Faith Diary - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7783563.stm

By Robert Pigott
Religious Affairs correspondent

There’s been a rising chorus of alarm from church leaders at what they regard as the “aggressive secularism” marginalising Christianity, the religion whose precepts - such as “do as you would be done by”, and upholding the sanctity of human life - once underpinned British laws.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of Catholics in England and Wales

A few years ago, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, warned that “Christianity had been all but vanquished in Britain” as the underpinning for the nation’s moral life.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?columnist=schlabach_mark&id=3381810&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos1

Tim Tebow sophomore heisman trophy winner from the Florida Gators has an opportunity at an early age to be a voice of hope in the spotlight of athletics. Tebow has earned the right to be heard. Respected in the athletic arena, allowing others to give him their attention off the field, where he acknowledges, a real impact can be made.

Copied from Thabiti Anyabwile blog… This was very good and timely!!!

“This, then, is the prayer of faith: to ask God to accomplish what He has promised in His Word. That promise is the only ground for our confidence in asking. Such confidence is not “worked up” from within our emotional life; rather, it is given and supported by what God has said in Scripture.

“Truly ’righteous’ men and women of faith know the value of their heavenly Father’s promises. They go to Him, as children do to a loving human father. They know that if they can say to an earthly father, ’But, father, you promised…,’ they can both persist in asking and be confident that he will keep his word. How much more our heavenly Father, who has given His Son for our salvation! We have no other grounds of confidence that He hears our prayers. We need none.

I appreciate Judy leading prayer in the gathering yesterday. The idea of holding on to things and then releasing them to God was most encouraging and beneficial for me. This was yet another confirmation from the Lord on direction/steps I must take in my personal journey.

I am reading through the Gospel of Mark. It seems that every page I read has something to do with living by faith or trusting Jesus or giving Jesus total control of my life… in the sense of sanctification. As I was reading the Parable of the Sower I was blown away by Jesus explanation… specifically Luke 4:18-19

From the ESV

From “The Message”

Michael Patton has written a terrific blog on All the Right Beliefs for All the Wrong Reasons. This is must-reading.

He starts out by reviewing four types of people with respect to knowledge:

1. The one who doesn’t know, and doesn’t know that he doesn’t know. He is a fool – shun him.

4. The one who knows and knows that he knows. He is a wise man – follow him.

He then adds a fifth:

5. The one who knows but does not know how he knows. He is naive — deconstruct him.

God never promised to keep us safe and free from harm, He did promise he would be with us always even to the end of the age. Well, if he’s with us always, and i get mugged on the way to my car, does that mean he is appointing the mugging to occur before the beginning of time in his foreknowledge? Is there anything anti-biblical about owning a fire-arm for personal safety? What if you live in a not so good neighborhood and would feel more secure with a gun.

Michael Patton does a superb job of defining faith from the Reformed perspective. In our contemporary culture “faith has been redefined in the Church to the point that it is in danger of relegating Christianity to irrelevancy, having equal pluralistic status with all the other major belief systems in the world.”