Lumberjack Charles Update

 January 17 2013 Update: In the center of the photo is a white pole that is the bottom of the hill where I have ended my clearing out.

 To give some perspective as how far down this goes

 I am standing beside the while pole in the ground.

 Charity took this photo from our window in the back of the house.

 January 19 2013 the before photo today.

 Today an after photo of clearing some old trees and limbs.

 Today: There is still a lot of work still to do to clear the ground of 30 years of trash that has been thrown down the hill.

 This was a before photo of the hill today.

This was the after photo after I cleared out some more limbs .

Luke 2 Preparation Time for Jesus

How To Stay Calm and Cool In Life

God told Isaiah to go meet Ahaz and give him this message: vs. 4

‘Take Heed, and Be Quiet”

Isaiah 7:1-9

Charles e Whisnant, Pastor/Teacher/Counselor

January 02, 2013  # 27

Be on guard and rest: Good thought, right?  Matthew 11:28-30.  This is the right attitude to take in life:

            On one hand: vigilance, determination, earnestness.

            On the other hand: silence, resignation and hope.

            Here we find balance between the passive and active aspects of life.  Herein we find rest in our heart. 

            (my message from Matthew 11:25-30: Jesus’ invitation to us to “rest.”)

1A       All True Life is a Listening:  “Be attentive, alert and take heed.”

            1B        Light doesn’t come into careless, inattentive souls.

            2B        A prayer attitude must be to think on these things.

            3B        Revelation comes to those listening. God’s voice is lost because men come with souls full of noises.

(God’s voice is heard through the Holy Spirit in our spirit, and comes as we pray and read the Scripture and listen to the preaching of the Word of God)

            4B        Our personal life, history: is a revelation of the mind of God, but we often miss the instructions.

5B        Give full place to observation and reflection: “Be Quiet” and you will find plenty of light and you will have no room in your heart for anxiety, unbelief, and despair.

2A       All True Life is a Watching:  Be caution, vigilant, circumspect.

1B        There is no room in life for presumption. When earnest prayer has been cultivated into a habit of prayerful watchfulness.  Let us be quiet.

2B        Most feel the need of

1.      Walking softly

2.      Being on the alert

3.      Soul is full of sober caution

But they never know: how to combine with this, that strong confidence in God which brings the sensitive heart’s assurance and peace.

            3B        All True Life is a Striving:

1C       Life must be full of:

1.      Effort,

2.      Aspiration,

3.      Strenuousness,

4.      Perseverance.

                        2C       Life calls for us:

1.      To Consider.

2.      To Discriminate.

3.      To Decide.

4.      To Act.

3C       Yet We are to be “Quiet”

1.      Calm amid tumult.

2.      Tranquil in severest effort.

3.      Full of peace

4.      Full of confidence, when life is most difficult and denying.

4C       In our Earthly life:

1.      It is not a life to be lazy.

2.      It calls for us to be:

A.     Earnest

B.     Discreet

C.     Economical

D.     Prudent

E.      Pains-taking

Then we are to be “Quiet: which means: ‘No painful, misgiving thoughts of word.

5C       In our Christian life:

1.      Never to dream ourselves into, but seek:

A.     Spiritual knowledge

B.     Strength

C.     Beauty

D.     Completeness

2.      When we have given ourselves to God’s service and glory. With a single, purposeful heart. Let us for the rest be quiet.

3.      Investigate, with caution, patient and hopeful.

4.      Life has many puzzling avengers. Life presents things that are of confusions and contradictions.

5.      Reading the Word of God: Its content speaks clearly, to the glory of God. We are not to glide over such pages and loosely think over them.

6.      Our life at times may be going very smoothly – health good, business good.

7.      Other times life circumstances change: our health fails, creditors’ call, popularity falls

A.     Then we are staggered and ask skeptical questions.

WHAT ARE WE TO DO WHEN WE ENCOUNTER CHANGE!!!!!

B.     BE QUIET

1.Proceed with caution. Look before you leap. Think before you act.

2.Do nothing before you have thought it over and prayed about it

C.     TAKE HEED:

1.Worldliness is gradually creeping in.

2.Doctrine of all sorts is at a discount.

3. 

D.     SIT TIGHT:  FEAR NOT:

1.Self-control in the time of stress and storm. The world says: “How can they do that?  What is the secret of that wonderful composure? GOD.

2.Too often we believe the worst is going to happen. We are afraid of the outcome so much that we don’t do anything.

3.Fears, yes. Don’t cherish them.

4.Have patience: see the end of this trouble.

5.Fear not Tomorrow, God is already there.

E.     CAUTION WITH CONFIDENCE:

1.Life is danger. We are walking in jeopardy every hour.

F.      VIGILANCE AND GLADNESS:

1.Be like the birds, they sit and look around.

G.    STILLNESS OF SPIRIT

1.Allow the Holy Spirit to draw His various graces upon you.

H.    CHRISTIAN SERENITY:

1.The child of God should live above the world, moving through it as a star, quietly moving – clear, serene and still.

Death of Robert Bork, Great jurist, false gospel

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On the death of Robert Bork: truthful jurists, false Gospels

from Biblical Christianity by DJP

Judge Robert Bork died today at the age of 84.

My life-circumstance was such that I got to follow a good bit of the Bork hearings, when President Reagan had nominated the great man to the Supreme Court. I never forgot what I heard, and I have never forgiven the unrepentant, corrupt men who maligned and rejected him: Kennedy, Specter, Biden, Metzenbaum, Inouye, Packwood, Chafee, others.

Bork would have been frustrating at times, but he would have been one of the greatest justices in American history. But it wasn't to be.

One of the main issues in those hearings was the issue of originalism, of original intent: that the documents should be read in terms of authorial intent, in terms of the way the Framers meant them to be read. It was not the role of the courts to do justice, arbitrarily and differently defined from fad to fad; it was their role to read, understand, and apply the law as written. Not to legislate from the bench.

Of course the great and specific fear was for the sanctity of one of the greatest "rights" ever fabricated despite the Constitution, but in its name: the "right" to murder unborn children who are inconvenient or imperfect. That was probably the largest single central issue to Bork's opponents.

Admiring the man as I did, I was deeply saddened to read years later that he converted to Roman Catholicism.

This was not only tragic, it was tragically ironic. A man known for insisting that the Constitution be respected as the law of the land, and that it be read according to authorial intent, trusted his soul to an institution devoted to obscuring and perverting the teachings of its putative central document, the 66 books of Scripture. Though he rejected a court that legislated and created law from the bench, Bork embraced a church that did all that and worse with Scripture.

Lest anyone hope that Bork somehow actually heard and believed the Gospel, despite Rome's official dogmas, we must sadly note that he said this at the time: "If you get baptized at my age, all of your sins are forgiven. And that's very helpful."

There you go. One brief external act, and Heaven overlooks Robert Bork's crimes against God.

There is nothing of broken repentance, of a Gospel-tilted worldview; nothing of boasting in Christ, of trusting to His righteousness and His blood alone, by grace alone, through faith alone. Nothing, in other words, of the  Biblical and true Gospel of Christ. Just praise for a ritual... which is Roman Catholicism. As I commented at the time, "How evil must a sect be, that would encourage an old man to take that to the grave as his trust!"

Of course, had Robert Bork read the Bible as he insisted on reading the Constitution, he never would have come within a hundred miles of Rome. He would have seen that salvation comes through faith in the Lord Jesus (Acts 16:31). He would have seen that salvation is in Christ alone through faith alone by grace alone (Rom. 3:19—5:21). He would have looked to Christ and God's grace alone for a sovereign work of salvation (Eph. 2:1-10). He would have never tired of glorifying Christ and His saving grace (1 Tim. 1:15; Titus 2:11ff.) — not a ritual.

Of course I hope that someone found Bork and preached the Gospel to him, and that he repented of his trust in deception and believed in Christ. And I can totally believe that the mainstream media would not report such an event, if it occurred.

But if not, then there is yet another soul to be charged against the monstrous institution of the Roman Catholic Church in its centuries-long pursuit of sending more and more souls to a hopeless eternity, trusting in falsities and and rituals and hocus-pocus and vain lies for the salvation we all so desperately need — and which we all can find, in Christ alone.

Rivers of Joy Baptist Church From the Past

Pastor Charles begin July 2008

Back in 2010

Rivers of Joy Bapitst Church In November 2012

Who is God?

What are the essential truths to know about an infinite God?  What are is irreducible minimum about God?  To know and worship God truly, we must acknowledge at least three truths about Him.

First, He is a triune God.  He is one in essence and three in person and the three persons (they are not manifestations or modes) are distinct in relationships and equal in authority (1 Pt. 1:2).  “There is only one and true God, but in the unity of the Godhead there are three co-eternal and coequal Persons, the same in substance but distinct in subsistence” (B. B. Warfield).

So, as the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and yet the Father is in the Son and the Spirit is in the Father — all the members of the Trinity are in each other without being equal to the other members — and combined, the three distinct persons of the Trinity make up one God.  Further, the three members of this Tri-unity have distinct functions and roles, yet all serve to glorify the others and none is any less God than the others.

We tend not to think too much of the Trinity, yet the Trinity is essential because it establishes the uniqueness and transcendence of God, establishes the deity of all the members of the Trinity (which is important because the deity of the Son and Spirit are sometimes denied), and because it is intrinsically connected to the gospel and our spiritual life. Fred Sanders has noted, “Christian salvation comes from the Trinity, happens through the Trinity, and brings us home to the Trinity.…The more we explore and understand the depths of God’s commitment to salvation, the more we have to come to grips with the triunity of the one God.  The deeper we dig into the gospel, the deeper we go into the mystery of the Trinity.” [The Deep Things of God]

Secondly, we can only comprehend the character of God as we contemplate His attributes as they are revealed in Scripture.  These attributes can be divided into two broad categories — communicable and incommunicable attributes — demonstrating both His transcendence and approachability.  Here is a compilation of some of the most basic of His attributes:

Finally, because God is God, all life terminates on Him.  Life is not about us; we’re not ultimate.  He is.  We live for Him, to please Him, and to glorify (reveal) Him (2 Cor. 5:9; 1 Cor. 8:6; 10:31).  All life is therefore theocentric (God-centered) and not anthropocentric (man-centered).

In summary,

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.…For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.  We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.  This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church.  Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech.” [Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy]