pride

aimee byrd, discernment, housewife theologian, pride

Discernment helps: Danger in Women’s ministries, how discernment should affect our walk, and detecting pride

Posted on July 15, 2015May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

Over coffee this morning, I read three good articles this morning and realized that they were all similar in theme.

In this first article, “Housewife Theologian” Aimee Byrd explores why it is that women are weak and gullible when it comes to discernment. In 2 Timothy 3:6 Paul wrote,

For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

Ms Aimee is writing a series of blog posts to help women spot the Danger in Women’s Ministries. And if you have followed me for very long you know that Ms Byrd is preaching to the choir with me, for it is an extremely important and timely message I hold dear to my heart. It’s no accident that Joyce Meyer is one of the most popular “preachers” in America. It’s no accident that the best selling book of any genre is Jesus Calling. And Ann Voskamp’s influence is tremendous. She’s everywhere, writing books, holding positions on boards, participating in movements, and guest blogging on popular websites. Please follow along with Aimee as she continues the series she began on Friday and so far has two parts.

Part 1-The Danger in Women’s Ministries
Part 2-Why We Are So Insulted

Here is an essay I’ve authored containing recommendations for good women and men’s ministries that can be trusted (as of this writing, in my opinion). You will notice that Aimee Byrd is already listed on there.

Trustworthy Women’s and Men’s ministries

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
Genesis 3:1

In the second essay I read over coffee this morning is written by the ever wise and gentle Sinclair Ferguson. He explains what biblical discernment is and how it should affect our Christian walk.

Discernment: Thinking God’s Thoughts after Him

The experience caused me to reflect on the importance of discernment, and the lack of it in our world. People do not see issues clearly and are easily misled because they do not think biblically. But, sadly, one cannot help reflecting on how true that is of ourselves, in the church community too. Most readers of this article would want to distance themselves from what might be regarded as the lunatic fringe of contemporary Christianity. But there is more to discernment. True discernment means not only distinguishing the right from the wrong; it means distinguishing the primary from the secondary, the essential from the indifferent, the permanent from the transient, the good and the better from the best. Thus discernment is like the physical senses; to some it is given as a special grace gift (1 Cor. 12:10), but a measure of it is essential for us all, and must be constantly nourished. The Christian must take care to nourish his “sixth sense” of spiritual discernment. This is why the psalmist prays, “Teach me knowledge and good judgment” (Ps. 119:66). But what is discernment? …

Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”
John 7:24

Discernment is important to each and every Christian, whether it is a specifically endowed gift, (1 Corinthians 12:10) or simply something the non-gifted Christian practices for the glory of the Lord. However especially gifted discernment practitioners are also especially given to the sins of pride, a harsh spirit, a tendency to look at only the negative, and more. All of us are prone to pride, no matter the gift we have been given. Here is an essay that we can benefit from … or be convicted by … as the case may be. It is written by Fabienne Harford at Desiring God with an aid to making that all-important diagnosis.

Seven Subtle Symptoms of Pride

Pride will kill you. Forever. Pride is the sin most likely to keep you from crying out for a Savior. Those who think they are well will not look for a doctor. As seriously dangerous as pride is, it’s equally hard to spot. When it comes to diagnosing our hearts, those of us who have the disease of pride have a challenging time identifying our sickness.

For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.
Galatians 6:3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Why do I want man to put ashes on my forehead when God will mark my forehead later? No Lent for me!

Posted on March 8, 2014May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

I’m not for Lent. It has a pagan foundation and is perpetuated by the false Catholic religion. It’s associated with golden calf-Mardi Gras and Pharisaical rituals. In addition it is contrary to the Gospel. I know some say that Lent for them is just a personal time of preparation for the upcoming Resurrection Sunday AKA Easter. But personal preparation is also called for in advance of the Lord’s Table (1 Corinthians 11:28) and to some extent every time we prepare for Sunday worship. (Ezra 7:10, Romans 12:1). Actually we’re supposed to pick up our cross daily, so why set aside a special time once a year for self-examination, obedience, and repentance? Why do we make a display of preparing for just as sacred as an event so publicly? Why smear our faces with ashes and mourn when we have overcome the world, have His peace and have been given His joy?

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:1)

labeled for reuse. Cardinal Dolan on Ash Wednesday speaking to reporters

“But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:17-18). [underline mine]

Further, the activity of placing a mark on our forehead looked at thorough a biblical lens… The bible shows that the false prophet places a mark on the hand or forehead of those who follow the antichrist. (Revelation 13:16). These will be doomed forever. The Whore of Babylon has a secret name written on her forehead. (Revelation 17:5). Who wants to be associated with THAT?

On the positive side, during the Tribulation, angels mark the foreheads of those who serve Jesus (Revelation 7:3, Revelation 14:1). Finally, gloriously, “They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.” (Revelation 22:4). The name of Christ will be upon our foreheads, placed there by angels at the behest of God, or by God Himself, so why do I want man to put any mark on my forehead? Can somebody explain that to me? Anyone? Anyone?? No thanks. I’ll wait for God to do it.

Wikipedia CC

I know the pride of my heart. I know that participating in public displays of external worship activities will only go to my head and I’ll end up promoting my own sanctity done on my own steam. No thanks, I don’t need any help in substituting works for grace. Maybe others can withstand the temptation. I know I can’t and I don’t even want to tread one inch over there. Here are some people who feel the same but have expressed it much more eloquently. The first one is by a woman named Amanda-

Counting it all Joy: A Vent About Lent
“And here’s where I may be upsetting to the more theologically-minded, but it really isn’t first and foremost about a principle for me. Or a confession. It’s about me thinking this is contrary to the GOSPEL.“

John MacArthur on Lent’s beginnings and how it is nowadays an abuse for sinning as much as possible-
Another vent about Lent:
“Some even more religious souls feel that you sort of have to work your way up to resurrection Sunday, and so they celebrate what has become known as Lent. Forty days of eating no meat and, supposedly, expressing penitence for sin. I suppose its, in most cases, hypocritical, since penitence for sin is not accomplished by some self-directed abstinence or some self-motivated plea toward God, and its hypocrisy is also seen, I think, in the fact that before Lent, people tend to really pile up the sinning since they have to do without for a while…

In fact, there are two words that come to mind when you think of the pre-Lenten season. One is the term Mardi Gras, and the other is carnival. In our country, we’re familiar with Mardi Gras. In other parts of the world, they celebrate carnival. It is a time of unbridled sinning, of drunkenness, rioting, sexual misbehavior, getting ready for penitence…in view of Easter. In fact, Mardi Gras comes from two French words. If you know French, you know that the French word Mardi means Tuesday, and gras means fat. Fat Tuesday is the last day before Lent, and you better get fat now, because you’re gonna go without for a while. Carnival comes from words that we’re familiar with. Carne, we know from chili con carne, means meat. Val, we know from high school days when somebody was the valedictorian and gave a farewell speech, means farewell. Carnival means farewell to meat. So you have a big party before you get spiritual just to make sure you don’t miss anything; and then you hope against hope that it’ll all turn out in the end if you’re penitent enough and abstain from enough, maybe someday God will raise you up.

By the way, as a footnote, Lent is not from the Bible. There is no such thing in the Bible. It comes from the mystery religions of the cults of Babylon and was connected with the supposed killing of Baal by a wild boar; and for forty days and forty nights, the priestesses and the followers of Baal mourned his death until, supposedly, he rose from the dead on the 40th day, and that is where Lent came from, and it has been superimposed on Christianity…“

Annnnd, this too, from Jeremy Walker,

This Lent I am giving up….reticence
Whether or not it is a vestige of the Emerging/Emergent appetite for a range of ‘spiritualities’ or an enthusiasm for an over-ripe liturgical renewal, I cannot say, but I wonder if it is in part a matter of distance both of time and space. This alleged ‘recovery’ of Lent and Easter is not actually a matter of historical sensitivity and an inheritance regained but of historical unawareness and an inheritance lost. Whether or not it is the high-grade muppetry of entire churches being urged to tattoo one of the stations of the cross on some part of their anatomy, or some gore-drenched re-enactment of the unrepeatable sacrifice, or some spotlit image-fest in which a total insensitivity to physical representations of the Christ – the image of the invisible God – is displayed, or some be-robed priest-figure half a step away from incense and obeisance, it does not come from Scripture and it does not belong in Christ’s church.

So that is my thought on Lent. Why is it making a comeback into Protestant churches? Here are two essays discussing Lent.

What is the meaning of Lent?

What is Lent?

obama taster, pope francis, pride

Of popes and kings: Is the pope humble? Does Obama have a cup-bearer?

Posted on March 15, 2013May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

As the (misplaced) excitement at selecting a new pope dies down, we are left with the litter of conflicting notions of who rules the world, really. The pope claims to be a supreme and infallible authority over every Catholic on the planet and not coincidentally claims that the RCC is the only true church. Infallible means he cannot make mistakes and everything he says is pure gold. He is called ‘vicar of Christ’- A title of the pope implying his supreme and universal primacy, both of honour and of jurisdiction, over the Church of Christ. He is the supreme “another Christ” or alter christus. He is not subject to any government, organization or even to his own church. He is a king and more: he claims to be head of the church. (Only Jesus is head of the church, Colossians 1:18). (Above, the new Pope Francis)

The new pope, Francis, is said to be a humble man. This is incorrect. No man can be humble who thinks he is the head of the church, supplanting Jesus, the true head. No man can be humble who seeks and accepts an office where he is an “absolute monarch on earth, answerable to no temporal power, holding the highest administrative office in existence, and managing the largest non-governmental operation in the world. His power is absolutely unlimited save by divine law, and only death or his own will can remove him from office.” (Carol Balizet, The Last 7 Years)

No man can be humble who seeks and accepts ruling over “the wealthiest institution on earth and the most prosperous global institution on earth. The Catholic church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe. The pope, as the visible ruler of this immense amassment of wealth, is consequently the richest individual of the twentieth century. No one can realistically assess how much he is worth in terms of billions of dollars.” (Avro Manhattan, The Vatican Billions).

Pope is a word that comes from ‘papa.’ The problem comes when we attempt to address these august personalities. What do we call such a ‘holy’ and distinguished men among men? Father? Holy Father?

However, the bible says there is only one Holy Father and we are not to call anyone else father. “And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.” (Matthew 23:9).

The Jewish people had a hard time with this too. So they decided on apifyor.

“The Catholic Church has a new leader on the Chair of Saint Peter – Pope Francis. But in Hebrew we don’t call him “pope” or “papa,” but rather apifyor (api-FYOR). Until the 16th century, Jews called the pontiff as their Christian neighbors did: papa, a name that since the 12th century was reserved for the Bishop of Rome but before that referred to any high ranking church official. It derives from the Greek papas – a term of endearment a son gives his father. Apparently some creative soul back in the 16th century thought it was improper for Jews to refer to the pope with such deference and decided to come up with a new term instead. This anonymous Jewish scholar picked the obscure word apifyor from the Talmud and fit it to the task. By the 17th century the word “papa” had all but disappeared from Hebrew.”

Yes, there is so much confusion that results when men think they are God. There will be one who will come who WILL call himself God and cause all to worship him. His title is the Beast, or the antichrist. (2 Thessalonians 2:4). Meanwhile this current “holy papa” is an antichrist, a little forerunner to the one who will fulfill prophecy by becoming the man of sin. In the 1600s, Puritan Thomas Manton (1620-1677) preached three sermons about the coming man of sin. This excerpt is from the third sermon: (below, Rev. Thomas Manton)

“Now why did they call Antiochus the man of sin? Because he sought to alter the religion of the people, and by cruelty to introduce a change of worship and idolatry, and such laws as he would set up. Now, according to this pattern, Antichrist is a man of sin; that is, either a man given up to all sin eminently, a sinner addicted unto sin, and a ringleader of others unto sin, either by fraud and violence; or as he giveth encouragements and encitements to sin; or as a special kind of sinner, a usurper and invader of the empire of the Son of God. So was Antiochus. So was Antichrist. Now, how much open sin is practised, allowed, and maintained in the Papacy, I do not wish to proceed into; their own stories speak enough; — the sodomy, blasphemy, incest, adulteries, sorceries, murders, treasons, parricides, which they have authorised and countenanced. Histories witness that hardly hath the world yielded a more abominable sort of men, than have sat in that chair of pestilence. This I am sure of, that a man can sin nowhere at so cheap a rate as in Popery, where, what by dividing their sins into mortal and venial, and these expiated by a little penance, accompanied with a single attrition, and bare grief and trouble, because of the punishment; what by faculties, pardons, licenses, dispensations, indulgences, sin is distinguished out of the conscience.”

Thinking one’s self as king supreme always leads to destruction. We have a little king problem in the US right now, with Barack Obama.

Did you know that Obama has a cup-bearer?

In the bible a cup bearer is a personal taster to the king and his butler. Pharaoh had a cup-bearer we read in Genesis 40:2. That was the one who told his dream to the incarcerated Joseph. (Genesis 40:1). Nehemiah was a cup-bearer to the king of Persia. (Nehemiah 1:11). A cup-bearer, or a taster, had a duty to serve the drinks at the royal table. On account of the constant fear of plots and intrigues, a person must be regarded as thoroughly trustworthy to hold this position. He must guard against poison in the king’s cup, and was sometimes required to swallow some of the wine before serving it, or so says Wikipedia. Cup-bearers are mentioned further in 1 Kings 10:5; 2 Chronicles 9:4, where they, among other evidences of royal splendor, are stated to have impressed the Queen of Sheba with Solomon’s glory.

In keeping with this royal splendor, we read today that Obama refused to eat of the GOP luncheon because he didn’t have his ~~royal cup-bearer~~ taster with him.

Nehemiah the cup-bearer,
bible encyclopedia

Barack Obama agreed to meet with a group of GOP senators yesterday. But, he wouldn’t eat their food.
He didn’t bring along his royal taster. No joke. The Daily Caller reported:

President Obama was offered a feast of Maine treats, including University of Maine lobster salad and Wild Blueberry Pie when he visited Senate Republicans for a Capitol Hill luncheon on Thursday. But he didn’t touch a bite, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told reporters following the 1:30 PM eat n’ greet. That’s because the President didn’t have a food “taster” with him, said Collins, who was responsible for the menu.

Sen. Collins said she told Obama that they were all eating the lobster and pie, and that if it was poisoned they’d all keel over, but Obama refused to bite. Now, to be fair, there does seem to be a regular call for the use of a taster for all US Presidents, or at least, some kind of security detail which monitors food and silverware when the President is off turf. But the image of cup-bearer to the one who has already been called pharaoh, was too much to resist remarking upon.

It is always a problem when kings and popes become too full of themselves. Fortunately we know to whom we owe allegiance as the real king. Though we are called to submit to earthly authorities because God has set them up, (1 Peter 2:13) we know our King is the Righteous One who comes in all glory. On the last day, He will reign supreme in all goodness and perfection.

It shall come to pass in the latter days

that the mountain of the house of the Lord

shall be established as the highest of the mountains,

and shall be lifted up above the hills;

and all the nations shall flow to it,

and many peoples shall come, and say:

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

to the house of the God of Jacob,

that he may teach us his ways

and that we may walk in his paths.” (Isaiah 1:2-3)

What a privilege it is to know the REAL Holy Father! The Real King! Our High Priest! Jesus

abortions, daily klos, personhood initiative, pride

According to Daily Kos, the poor have no right of self determination

Posted on October 10, 2011 by elizabethprata

Originally posted at the progressive-extreme liberal media site The Daily Kos, and re-posted at a blog called Reality Check, the following statements were made regarding the Mississippi ballot initiative seeking to define a person as a person from conception I wrote about earlier today: this profane headline speaks to the anger generated when any movement even approaching God’s standards is proposed:

“Occupy My Uterus. My Ass! Fertilized Eggs Are NOT People!”

You’d almost think that it was Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas’s uterus at stake (if he had one).

“Eggs Are NOT People.”

“But, time is running out to fight this, and I’m confident The Great Orange can help reverse the cone of silence around Amendment 26. Mississippi has an unemployment rate of 10.3 percent (9th worse in the nation), consistently ranks in the lowest in education, 17.6 percent of Mississippians have no health insurance, and 21.8 percent of its citizens live below the poverty level. Yet, these yahoos think it’s important to focus on further degrading women by making it impossible to get an abortion instead of taking real action to improve the living conditions in their state. This is also the state that has the strictest abortion TRAP laws of any state. And, this is the state that has only one remaining abortion clinic, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization.”

What the progressive extreme liberals are saying is that we need to help the poor by intruding into their lives unasked until and unless they do something that opposes what the progressive elite believes to be right. Then, the poor do not have the right of self-determination. Their right to self-determination suddenly vanishes and evaporates, and people with more money (and by definition, more brains?) will make the decisions for them. In addition, the uneducated, the poor, and the sick by virtue of their being poor, uneducated and sick, do not have the right to prioritize their ballot initiatives. The Liberal elite will do that for them. Finally, simply because the state has high incidences of poverty, uneducated and the sick, it must also mean that there are NO smart, well, and rich people in the state on a par with the progressive elite.

Do you see how unfounded their arguments are? How angry they get? Why do they get so angry? Anger is a work of the flesh (Gal 5:20). Any person not saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christs is a work of the flesh. We’re all born that way. We are born sinners, blind, fleshly and following the works of the flesh until and unless we are born again. Then Jesus gives us a new spirit and a new heart. Anger is connected to pride, (Proverbs 21:24) which is the first sin and is a sin at the root of all sins. (Is 14:13-15). Pride is a hindrance to seeking God. Psalms 10:4 says “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.” Their anger is born from their foolishness, for if they were wise, they would turn away wrath. (Proverbs 29:8).

It’s heartbreaking to think that their passion for a cause is so misplaced, but before I was saved I was the same, proud, angry, blind. We can and we should pray for God’s will to be done and that His will includes opening the eyes of the blind so they may see His glory, and the glory of Him in children. Children are graciously given to us (Genesis 33:5). The fruit of the womb is not a lifestyle choice to be destroyed for personal convenience. It is His reward. (Psalms 127:3). The anger we see from people opposing abortion restrictions is from that everlasting struggle between pride of life and submission to His gifts and His will. It is the children caught in the struggle though, literally torn apart in the fight.

I pray for the rapture for many reasons. One is so that all the children will be safe. Another is that all of us saved humans will honor God’s will with one accord. When that struggle and strife between the flesh and His will is removed, what a gracious gift that will be! Until then, we live among anger and hatred against God, encapsulated in the political football that is called abortion.

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