Peace Over America

I remember all of my family members.

The 1775 Lexington Alarm Colonial War And I.

My ancestors fought for my country of my birth America.

The first battle of the Revolutionary War, fought in Massachusetts on April 19, 1775.

British troops had moved from Boston toward Lexington and Concord to seize the colonists’ military supplies and arrest revolutionaries. In Concord, advancing British troops met resistance from the Minutemen, and American volunteers harassed the retreating British troops along the Concord-Lexington Road. Paul Revere, on his famous ride, had first alerted the Americans to the British movement. My family was there and we fought for our country!

Beyond a doubt we Sloanes are descended from patriots that marched on the alarm of 1775
. From the

archives; MASSACHUSETTS Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War.

The sons’, of David Slone b. abt. 1700, of Dorchesterand John Slone Jr., a grandson of David of Dorchester, all served in the Revolutionary War.

Anyone tracing their lineage back to these patriots would prove SAR/DAR eligibility .

 I trace back to David of Dorchester (John, Timothy, Charles) can also prove eligibility through (Molly) Mary Polly Silvester (wife of Timothy) who was a daughter of Philip Silvester son of Benjamin Silvester.

I am also traced back to the Mayflower Pilgrims.

So is it any wonder that I am so passionate about America?

That I am so concerned with the things that go on in America? My family has lived here from the beginning of this great nation and has fought for her freedom always.

David Sloane son of
Donald Sloane son of
Percy Sloane son of
Horace Sloane son of
Lyman Sloane son of
Charles Slone son of
Timothy Sloan son of
David Sloan
And the list goes on and on…

This is my country!

So when I do research and see what is going on in my country I get concerned as do many others.

 I am a voice that started a long time ago in America. There is a family heritage that belongs to me. I believe that as a family member of the founding fathers of this great nation my prayers and conversation with God over America have some value.

Today we are seeing strife. There is a battle in America.

Pray fervently.

There is room for all people at the cross no matter what age, race, or nationality. And when you become His child, He enlarges your heart to love all of His people even those who wounded you.

 He will make enough room in your heart to overlook the willful and hurtful transgressions of others. Whereas, you could not do this before you came to Christ.

Pray for peace in America.

In the gospel of John chapter four, Jesus gives us this same principle by loving and forgiving someone who would be considered as an outsider or even as an enemy.

When He came to Jacob’s Well in Samaria, Jesus sat down and asked a woman of religious and cultural mixture for a drink.

If a Jew, other than Christ had met that woman at the well, she would have been ignored and shunned because of her background, let alone her gender. Jesus did not allow anything to alter his deliberate treatment of her as being someone created and loved by God. That day she was given living water from God Himself.

If you want to continue to experience the same fullness as the woman at the well, you have to start by forgiving those the world says should be your enemy.

You offer love and forgiveness, whether it is accepted or not. The moment you do, it will be as though you have dug out all the dirt from the old wells of Abraham, and living water will begin to flow again. Just think of the impact you would have in the workplace if you forgive a co-worker who had wounded you.

 Think how everyone on the job would marvel that you would actually reach out to this hurtful person and offer friendship to them again.

The sonnet on a plaque inside the pedestal that the statue of Liberty stands reads:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

The only Statue of Liberty inscription can be found on the tablet in her left hand, which says JULY IV MDCCLXXVI (July 4, 1776), the day the United States adopted the Declaration of Independence.

America is independent. America is free. Let us keep it that way.
God has chosen the United States of America to lead the way for Christian Freedom as we await the return of our Lord.

Tammy Faye Baker Gave Hope

Tammy Faye Was A Hope Broker

By Anonymous author...

Tammy Faye was a hope broker. She is a hero and a role model for me. I can only dream that I could help as many people as she has with her (to quote the Charlotte Observer obituary) "can-do Christian cheer."

A lot of Christians made her life miserable and left her when she was down.

But she seemed to move right past it. It was interesting to me that when she died her family contacted Larry King. He had an awful lot of respect for her and let her talk freely about anything she wanted to talk about.

I have to admit that at one time I almost became a Tammy Faye detractor myself, until it occurred to me that I WAS Tammy Faye.

Male perhaps, but Tammy Faye nevertheless.

 It also occurred to me that it wouldn't be hard to imagine having someone like Tammy Faye as part of your own family.

I'm willing to go out on a limb and say most families have someone like Tammy Faye in their extended circle.

 Somebody that speaks their mind, but embraces all people. Somebody that is brash but loves everybody and loves them all the same. Somebody that wears outrageous clothes, hairdos and styles. Somebody that loves to laugh and goes to the extremes.

Somebody that loves life and lived it!

A few years ago I read an interview with Tammy's son Jamie (who goes by Jay,) who heads up a wild ministry to folks on the extreme edge.

Jamie is on the edge himself (videos are not working). At the time his mom was involved in some pretty peculiar work for the former wife of one of television's best known evangelists.

She was on the WB reality show "The Surreal Life" with Vanilla Ice and former adult porn star Ron Jeremy. Her son Jamie - who was embarrassed by his mom - told of trying to convince her that people were watching the show and laughing at her.

She told him she didn't care, that she loved these people, that they were her friends, and that Jesus loved them and she wanted to be the one to tell them.

Jamie Bakker said after listening to his mom explain it all to him she went from being an embarrassment to him to being his hero.

That's when she became a hero to me as well.

Around the same time and after the release of the documentary "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" which chronicled her life, she became a sensation in the gay community.

That raised my eyebrows, so I started to read about what her role was there.

 Turns out they were inviting her to preach! 

But mostly she just loved on them. She preached at AIDS events and became loved by gay men across the nation.

I read one of her sermons to these gatherings and it could have just as easily come across Billy Graham's pulpit.

She reinforced how much she loved these guys, how much Jesus loved them, how much God despised sin, and how she was pleased to give a kiss and a motherly pull on the cheek to everyone of them.

You go girl!

 I cried after reading the accounts and asked God to help me love everybody as much as Tammy Faye did.

Maybe someday I'll love people with the fervency Tammy Faye had for people. Maybe someday. Maybe.

Tammy Faye grew up in northern Michigan in a family of eight kids in a house without running water.

Her and Jim were Assembly of God kids that met in Bible College and wanted to share the message of Jesus far and wide.

They started out doing puppets, which they eventually did for a budding television program that would become known as the 700 Club. They started out small and grew huge.

It might be fair to say that success became their downfall, except that they didn't stay down. Both Tammy Faye and Jim bounced back with a love for people and a message of hope for the ordinary person.

I had the privilege of meeting Jim Bakker a few years ago right after he got out of jail and wrote a book called, "I Was Wrong."

 He was broken, sincere, kind, gentle and had all the time in the world for me.

 I was embarrassed, humiliated and felt a degree of self-scorn for not being a person that had the same outflow of love as he had.

 I wish I would have met Tammy Faye.
 
Tammy Faye was at one of the local casinos not too long ago making an appearance and signing her book.

She did an interview with a local radio station, they loved it and said she was a blast, and the local newspaper made it sound like a not to be missed event.

 Lots of hugs, people thanking her, lots of tears, lots of encouragement, lots of talk about Jesus. People loved her and she loved people.

Tammy Faye was a hope broker. People with broken lives were drawn to her.

Gay men listened as she spoke about sin. Larry King leaned over and listened to her every word over and over.

After almost every Tammy Faye interview, he would say, "Amazing!"

She was a hero to her son. A broken lady that loved Jesus and moved through every difficulty in her life, while she continued to try and draw people closer to God.

If at the end of your life the Charlotte Observer - which was harsh to the Bakkers at many junctures in their life - says of you that you carried a message of "can-do Christian cheer" than we'll be able to say that was a life well lived.

You go sis! I love you and am proud to be your brother!!

P.S.
 I am so glad I didn't do post number 100 on the midnight release of the new Harry Potter book - which I originally planned to do.

This is SO much more important than Harry Potter could ever hope to be!

Ewing On 2 Corinthians 4:8-12

"....though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." 

The apostle Paul has, in this and a few prior verses in the chapter, been referring to the trials and suffering that he and those like him must endure as a servant of Jesus Christ in order to effectively minister the Gospel, in its purity, to others- in this case, the Corinthians.

The lengths to which God will go in bringing us to the place where He wants us spiritually may be very intense and extreme, and yet it is well worth all of it to the apostle Paul. It must be worth it to today's believers as well, if we are to have any real spiritual power.

"We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you" (2 Corinthians 4:8-12).

Every single believer will face this in his or her life, in exactly the way that God chooses to bring it about in the individuals life.

 It has been called the way of the cross, it has been referred to as death to self...It is very real. It is painful- and is ultimately beneficial to both the one enduring the trial, and those to whom he or she will eventually minister.....

Kathryn Kuhlman has been quoted as saying, "You cannot give anybody else that which you yourself have not received." 

Even a brief look at her life will indicate that she knew- from experience- exactly what Paul meant in these verses. This cannot be faked.

You cannot effectively communicate the love, the compassion, the faithfulness, the majesty of our God until and unless you've experienced them.

They do not come from a textbook, or from hearsay- they come only from a life spent in His Presence, and that, beloved, is His will and plan for you. "...though our outward man perish..."- In the original Greek, the word translated 'perish' here means destroyed, or decaying, or corrupted.

This is what happens to your self-confidence, your self-pride, your self-reliance when the Lord deals with you.

 You learn through difficulties, pain, and sorrow to cease trusting in yourself, and to more fully trust in the One Who made you, Who knows you fully, Who loves you unconditionally, Who has only your highest good in mind, and Who, through all of it, COMFORTS you.

 "Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." (2 Corinthians 1:3;4)......

I sometimes think of the 'outward man perishing' as my own mortal body as it slowly ages and is able to do less, and with more strain, than in my youth, and as it requires more effort to function.

I tire more easily than in my younger years, my bones and joints pop, and I looked a lot better as a kid than I do now.

But I didn't know the Lord in my twenties like I know Him today, and I wouldn't trade that for all of the youth, strength, or hair in the world!....

Miss Kuhlman said something else that I've never forgotten, as she reflected on her age, and how fatigue inevitably increased as she got older, "Wonderful Jesus, why didn't you give me this ministry when I was younger, when I never grew weary in body?"

 Then God spoke to her heart, "If I would have given it to you then, you would have blown it." She understood. She knew Him.....

Is He your everything?

Do you desire to bless others?

Will you allow Him to pour you out like a drink offering?

Will you trust Him in your pain, in the protracted waiting, when it all looks so impossible and hopeless?

 Will you imitate the example of the apostle Paul? You will be blessed beyond measure!

En Agape,
Jim Ewing

Repost

Friday, June 14, 2013

How did you get into Christian gaming?
Mikee Bridges: 
" I've been a Christian all my life and I don’t like American, Western Christianity. I don’t like the way we’ve portrayed Jesus, which is surrounded by guilt, shame, and judgment. Nowhere in (the Bible) does it say any of that stuff. I went from being a musician to being a promoter, and because of promoting, I had music venues, and in these music venues, I’d have a café or a lounge. I’d put some computers in there, and kids started gaming. It was a lot more fun to hang out with the kids who were gaming than the musicians, because the musicians were babies. So I stopped doing music, and I started doing gaming. We run a 7,000-square-foot gaming facility in Ventura, about an hour from here. All we do is game, all day, all night. Gamechurch.com is an extension of that."

God Loves Us

Almighty God the Father, the One True God and Creator of the Universe

 Anyone who knew Brant Baker as their shepherd knew that he always emphasized to everyone how much that God loves us. In fact that was the main focus of Shekinah fellowship from my perspective as just an attendee.

God the Father is the perfect example for all earthly fathers. He is holy, just and fair, but his most outstanding quality is love: Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:8, NIV)

 Jesus urged us to think of God as our loving father and went a step further by calling him Abba, an Aramaic word roughly translated as "Papa Daddy," to show us how intimate our relationship with him is.

God the Father created the universe and everything in it. He is a big God but at the same time is a personal God who knows each person's every need. Jesus said God knows us so well he has numbered every hair on each person's head.

God the Father is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing), and omnipresent (everywhere).

He is absolute holiness. No darkness exists within him.
God is just yet merciful. He gave humans the gift of free will, by not forcing anyone to follow him.

Anyone who rejects God's offer of forgiveness of sins is responsible for the consequences of their decision.

God cares. He intervenes in the lives of people. He answers prayer and reveals himself through his Word (the Bible), circumstances, and people.