Blessed are...

“You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He is risen!” (Luke 16:6, NIV) To me, these are some of the most powerful words recorded in the Bible. These words tell us that we serve a God that was crucified for our imperfections, our sins, that He died this horrible death so that we did not have to and that He conquered death. He lives, even today, He lives! We serve a living God! Think about that for a moment…..then take a couple minutes thanking Him for all that He has been through for you.

As believers, Easter is one of the most joyous holidays because, through it, we get to celebrate everything that sets our faith and our Savior apart from this world. Now that the Easter holiday is through I encourage you to stay focused on Christ, on everything that He has done and everything that He continues to do in, through, and around you.

After Jesus’ resurrection he appeared to many people before his ascension into heaven. The other day I was reading about Jesus’ appearance to Thomas, one of His disciples (John 20:24-31). One verse caught me more so than the others that morning, verse 29. Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those that have not seen and yet have believed.” Was Jesus talking about us in this verse? Was Jesus saying that we are to be blessed, to be happy, to be envied because we have not seen Him and yet we have believed? I have read this passage in the past and for some time now I have believed that Jesus was, in fact, speaking about you and I. But more recently I was reminded of Jesus’ healing of the man who was born blind (John 9). Later, when this man was questioned by the Pharisees, he replies “One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see.” (John 9:25)

Whatever your view on this passage is, whether Jesus was speaking about you and I, because we have not seen Jesus in the physical sense or not. The truth is, it doesn’t matter! For if you have seen Jesus in the Spiritual sense, you have been blessed immeasurably. Your challenge, then, is to evaluate the relationship you have with The Creator of the heavens and the earth, to come to know Him for who He is in, around, and through you! And then, live this blessing out and share it with everyone around you, today, tomorrow, and forever.

Who is our president: I finally got it

 
Over the past, I don’t know how many months, I have been receiving email forwards and text messages claiming that Obama is a horrible president. Now, I can say that I was not originally fond off this guy, his platform, or his policies, yet I was careful not to go to the degree to which many did. It seemed to me that shortly after Obama received the Democratic nomination, the comments and accusations that began focused around his past and the fear that many individuals were just being racist and were not truly giving the guy a chance. While I still did not vote for him due to my stance on his issues, I was not as harsh as others were at the time.
Since the time that Obama has taken the office I have received more email forwards than ever before, from family members and from friends, claiming that he is a terrorist and that his aim is to destroy America. Again, many of these emails come with a rather racist attitude and for that reason I tend to delete many of them before even opening and reading them. It seems to me that this world is filled with too much hatred and disgust and that I don’t need it being delivered to my desktop on a daily basis.

Given this, I have been struck with the understanding that Obama really has not done anything significant since taking office. At first I was encouraged by this, knowing that he may go down as a failure of a president and also knowing that if he wasn’t doing anything, than he wasn’t doing anything destructive.
Yet, as I began to read more and more about what he has actually done it occurred to me that he has done quite a lot while not doing much at all. Obama’s budgets and spending sprees have driven America into one of the largest deficits ever. Spending more money than any president ever has and also committing more money to projects that will not prove to benefit our great country in the coming years. Obama truly is aiming to destroy America yet much of the population will not come to realize it until it is far too late. This article really opened my eyes to this fact.
Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam's IOUs - Yahoo! News
We may, in fact, be living during a time when our president is a terrorist. We definitely are living during the era of the worst president ever!