The Real Gift of the Spirit

In the last few years I have said goodbye to several Christian friends,ministers and pastors who had tremendous anointings in God (one of whom died a week ago).  They provided vision and leadership to the ministry God gave them.  When they died they left a huge hole. It wasn't filled or was filled differently from the legacy they wanted to leave.  In one case a great church built on the power of the Holy Ghost is now a seeker sensitive church with no power at all. 

 

Most to the day they died didn't believe the truth of their mortality.  They weren't going to go despite the statistics.  So they didn't prepare the ministry or church they led for the day when they changed worlds.

 

Zola Levitt did. He died Wednesday.  He prepared and left things in good hands.

I respect and honor that ultimate vision.

 

The Apostles of the early church were under no such illusions of immortality on this side of the veil.  Paul had his Timothy.  To the day he died he invested in the young man.  When the executioners axe came he could smile at the face of death.  He would live on in Timothy and then in Timothy's Timothys.

 

Are the Apostles of today developing Timothys?  I fear that many good men do not invest in strong men because they fear that before they are ready the young man might take away their church or split it.  And sometimes, they invest themselves in men who are less than able to take the ministry or church over when they move up.  Kind of like the old adage, ""first rate people hire first rate people, second rate people hire third rate people out of fear of being usurped"".

 

That's true in corporate American and more true than we ever might think in the Christian world.

 

So I address the hundred or so Spiritual Leaders who will read this.  Who is your Timothy? Is he worth your investing in, and if so, are you?  Will your ministry survive you?

 

You owe it to the gift God placed in you to see to it that it will.

 

Invest in Quality.  That's true in the world and truer in the Church.

 

Sheehan versus Dr. Wang

In case you had any doubts about liberal press bias in this country read this:

Cindy Sheehan protests, yells, calls names does all kinds of things and is invited to speak at a public school in California. She is a sweetheart of the liberal press. She is beyond reproach as far as the treason-press is concerned.

Because she felt slighted by the President when she met him, that’s the reason given. The truth is Ben and Jerry’s ice cream empire financed and motivated her (read that puppet on a string) to do this banality. They are behind the True Majority propaganda efforts. Mostly anti Bush yelling all the time.

The liberal press loves Cindy (oh Cindy where has my heart gone). Why?She hates Bush. Ben and Jerry told her to.

Yesterday, a woman, Dr. Wenyi Wang, 47, a Physician, makes a protest against the imprisonment and execution of a religious group in China. She and Cindy Sheehan are the same age. They have a similar beef. Reproach against a government they consider opposing their interests.

This is still a free country except in the treasonous press’s eyes. Some people see thru the conspiracy of silence and bias.

To the liberal press she is considered an embarrassment, a problem, a black mark.

Cindy protests and it's all sunshine and light, Dr. Wang protests and it’s dark and embarrassing.

Unbiased Press my tush. They should be thankful this is still the USA. In China they saw nothing of this. Where is their treasonous allegiance?

8 Billion People will Die Within 7 Decades

New York Post - STUNNING DROP IN DEATH RATE

I gave a start when I read this headline. Then I thought, no, the death rate is still the same. One to a customer. In fact the most accurate headline of all is the one at the top of this post. Nearly every person reading this will be dead in 7 decades.

If there are 6 billion on the earth today and we have normal accident, war and infant death, to say 8 billion people will die in 80 years (7 complete decades) is not a hard statistic to accept.

I just wondered at the idea that somehow we are beating death or that the death rate being reduced.

Ain’t nobody getting outta here alive.

RIP Clear Channel Radio (I really don't mean PEACE)

I maintain a file on certain companies that never fail to disappoint.

Wal-Mart
Ameritech, then SBC now AT&T
And
Clear Channel Radio

There are others on Gene’s Wall of Shame but these three are among the most egregious. What does it take to make Gene’s Wall of Shame you ask?

You must be a large company, which has as it’s operating philosophy, we want to own the whole world and run it like we want without any care for our employees or customers and screw our suppliers into the ground.

I have written about Wal-Mart on this blog the most. You can use the search tool on top and look at all those entries. I still stand by them.

I have written a few times about the idiots at the name change bazaar SBC now AT&T.

But today’s award for infamously stupid and incompetent behavior on a kingdom wannabe goes to: (Drum Roll Please) CLEAR CHANNEL.

Let’s see. First in full disclosure, I have friends that have and DO work for Clear Channel. It would be well if they stayed anonymous on this tirade.

Clear Channel, How do I hate you, Let me count the ways:

• You pay your suits way out of proportion to your working people
• You run your vanilla radio stations such that driving across country you can hear the boredom without any effort. You can spot a programmed clear channel station at a mile.
• You continue to participate in sleazy practices like Pay for Play (Payola). That’s so 50’s
• You treat your employees like a number
• You have no soul.

But, the good news is, the market is beginning to notice. Incompetence is it’s own reward. You qualify Clear Channel. I note that when you were asked to comment on your inability to run a radio station for actual profit you declined the interview. What a shock.

A couple exerpts from the analysis:

Clear Channel grant excessive severance, Clear Channel overpays its executives,

Representatives of Clear Channel and OfficeMax declined immediate comment.

For you kids out there, this is the message, big is not better, it’s just bigger and hubris (like in the case of Clear Channel) is always death.

I hope some real radio operators will pick up the scraps and make real radio stations out of them when Clear Channel has to divest because of poor performance. Disney did.

You’re NEXT!

Sick in the Spirit

I read a good man's Christian blog.  I recommend it.  He makes an observation which has bugged me for years.

 

I have DISH TV.  There are 3 "religious" channels.  TBN which I watch often.  ETWN the catholic channel (I'm as catholic as Jesus is) where I only watch one fellow who teaches basic catechism.  I find him pretty challenging.  Then the 3rd is Angel 1.  Robert Johnson from Florida put this up many years ago with great promise. 

 

He's dead now.  But this is the worst TV you can imagine.  Only occasionally there's a Christian program.  The rest of the time it's ads for watching their channel which has nothing on it, ads for vitamins and snake oil, and ads for bibles of some sort or another.  What's even worse is some time ago Angel made a deal with Dish that they couldn't add another religious channel.  Daystar was on for a while.  That was great.  But money over God any day.  They made Dish take it off the feed. 

I am considering taking it off my favorites list. 

 

We used to have a pretty good Christian Radio Station in Chicaoland.  106.7 the fish.  It's Hispanic now.  The only objection I had to it was on weekends it was wall to wall advertisements for vitamins, nostrums, and other things which cost money and do no good at all.

 

When my dear friend and Pastor Dan Rothwell was sick with cancer many many people came to him with junk that if he took he would be well. He showed them to me.  It was pitiful.

 

He passed away a couple years ago.  It was his time.  We are all like the grass and then we wither.  Why do Christians depend on such junk?  Jesus is all you need.  Go to the doctor and believe for Jesus to heal you with or in spite of what the Doctors do. 

 

How have we drifted so far?  And on so called Christian TV and Radio. 

 

It's beyond Belief.  It's no belief except in Man.  That's a curse according to the Bible.

$29 Minimum Wage Solves Everything

I am sympathetic to poor people having to pay these $3 per gallon gasoline prices. I also want to do something to preserve the Republican party's majority in America.

It is a proven fact that people earning $60,000 per year or more have no discernable impact in their standard of living from gasoline, even if it went to $4 per gallon.

It is also true according to statistical analysis that people earning $60,000 per year or more vote overwhelmingly republican (unless they marry or inherit the money like John Kerry or Ted Kennedy). Or are high earning idiot celebrities who stumble upon money mindlessly like Cher and other Hollywood types.

Average Joe Pinot Noir (He’s now better than Joe 6 pack) won’t be as stupid as those people.

So, if we just raise the minimum wage to $29 per hour we will in one fell swoop eliminate the impact high oil and gas prices has on working people and we insure that the Republicans will win elections from that day forward.

I know there will be naysayers. I can hear them now. Oh, I know it might increase unemployment a bit. The underground economy and illegal aliens would flourish. That this kind of move would likely destroy small business in America. That this would be highly inflationary as the Wal-Marts of the world would have to pay a “Living Wage” and therefore raise prices. That this is economically a stupid move.

Maybe that’s the point with all minimum wage discussions.

Stupid Move!

A Demonstration of the Real Solution to The Mexican Immigration Problem

The Mexican's stream across the border to El Norte.  Mostly to California.

 

Our borders are indefensible.  I have a solution.

 

So, we make a deal with the Mexican Government.

 

They patrol the border.  If ANY undocumented Mexicans get into the USA after the day they take over we get Paid $10,000 per head for each one we find and return to them.  They have currency.  They sell us Oil.  This should fix a balance of trade issue with them some.

 

Why should they do this?  To demonstrate our good will, we will give them Southern California.  They pretty much own it now.  From Tijuana to San Francisco and Sacramento.  To the west there are the Sierra Madres.  After that Death Valley.

 

Let them demonstrate how well that will work out.  Does that mean that in a few months or years Mexican's will be trekking across the desert or the northern border to find work.  Will the southern California state of Mexico be any better? 

I doubt it.  You see, the dirty little truth is, the country of Mexico with all it's natural resources, hard working people, favorable climate and miles of coastal lands should be a powerhouse economically unlike our neighbor to the north, Canada who has polar bears and frozen tundra thru much of the land up there.

 

Mexico doesn't work because it is corrupt.  Very corrupt.  If you don't change the government, the culture of corruption, the way this most unegalitarian culture works even if we gave them the whole of the USA back, it would look like the slums of Mexico City in a few years.

 

Corruption can't govern.  Just ask Illinois.

 

 

Pruning

It was a beautiful day yesterday.  I spent much of it outdoors.  Pruning and trimming branches.  By the end of the day, I was exhausted.

 

But, It was worth it.  Things look better, they will grow better.  They will become what they were supposed to become.

 

In the middle of cutting off one particularly large branch it occurred to me that pruning in my (and YOUR) life is essential to us becoming what we were destined to become.

 

Considering these Pruning Truths:

 

• Pruning is always traumatic for the tree being pruned. Sometimes they even bleed.  It doesn't kill them, but it is traumatic for the moment.
• Cutting off dead wood protects the tree from infection and disease.  It keeps it from being susceptible to difficult winds in life. 
• To prune properly the one pruning must have an image of what he wants the tree being pruned to look like when it's done.
• Some plants (like grapes and wisteria) won't bloom or bear fruit without pruning.  They will just grow randomly and become fruitless.
• The branches cut off are only good for the burn pile.  Pining over lost branches is a waste of time and energy.
• The best pruning  leaves nothing of the branch pruned as a reminder.
• Some pruning takes place pretty close to the trunk.  Seems dangerous but the best thing to do.
• Sometimes a pruning is best accomplished (like on a dogwood shrub) but cutting everything off to the trunk.  It will look dead, but when it comes back it will grow with twice the vigor and beauty it had before.
• That branch that grows out of proportion with the rest of the plant must be pruned or it will eventually kill or damage the plant.  Balance is essential in look and in growth.
• The ultimate prune for every plant is death.  Every tree, not matter what, dies.  The space it used to occupy will become the growth for new life that will follow.

 

How much the husbandry of trees and shrubs is like life.

 

Jesus said, I am the vine, you are the branches.

 

 

 

 

The Greatness of President George W. Bush

I Understand hat some of the readers of this blog are liberals. If you are among them, you won’t want to read this post. It will damage your thinking.

I’m about to say something that is rumbling below the surface. People who may not have been Bush backers are beginning to say this:

A hundred years from now when Presidencies are evaluated President George W. Bush will be acclaimed as one of the Greatest Presidents of ALL TIME.

Don’t believe me? That’s OK, perhaps you will buy into what a friend of our great country from Australia says. President Bush is a great, not a good, not an OK, but a Great President.

You don’t have to believe it but your Great Great Grandchildren will. History has a habit of redeeming the vilified of their generation. Remember Harry Truman? Abraham Lincoln? They were universally hated by their generation. And then, revered Later.

Thought I would give you an advance read on the Textbooks of 2106.