Quote of the Week: Building Your Mate's Self-Esteem

 Neglect Is Dangerous

When a spouse feels neglected and bored at home, he or she may seek excitement elsewhere.  One of the chief ingredients in extra-marital affairs is the fresh interest that two people express in each other.  Consequently, both become good listeners, and the competition is on again.

Too often people ignore those closest to them.  With the "prize" secured, they don't think of maintaining the strength of their relationships in order to keep the competition at bay.  Frequently they neglect their mates because they are selfish and it's the easiest thing to do.  But they are still competitive for their mates, or at least they should be.  If they do not focus on their mates, they leave the door wide open for others to come in and look around.  They lose by default.

(Dennis & Barbara Rainey, Building Your Mate's Self-Esteem, pp. 142-143)

Quote of the Week: Woke, Inc.

      "Once corporations discovered wokeness, the inevitable happened: they used it to make money.

    Consider Fearless Girl, a statue of a young girl that suddenly appeared one day in New York City to stare down the iconic statue of the Wall Street bull.  It was apparently a challenge for Wall Street to promote gender diversity: the placard at Fearless Girl's feet said, 'Know the power of women in leadership.  SHE makes a difference.'  Feminists cheered.  The trick?  'SHE' referred not only to Fearless Girl but to the Nasdaq-listed exchange -traded fund (ETF) that her commissioners, State Street Global Advisors, wanted people to buy.  State Street was battling a lawsuit from female employees saying it paid them less than their male peers in the firm.  Instead of paying women equally, State Street made a statue for them.  Fearless Girl was a line item in an advertising budget."

(Woke, Inc., Ramaswamy, p. 5)

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Quote of the Week: The Magic of Thinking Big

 And who hasn't heard the statement that "Success isn't worth the price," as if you have to sell your soul, your family life, your conscience, your set of values to reach the top.  But, in truth, success doesn't demand a price.  Every step forward pays a dividend.

(The Magic of Thinking Big, D. Schwartz, p. 3)

Who Alone Has the Authority to Interpret God's Word?

 Genesis 40:8

"We both had dreams," they answered, "but there is no one to interpret them."

Then Joseph said to them, "Do not interpretations belong to God?  Tell me your dreams."

This question that Joseph asked Pharaoh's baker and cupbearer after they had their dreams while in prison is an important question for us still today.  The dreams these two men had came from God for a specific purpose: to reveal his power and sovereignty through Joseph.  Look at how Joseph approaches interpreting God's Word (the dreams).  He recognizes that only God is capable of interpreting his own Word, so Joseph lets him.  Joseph doesn't rely on his own feelings or ideas about what each dream might mean, or could possibly mean.  He looks to God for the interpretation.  The proof of Joseph's faithful submission to God in interpreting these dreams is seen in the fact that they came true, exactly as Joseph said.

This lesson is still relevant and important for us today.  As Christians, we don't have the freedom to interpret God's Word however we want.  The only right way to interpret Scripture is to let Scripture interpret Scripture; or said another way, to let God tell us what he means when he says what he says in his Word.  The mistake too many people make is to think they have the freedom, or the right, to impose their own thoughts, ideas, and feelings onto what God says in his Word.  The Bible is God's Word.  He takes it very seriously and so should we.  He gives multiple warnings about adding to it or subtracting from it (Deuteronomy 4:2; Revelation 22:18-20).  This is why matters of doctrine in churches is so important.  What a church teaches must be supported by Scripture.  It can't simply be the pastor's own ideas or feelings about what society says Scripture should say.  No one has the freedom to impose their own thoughts and feelings onto God's Word--not pastors, not the media, and certainly not the selfish masses.  Biblical interpretation is not open to a democratic vote.  There is only one vote that counts: God's.

I will finish with a couple of quotes from David Kuske's book Biblical Interpretation: The Only Right Way:

        In interpreting written symbols of any kind, the interpreter's purpose must always be to determine the meaning that the original writer intended for the original reader--nothing more, nothing less.

        SAYS=MEANS

        This equation is a basic rule that must govern all communication; otherwise, what people said or wrote to one another would obviously be confusing at best.

        What is true for everyday interpretation is doubly true in Bible interpretation because we are interpreting what God says.  In the process of determining what the Bible says and means, the interpreter must be careful no to inject anything subjective into his interpretation.

--Biblical Interpretation, Kuske, p.13

God bless

Jason Fredrick

        

A Message from the Lord to the World's Rulers

Psalm 82

A psalm of Asaph.

1 God presides in the great assembly;
    he renders judgment among the “gods”:

2 “How long will you[a] defend the unjust
    and show partiality to the wicked?[b]
3 Defend the weak and the fatherless;
    uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
    deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

5 “The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing.
    They walk about in darkness;
    all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

6 “I said, ‘You are “gods”;
    you are all sons of the Most High.’
7 But you will die like mere mortals;
    you will fall like every other ruler.”

8 Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
    for all the nations are your inheritance.

Quote of the Week: Leadership Education- The Phases of Learning

For most educators, the hardest part of getting off the conveyor belt is getting their own Leadership Education.  The second hardest thing is backing off from a "require, require, require" view of education when children are young.  If you do these things well, your fourteen-year-olds will beg for a Leadership Education like Thomas Jefferson got and you will be ready to help them attain it.  They will get a superb Leadership Education, and the future of the world will be changed--one home and one classroom at a time.
(Oliver DeMille, Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning, p.30)

Audio of the Week:

Moses' Teachable Moment

Quote of the Week: Letters to the Church

There have been times in history when shepherds became corrupt.  God confronted the shepherds strongly in the Old Testament (Ez. 34), and Jesus did the same with the religious leaders of His day.  His solution was to replace the professionals and train a group of ordinary, uneducated people to change the world.  People like you.
The Church is in dire need of a fresh wave of godly leadership.  I pray all existing leaders would be renewed or replaced.
(Letters to the Church, Francis Chan, pp. 125-126)

Quote of the Week: Letters to the Church

Part of my responsibility as a good dad is to make sure I raise my kids in such a way that they are capable of leaving my home to start their own... This should be the goal of every pastor as well.  If we are not careful, we end up with people who have been sitting in churches for years and complaining they aren't being fed to their liking.  This is the same kind of dysfunction as a thirty-year-old complaining about his mom's cooking.  The goal of a good pastor is to raise up good pastors.

While many pastors boast of how many children sit under their care, doesn't it make more sense to boast of how many have graduated from their care?  Isn't it more a sign of failure when children are unable to leave the house?  Raising thousands of consumers is not success.
(Letters to the Church, Francis Chan, pp. 118-120)

Quote of the Week: Letters to the Church

A pastor from India once told me he was researching movements and noticed a common thread:  movements of God always start with a leader who knows God deeply, and they always end when the followers know only the leader deeply.  Pastors, we must know Him deeply and make disciples whose primary attachment is to Christ Himself.
(Letters to the Church, Francis Chan, p. 114)

Quote of the Week: Letters to the Church

Leaders, I want to challenge you to examine your lives and see whether you can truly tell people in good conscience to follow you as you follow Christ.
Just because we claim to believe in Him or went to school to study for ministry, it doesn't ensure that our hearts are His.
Remember that in Jesus' day, some of the religious leaders were the most evil.
(Letters to the Church, Francis Chan, p. 111)

Quote of the Week: Letters to the Church

Our Father thinks all His children are extremely gifted.  God is convinced He did an amazing job in creating each of them and supernaturally empowering them.  His desire is to see all His kids serve to their full potential.  He placed church leaders on the earth to ensure this would happen.  Few people understand this to be the role of their church leaders, and the leaders themselves often don't understand their role.  Leaders have become like personal trainers who lift the weights for their clients.  They run on the treadmill while their trainees sit and marvel.  Then we wonder why we the people aren't developing.
(Letters to the Church, Francis Chan, p. 91)

Quote of the Week: Letters to the Church

Don't you see the weirdness in calling people CHRISTian when they aren't servants?  I know we can't force people to serve, but there has to be something we can do.  No team puts up with players who refuse to contribute.  No army puts up with soldiers who don't carry their own weight.  Why do churches continue to put up with Christians who refuse to serve?  Why don't we treat selfishness as a sin that needs to be confronted?  If Scripture commands us to serve one another, isn't it a bit strange that we give people a free pass?...
We confront sexual immorality in our churches because we are commanded to live holy lives.  The adulterous person does not represent Christ well.  But neither does the consumer.  It's a sin that has to be confronted if we want to give the world an accurate representation of the body of Christ.  And if we really love our brothers and sisters, shouldn't we be encouraging them to repent?
(Letters to the Church, Francis Chan, pp. 97-98)

Quote of the Week: Psalm 12

Psalms 12:8

The wicked freely strut about when what is vile is honored among men.

Quote of the Week- August Pieper

And now I tell the Synod in the name of God:  If we do not take an entirely new attitude toward our mission work, our work in the congregation, in the school, and in the home, as well as in the operation of the educational institutions for the training of pastors and teachers which God has placed into our hands, and apply ourselves to this task with greater zeal than heretofore, then our Church, and particularly our own Synod, is an unfaithful servant, who has failed to recognize the time of his visitation, and whose future lies not ahead but behind him.  My God!  Until now it was still true of us here in America what was said to the church at Philadelphia in Asia Minor, "Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it." (Rev. 3:8)
(August Pieper, The True Reconstruction of the Church, p. 24)

Quote of the Week- August Pieper

A reconstruction that endeavors to make various external changes in the Church or to introduce various external innovations, without correcting the basic damage of the Church, the indifference in spirit, is worth nothing.  What we teachers and hearers need above all is a new and right spirit.  The zeal for our own soul's salvation and the zeal for the house of God must consume us, as it once did the Lord (John 2:17) and Paul (2 Corinthians 11:2), to the degree that we--to use only one example--do not rest until we have filled Saginaw, New Ulm, Watertown, and Wauwatosa with students who wish to become pastors and teachers, so that the walls burst.  If God gives the pastors and teachers of the Church above all a new and right spirit, a new burning and consuming zeal for their own soul's salvation and for the salvation of the Church, then all necessary and wholesome external arrangements become insignificant details.
(August Pieper, The True Reconstruction of the Church, p. 12)

Quote of the Week- August Pieper

Woe to our Synod, if it says with the angel (bishop) of the church of Laodicea, Revelation 3:17,  "I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing!"  Woe to our people and to us "angels" of our people, that is, to us professors, pastors, and teachers, visitors, presidents, officials, and commissions, if we in the present circumstances of our spiritual life try to persuade ourselves that there is no need of a spiritual renewal, by saying, "Spiritual life is indeed not as fresh and vigorous in me as it one was and as it ought to be, but it is still there, and not much weaker than elsewhere.  It is the natural course of events; all life, spiritual life included, gradually diminishes, and there is nothing that can be done about it.  No one can instill new spiritual life into himself- only God can do that.  The matter must be committed to Him, who doubtless knows how to save His elect even in times such as these, and I hope, me too!"--Whoever thinks thus, reveals the spirit of the church of Laodicea.  This is that Laodicean laxity that a person is not truly aware of the danger in which he is, but is rather well satisfied with his own spiritual condition.  One's own spiritual deficiencies go unnoticed and life goes on in a carefree manner.  Oh, yes, the deficiencies of others are noticed indeed, are deplored and condemned, but of the beam in one's own eye no notice is taken.  How much of this complacency, that in comparison with others we are still rather pious, is not found among us!  This is little more than mere spiritual weakness.  It is hypocritical Pharisaism.

Only he who is convinced  that he himself is in need of spiritual renewal, first and foremost, has the right and the duty to pronounce the judgment that the Church of his time is in need of a spiritual renewal.  All reconstruction must begin at home.

(August Pieper, The True Reconstruction of the Church, p. 4)

Quote of the Week- August Pieper

When things have to a great extent gone so far, that the knowledge of God has become insignificant, faith has become a reed shaken in the wind, love has become cold, the whole life of faith has become weak and feeble, whereas satisfaction with the world and the cares for the things of this life have seized hold of the hearts of the Christians, particularly of the angels, i.e., the shepherds of the congregations, when the spiritual life, the spiritual character threatens to become extinct, then the disintegration of the Church has begun; then a reconstruction, that is, a regeneration, a renewal of spiritual life must set in, or it will perish in the abyss of spiritual death.
(August Pieper, The True Reconstruction of the Church, p.3)

Quote of the Week: Speed of Trust

Trust is a function of both character and competence.
(Speed of Trust, p. 25, Covey)

Quote of the Week: Courage-The Backbone of Leadership

Courageous leading begins with honoring all persons, regardless of rank, status, education, or power.
(Courage, Gus Lee, p.141)

Quote of the Week: The Speed of Trust

How you go about achieving results is as important as the results themselves, because when you establish trust, you increase your ability to get results the next time.
(The Speed of Trust, p. 40, Covey)