O Lord revive your works in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make it known…(Hab 3:2)

My heart and spirit has been captured by the thoughts of REVIVAL over the years. God in His mysterious` ways, stirred my heart early part of 2001 and has not let me go ever since. I don’t know how long it would go on but I pray that the hand of God stays.

Who am I to receive such a burden? Nobody! A dirty worm who happens to laid his sight on.

Over the years, my prayers for revival caused me to seek the face of God Almighty more and more. The Book of Psalms says “He who dwells in the secret place of the most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty”. My desire is to be in constant communion with Him . There’s no greater joy nor better place for a worm like me.

I was reminded of the humble cry of the people of Wales, “Bend us, bend the church, and save the world”, hundred years ago. There hearts were broken in repentance and their spirit in deep agony. This made me tremble ! For the sorry condition of the church and the eternal destiny of the unsaved weigh heavily on the hearts of the stirred. Am I willing to endure?

For sure, I’m not the only one touched by the Lord about this. Certainly God has His anointed ones ,over the years, cry for revival. I’m only one among many voices. A faltering voice at that! One dirty worm ardently longs for revival in our times.

Take a walk. Its good for your heart. Good for your health. It seems positive benefits are endless. Well, a lot but not endless.

I do have my walking from time to time. It should have been more had  it no been for my excuses lately. To my shame!

The other day I walk. What a refreshing delight. On my right  ,as I pass, the lawn of my neighbor  Joe. He had his mini-pool put up for his kid. That’s why from time to time I hear shrieking,the kid must be enjoying his swim. The lawn is not freshly cut but ,hey, did I see a Robin?

Come next the Pfieffer’s. One of the Pfieffer’s boys was a class mate of my daughter. Eric once attended our church and has never visited the church hence.

Few houses away  come the  house of the former Pastor who used to own our present house of worship. I have only seen him once and that’s it. The last seven years of being neighbors never made us closer as friends. Was it disinterest? Culture barriers? Or simply a case of neither one of  us, is willing to put up a bridge to connect?

Reaching the corner of the block is no sweat. There in silence an old house seats. Well, every house in this block is old…built in early 1940’s.From the corner, easily you spot the Assembly of God Church.Just recently renovated. The chapel now looks alive.

Oops, a vehicle pass by. Top down. A young man drives with a headphone on. Speaking of multi tasking generation! A noise in the sky tell me, a plane is passing by. I wonder, how many had their gadgets on and if ever ,notice creatures down low? From their perspectives, I’m not even a dot. From mine, they’re only a noise. Fair !

I pass the next yard. A Lady with a dog cross my path. She wave. Her dog give me a look.I smile. Earlier, I notice she pick up the “garbage’ her dog unload on the grass. That identify the curious smell I inhale. What a poisonous gas! But which one is worst,picking up the “garbage” or smelling it ?

Then, the corner before mine lies Bro. Bruce’s house. Always, well maintain backyard. Recently , Bro Bruce tell me a humorous story.He’s a good story teller . Several times, he give my wife plants. This time of the day, he is nowhere in sight. He must be at work. His dog must be drooling for his coming, to take that regular walk again.

Now back from where I started earlier. Exactly12 minutes of walk. Suddenly it dawn on me, how that brief walking made a difference in my day?

Twelve minutes of walk and God unfold before me, life in the neighborhood, those I know, barely know, and ,in totally unknown to me. A piece of land share by about 20 families the last seven years yet many, remaining  stranger and alien with one another. There are so many to connect to. To notice and pay  attention to. Grass growing. Birds migrating. Lawn maintaining. kids dipping on their pools.

I started with health issue on my mind. I ended witnessing life. Walking merge both worlds to  enjoy. No wonder there’s so much with this “Arise ,and take up thy bed, and walk…” (Mk 2:9)

I read a good article today on Christianity Today about “The Secret.”

I’m not sure if a lot of people heard about this movement, but once I heard about it, I was very hesitant.  I’m always very hesitant though with large popular “spiritual” movements that promote something other than the grace of Christ, and instead focuses on the efforts of self rather be on the mercy of God.  I am not trying to hate on people’s beliefs, but there’s no getting around how there are so many aspects of ‘the Secret’ that I personally disagree with. 

To read an article on it, click on this: The Secret Exposed

Last week, the I had an online case study discussion with the YB, relevant to recent popular culture that tests what they’ve learned in Galatians and Romans.  Basically, we took a very popular, a much widely listened to iconic figure who was saying that there is more than one way to heaven than through Jesus Christ.  One way, she discussed, was to live a good life. 

But that’s the problem isn’t it?  Goodness becomes relative.  What is good?

The Bible explains that no one is righteous, but because of Jesus, we have been made righteous in God’s sight, therefore eliminating our merit, because we cannot work for salvation nor earn holiness.  Heaven was paved a way through Jesus alone, and that’s what makes grace so amazing! And that’s what elevates Christ.  More of Him and less of us.

Goodness is through Jesus alone.

And we need to accept that whatever happens in our lives- the good and the bad, that we live by grace…believing that no matter what, God is good.  We do not control all the forces through attraction.  We cannot make the world revolve around us and bring us all goodness by believing and channeling positivity.  It reduces our need for God, saying that we control the goodness and blessings in our lives because we attracted those things to us.  But then what about the bad stuff that happens to us?  Did we ask for that too? Disease? Poverty? Heartache? Death?

Do suffering countries not get “the Secret” right?  Mothers who lose their children? Parents that lose their sons and daughters to war and terrorism?

For me, the secret’s already been out, and it’s not so much a secret. It happened at Calvary…when God sent His son Jesus.

And it doesn’t cost a lot of money so you can order the video…they have it at motels for you to read; they give it out at streets, missionaries give them out to poor countries…and we all probably own one in our shelves at home- the Bible…

I love this new book titled The Culture- Wise Family by Ted Baehr and Pat Boone. This is one of the books we are reading for our church’s forthcoming Family Retreat on July 6-8. With the current series of devotional materials`I am sharing, I thought that the portion Mr. Baehr and Mr. Boone has written has enriching insight for all of us . Read on…I love the Fourth of July! Eleven times a year, Americans are asked to remember to fly the flag on days such as Armed Forces Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. But i ask you: On which day do you feel more compelled to fly Old Glory than the Fourth of July / I daresay none.

But beware ; we should not take this freedom for granted. There are some people who want to prevent us from reciting our glorious Pledge of Allegiance as those beautiful colors lap against our houses and to remove the words “under God” from that pledge. Only a few years ago such a notion would have been unthinkable. Not today. Now it is the subject of serious and heated debate. How have we come to this misguided moment in our nation’s history?

Thankfully, not tool ong ago the U.S. Supreme Court overruled a liberal lower court’s decree that would have given one Michael Newdow, an atheist and noncustodial parent of a nine-year-old daughter, a legal right to stop her school (and all school kids everywhere) from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Newdow had claimed that citing ‘under God” in the Pledge violated the Constitution’s ban upon the establishment of a national religion.

Mind you, the girl’s mother- who does have a custodial rights and who regularly attends church- has no issues with her little girl reciting the Pledge,including “under God”. For that matter, nearly 90% of all Americans, according to an AP poll, want “under God” to remain just as it is in our Pledge. So it’s clear: With the vacuous compliance of the Ninth Circuit Court, one selfish atheist is offended by two words in our Pledge of Allegiance, so he wants the rest of America to shut up! This just isn’t the way democracy works.

Mr. Newdow (and some of the the Ninth Circuit Court) keeps quoting the First Amendment as it Congress had somehow mandated the saying of the pledge and thereby “established religion,” ignoring the fact that it is the school board and the kids themselves who voluntarily choose to say it the way Americans have said the Pledge since 1954. As Alan Keyes brilliantly points out, there is no law respecting the establishment of religion, because the First Amendment itself expressly forbids it! Congress can’t make any laws about religion.

Atheism itself is a religion, a faith system built on the premise that there is no Gos- and one that can’t be proven. Theism,of any description, is based on the premise that there is a creator God- and the evidence abounds everywhere. All our founding fathers,including Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Monroe and Lincoln, acknowledged this. And every single one of the 50 states in America acknowledges God within the framework of their own state constitutions. Here are few:

ALASKA (1956): ” We, the people of Alaska, grateful to God…”

IDAHO (1899): “We, the people of the State of Idaho, grateful to Almighty God…”

MASSACHUSETTS (1780) : “We…the people of Masschusetts,acknowledging…the goodness of the Great Legislator of the Universe…”

MISSOURI (1845): “We, the people of Missouri, with profound reverence for the Supreme Ruler of the Universe…”

SOUTH CAROLINA (1778): “We, the people of the State of South Carolina,grateful to God…”

Get the picture? Our founding fathers, the ones who wrote our Constitution and maintained our liberties, were never ashamed to acknowledge our dependance on God. In FACT THEY FOUGHT FOR THE RIGHT! So what are we doing? if embittered atheists like the late Madelyn Murray O’Hare and Michael Newdow have their way, we’ll not only lose “under God” in our Pledge of allegiance but school kids will also be forced to stop memorizing Lincoln’s Gettysberg Address, which ends with the famous “this nation, under God, shall not perish from the earth.” And that’s not all; we’ll have to remove “endowed by the creator” from Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.

Will we stand for this , fellow Americans? Or shall we just meekly lie down and let a few impose their will on us? Nobody makes Mr. Newdow,or even his nine year old daughter, say anything they don’t want to say. Shall we let him prohibit us?

Ref: The Culture- Wise family . pp63-65

It’s disheartening but true!The clashes are in COURTS and CLASSROOMS. Two crucial places where law is interpreted and applies and where the next generation comes out. Both will give shape and substance to the kind of thinking and believing they posses and will endorse… by interpretation of law and by Creator-less education.

It’s amazing and confounding at the same time that The National Archives, the repository of this nation’s most important documents, upon walking into the building, you’ll see an image of the TEN COMMANDMENTS that God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. A silent but undenying influence to formation of our system of laws today.A muted presence borne by history , its meaning, frozen by times !

But let us go to some of its valuable documents stored. Example, the Declaration of Independence. the Founding Fathers believed that our rights as human beings come from God,not from the king or the state. It contains four references to God: as LAWMAKER ( “the laws of nature and nature’s God”) ;as CREATOR (”endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”) ; as SUPREME JUDGE (”the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions”); and as PROTECTOR (”the protection of Divine Providence”)

Certainly, of course, the Constitution of the United States starts with these words: “We the people” expressing the consistent belief that each person’s fundamental rights come from God and barring the idea that states or government were sources of freedom and liberty.

The Bill of Rights or the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution states on the first amendment that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,or prohibiting the exercise thereof.” Again, an acknowledgment of Creator- God. The fact that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison,two of the principal authors of the First Amendment (also our third and fourth presidents) both attended church services in the Capitol building signify the coverage of this amendment…the observance of religion in both private and public spaces. During Jefferson’s presidency, church services were also held in the Treasury building and the Supreme Court

The National Archives may not be a battlefield like the courts and schools today, but I strongly felt that the documents it contains,primarily,The Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights are indestructible proofs of the conviction of the Founding Fathers to forge a nation “under God”. Benjamin Franklin says it all “God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice,is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid ?”

Where is God in America? Hey, He is “in” but not “of” the National Archives documents.