Pure Grace

I have no idea who came up with this top 10 list, but I think it’s something to reflect upon!
Top 10 Predictions No Matter Who Wins the Election

1. The Bible will still have all the answers.
2. Prayer will still work.
3. The Holy Spirit will still move.
4. God will still inhabit the praises of His people.
5. There will still be God-anointed preaching.
6. There will still be singing of praise to God.
7. God will still pour out blessings upon His people.
8. There will still be room at the Cross.
9. Jesus will still love you.
10. Jesus will still save the lost when they come to Him.

and God approves this message!

Credit is the buzzword of the past 3 weeks. We’ve been hearing about the credit markets being frozen. What if we lived with no credit and could only spend what we earned? I wonder what this crisis would look like under those circumstances. Credit had become very easy to get, buy a coat sign up for a instant credit card and get an immediate 10% off. Credit is sold as same as cash, with 12 months interest free financing. Even churches and non-profits fell into the credit trap. The meltdown over the past weeks reminded me of a Dave Ramsey riff (clip attached to this post!) on his radio show about a church going into debt on faith that God would see them through. The Dave Ramsey Show Podcast 08072008 1st hour
It’s really easy to rationalize our purchases especially when credit is/was so freely available. It’s also really easy to believe that faith in God will ease the debt payments. I often wonder how this makes God feel? I wonder if God is tired of hearing calls for bailouts. He did after all, create choice and a brain for each of us to make responsible financial decisions.

A great place to start eliminating debt from your life, grab yourself a copy of:

Earlier today I read a post from Lynell LaMountain: at Godbrief.com that discusses the notion that religions spend lots of time worrying about right vs. wrong and really they should be arguing life or death. God wants us to choose life and He wants us to live abundantly. Then this evening I was browsing Google News and found this article from Voice of America about Kay Warren’s (wife of Rick Warren pastor of the Saddleback church) embrace the AIDS cause. In the article she discusses how she tiptoes around conservative christians and the battles she has with the AIDS activists that preach safe sex practices instead of abstinence. In the end, the AIDS crisis and most crisis’ is about Life or Death, not Right vs. Wrong. 

I’ve owned the domain Puregrace.com for 11 years and for about 6 or 7 of those years the domain was used to server the Las Vegas Mountainview SDA church in Las Vegas, NV and if you do a Google search for Las Vegas Adventist churches you will more then likely end up at Puregrace.com. The domain Puregrace.com has not been used by the church in over 15 months. I find it interesting that after 15 months of Google spiders still indexing the site, the site still shows up in searches for the church. So I guess what’s interesting is that once Google finds you it takes forever for Google to find a new site. While Puregrace.com has had a bit of a departure over the past few months, I am going to explore ideas I find interesting and hopefully learn a thing or two about gratitude and grace. Fortunately, I think this is a better use of Puregrace.com

Lynell LaMountain over at http://www.godbrief.com wrote a post about a reader that compared his devotionals to all other religions that just take care of the pain and doesn’t work to solve the root of the problem. I had never really heard of the term Tylenol Religion until yesterday, and it got me thinking. I think churches do a good job relieving headaches, because there are many that head to church when times get tough. It’s typical to turn towards God, when there is a death in the family or a job is lost. When there are no headaches its easy to move God to the background. I think this is a human condition not a religious condition. God wants to be part of our lives, the good and the bad. Churches and ministries like http://www.lifeIgnited.com do a great job being there when times are tough, but where is the personal responsibility to work on the bigger problem once the pain is gone. God gave us a brain and the free will to choose our path, it’s our choice whether we want God to help us make those decisions.