October 5, 2014

Faith Is The Victory

By Joe

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Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 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?
1 John 5:1-5

The above verses, which state that faith is the victory, is a well-known verse. But the way in which we often interpret it tends to skew the meaning. Most of us think that we are being told that if we have enough faith we will press through to the victory. In short, we think that it is faith that carries us into any victory.

But wait. Read this verse carefully. It really does not say that our faith carries us into any victory. Rather, this verse states that faith is the victory. Faith itself – the reality of faith in us – that is the victory. Anything else that comes about because of this faith is not the victory, but the faith itself is the victory. We can grow in faith as we follow Christ, and such faith endures suffering. Such faith also sees us through to ultimate victory in Christ.

Consider two apostles, John and Peter. John writes, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world-our faith.” (1 John 5:2-4)

Peter gave words of blessing to those who were already undergoing suffering, “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”(1 Peter 5:10) Why does our faith overcome the world and end in victory? Because the God of all grace will “restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish” us until the end. Peter concludes in verse 11, “To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.” God can strengthen and restore us because all authority and power belong to Him for all of eternity. There simply is nothing Satan can throw at us that can destroy our faith if our faith is constant and rooted firmly in Christ.

I have watched people go through all kinds of challenges in life and challenges to their faith. Nothing is more devastating than being rejected by your family or faith because of your sexuality. Whether others look at their sexuality as sin or just part of life, it is our live to us, calling us to faith greater than what is in themselves. While no one can control their future, they can respond with faith in the Word, the Lord, and His plan for their lives. This does not relieve our pain, but helps us through their pain and the realization of God’s love.

Faith was never designed for us to demonstrate how strong we are or show how much we could accomplish. Faith depends upon and displays God’s strength, giving us assurance that victory will be ours. This victory is not a victory we earn; it’s a victory we enter. It is Christ’s victory. This is why victory is assured if we trust Christ. It’s His victory already won. This is why Paul could write, “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 15:57)

This first thing that came to mind when I read the verses above was the song “Faith Is the Victory.” I have always loved this song. We can overcome the world with our faith. There is a lot of evil in this world and things may not always go our way, but faith in Christ is our victory.

Faith Is the Victory
Words: John H. Yates, 1891
Music: Ira D. Sank­ey

Encamped along the hills of light,
Ye Christian soldiers, rise.
And press the battle ere the night
Shall veil the glowing skies.
Against the foe in vales below
Let all our strength be hurled.
Faith is the victory, we know,
That overcomes the world.

Faith is the victory! Faith is the victory!
O glorious victory, that overcomes the world.

His banner over us is love,
Our sword the Word of God.
We tread the road the saints above
With shouts of triumph trod.
By faith, they like a whirlwind’s breath,
Swept on o’er every field.
The faith by which they conquered death
Is still our shining shield.

Faith is the victory! Faith is the victory!
O glorious victory, that overcomes the world.

On every hand the foe we find
Drawn up in dread array.
Let tents of ease be left behind,
And onward to the fray.
Salvation’s helmet on each head,
With truth all girt about,
The earth shall tremble ’neath our tread,
And echo with our shout.

Faith is the victory! Faith is the victory!
O glorious victory, that overcomes the world.

Leave a comment | posted in Religion

October 4, 2014

Moment of Zen: Relaxing

By Joe

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How to unwind and relax after a long day at work in four steps.

Step 1: Loosen tie and unbutton shirt.
Step 2: Find a comfortable place to rest.
Step 3: Pull up something interesting on the Internet.
Step 4: Do what feels natural.

Leave a comment | posted in Moment of Zen

October 3, 2014

Educational Pun

By Joe

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Leave a comment | posted in Education, Funny

October 2, 2014

Grading

By Joe

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There is one thing that I truly hate about teaching: grading. Students always want to know if you’ve graded their test, and my usual nap swear is that I’m working on it. Grading is one thing that is a constant in the teaching profession. It really doesn’t matter if you teach college or high school, you still have to grade. I have a large stack that needs to be graded right now. I even brought it home to grade, and I despise bringing home work. By the end of the day, I can’t stand to look at another paper. I especially find it exasperating when I’ve said something many times in class and the students stills don’t know it. Nothing drives me insane quicker than to spend time preparing for class, doing my best to make things interesting, and the students just don’t care.

Apathy is the ugliest disease in America. I think seriously think that apathy will be the downfall of America. Students, and you see it in their parents too, want to be told how to think and what to think. The problem is that they listen to the wrong people. If they’d only listen to me, this world would be a better place. Haha!

Seriously, though, it is frightening how little students care these days. It’s scary how little respect they have for anything or anybody. It worries me that America’s youth want to only do the minimum. So few of them have the desire to be better, just average at best.

More and more, I’ve been thinking that I am just not cut out to teach high school. I just don’t have the patience or the energy. I much prefer to teach college, but so few jobs are out there and so many applicants vying for the same job. The whole thing becomes discouraging.

Leave a comment | posted in Education

October 1, 2014

Will They, Or Won’t They?

By Joe

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The nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court met behind closed doors on Monday to consider whether they should take up the hotly contested question of whether states can ban gay marriage.

The court has seven cases pending before it concerning bans in five states: Virginia, Utah, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Indiana. If the court agrees to take one or more of the cases it has the chance to rule when, if ever, gay men and women in the 31 states that now bar them from marrying could get marriage licenses.

An announcement on whether the court will hear the same-sex marriage dispute could come later this week. But given the weight of the controversy and that the justices only in recent weeks received the petitions, an announcement could come at a later point. The court officially reconvenes next Monday for its new term, which runs until the end of June.

The justices are due to discuss the cases as they weigh hundreds of petitions that have piled up during the court’s summer recess. The discussion is private. The court takes a case if four or more of the nine justices vote to hear it.

Gay marriage is legal in 19 of the 50 U.S. states. Judges in 16 other states have issued pro-gay marriage rulings, most of which have struck down bans. The bans have remained intact while litigation continues.

Supporters of gay marriage say the bans violate the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal treatment under the law.

State officials defending the bans counter that the Constitution does not dictate how states should define marriage and that there is no deeply rooted legal tradition that supports a right to gay marriage.

Although all seven cases raise the key question of whether states can ban gay marriage, they are all slightly different. If the court does decide to consider the issue, it could take one case or several.

The court could also decide to take no action on the cases at this stage. If the court were to decline to take them, appeals court rulings that struck down the bans would go into effect and other bans in certain states would likely fall as a result, but there would be no national ruling.

Across the country, a wave of court rulings favored arguments for gay marriage, prompted by the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in U.S. v. Windsor. In that case, the justices struck down a key part of a law called the Defense of Marriage Act that restricted the definition of marriage to heterosexual couples for the purposes of federal benefits.

If the Supreme Court agrees to hear at least one of the pending cases, oral arguments would be heard early next year and a ruling would come by the end of June. Additional lawsuits testing other state bans are also in the pipeline.

From
Supreme Court Meets To Consider Taking Gay Marriage Cases. By Lawrence Hurley
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5900122?ir=Gay%20Voices

Leave a comment | posted in News

September 30, 2014

Every Day

By Joe

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Every Day
Written by Jeffrey Steele and Alissa Moreno
Recorded by Rascal Flatts

You could’ve bowed out gracefully
But you didn’t
You knew enough to know
To leave well enough alone
But you wouldn’t
I drive myself crazy
Tryin’ to stay out of my own way
The messes that I make
But my secrets are so safe
The only one who gets me
Yeah, you get me
It’s amazing to me

How every day
Every day, every day
You save my life

I come around all broken down and
Crowded out
And you’re comfort
Sometimes the place I go
Is so deep and dark and desperate
I don’t know, I don’t know

How every day
Every day, every day
You save my life

Sometimes I swear, I don’t know if
I’m comin’ or goin’
But you always say something
Without even knowin’
That I’m hangin’ on to your words
With all of my might and it’s alright
Yeah, I’m alright for one more night-
Every day
Every day, every day, every day
Every day, every day
You save me, you save me, oh, oh, oh
Every day
Every, every, every day-

Every day you save my life

Jeffrey Steele, one of the song’s co-writers, was inspired to write down the title after meeting singer Sarah Buxton at a restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee. Buxton told Steele about her roommate, saying “Every day, she saves my life”. Steele then went home thinking about a lyric. Later on, while at a songwriting seminar in Colorado, Steele met songwriter Alissa Moreno, who was playing a melody on the piano. Steele then sang the title that he had written alongside Moreno’s melody, they worked on the lyric and melody, and the song was completed. He then sent the song to record producer Dann Huff, who recommended the song to Rascal Flatts. The group then recorded it for their Still Feels Good album, giving Moreno her second outside cut as a songwriter.

A friend sent me the lyrics to this song in a very sweet card. In the card, he wrote about all the reasons he thought this song described me. The thing is, it really describes him from my perspective. He’s always been there for me when I was down. He’s always been their encouraging me to be a better person, and I really do try. I value our friendship and though my friend may say that every day, I save his life, he’s the one that saves mine everyday by being my friend. Through thick and thin, he’s a true friend. I love you, my friend.

Leave a comment | posted in Music, Poetry

September 29, 2014

Gone with the Wind

By Joe

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‘Gone With the Wind’ to celebrate 75th anniversary with theatrical screenings showing the movie as it was originally shown seventy-five years ago. I took my mother to see GWTW, and it was worth every second of the five hours we sat in that theater. Though the movie has a running time of 238 minutes (with overture, intermission, entr’acte, and exit music), the theater where we saw it apparently didn’t know how to run a movie. The intermission should have been 15 minutes, but due to technical difficulties was over 45 minutes. It was still worth it to see my mama enjoy a movie that she has loved since she was a teenager.

TCM is presenting screenings of Gone With the Wind on Sept. 28 and Oct. 1 in movie theaters across the nation. If you are a fan of the movie, it is worth the price of the ticket to see it (even if ticket prices are more than the $10 that was the cost to see the originally premiere in Atlanta with Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in the audience).

Because we still give a damn: Long considered among the greatest films ever made, Gone With the Wind starring Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland celebrates its 75th anniversary this month.

Here are the details from Fathom Events, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and TCM:

Scarlett O’Hara won and then lost Rhett Butler, Atlanta burned and the antebellum South was shown in all its splendor and decimation in one of cinema’s most treasured and most successful films, “Gone With the Wind.” And now, as part of the festivities to mark the 10-time Oscar©-winning film’s 75th anniversary, Fathom Events is joining with Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and Turner Classic Movies to bring “TCM Presents: Gone With the Wind” back to its original home in select theatres nationwide and presented in its original aspect ratio so audiences can experience it as it was originally shown 75 years ago. The film will be exhibited on Sunday, September 28 and Wednesday, October 1 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. local time.

In addition to the classic film, which starred Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara, Clark Gable as Rhett Butler, Olivia De Havilland as Melanie Hamilton and Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes, “TCM Presents: Gone With the Wind” included a specially produced introduction by TCM host and film historian Robert Osborne.

As any fan of classic films or American literature surely knows, “Gone With the Wind” is the Epic Civil War drama about spoiled southern belle Scarlett O’Hara. Starting with her idyllic life on the plantation Tara, it traces her unrequited love for Ashley Wilkes, her tempestuous relationship with roguish Rhett Butler and her struggles as Atlanta burns, her family home is decimated and she vows to never go hungry again. As has been evident from the enduring devotion that fans have for the story – on film, on the pages of Margaret Mitchell’s original novel, on TV and home entertainment formats – frankly, they DO give a damn about Scarlett’s triumphs, travails and ultimate will to survive.

Leave a comment | posted in Movie Review

September 28, 2014

God Is Love

By Joe

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Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
1 John 4:7-21

Let’s look at how the Bible describes love, and then we will see a few ways in which God is the essence of love. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a). This is God’s description of love, and because God is love (1 John 4:8), this is what He is like.

Love (God) does not force Himself on anyone. Those who come to Him do so in response to His love. Love (God) shows kindness to all. Love (Jesus) went about doing good to everyone without partiality. Love (Jesus) did not covet what others had, living a humble life without complaining. Love (Jesus) did not brag about who He was in the flesh, although He could have overpowered anyone He ever came in contact with. Love (God) does not demand obedience. God did not demand obedience from His Son, but rather, Jesus willingly obeyed His Father in heaven. “The world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me” (John 14:31). Love (Jesus) was/is always looking out for the interests of others.

The greatest expression of God’s love is communicated to us in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Romans 5:8 proclaims the same message: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We can see from these verses that it is God’s greatest desire that we join Him in His eternal home, heaven. He has made the way possible by paying the price for our sins. He loves us because He chose to as an act of His will. Love forgives. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

God is Love, and His love is very different from human love. God’s love is unconditional, and it’s not based on feelings or emotions. He doesn’t love us because we’re lovable or because we make Him feel good; He loves us because He is love. He created us to have a loving relationship with Him, and He sacrificed His own Son (who also willingly died for us) to restore that relationship.

Can anyone really comprehend “unconditional” love? It seems the love that parents have for their children is as close to unconditional love as we can get without the help of God’s love in our lives. The problem is that even that is not conceivable to many of us as unconditional because many of us have been rejected by our families because of our sexuality. One of the greatest things my father ever did was to remind my mother when she found out I was gay, that I was their son and that she would always love me no matter what.

If I ever had children, I’d continue to love my children through good times and bad, and I wouldn’t stop loving them if they didn’t meet the expectations I may have for them. Many parents may be able to love their children unconditionally, but as gay Christians we often find the conditions and limits of their love. God’s love for us is different. God’s love transcends the human definition of love to a point that is hard for us to comprehend. He will never reject us or put conditions on His love for us, even if other people will do,so in His name, but those people merely prove that they do not know God.

The passage from 1 John above has one of my favorite biblical passages, “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” It is so clearly stated and yet there are constantly people who proclaim that they love God, but in the next breath will tell you all the people they hate and the myriad of reasons for their hate. It bothers me even more when someone says that God hates someone or some group. God is love, therefore hate does not exist for in him.

I hope that one day, the message of God’s love is spread throughout every man’s heart. In that day, the world will be a better place. We can begin by showing our love for mankind as God does. We should lead by example, and we should pray for those who have lost their way to come back to the heart of the message of God.

I want to end today’s post with a beautiful song that exemplifies what I wrote about today.

God Is Love
By Seth Wells

Come, let us all unite to sing:
God is love!
Let Heav’n and earth their praises bring,
God is love!
Let every soul from sin awake,
Let every heart sweet music make,
And sing with us for Jesus’ sake:
God is love!

God is love! God is love!
Come let us all unite to sing that God is love.

O tell to earth’s remotest bound,
God is love!
In Christ we have redemption found,
God is love!
His blood has washed our sins away,
His Spirit turned our night to day,
And now we can rejoice to say:
God is love!

God is love! God is love!
Come let us all unite to sing that God is love.

How happy is our portion here,
God is love!
His promises our spirits cheer,
God is love!
He is our sun and shield by day,
Our help, our hope, our strength and stay;
He will be with us all the way;
God is love!

God is love! God is love!
Come let us all unite to sing that God is love.

In Canaan we will sing again:
God is love!
And this shall be our loudest strain:
God is love!
Whilst endless ages roll along,
We’ll triumph with the heavenly throng
And this shall be our sweetest song:
God is love!

God is love! God is love!
Come let us all unite to sing that God is love.

Leave a comment | posted in Religion

September 27, 2014

Moment of Zen: ____________

By Joe

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I will let you fill in your own blank for the subtitle of this Moment of Zen. I don’t think it will be hard to imagine why I find a certain perfection and tranquility in this picture.

Leave a comment | posted in Moment of Zen

September 26, 2014

Life Can Make a Liar Out of You

By Joe

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In my post on Wednesday, I discussed how I haven’t been able to take a nap in the afternoon, even though I was tired. Well, by the time school was over yesterday, I was so exhausted, I could barely hold my head up. I think I might be coming down with something because I ached all over. This was not just a headache, it was body aches. I wasn’t running a fever though, which was good. I got home, got undressed, and went straight to sleep. I woke up a few hours later to check my phone for messages and to answer a phone call, then tried to go back to sleep, but this time I could only lay there. I eventually got out of bed and got something to eat, then I went back to bed. I did some reading, some work, and watched some TV. Eventually, I fell back to sleep. I hope I continue to feel better today. I really don’t want to be sick. Sunday, I am supposed to go with my mother to see the 75th anniversary showing of Gone with the Wind. I’m excited to see it in the movie theater, and to see my mother see it in the theater again. She saw it on the 25th and 50th anniversaries. It’s her favorite movie and these tickets were part of her birthday from me this year. So I need to be feeling better.

Leave a comment | posted in Miscellaneous