Each Friday I am hoping to be offering you a freebie Timeline cover for your Facebook page. These are free for you to use on your Facebook timelines and I hope that you will enjoy them. I enjoy creating them and I think there needs to be more options for Christians on Facebook. So without further ado…here is this week’s Facebook Timeline Cover!
To download, click on the image to open it into full size and then right click to save.
In the words of Stephanie Tanner, “How Rude!” I think most of you from my generation knows this often used quote from the character on the T.V. program Full House. We certainly know how Stephanie feels about rudeness, but what does God think?
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;” (I Corinthians 13:4-5)
If we are truly to love others as Christ commanded, we are not to be rude. Let’s look at the definition to find out more about the word “rude”.
Webster’s defines “rude” as: “offensive in manner or action”.
Rudeness is simply acting in a way that is offensive to others. So if we are going to love others as Christ called us to do, then we must NOT be rude. Instead we should exhibit kind, civil, respectful, polite, nice and mannerly characteristics.
Ephesians 4:32 tells us “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
Instead of being rude, we are to be kind, tenderhearted and forgiving towards others, just as God did for us when He sent Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins. In light of what the Lord has done for us, how can we do any less for those around us.
I occasionally get questions in regards to what I believe and/or have questions raised about what “glasses” I use to look at life and my faith. So, I decided to write a post and list my beliefs, so that they are here on my blog for all to read. This way, I can refer people back to this list when questions arise. I may on occasion add to this list and it will act as a FAQs on my beliefs on subjects of faith. If you have any questions on any of these or on other subjects, I will be happy to answer them, as long as they are asked in a respectful manner.
What I Believe:
I believe that the 66 books of the Bible are divinely inspired and are without error or conflict. I believe that the Bible is our instruction manual for life and should be used to settle every religious question. What the scripture says is the final word on any religious subject.
”All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” (II Timothy 3:16-17).
Scripture is the textbook of the church and no other doctrine should be added and no doctrine removed from Scripture. Any denomination that adds to or subtracts from scripture is wrong. All Christian churches should have the same doctrine when it comes to the basic tenants of the Faith and when it comes to salvation.
”I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgement,”. (I Corinthians 1:10).
I believe that there is only one God and that the one God exists in a perfect union of three persons (Godhead or trinity) the Father (God), the Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit.
“Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” (Mark 12:29).
“For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world–our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This is he who came by water and blood–Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify:” (1 John 5:4-7).
I believe that salvation comes through God’s grace by the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus sacrificed himself for our sins and through Him, we gain salvation.
“And Peter said unto them, Repent ye, and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”(Acts 2:38).
I believe that salvation comes through God’s grace alone and not through works.
“But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 2:4-7).
I believe in the virgin birth.
“And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy–the Son of God.” (Luke 1:34-35)
I believe the creation story in Genesis to be true and accurate as written.
(Genesis 1:1-2:2)
I believe Heaven and Hell are actual physical places and that the saved will go to Heaven (eternal life) and the unsaved will go to Hell (eternal punishment).
“And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:46)
I believe that women should not be pastors or teachers over men in church.
“For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. (I Corinthians 14:33-35).
“Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. (I Timothy 2:11-12).
I believe that women should not hold positions of authority in the church.
“This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you– if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. (Titus 1:5-6)
I believe in the headship order of Christ over man, husband over wife, and God over Christ.
“But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.” (I Corinthians 11:3).
I believe that life begins at conception and that abortion is murder.
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139:13-16).
“Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and righteous, for I will not acquit the wicked.” (Exodus 23:7).
I believe all sin is sin and none is greater or lesser than another. We are saved through God’s grace alone. We are to REPENT from our sins, CONFESS our sins to the Lord, AVOID COMMITTING OUR SINS against the Lord and RESOLVE to live a more godly and righteous life. Christians will bear GODLY fruit.
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Don not be deceived: nether the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it–the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned an fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forth as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. (Romans 3:21-25)
Convictions:
The love of self is the most prevalent teaching of the world. We are told to “take care of #1” or to “do what feels good to you” and many more self-loving beliefs. This is all contrary to what Scripture teaches.
“{Love} It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or rude,.” –I Corinthians 13:5
As Christians, we are taught that we shouldn’t insist on our own way. We should love others so much that we can put aside our own wants to meet their needs and wants. This is a big change for people when they come to Christ. We come from years of training where we’re taught to be selfish and self-serving people.
“Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” –Philippians 2:3
Scripture makes it very clear that we are to meet the needs of others before me meet our own needs. This is so hard to do at times and it certainly goes against what is in our nature to do. Even if you have people in your life that seem impossible to love, we are told that we must love them and put their needs ahead of our own. Not always an easy task, but it’s still something we’re expected to do as Christians. We simply cannot do any less in light of what Christ did for us on the cross. He made the ultimate self-less sacrifice for us. Compared to that, putting a hard to love neighbor or family member’s needs ahead of our own is a piece of cake!
Graphic from Cute Colors.
This afternoon as I was reading my Bible, I came across this verse and it really stood out to me.
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” -Ephesians 4:32
As Christians we are called to exhibit three traits to others, (1) kindness, (2) tenderheartedness and (3) forgiveness. This isn’t something that is always easy to do, and at time can be near impossible for us to do without the Grace of God. Let’s look at these three traits for a moment.
So, this verse tells us we need to be gracious and kind. Treat each other with compassion, forgiving each other for sins that have been committed against us. This is a really tall order. It’s hard to live these character traits towards those who have mistreated us.
These three traits are bound together. You really can’t fully act on one without also do the other two. We should do all three because God did them for us, and so much more, through the Death and Resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. We must do for others the same that the Lord has done for us. To do anything else is a slap in the face to our Heavenly Father. When we are kind, tenderhearted and forgiving to those whom the world may feel don’t deserve it, we are letting HIS light shine through us. As Christians, how can we do anything less.
“but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”. –Romans 5:8.
This is the greatest blessings of being a Christian. Even though we were born rotten to the core, God still loved us so much that He sacrificed His only, beloved Son, Jesus, for those sins. It’s such a humbling thought.
I’m going to be away from my blog for a few days, not really sure how long. Today we got 2 pieces of really bad news. I’m asking for some prayer and I so appreciate your love and support.
First of all a friend of my husband was declared brain dead. He had been in the hospital since Sunday with with pneumococcal meningitis. My husband is very saddened by this piece of news and we expect to be attending a funeral in the next few days. I ask that you please lift up my husband, as well as his friend’s wife, family and friends. This has hit everyone really hard and things progressed so suddenly and it was so unexpected.
I also ask for prayers for my 95 year old Nanny. Hospice is going to start coming in and the doctor says the Alzheimer’s is speeding up very rapidly and he’s seen a major increase of memory loss since last month. He says she will soon be unable to recognize people so if we want to see her while she still recognizes us then everyone should visit sooner rather than later. The doctors say it could be 6 months or it could be several years, they don’t really know. We visited with her last weekend and she was really confused and out of it and her doctor says that soon she will probably go into paranoia. Earlier this month she was diagnosed with dysphagia and my parents were told that she needed to drink only “honey” thick liquid. Liquids thinner than that could end up going into her lungs. Dysphagia is the result of any condition that weakens or damages the muscles and nerves used for swallowing. It is suspected that when the dysphagia started that she may have suffered a minor stroke, which could also be the culprit behind her alzheimer’s speeding up.. This was a real hardship for her because she had to give up her beloved Coca-Cola. She was so unhappy, miserable and depressed by this. Now with the discovery of the alzheimers speeding up, my Mom decided that it was more important for her to be happy in what could be her last days than to worry about something that “might” happen should the liquid end up in her lungs. Please keep Nanny in your prayers, as well as my Mom (who is the power of attorney and supervises her care), and all the rest of us who love Nanny. This is one special woman who is loved by all who know her and I am heart broken at the thought of her going through this.
It has become all to easy in the world today to vilify Christians for standing up for their faith and convictions. The world cries that Christians are intolerant bigots who have no rights to their convictions and views. They did it recently to Kirk Cameron for standing up for his convictions and faith about gay marriages. YET, in the same breath they are willing to defend people of other faiths including those who hold nearly identical views as Christians in regards to abortion, gay marriage, homosexuality, adultery, and fornication. These people who are vilifying Christians are as hypocritical, if not more hypocritical than those Christians they vilify. If you want tolerance, then live tolerance. Be tolerant to those who believe differently than you. As a Christian, the best I can do is live my life in a Christ-like manner in all things. The way I live my life if my best testimony which means that while I try very hard to love everyone, that doesn’t mean that I have to agree with their life choices. If personally asked where I stand on issues such as abortion, gay marriage, homosexuality, adultery and fornication I hope that I can do so in a loving manner, yet still stand firm my faith an convictions. While I may disagree with them and see their actions as sin, I can still be loving and respectful to them.
So what brought on this chain of thoughts on my blog? A fellow Sister in Christ is being vilified, ridiculed, and bashed by these so called “tolerant” folks over at Free Jinger. This group loves nothing more than to show their “tolerance” by ripping and tearing Christians who stand by their convictions and faith apart. Oh they’ll defend the Muslims, gays, atheists, feminists, and all others of different faiths but they jump on Christian women who choose to follow the Biblical path like lions on their prey. All because they choose to stand firm in their convictions and faith. I’m amazed at how worked up these folks can get over the fact that a Christian woman CHOOSES to cover her head or wear dresses only. Do these folks honestly have nothing else to do? So, all I can say is please, if you are going to preach tolerance, then please live your life in a tolerant way. I will be tolerant to your beliefs if you can be tolerant to mine. Doesn’t mean that I will agree with you, but I can’t expect to convert everyone I run across to become a Christian. There are just always going to be people that you can never lead to the TRUTH. So, all I can do is react to them in a a loving and kind way and continue living my life as Christ-like as I can.
So to my friends Tabby, Candy, Stephanie, Brandy and I’m sure many others. I love and support you, Sisters in Christ. I love and accept y’all just as you are and I pray for your deliverance from the intolerance of the so-called tolerant.
To the Free Jinger folk, I sincerely pray that you find a way to be tolerant to Christians as you are toward people of other faiths.
Well it’s been a week or so since I updated about our aquaponics system. When I last left off, we were fighting an algae bloom in the fish tank. This algae ended up killing all the fish and Marty began a serious search for a way to clear up the water. He finally settled on a home made system, which I’ll have to get him to explain to me so I can post more about it here. So please be patient, I’ll try really hard to get a post up about it soon.
As you can see on March 12, 2012, the fish tank is still murky and dark. You cannot remotely see the bottom. This was after running the water through a diatomaceous earth filter. Which did not work at all. All it did was leave a nice layer of diatomaceous earth on the bottom of the fish tank.
On March 4, 2012 we planted some seeds into the grow bed #2, as you can see from this March 12, 2012 photo they are doing well and we have the cutest little veggie seedlings popping up!
Two days after starting the new filter on the fish tank (March 14, 2012), the water is clearing up! As of today (March 20, 2012) the water is perfectly clear…sorry don’t have a photo from today, but here is a photo from March 14, 2012.
On March 14, 2012 we have quite a crop of seedlings coming up!
I also can’t believe how much the ducks have grown! We bought them on March 4, 2012 and look at them just 10 days later on March 14, 2012!
We didn’t get a whole lot done over the past weekend, because we went out of town. But we got home early enough on Sunday to get the grow bed #3 installed. Then yesterday after Marty got off work he repotted most of the seedings in grow bed #2 and put them into grow bed #3 to continue growing. When they are big enough they will be transplanted into the garden in our front yard.
Marty found these Dixie cup sized plastic cups at Dollar General for 50/$1, he bought 2 packages and is using them as reusable individual transplant/seedling pots. The put holes in the bottom of them so the water in the grow bed comes up through to keep the seedlings moist.
In the next few weeks, now that the fish tank water is clear, we will begin adding fish to the system again which will add some much needed nutrients to the system. We will also be moving the chicks and ducks out of the greenhouse and into chicken tractors pretty soon. The ducks sooner than the chicks as they have pretty much outgrown the brooder they’re in. We won’t be moving the chicks out until after Easter, which usually signals our last frost around here. We will also be getting the garden beds tilled up an ready to begin planting. So, I’ll come back and update as we have more news 🙂
Essential Traditions/Real Food Real Frugal 