Paul has already established in the earlier chapters that when someone chooses to reject His guidance, they are delivered over to the Devil. They are granted all the evil they want, and more. It will fill their lives until it consumes them. This is what happened to the Nation of Israel.

Paul would be willing to exchange his own election if they were released from that curse. That's not how God works. The glorious touch of Christ is more generous than anyone deserves, and yet His Presence is freely given to all who seek Him. This glory belonged to Israel, the nation that rejected the terms that came with it.

Not every Israeli in the flesh belongs to the divine promise that goes with the name "Israel". Paul differentiates between the human birthright and identity of Abraham's descendants versus the spiritual birthright of the covenant promise God gave him. He notes that Abraham had other descendants, but only one covenant heir. The same goes with Isaac, whose wife bore twins. God favored one twin over another before they were even born, Jacob who received the name Israel.

This brings up the issue of predestination and election. Not every event in history is predestined, but some events are because of God's plans. Just so, not every human born is elect. It is impossible to justify such a thing by human reckoning. All that's left is simply embracing God's decisions and making the most of it.

As we read the account of the Exodus, we learn that Pharaoh was chosen by God to rise up, to build a great empire, and then to have its economy destroyed. He was not hardened until he rejected God's claims over Israel. Had he accepted God's choices, he would not have suffered so badly. He could give up one bunch of slave laborers, or have all of his agricultural output and society destroyed.

Paul goes on to restate the common reasoning of people about this situation, that God punishes those who do what He ordains. That's the wrong approach to the question. It assumes the authority to judge God by human standards. It doesn't work that way. God can choose what pleases Him and it is, by definition, good and right and in everyone's best interests.

That's because the most important thing God could do for fallen mankind was to reveal Himself at all, never mind how. The prophets had warned that God could unmake Israel easily, by replacing them with some other nation. Indeed, at some point He would do so. Indeed, the greatness of the name "Israel" would go on to outshine all that had already happened, because that name would apply to a different kind of nation that could not be counted.

Thus, a host of Gentiles who never heard of Jehovah would be adopted as His family. This was predestination, a decree from God. If Israel chose not to participate, that was on them. He would reveal to these other nations the righteousness of faith and they would embrace it. Meanwhile, Israel the people would be driven to chase a superficial righteousness of legalism and not even succeed at that.

It was because they rejected the one and only choice God gave them: faith. Without faith, they were unable to recognize the cornerstone of the New Covenant of Christ. Instead of being part of this great new Temple, they stumbled over it and chose to build a hovel somewhere else. But those who built on the Cornerstone of Christ would celebrate His glory poured out on them.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

Paul begins Chapter 7 explaining that the Law is binding on mortal flesh, not our spirits. He uses the symbolism of a wife; once her husband dies, she is no longer bound to him. But in Christ, it is we who have died. He calls us to nail our fleshly natures to His Cross so that we walk free to serve Him.

Part of the Curse of the Fall is that our fleshly nature cannot respond to the urgings of the Law. All it gets from the Law is a guide on how to sin more completely. Does that make the Law evil? Not at all. It's the flesh that is evil. It sees the law code and awakens all manner of evil desires to transgress God's boundaries. The flesh wants to drag us off to Hell, but the Law wants to awaken in us a need for redemption.

The fleshly nature is utterly perverse. It's at war with our hearts, for the Law also awakens a moral awareness, making us long for redemption, but our flesh overwhelms that. What a horrible situation! How can we escape? It's through Jesus Christ.

The next chapter leads off with the declaration that the Holy Spirit of Christ is the key. His divine Presence and power in us put the death sentence on the fleshly nature. His righteousness marks us out for redemption.

For us, the battle then is to reorient our conscious awareness. We must embrace the spiritual outlook supplied by the Holy Spirit. This begins the lifelong process of killing off the fleshly nature. We reclaim our human existence here as territory to be won in battle against our fleshly nature. This puts us at peace with our Creator, as our spirits cry out to Him as Father.

Our fleshly natures are part of the created world we are supposed to manage on behalf of the Creator. Instead, we are stuck within this world and cannot manage it, so it is subjected to chaos. Like the rest of Creation, we cry out for redemption. It grants us a vision of enduring this travail because we can see His Day coming.

Indeed, we don't even really know how to pray for victory, but the gift of the Holy Spirit includes a voice that God can hear. On our end, that divine Presence reassures us that everything in on track, despite how awful it appears to us in our limited fleshly existence. We were chosen before Creation, so we know He will make everything happen as it should.

No agency in all of Creation can break our election, and God does not contradict Himself. We can rest assured that physical death is actually our ally, and we are eager to get it over with, but in God's good time.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

In Chapter 4, Paul gives the example of Abraham, the man whom all Jews count as their forefather. His calling and favor with God was before his obedience. His faith in God's favor is what brought him into compliance with the covenant God offered him. Abraham was the father of many nations, not just Israel, because it was a matter of faith, not DNA. And it wasn't the code of the covenant that defines his heirs, but the faith that distinguished Abraham from the rest of humanity.

But that Abraham might be the anchor of faith's testimony, God promised him a literal heir. Despite their far advanced age, Sarah bore him a natural heir, and Paul insists that it was solely because Abraham had faith to believe that promise. The covenant and the promises would have been dead without faith. The reason all of this is recorded in Scripture is so that everyone else could see his example and come to God on the same terms. Faith precedes and is the foundation of any covenant God offers to anyone. Faith is submission to God's claim on our lives.

Jesus is the final covenant, who died so that we may live in faith and be accepted by His Father. He stands today as the living revelation of God.

Paul continues into the next chapter that, on the basis of that feudal commitment to Him as Lord, the Father calls us to stand in His Presence as family. This is our power to face tribulation, and to convert human sorrows into glory. It gives us hope. There was every justification for God to send us all to Hell, but instead He opened the path for us to redemption. Through His Son, we who were His enemies are now His children.

The reason Adam's sin condemns us is that Creation itself is feudal. If our progenitor sinned and gained for himself the penalty of mortality, we can hardly escape, because that is our birthright. We are born mortal, which means we are born doomed. So it didn't matter that there was no revealed law; we are born in sin. It's our nature; we don't choose it. This is what we inherited from Adam.

There is one common element: One man put us all under death, and one man brings us life. Unlike the curse, which we all could have easily gotten for ourselves without Adam's help, the gift of redemption could have come through only the Son of God. That's how the two are different. But we would not have even longed for redemption unless God had not given the Law of Moses to point out our sin nature. And the grace that God offers is more than sufficient to cover all our sins.

In the sixth chapter: Does that mean we should keep sinning so that grace may abound even more? What kind of silly logic is that? The whole point of redemption is to take sin out of our lives. The symbolism of baptism is that we die with Christ so that we can rise with Him to walk in a new life. We take the old dead man down to a water grave so he can stay there, while the new man walks away in grace. Live that new life in purity.

You can play all the word games you like regarding the symbolism and mysteries of faith, but it becomes an excuse to drag your old fleshly nature along, feeding and enabling the ongoing death that comes with it. The fruit of grace is holiness, not the filth of the flesh.

This may be a little lengthy because there are three different people that need prayers.

Two of my "kids" (went to my school with my daughters) Lee and Kelly and Kelly's daughter, Ciara.

Lee -47ish, is having heart ablation catheter surgery tomorrow (Friday) morning.  He has been suffering from afib for almost 2 years and the medication is not helping him. The doctors decided that the ablation surgery would be the best solution for him. I won't go into the details of what the surgery involves. If you don't know ask me and I'll be glad to tell you. It is a common and relatively successful surgery that takes anywhere from 3 to 4 hours. He is the provider for the family but probably will not be able to work for a couple of months however his employer did provide him with total salary temporary disability.  Hallelujah for that.

Kelly (same age-ish) was at my granddaughter's cookout this past Saturday and she told me that she had just had her gallbladder out and that she wasn't feeling very well.  Well, her boyfriend took her to the ER Monday night and she ended up at our big hospital at UNC in Chapel Hill. Something must not have gone right with that surgery and she developed complications where her bile ducts in her liver backed up and inflamed. That is one of the risks of gallbladder surgery if the surgeons accidentally don't do it exactly right. In any case she had one surgery yesterday and then today things were looking even worse so they had to go back in there and do an emergency surgery. She just got back in her hospital room about an hour ago. My daughter Cynthia and I will be heading up tomorrow morning around 10:00. It's about an hour drive.

Kelly's daughter, Ciara, was in a motorcycle accident Monday. She ended up at the same hospital in ICU. She fractured her spine, broke her arm in several places and her wrist, broke her ankle and lacerated her liver. There might have been some broken ribs too. I don't have all those details.

So my dear Brothers and Sisters if you would please remember all of my children in your prayers. Each of these people are part of my extended family and I have always looked after them.

Thank you!

Please pray for me as I must visit the Dentist tomorrow to have an upper back molar evaluated for the excessive pain it is causing me.  The tooth has a crown that is only 4 years old but I fear the tooth itself might have some issues.  That usually means a root canal or extraction both of which I find very unpleasant.  I know the Lord will grant me the strength to endure whatever comes and your prayers will be appreciated.

We knew long ago that we couldn't stay in our apartment forever. The calling and mission would eventually move us to another kind of residence. But we didn't have anything concrete, just a vague sense we were getting close.

It sprang us rather suddenly last week. My son asked us if we would consider merging our financial resources to buy a house big enough for all of us to share. Not a mobile home, like the last time, but a regular house. We have no illusion about how challenging it will be, but the alternatives for all of us are far worse. Pray with us; here are the concerns we see:

1. Short time frame. Our lease comes up in August. Their situation may be even shorter.

2. Financing, of course. It's one thing to have enough income for the payments, but there are more costs before you even make that first payment. In our favor is that my VA home loan privileges still cover us for a decent amount in our local market.

3. Location. My daughter-in-law is pushing to stay in their current school district (Choctaw, OK). My wife needs to stay near her employer, the Mid-Del School District. While those two are adjacent, it does limit our choices trying to stay close to that shared boundary.

4. Size. It has to be big enough to accommodate all of us, and four cars, etc. The honest truth is that I'm willing to do without a computer office, but not my server. There are too many reasons both families need computers for different work purposes, so four bedrooms is the minimum, and five is a lot better. They have three daughters, and one is a teen.

Regardless, you can count on me to move forward with all my current ministry and projects, even if I have to sit with a laptop in the library.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

   
I had a little time waiting for a bus change at the San Antonio station, so I walked around and took some pictures. It's a very lovely downtown.
   
There was a park nearby.
   
While I have no idea what this building was used for, this ornate concrete casting was stunning in real life. It was on three sides of the building.
   
The last bus I caught between Dallas and OKC was a really nice charter rig with better windows, and I managed to capture one of the storm clouds as it billowed upward. By the time we got even with it, the rain had begun.