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Posted At: 9:58am by AgentDelta
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Well, I'm back. Briefly. I've got another post written in my head that I plan to put up here soon. I hope I'll be able to do it tomorrow. In the meantime, I just wanted to update since it has been about a week.
Paraphrased wisdom from "The Teeth of the Tiger": "If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan very well."
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Posted At: 9:43am by AgentDelta
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"For it is by grace that we have been saved, through faith--and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works so that no one can boast." -- Ephesians 2:8-9. (NIV).
This has always been one of my favorite Bible verses. Probably because it gives the assurance that salvation is not dependent on our physical and mental abilities.
I don't know about y'all, but sometimes, I worry about how well I do things. "Am I getting it clean enough?" "Am I doing this right?" "Did I get EVERY SINGLE ONE of the problems on my homework right?" etc.
But of the above-quoted verse tells us that we don't have to worry about our salvation. We don't have to worry "Do I believe enough?" "Have I done enough good deeds?" "Did I repent hard enough?" etc.
We know we are saved, because our salvation is something that God gives us, not something that we earn or create. Because of this, we don't have to worry about our faith being good enough. After all, God is perfect, and everything he does is perfect. Therefore, if salvation is a gift from God, then we know that it is perfect. And if we know that it is perfect, then we know that it is guaranteed to save us.
Another thing about God doing the salvation: Anybody can be saved. ANYBODY. Hitler could (might) have been saved, if he had repented and come to faith. Do I think he did? No. Is there the possibility? Yes. Wouldn't that be wierd, to get to heaven and find Adolph Hitler there?
Something I have observed is people are always looking to get something for nothing. They are also looking for the best bargain available. The exception I have noticed to this is when it comes to faith. While somebody may be willing to drive 400 miles to get a great deal on a car or a laptop, they won't let God give them faith. Instead, they insist on earning their way to heaven "the old-fashioned way," as my pastor always says.
Perhaps the reasoning for this comes from the old saying "if you want it done right, do it yourself." People don't want to trust God with something as important as their salvation. They want to make it themselves, mistakes and all! After all, God will surely understand if there are a few imperfections thrown in. He is merciful, isn't He?
WRONG! Yes God is merciful, but he demands absolute perfection. Absolute perfection cannot be achieved by sinful human beings. It like using a muddy rag to wash your car. The car won't get clean. This is where Jesus steps in. He fulfilled God's demand of absolute perfection. He did it all. He kept the law perfectly.
Now for the real kicker: He wants to transfer HIS perfection to us. The perfection that He alone has achieved, and He wants to give it to us, despite the fact that we hate Him. Despite the fact that we killed Him. Despite all this, He wants to give His perfection to us, and take the punishment for every single sinful thing we've even done and ever will do. He earned salvation for us. He took the punishment for our sins. He wants to give us that salvation. He wants to credit his perfection to us. And not just to you, but everybody. He wants to give salvation to Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and everybody else on this stinkin' planet. Why? Because He loves us. Despite all we've done to Him, He loves us, and wants to see us in heaven. How cool it that?
Sorry I started rambling and repeating a bunch of stuff y'all probably already know. 
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Posted At: 9:46am by AgentDelta
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Have you ever wonderd what would happen if we replaced all of our leaders (national, state, etc.) with people who weren't politicians? Not necessarily people who don't know anything about leadership, but people who don't play all the games that today's politicians play.
Let's take this further. What if these people started cutting out the government bureaucracies? What if these people refused to listen to lobbyists? That would mess up a lot of stuff...
But overall, it would probably be good for us. It would probably get rid of a lot of the corruption, etc. that plagues us.While I don't think something like this wouldever happen, it's still something interesting to think about.
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Posted At: 9:47am by AgentDelta
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"If you control the present, you control the past. If you control the past, you control the future."
"The past is what happened. History is just what somebody decided to write down."
Have you ever thought about the truth of these statements? If you control the present, then you control what people are taught about the past. You can even make up stuff that ever happened, and pass it off as truth. Maybe sometime in the future, the government will deny the Civil War. The war will not be taught to anybody, and it will soon be forgotten.
If you control what people are taught about the past, then you control what people will do in the future. If you teach people that bad things happened in the past because somebody decided to randomly invade a nation, then people will not randomly invade nations in the future. If you teach people that good things have comes from lying and cheating, then people will lie and cheat.
"History is just what somebody chose to write down." Isn't that the truth? How do we know that what we are taught about the Civil War, or anything else, for that matter, is the truth? How do we know that it is the whole truth? We don't. All we have is what somebody decided to write down, be it true or untrue.
In summary: The government controls all. They control the present, so they control the past. They control the past, so they control the future. But they are not in absolute control. God is in control of them. And that is a very comforting thought. 
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Posted At: 9:35am by AgentDelta
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Turns out the drought might not be over after all. It all depends on whether they think we'll continue to get rain. We ended up getting 3.8 inches at our place. Most places got at least 2 inches, and some places got up to 7 inches.
Even if this rain doesn't officially end the drought, it should reduce the wild fire danger. There have been lots of fires around here recently. Not too many this past month, but a couple months ago, there was one two minutes away from our house. Fortunately, the wind was blowing out of the west, so the fire just burned part of a cow pasture.
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Posted At: 5:46am by AgentDelta
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The rain continues to fall here. When I checked the rain guage a minute ago, there were 3.6 inches of water in it. Other places in my area have gotten up to 7 inches of rain. The spillway at one of the area lakes looks like a river that people would go white-water rafting on. :P
I hope this means that we can consider the drought officially over!!
Please keep the people down here in your prayers, since several homes have flooded, and you never know what will happen when you combine flash flooding with impatient drivers. Fortunatly, this is happening on a Sunday afternoon, so not many people are out driving.
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Posted At: 2:10am by AgentDelta
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It's been raining since yesterday. So far i think we've gotten around 3 inches worth of rain. It's a good thing, since we still haven't really recovered from a six month drought.
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Posted At: 8:52am by AgentDelta
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On the forums a while back, we got to alking about civilization. I commented that about our so-called "civilization." We have legalized murder, we let people tell us that homosexuality is OK, and we let liars run our country. And we call this civilization??! Dulcimerist then pointed out that Roman culture was worse than ours, yet Jesus still came from it, and Christianity got its start in Roman culture. It's a comforting thought when the sinfulness of this world gets you down. :)
However, we must have had some advancement in that past 2000 years, so lemme think...let's see...it's no longer OK to sell your kids into slavery...we no longer have slavery...ummmm..there was something else...I can't think of it...oh well. Other than that. that's all I can think of. 2000 years. 2-3 advances. *shakes head* I'm no expert on Roman culture, so doubtless there are other advances, but still... it's like Solomon said in Ecclesiastes "There is nothing new under the sun."
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Posted At: 9:50am by AgentDelta
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I've been noticing something disturbing over the past few weeks: The grass is green.   ;-)
I am having great problems understanding this. For the past 6 months, the grass has been brown. Something is just not right about the grass being green. I have come up with a theory to explain this. My theory is that the natural color of grass is brown. Rain dyes grass green. Thus, when you don't have any rain (we hadn't had any for six months) the dye wears off, and the grass returns to its natural color of brown. We got a couple inches of rain...probably about a month ago....and it dyed the grass green. It looks quite wierd. 
What color is your grass? Is it its natural brown, or unnatural green?
Edited on: March 18th, 2006 11:10 pm
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Posted At: 6:54am by AgentDelta
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Looking over the history of the world, I've noticed that each empire/world power seems to get only one crack at greatness. After this, they crumble to a shadow of their former selves. Look at Rome, once a great empire, but now, just another city in Italy. Look at France. Once, the French ruled the most of Europe. Now, they're just another European country.
Look at Great Britain. The British once had a vast empire. Now, they just have their rather small island country. None of these countries/cities has ever regained their greatness. I could go on to list other examples.
All of this makes me wonder: When will America's greatness end? We've been a world power for some time now. Our moral foundations are crumbling. How long will we last? Will our fall be somewhat like Babylon's? While the king feasted, the Persians sneaked in a conquered Babylon. While we enjoy our wealth, are the terrorists already sneaking in to conquer us?
Rather pessimistic and semi-pointless, I know, but I wanted to post something serious on here.
Edited on: March 17th, 2006 10:01 am
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