had been taken into custody due to the "public's demand".

He said they were detained for "outraging public decency, which is an influence of the degenerate Western culture".

Mr Khalaji added that they had been released on bail.

The incident has sparked a debate on social media about the public proposal and Iran's wider social restrictions.

"Poor guys, instead of celebrating they have to bail themselves out while crying!", one Twitter user wrote.

"It's ridiculous and meant for the cameras," another said. "Why make a spectacle of a very personal thing such as marriage?"

It is not the first time Iran's laws on public decency have received international attention.

Last year, an official was arrested after people were filmed dancing at an event in a shopping centre in the city of Mashhad.
The Guardian, UK
written by Reuters in Geneva
Monday March 11, 2019

Nasrin Sotoudeh, an internationally renowned human rights lawyer jailed in Iran, has been handed a new sentence that her husband said was 38 years in prison and 148 lashes.

Sotoudeh, who has represented opposition activists including women prosecuted for removing their mandatory headscarf, was arrested in June and charged with spying, spreading propaganda and insulting Iran’s supreme leader, her lawyer said.

She was jailed in 2010 for spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security – charges she denied – and was released after serving half of her six-year term. The European parliament awarded her the Sakharov human rights prize.

Mohammad Moqiseh, a judge at a revolutionary court in Tehran, said on Monday that Sotoudeh had been sentenced to five years for assembling against national security and two years for insulting the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Sotoudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan, wrote on Facebook that the sentence was decades in jail and 148 lashes, unusually harsh even for Iran, which cracks down hard on dissent and regularly imposes death sentences for some crimes.

The news comes days after Iran appointed a hardline new head of the judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi, who is a protege of Ali Khamenei. The appointment is seen as weakening the political influence of the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate.

Iran, often accused of human rights abuses, said it had allowed the UN deputy high commissioner for human rights, Kate Gilmore, to visit last week at the head of a “technical mission”.

The visit, confirmed by a UN official, appeared to be the first in many years by UN human rights investigators, who have been denied access by the government.

The UN investigator on human rights in Iran, Javaid Rehman, raised Sotoudeh’s case at the UN human rights council in Geneva on Monday, saying that last week that she “was reportedly convicted of charges relating to her work and could face a lengthy prison sentence”.

He added: “Worrying patterns of intimidation, arrest, prosecution and ill-treatment of human rights defenders, lawyers and labour rights activists signal an increasingly severe state response.”

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 2:06 AM 0 comments

TUNISIA: Tunisia Becomes The Latest Country To Ban Full-Face Veils, The Islamic Niqab In Public Institutions After Two Islamist Suicide Bombings Rocked The Capital Last Week.


The Washington Post
written by Claire Parker
Friday July 5, 2019

Tunisia has banned the niqab in public institutions after two suicide bombings rocked the capital last week, becoming the latest country to outlaw the orthodox religious garment in the aftermath of terrorist attacks.

Prime Minister Youssef Chahed cited security concerns when he signed an order Friday barring anyone wearing a face covering from entering public establishments, the Agence France-Presse reported — effectively prohibiting women from wearing the niqab, a veil that covers nearly the entire face.

The move is sure to generate opposition and recalls restrictions on veiling in Tunisia under two successive authoritarian regimes that enforced the ban in the name of security, but critics said used it to discriminate against conservative Muslim women. After Tunisia’s 2011 popular uprising that unseated longtime president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, women began wearing the veil in greater numbers.

The two suicide bombings in Tunis last week left two dead and several injured, sparking fear and panic in the relatively peaceful North African country at the peak of its tourism season. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks, and the alleged mastermind of the plot, 23-year-old Aymen Smiri, was killed during a manhunt Tuesday night when explosives he was carrying detonated on a street in Tunis.

Tunisia’s interior ministry published a statement after Smiri’s death disputing rumors that he had disguised himself as a woman or worked with a female accomplice.

With Friday’s order banning the garment, Tunisia joined a growing list of countries that have banned the niqab out of concern that full body coverings can hide weapons or explosive devices used to carry out terrorist attacks. Sri Lanka banned face coverings after deadly attacks on Easter earlier this year. Cameroon outlawed full-face veils in a northern region after two women wearing them blew themselves up and killed 13 people in 2015. And Algeria prohibited women from wearing the niqab at work in 2018.

It’s not the first time in recent years that Tunisia has sought to enforce a dress code for security reasons. The Tunisian government announced it would “tighten procedural controls” on the niqab in 2014, although it is unclear what that actually meant. The Tunisian parliament also introduced a bill, which was never passed, to outlaw the niqab in 2016 following two major terrorist attacks in Tunis and Sousse that threatened Tunisia’s stability and dealt severe blows to the country’s tourism industry.

Tunisia, widely viewed as the Arab Spring’s sole success story, has struggled to maintain stability and safeguard its democratic transition since the 2011 revolution. Terrorism poses a particular threat, as the country’s youth unemployment rates have soared and Tunisia constituted one of the leading exporters of foreign fighters to the Islamic State. Tunisian authorities are now grappling with the prospect of those fighters returning home.

Amid fears of terrorist attacks, countries that have adopted niqab bans say authorities must be able to see faces for identification purposes.

But critics say restrictions on veiling amount to state-sponsored religious discrimination and limits on freedom of expression. These bans have tapped into a larger debate about the role governments should play in religion that have raged across Europe and the Middle East.

A number of European countries, which pride themselves on their secular orientations, have prohibited Islamic face or hair coverings — sometimes citing security reasons, but often on the grounds that the clothing represents an encroachment of religion on public life. But many Muslims and human rights organizations have decried laws like France’s burkini bans and Denmark’s niqab ban as Islamophobic. Historically, European colonial powers in the Arab world pointed to the veil as a sign of societal backwardness and used it to justify colonialism.

Veiling — and prohibitions of the practice — has had a particularly fraught history in Tunisia, a Muslim-majority country known for both its strong secular and Islamist movements. Former president and founding father Habib Bourguiba imposed state secularism after Tunisia gained independence from France in 1956, and he infamously removed veils from Tunisian women on the streets.

A law passed in 1981 banned women from wearing headscarves or veils in public, and women faced harassment or arrest for defying the law — particularly after Ben Ali took power in 1987. Veiled women were expelled from schools, prevented from working in the public sector and forced to frequently check in at police stations.

Although Tunisian authorities claimed to be promoting women’s rights to justify prohibitions on veiling, experts say these policies were aimed at cracking down on Islamists, who constituted the largest and most fiercely repressed political opposition group under the Ben Ali regime.

The 2011 revolution ushered in an Islamist-led government and a visible relaxation of dress codes. Although the 1981 law has remained in place, freedom of dress expanded considerably and more women wore some sort of head covering. The range of religious observance among Tunisians in recent years can be seen on the country’s Mediterranean beaches, where women in bikinis stroll next to women wearing the full black niqab.

Still, the niqab is relatively unpopular in Tunisia; a 2014 Pew poll found that 57 percent of Tunisians thought the less restrictive hijab was the most appropriate form of attire for women, while only two percent indicated they thought women should wear the niqab.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 1:50 AM 0 comments

September 15, 2019

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Prayer.

I am here to tell you that I have personally witnessed prayer work. I still get blown away when God answers my prayers. God Almighty is very real. Jesus, the living breathing WORD of God is very real. The Holy Spirit, the BREATH of God is very real. I have provided several prayers for you to use. You'll see the list of prayers on the top right side of my blog. I recommend that you print out the prayers so you have access to them at any time. I also recommend reading the Psalms section in the Bible. You'll be guided to read the Psalms that pertain to your situation.

The Word from the Bible is life giving. Why else do you think the Bible is banned in many nations of the world? People actually risk their lives smuggling the Bible into many nations. People also risk their lives smuggling PAGES of the Bible into many nations. People travel far and by foot just to get ONE PAGE of the Bible to keep with them and read. I want you to process that in your head and heart. What we take for granted, they see it as life giving, light giving in the darkness of their nations.

Please understand, this has NOTHING to do with religion. This has NOTHING to do with you attending a Church or joining an organization. The term Body of Christ refers to believers. The Body of Christ as a whole is the Church. We are the Church. It does not pertain to a building.

Praying is a very personal experience. When you pray, you are having a one on one experience with God Almighty your Creator and Source of all LIVING things. Praying draws you close to God. I promise, you will feel His presence that will bring tears to your eyes because His love is that intense. When you pray, you are calling down Heaven into your situation. Praying adds Supernatural power to your natural life.

as King David wrote in Psalm 141:2: "Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice."

repeat after me, "I reverse every curse, spell, incantation sent my way, back to the senders head, one thousand fold. In the mighty name of Jesus Christ. Amen."

or better yet pray, "I reverse every curse, spell, incantation against my life back to the senders head one thousand fold. In the mighty name of Jesus Christ. Amen. (emphasis mine)
written by Priscilla Shirer
[source: Today's Christian Woman]

Rise up from your rut and reclaim your spiritual passion.

Have you ever found yourself in a spiritual rut? I know I have. Life gets busy, church feels like one more thing on your to-do list, and prayer feels both cumbersome and ineffective.

Beyond the fact that life itself can become overwhelming, even sapping your spiritual vitality, there is a more pressing culprit that threatens to marginalize your prayer life: You have an Enemy waging war on your soul.

Make no mistake, this is a war. You are in the fight of your life. A very real Enemy has been strategizing and scheming against you, assaulting you, coming after your emotions, your mind, your future.

But I say Satan’s reign of terror stops here, now. He might keep coming, but he won’t have victory because his power starts failing when we start praying.

The Mystery of Prayer

I’m willing to admit, right up front, that I don’t fully understand this. There’s an undeniable, unknowable, invisible mystery to the power of prayer. That’s why our first reaction to prayer may be to dismiss it, downplay it, or even devalue its critical importance. Prayer, we think, is a good idea in theory—if only it would actually make a difference.

That thinking is what gets us in trouble. When we underestimate the power of prayer, when we think it doesn’t work, when we choose to believe that God won’t answer our prayers or that he isn’t listening, we wave a white flag and invite Satan into our situation.

Believe me when I say that praying is the last thing Satan wants you to do. He will discourage you from doing it. He will dissuade you from it, and he will disarm you by putting a distaste for prayer in your mouth. He wants to see you passionless, prayerless, and powerless. Perfectly quiet. And because prayer is the divinely ordained mechanism that leads you into the power and victory of Christ, Satan knows you’ll remain defeated and undone without it.

The Power of Prayer

Despite what we may or may not understand about prayer, God has deliberately chosen this particular vehicle as the one that drives his activity in his people’s lives. It is the means by which he allows us to partner with him in the fulfilling of his will. He has created prayer as a primary way of putting us into personal contact with him and with his eternal realities, any hour of the day or night.

Prayer is the portal that brings the power of heaven down to earth. It is kryptonite to the Enemy and to all his ploys against you.

When Paul describes our spiritual armor, he includes the belt of truth, the body armor of God’s righteousness, the shoes of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit—the very Word of God. But he doesn’t stop there. “Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere,” Paul says in Ephesians 6:18.

There it is. The fuel that drives everything: prayer.
[source: Got Questions]

Question: "What is the power of prayer?"

Answer: The idea that power is inherent in prayer is a very popular one. According to the Bible, the power of prayer is, quite simply, the power of God, who hears and answers prayer. Consider the following:

1) The Lord God Almighty can do all things; there is nothing impossible for Him (Luke 1:37).

2) The Lord God Almighty invites His people to pray to Him. Prayer to God should be made persistently (Luke 18:1), with thanksgiving (Philippians 4:6), in faith (James 1:5), within the will of God (Matthew 6:10), for the glory of God (John 14:13-14), and from a heart right with God (James 5:16).

3) The Lord God Almighty hears the prayers of His children. He commands us to pray, and He promises to listen when we do. “In my distress I called to the LORD; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears” (Psalm 18:6).

4) The Lord God Almighty answers prayer. “I call on you, O God, for you will answer me” (Psalm 17:6). “The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles” (Psalm 34:17).

Another popular idea is that the amount of faith we have determines whether or not God will answer our prayers. However, sometimes the Lord answers our prayers in spite of our own lack of faith. In Acts 12, the church prays for Peter’s release from prison (v. 5), and God answers their prayer (vv. 7-11). Peter goes to the door of the prayer meeting and knocks, but those who are praying refuse at first to believe that it is really Peter. They prayed he would be released, but they failed to expect an answer to their prayers.

The power of prayer does not flow from us; it is not special words we say or the special way we say them or even how often we say them. The power of prayer is not based on a certain direction we face or a certain position of our bodies. The power of prayer does not come from the use of artifacts or icons or candles or beads. The power of prayer comes from the omnipotent One who hears our prayers and answers them. Prayer places us in contact with Almighty God, and we should expect almighty results, whether or not He chooses to grant our petitions or deny our requests. Whatever the answer to our prayers, the God to whom we pray is the source of the power of prayer, and He can and will answer us, according to His perfect will and timing.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 1:18 PM 0 comments

Laughter Came from Every Brick, A Poem ♥


Laughter Came from Every Brick
from Love Poems from God, by Daniel Ladinsky

Just these two words He spoke
changed my life,
“Enjoy Me.”
What a burden I thought I was to carry -
a crucifix, as did He.
Love once said to me, “I know a song,
would you like to hear it?”
And laughter came from every brick in the street
and from every pore in the sky.
After a night of prayer,
He changed my life when
He sang,
“Enjoy Me.”

***********************************************************
Tips to help you put more laughter in your life:
* Figure out what makes you laugh and do it (or read it or watch it) more often.
* Surround yourself with funny people — be with them every chance you get.
* Develop your own sense of humor but never at anyone else’s expense.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 1:11 PM 0 comments

Celebrating the Gift of Laughter :)

Celebrating the Gift of Laughter
[source: CBMidwest]

"A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken." [Proverbs 15:13]

Recent research has demonstrated what our grandmothers always knew: LAUGHTER is GOOD MEDICINE. Humor and laughter make a significant contribution to both our physical and mental health. Learning to adopt a lighter attitude and see the funny side of everyday situations gives us the resilience we need to cope on the tough days.

Let us pause and recall that the God of joy and laughter is always abiding with us and filling us with life, with hope, with creativity and with a thirst for union with Him. We are God’s people, alive in the Spirit and called to continually celebrate His presence in our lives. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

"There is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to laugh, a time to dance, a time to embrace." [Ecclesiastes 3:1,4,5]

Humor is both God’s gift and a life-saving medicine.

"There’s nothing like a good laugh. It tickles our very souls. Laughter is an activity of the heart. We scrunch our souls with negativity and a lack of enthusiasm, but laughter smoothes them out. Laughter makes a noise so others can hear our feelings.” [Tickle Your Soul, Anne Bryan Smollin]

Reflection
An aspect of a child-like spirit is joyful glee. Jesus invites us to enjoy life, to nurture our sense of humor. Our faith, and especially our prayer life is enriched through this God given gift. One of the reasons I love being around children and teenagers is that they find delight in so much of life. They find delight and wonder in so many things, and notice that which we adults often times either take for granted or simply do not see. Children then usually react without the inhibitions that we adults place upon ourselves. This reaction often takes form in laughter, joyous, bubbly laughter. The humor of life is fresh and easily accessed in the childlike spirit.

Meditation
Laughter cleanses us from discouragement, anger, apathy, and grief, making room for new feelings and thoughts. Laughter frees us from self-consciousness, anxiety, and stress. Laughter helps heal our physical ailments – it massages internal organs and strengthens the life force flowing through us. Laughter teaches us to take our troubles lightly, releasing our spirits from the weight of the world and of ourselves. Laughter unites what has been separate, connecting us to one another and to our true selves. Laughter calls forth our desire to live. Laughter, then, is a source of miracles. Surely, it’s one of the places where we can meet our God. [“Glad Day,” Joan Larkin]

Intercessions
That our hearts may always be filled with joy and thanksgiving, we pray…
For those who see no joy in life, we pray…
For those who are able to lift up our spirits, we pray…
That we realize the importance of taking care of our mental and physical health through the gift of laughter, we pray…

Let us pray:
Loving Father,
Lord of clowns and smiling saints,
we rejoice that You are a God of laughter and tears.
Blessed are You, for You have rooted within us
the gifts of humor, lightheartedness and mirth.
With jokes and comedy, You cause our hearts to sing
as laughter flows out of us.
We are grateful that Your Son, Jesus, the Master,
daily invites us to be Fools for Your sake,
to embrace the madness
of Your prophets, holy people and saints.
We delight in that Holy Madness
which becomes medicine to heal the chaos of the cosmos
since it calls each of us
from the hum-drumness of daily life
into joy, adventure,
and most of all, into FREEDOM.
With circus bands and organ grinders,
with fools, clowns, court jesters and comedians,
with high spirited angels and saints,
we too join in the fun and foolishness of life,
so that Your holy laughter
may ring out to the edges of the universe.
Blessed are You, O Lord, our God,
Who invites us to be filled with holy laughter.
♥ AMEN ♥

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 1:09 PM 0 comments

Back to the Playground... I Was Led To This Wonderful Description About Enjoying LIFE With Childlike Simplicity And Humility That I Want To Share With You! ♥

Back to the Playground
[source: Theology Essay]

I’m spending a lot more time at playgrounds lately. My grandchildren are coniseurs of playgrounds. When they come to visit, I usually ask them what they want to do. Invariably, they excitedly sing out, “Let’s go to the park!” Park to them means a playground. They can’t conceive of a park without a playground. I’ve learned some valuable lessons at the playground.

On our last trip to a playground, two of my grandchildren came along. They had just put clean clothes on and it had rained during the night. So I was a little apprehensive about the puddles of water on the playground. It wasn’t long before I spotted Kaitlyn on the playground digging through the rocks and mud. Just before I was about to scold her for getting her clothes dirty, she came running toward me with an outstretched arm and a smile on her face. When she got to me she handed me a little heart-shaped rock and said, “Here PaPa! Here is a heart for you – just because I love you! Keep it!” With tears in my eyes, I thanked her.

Did I scold her for getting her clothes muddy? What do you think? No way! And, yes, I still have that little heart-shaped rock given to me by my four-year-old granddaughter. It is one of the best gifts that I have ever received. I realized that many times we miss out on so much when we sweat the small stuff.

We need to spend a lot more time at the playground. Jesus said, “Except you be converted and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever, therefore, shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3-4).

What are some things we can learn on the playground to help us live simple, stress free lives?

First – SIMPLICITY enables us to relax and have peace. Jesus revealed that those who live in humility as a little child are the greatest in the kingdom of God. Children enjoy the simple things in life. We often take things too seriously. Prolonged seriousness will kill. It will kill your joy and, worse, it will kill your child-likeness.

As adults, we tend to make things too complicated. When David was a shepherd boy, he dared to believe with childlike faith that God would deliver the giant Goliath into his hands. He spurned all of the body armor and weapons that King Saul gave him. Instead, he met the giant on the battlefield with his simple sling and five smooth stones. He figured it was simple – the giant was so big he couldn’t miss! Who won? That’s simple – God plus one is always the majority. (See I Samuel 17.)

Second – SING. Sing a silly song sometimes. Children love to sing. The Bible says, “A merry heart doeth good like medicine” (Proverbs 17:2). (See Proverbs 15:13 and Ephesians 5:18-19.) Have you lost your song? Ask God to give you a new song to sing. (See Psalm 98:1.)

Third – STAY LOOSE. Children are not normally uptight and worried about life. Ask yourself, “Will this matter a year from now?” I picked up a great little book the other day that had an intriguing title – Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff . . . and it’s all small stuff by Richard Carlson PhD. It is Dr Carlson’s premise that whenever we’re dealing with bad news or troublesome situations, most of us get into certain habits, ways of reacting to life that don’t serve us very well. We overreact, tend to blow things out of proportion, hold on too tightly, and focus on the negative. We live our life as if it was one huge emergency! Stay loose – don’t sweat the small stuff. (See Matthew 6:25-34.)

Fourth – SHARE. Children usually love to share. Giving is fun and it doesn’t have to be expensive or elaborate. Have you ever seen the delight of two children sharing an ice cream cone or simply jumping through mud puddles or dancing in the rain? I saw a wonderful bumper sticker not too long ago. It said, “Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty”. Practicing random or spontaneous acts of kindness is an effective way to get in touch with the joy of giving without expecting anything in return. It’s even more rewarding when you don’t let anyone know what you are doing. Remember that Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive”. Also, why not take time each day and think of someone to thank?

Fifth – SPRITIUAL VITALITY brings everlasting and abundant life. Children are naturally attuned to the spiritual. Only as people grow older do they become hardened and insensitive to the spiritual. That’s why we need to go back to the playground and become as little children. Jesus warns us, “I assure you, unless you turn from your sins and become as little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 18:3 NLT). Perhaps you need to sing that old children’s song again, “Jesus loves me this I know. For the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong. They are weak, but He is strong. Yes, Jesus loves. Yes, Jesus loves me.”

Do you need to go back to the playground of childlike simplicity and humility? In childlike faith ask Jesus Christ to come into your life. “For as many as received Him gave He power to become children of God even those who believed on His name” (John 1:12).

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 1:07 PM 0 comments

Donkey In The Well... I Love This story! 😊💖

One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey.

He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement he quieted down.

A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.

As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!

MORAL: Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

1. Free your heart from hatred - Forgive.

2. Free your mind from worries - Most never happens.

3. Live simply and appreciate what you have.

4. Give more.

5. Expect less from people but more from God.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 1:01 PM 0 comments

Self Criticism: God Is The Master. I Am The Clay. So Beautifully Expressed. ❤

written by Sarah Holmes; author, speaker, columnist and consultant.
you can contact her at her website: ChemicalFreeLiving.MarketingScents.com
[source: SheLovesGod.com]

On the radio today, the Christian radio host spoke. The host said, “Remember, God is the potter and you are the clay. It isn’t up to us to worry about finishing His work.” This spoke to me. Self-criticism can be a problem for many of us.

I often try to “complete the product.” I analyze myself as I try to figure out what I will look like when God is finished with His process. Often, I even look at myself through my own eyes as a work not completed.

Self-Criticism

The view I have of myself is a negative one or at least neutral at best. God sent his son Jesus to die for me. Because Jesus died, his blood paid for my sins. Therefore, when I accept this forgiveness, God no longer sees me as a sinner. Instead, He views me through Christ’s righteousness.
“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.” Isaiah 61:10
God sees me as His bride. I am someone He rejoices over!
“For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.” Isaiah 62:5
Not only does He rejoice over me, He sings over me!
“The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17
When we are followers of Christ, God doesn’t look at us as sinners.
“He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” Psalms 103:10-12
I am an heir of God through Christ!
“And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.” Galatians 4:6-7
He is preparing a mansion for me!
“In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” John 14:2-3
He wants to give me the kingdom
“Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Luke 12:32
God delights in me and sees me through the righteousness of His son. His still small voice reminded me it is not my job to critique His unfinished work (me). He will do a good work in me. I am not the master. I am only the clay. He is working out the imperfections. My job is to be someone He is able to mold by ensuring my heart is soft and pliable. I do not have the right to judge His unfinished work as good or bad.

I have spent my life looking over His shoulder as the master created His work in me. “Hmmm….I don’t think I am very good. I’m certainly not presentable to the master.”

Am I the Master or the Clay?

What God taught me today is:
  • “Who am I to critique?”
  • “Am I the master or the clay?”
  • “Does the clay get to determine how to create the finished product?” (Isaiah 29:16, Romans 9:20)
The answers are obvious. I can relax. My critique of myself is not needed or wanted from the Master. In fact, my criticism is often lies from the enemy. I do not want my kids telling themselves they are not good enough or believing they do not please me. (Because they do please me immensely!) In the same way, God does not take my view of myself into consideration when He decides whether or not my life pleases Him.

By accepting the forgiveness offered through Christ’s death, I am a new creation. The old me is gone and I am new. Therefore, God sees me as this new creation. He rejoices over me as His virgin bride. He sings over me and he is preparing me a mansion! Wow. Even as I write this, it amazes me. God would love me this much? He does. The scripture clearly teaches us God’s love for us is so overwhelmingly good.

One of the first steps I need to take to discover God’s will for my life is simply for me to understand God’s love for me. It is hard for me to remember I am the clay and I am not responsible for the quality of His finished work in me.
“Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” Philippians 1:6
(Scriptures above are quoted from the King James Version of the Bible.)

Additional scripture references:
“Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter’s clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding?” Isaiah 29:16 KJV

“Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?” Romans 9:20 KJV

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 12:57 PM 0 comments

The Potter And The Clay: In God’s Hand Common Clay Can Be Transformed Into Something Truly Remarkable. ❤

sermon given by Pastor Vince Gerhardy
[source: Gerhardy.id.au]
Text: Jeremiah 18:1-8
The Lord said to me, "Go down to the potter's house, where I will give you my message." So I went there and saw the potter working at his wheel. Whenever a piece of pottery turned out imperfect, he would take the clay and make it into something else. Then the Lord said to me, "Don't I have the right to do with you people of Israel what the potter did with the clay? You are in my hands just like clay in the potter's hands. If at any time I say that I am going to uproot, break down, or destroy any nation or kingdom, but then that nation turns from its evil, I will not do what I said I would.
Jeremiah was called to be a prophet of God at an early age. He was a sensitive man who loved God and who loved his people but hated to speak God's word of judgement on his people. Regardless of his feelings the Word of God was like a fire in his heart and he could not hold it back.

The Old Testament prophets use some wonderful imagery to get across God's Word to his people. The Book of Jeremiah is no exception to this. Let’s try to imagine what is happening in our text today.

We aren’t told what Jeremiah was doing at the time God spoke to him but good chances are he is on his knees in prayer. He’s not the most popular guy in town because his preaching has upset so many people including the king. His message is blunt about the sin of the people and the judgement of God on their sin. Because of his unpopularity his bank account is meagre. So we find him in a simple, one roomed, dirt floor house, with a narrow cot in one corner of the room, a low table and a mat in the other. Even though he copped a fair bit of abuse and bad treatment from the locals as he delivered God's message, he was cut deeply when they rejected God's warning. He witnessed God's chosen people being led as captives from the ruins of Jerusalem.

As Jeremiah was praying, he felt a finger poking him in the shoulder. "Jeremiah, Jeremiah, listen to me carefully. I've got a job for you... Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you a message. Off your knees, Jeremiah, get going".

And so Jeremiah heads off down the street to the potter’s workshop. I’m sure the potter must have wondered what Jeremiah was doing in his workshop. He knows who Jeremiah is and the reputation he has. But business is business. He knows Jeremiah doesn’t have much money but there’s no harm in letting him watch as he made another pot. Who knows? Maybe others will come in and buy something.

He sits at his potter’s wheel and takes a lump of clay. He works the clay to get rid of any lumps and unwanted bits. He plonks it on the wheel as the wheel goes round and round the pot takes shape. The scraps are thrown into a bucket. But as the pot takes shape something goes wrong. The pot collapses.

The potter is faced with two choices - to curse and swear at this unruly lump of clay, or to mash it down and start all over again. This sort of thing was a part of a normal day’s work so he squashed the clay down and remoulded it into a fine pot for the kiln. The extra pieces in the scrap bucket are not garbage to be thrown away. They are mixed together and put on the wheel to make another pot.

Nothing is ultimately a failure, nothing is wasted.

Jesus used parables/stories to get across to his listeners important truths they needed to know about God and his kingdom. Here Jeremiah witnesses a parable that explained to him God’s attitude toward his people. The message of this parable is as much for us as it was for Israel in the time of Jeremiah.

God is a master craftsman when it comes to making people. In God’s hand common clay can be transformed into something truly remarkable.

Even though God is a master craftsman the task of moulding humanity is a particularly difficult one. In moulding humanity God has granted the clay free will. Think about it? Think about making a pot from clay that has a will of its own! In the hands of the inexperienced potter it might seem that clay does have a will of its own but that is just an allusion. Clay in the hands of God, the master craftsman, is given a will of its own. God wants us to become beautiful and useful vessels, not to carry water or hold food, but to carry the good news of his love, forgiveness, care and purpose for humanity. He gives his creation a will that is designed to do just that.

Sometimes things go wrong.
  • sometimes it is those around us and worldly attitudes that mould us into shapes that are not the shape God wants us to be,
  • sometimes it is because of a conscious choice we have made and we refuse to allow God to mould us,
  • sometimes it is because events and disasters in our lives have overwhelmed us and we no longer feel the hands of God around us,
  • sometimes it is because we have lost our way as disciples of Christ and no longer believe that Jesus has a total claim on our lives and that loyalty to him takes priority over everything else as we heard in the Gospel reading today.
However, regardless of the reason we go astray, God is always there wishing to reshape and remake and renew us; to make us into the beautiful people he intended us to be.

Sometimes the only thing God can do is to break the clay down into a lump and start again.

This is what Jeremiah warned his people about.

Because of their willfulness and greediness, because of their arrogance and tolerance of injustice and idolatry, God would need to break them down; otherwise they would never reach their potential as his chosen people. God would demolish them, not to throw them on the rubbish heap but to start once more from the beginning.

It is okay to be broken down by God.

It’s not a comfortable experience, even in such loving hands. It had to happen to Israel as a nation and it happens to many of us as individuals. We do need to be broken down by God, and to let the master start again remoulding us.

God does this through speaking his clear Word to us that defines what kind of people we ought to be. It could be an application of the Ten Commandments or Jesus’ radical interpretation of God's will for our lives that brings to our attention our brokenness in our relationship with God and the people in our lives.

It could be that our hearts have been hardened by a lack of forgiveness. God smashes us down with "Lord, if my brother keeps on sinning against me, how many times do I have to forgive him? Seven times?" "No, not seven times, but seventy times seven". These words remind us how stingy we have been with our forgiveness and let self-righteousness and indignation dictate how we treat those who have offended us.

Or maybe our speech has been anything but kind and caring and God smashes us down with "Do not use harmful words, but only helpful words, the kind that build up and provide what is needed" (Eph 4:29).

Or it could be that we have let other things or people or activities come between us and our worship of our God and Saviour or we have let our loyalty and commitment to Jesus be compromised and God smashes us down with the words we heard in the Gospel reading, "None of you can be my disciple unless you give up everything you have" (Luke 14:33) or with the words of biblical command to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind.

Or maybe we have become self-centred and selfish and refuse to offer help to those in need. We hear God smash us down with "Help carry one another’s burdens, and in this way you will obey the law of Christ" (Gal 6:2).

Like the wobbly pot on the potter’s wheel we are imperfect and not the beautiful creation the potter intends us to be. Our flaws are clear, our blemishes are exposed, our weaknesses and defects are laid bare by the Word of the Lord. It’s clear that the potter needs to start again.

This starting again begins with trusting in God and turning to him in repentance. Repentance is a painful business. It strikes not just at our comfort but at our pride. It is admitting that what we have made of ourselves is not good enough. It is letting go of the familiar, the distorted shape of our lives, and going back into almost obscurity (like a shapeless lump of clay). It is becoming a nobody that we might, by the mercy of God, become really somebody - a somebody who is made a joint heir with Jesus Christ – a somebody who in God's eyes is about as perfect as anyone can be because of the blood of Jesus.

Our repentance is really a work of the potter as he begins to reshape us and mould us into something beautiful and new and perfect. It’s not just a matter of patching up the old pot and trying to make it good enough to sell but it’s a matter of smashing down the clay and with careful strong fingers God takes our rough clay and makes something new.

Our God is an incredibly patient potter. I would imagine that if any of us were to have a go at making a clay pot and the clay didn’t do what we expected it to do or because it was too wet or too dry or too crumbly we would lose patience, throw the whole lot in the garbage and get a fresh lot that might be more successful at being what we intend it to be.

Our God is not a throw away God but one who seeks to redeem that which has gone badly wrong. God does not give up on us but tragically, some people use their free will to give up on God. God does not discard them, they discard God. They choose a misshapen existence. They prefer to be anything but perfect (like the people to whom Jeremiah was sent). Our God is our Saviour who is always willing to start again and again as many times as necessary and gladly makes us into perfect pots.

This message of the potter and of the clay is a beautiful message because it tells us that we always have another chance;
  • that when we have failed;
  • that when we have lost the beauty that we should have;
  • that when we have gone off on a path that is not helpful;
  • that when we have become discouraged and dejected;
  • that God can rework us;
  • that God can salvage us, and make us beautiful;
  • and that it is God's purpose to do so.
In fact, so intense is God in his plan to remould and remake us that he sent Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit to renew, remould and remake us. He forgives our weaknesses and flaws. In Jesus Christ he even takes on the form of a lump of clay and becomes one with us and makes it possible for us to repent, to turn around, to be remade into what God intended us to be. It is the Holy Spirit who awakens in us the need to be remade and remoulded and leads us to look to Jesus Christ (Yahshua ha-Mashiach) as the only one who can do it.

No matter what our age may be, or what the cause of our variety of ugliness might be, God wants to save us. God is a not a throw away God, but a God full of grace, a redeeming God, a God of love and power. ❤

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 12:54 PM 0 comments

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