80t
Spencer Finnley.
Musings on my life and His work in me.
Lack of posts.
Sorry… I’ve been thinking. We’re allowed a little time for that, right?
Right. Thanks for understanding.
Q
thank you for a reminder of faith and how important it is to have a relationship with God. :]
A
That’s the point =)
Universal Kings: Be Thankful "To" God
Many times, we find ourselves thanking on this holiday the things we are thankful “for.”
We should be thankful to God. Our “for” wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for one who gave us life, one who provides a way through the struggle, one who offers eternal life, and the one who gives us unconditional agape love.
When I asked my father for a Nintendo Gamecube, he told me one thing. He said told me if I were truly thankful for the game system, I would never play it and only give thanks “To” him. Over the years, what the things my dad say make clear sense. If it weren’t for him, none of this would be possible. If it weren’t for my dad, I wouldn’t have a game system underneath my television ready to play.
Giving thanks to God is beyond giving thanks for things and even people. If it weren’t for our divine father, none of this would be here.
I give thanks to God today.
Amen, brother. Today is day to be thankful TO the One who gave it all for us!
Pride vs Servanthood
When you do things truly for yourself, you will be criticized.
When you do things truly for others, you won’t be criticized.
Pride is a bad thing. Let’s break these walls down together. And when we do, we’ll start looking up again at people and God rather than looking down at people and putting God behind our backs.
» Is that true though? The Bible tells us that the world will persecute Christians for simply being Christians. Which they do, from experience. And Jesus Christ did NOTHING wrong and was crucified on a cross, dying there entirely for others. As He was mocked, killed, and criticized.
I agree that doing things truely for you and no one else isn’t a good path or godly decision. But doing things for others, sometimes gets you in trouble as well. You’re called neglective of self, they say they “don’t want your help,” or call you flat-out moronic for “wasting your time on certain people.”
I’m not trying to say one needs to be selfish though. Just don’t begin to think that doing the right thing/selfless thing is easier, more painless, or leads to respect. Do it for God. Do it for them.
From March.
“My room is disgustingly dirty, laundry EVERYWHERE…
My car is filthy and I have no idea what’s living in the seats to make it smell that way…
My showering schedule has been seriously thrown off…
I haven’t slept consistently for who knows long now…
I’m frustrated with the curve balls the world keeps throwing at me…
I see more and more each day, of just how far off we are as a people from what we’re called to be…
I’m exhausted.
But the thing is…
I’m exhausted from doing the Lord’s work.
I’m tired because I spend hours day after day, focusing on Him.
Meditating and dwelling on all that is good and righteous.
Finding, through His word, what is being planned for my life.
Yesterday, at Prayer Night, an image came to me in the middle of my prayer.
I saw a face covered in black soil, just absolutely obscured.
A hand reaches up, and pulls the dirt from the right eye,
and I see it open.
I look down and see dirt falling from my own face, just falling and unloading onto the floor by my feet.
And as I see this dirt fall while I pray, Louise says into the mike up front, and I paraphrase, that we are being called to let go of the things that hinder us from serving our purpose. That we must cleanse ourselves of anything that would stop His church from doing his will.
I’ve been noticing this a lot lately.
Some of my goods friends are vegan. They practice the art of watching their consumption. They know exactly what they are allowing into their bodies any given time that they consume.
And I think, why don’t I live that way?
Why do I allow pollution, negativity, sin, the bad, black dirt… into my life? I consume these things, day in and day out.
I need to watch what I say, watch what I’m doing. I need to know what I’m watching, hearing, listening to, conversing about, touching, saying, asking.
When I allow the world into my life… I make less room for my Saviour. I make it more difficult for Him to speak to me and to make the things, that I truely want to know and experience, impossible.
Pray for me. Pray for you. Pray that we can “run with perseverence, the race marked out for us.”
It’s possible through Christ. It is.”
Always Be Ready
Like the BEST Christian apologetics site. This one’s for you, Joseph!
A photograph from today!
Check out more of my photography at flickr.com/spencerfinnley!
Yeah =)
| Professor: | You are a Christian, aren't you, son? |
|---|---|
| Student: | Yes, sir. |
| Professor: | So, you believe in God? |
| Student: | Absolutely, sir. |
| Professor: | Is God good? |
| Student: | Sure. |
| Professor: | My brother died of cancer, even though he prayed to God to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But God didn't. How is God good, then? Hmm? |
| (Student was silent) | |
| Professor: | You can't answer, can you? Let's start again, young fella. Is God good? |
| Student: | Yes. |
| Professor: | Is Satan good? |
| Student: | No. |
| Professor: | Where does Satan come from? |
| Student: | From.. God. |
| Professor: | That's right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world? |
| Student: | Yes. |
| Professor: | Evil is everywhere, isn't it? And God did make everything. Correct? |
| Student: | Yes. |
| Professor: | So who created evil? |
| (Student didn't answer) | |
| Professor: | Is there sickness? Immortality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don't they? |
| Student: | Yes, sir. |
| Professor: | So, who created them? |
| (Student had no answer) | |
| Professor: | Science says you have 5 senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell me, son.. have you ever seen God? |
| Student: | No, sir. |
| Professor: | Tell us if you have ever heard your God. |
| Student: | No, sir. |
| Professor: | Have you ever felt your God, tasted your God, smelt your God? Have you ever had any sensory perception of God, for that matter? |
| Student: | No, sir. I'm afraid I haven't. |
| Professor: | Yet you still believe in Him? |
| Student: | Yes. |
| Professor: | According to empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, Science says your God doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son? |
| Student: | Nothing. I only have my Faith. |
| Professor: | Yes, Faith. And that is the problem Science has. |
| Student: | Professor, is there such a thing as Heat? |
| Professor: | Yes. |
| Student: | And is there such a thing as Cold? |
| Professor: | Yes. |
| Student: | No, sir, there isn't. |
| (The Lecture Theatre became very quiet with this turn of events) | |
| Student: | Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don't have anything called cold. We can hit 458 Degrees below Zero which is no heat, but we can't go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of Heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it. |
| (There was a pon-drop silence in the Lecture Theatre) | |
| Student: | What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness? |
| Professor: | Yes. What is night if there isn't darkness? |
| Student: | You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of something. You can have Low Light, Normal Light, Bright Light, Flashing Light... But if you have No Light constantly, you have nothing and it's called Darkness, isn't it? In reality, darkness isn't. If it is, You would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you? |
| Professor: | So what is the point you are making, young man? |
| Student: | Sir, my point is, your Philosophical Premise is flawed. |
| Professor: | Flawed? Can you explain how? |
| Student: | Sir, you are working on the Premise of Duality. You argue there is Life and then there is Death, a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, Science can't even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the absence of it. Now tell me, Professor, do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey? |
| Professor: | If you are referring to the Natural Evolutionary Process, yes of course, I do. |
| Student: | Have you ever observed Evolution with your own eyes, sir? |
| (The professor shook his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument was going) | |
| Student: | Since no one has ever observed the Process of Evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a Scientist but a Preacher? |
| (The class was in uproar) | |
| Student: | Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor's brain? |
| (The class broke out into laughter) | |
| Student: | Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor's brain, felt it, touched or smelt it? .. No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established Rules of Empirical, Stable and Demonstrable Protocol, Science says that you have no brain, sir. With all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures? |
| (The room was silent. The Professor stared at the student, his face unfathomable) | |
| Professor: | I guess you'll have to take them on Faith, son. |
| Student: | That is it, sir.. exactly! The link between man and God is Faith. That is all that keeps things alive and moving! |
2:01 AM
How do I end up awake this late practically every night?
Time for bed.
Thank you Lord for an interesting day with You and some of Your people.
Thoughts for Today
I’ve noticed that God has given me a lot of opportunities to defend the Bible itself lately, and that it’s been uplifting for me to be reminded of the authoritative and FACTUAL God that we serve. For those of you who think they know all the latest theories on why the Bible is fake, and how there is no clear and definitive way to know that God is not only a, but THE, real Being who created the universe, then here’s just a couple reasons of why you can trust that Scripture is no lie:
(P.S. Most of these are stolen from Charlie Campbell’s website. He is a former atheist (like C.S. Lewis) who found God while trying to disprove Him. His website is [alwaysbeready.com])
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»1_FulfilledProphecy
+ There are 26 other religious books out there in the world that claim “divine inspiration” (the Vedas, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Mahabharata, the Upanishads, the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon, etc.) and not a single one of them contains a single, specific fulfilled prophecy! But the Bible has hundreds of specific detailed prophecies that have come to fruition! An amazing 27 or more percent of the Bible could be considered predictive prophecy at the time it was written. As Charlie said, “The Old Testament foretold, hundreds of years in advance, very specific details about: the Messiah’s ancestry, that He’d be born of the seed of Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3, 22:18), of the tribe of Judah (Gen 49:10), of the house of David (2 Samuel 7:12f), etc. The city in which He would be born (Micah 5:2), that He’d come while the temple was still standing (Malachi 3:1), that He would be born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14), that He would perform miracles (Isaiah 35:5-6), that He’d be rejected by His own people (Psalm 118:22; 1 Peter 2:7), the precise time in history when He would die (Daniel 9:24-26; 483 years after the declaration to reconstruct the city of Jerusalem in 444 B.C. This was fulfilled to the very year.), how He would die (Psalm 22:16-18, Isaiah 53; Zech 12:10), that He would rise from the dead (Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:27-32), and there are many more. All of these prophecies and hundreds of others have been literally fulfilled.” We also know that these prophecies were not added back in later as an aferthought or a scam because of manuscript evidence! Ever heard of the Dead Sea scrolls? They are hundred-year old copies of the Scripture that we read today, dating far enough back to before Jesus was born! Aside from also proving that the Bible hasn’t been “lost in translation” because we can hold up today’s translation against ancient manuscripts, it poses an interesting question: Couldn’t Jesus have just made it his goal to fulfill these prophecies, intentionally? Well, no. How can a person determine where they’ll be born, when they’ll be born, and who their ancestors are? And who choose to set out on a quest that ends up with death on a cross, the most painful, humiliating, and horrible death of that age? Another interesting fact is this: “Peter Stoner, a mathematician, and Professor Emeritus of Science at Westmont College, in his book Science Speaks (Moody 1963) calculated the odds of a single man fulfilling just eight of the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled as the mathematical improbability of 1 in 10 to the 17th. That is a HUGE number. One in ten to the seventeenth power. That’s a one with seventeen zeros after it (100,000,000,000,000,000). If we had 100 quadrillion 1” x 1.5” tiles we could cover every square inch of dry land on planet Earth.”
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People, this is just one reason to consider the authenticity of the Bible as the WORD OF GOD. The full article I’ve been paraphrasing is here:
» click me
I’ll leave you with another article to read if you’re interested about supposed “errors” in the Bible. Do what you will with them, but I honestly hope you take a good look and evaluate your perception of “truth” in this world.
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Q
I wish I could take credit for the photos, but the majority of them are reblogs. My parents are actually professional photographers though, so maybe I should get into it too. Why don't you post your pictures on here?
A
I just use this as a a blog space. My flickr is where all the pictures go. But hopefully, I’ll have a website soon, with both.
And yeah, I kinda figured that out. But in the lest, you have good taste in photography =)
Q
I feel like such I creeper, but I was looking at your pictures on flickr, and I was completely blown away. Many people have one or two good pictures, but every single one of yours is amazing! :) THEN I saw some of your comments about Christ, and it made me super happy :) I'm 18 and Christian also, and I strive to let my light show to everyone I know. Also, it appears that you're adorable in your self portraits. hehe, you seem too good to be true.. but that's besides the point. Everyone our age seems to be obsessed with lusty love, but to me, my one TRUE love is Jesus Christ, and He will always be. In heaven we'll all just be brothers and sisters anyways. Ah, you just inspired me a little bit, but it's whatever. :) Let's be friends!
A
Not creepy at all. I appreciate the compliment and I’m gonna take a look at your photos =)
