The right thing to do varies. One thing can be right and wrong depending on who is involved. It can vary for one person depending on the situation. We know this and rely on the voice of God in our hearts to determine our course. I have no doubts and rarely fret "did I do the right thing? ". If I screw up, I'll know soon enough and take my lumps. When I'm right, ah Blessings yummy. Some can't or won't see grey, the earthly realm is full of grey, there is never an action that pleases everyone. This means some saved people lose out on the greater blessing by hiding the masters talent under the floor. American Fundamentalists, Evies and Holy Rollers sell their adherents a false reality, falsality (I love inventing wurdz). Where there is universal right and wrong, the absolute shall. How can someone possibly grow confined to such a prison, (shaking my head) I thank God, I was set free. 
  Ok, my buddy has a decision to make and because he/she/it comes from the latter background. They cannot make up their mind because they are worried that God will "smite them". Coming from a broader sensibility. The choice is absolutely the right one, I can see Immediate and lasting blessing in  it. It can't get over the threshold because of their Arminian, decision salvation makes them reluctant to "step on" a goat on the way through. Pray please. 
 There are sheep, goats, wheat and trees. I sense the "step" in this case is actually a wolf in sheeps clothing, rotten fruit in abundance. 
PS. I decided to start attending Wednesday night meetings again. Pray 4 that too, I have an obligation to these people and have to at least give it one more try. "Good Luck, T". Blessings and Abundance of Joy in transit, arrival after you receive this!
PPS. Oh, forgot. I hate seeing people miss out on blessings because of bad theology ,  it's not there fault, people will go with the herd they were raised in and it's hard for them to go outside their life experience. You wanna shake'm "Dude, just Do It, if this other person gets hurt, God can fix them just like He did you" SHEESH! The things we do fer these people.

Just a reminder that we are participating in our weekly corporate prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own. Thanks!

He's a decent guy and I call "Dad." His name is Doug and I performed their wedding. They are going to try stem-cell treatment for his brain to see if it helps any. I believe they are doing this in Mexico, since they live so close to the border, and Mexico is a whole lot cheaper.

My wife handles my prescription painkillers for me. Each morning,  she puts my daily dosage into a pill bottle on top of the microwave. This unburdens me of the temptation to take an extra dose whenever the pain is at its worst. This has worked well for 17 years, until last Friday, when as best as we can piece it together, a patient in x-ray, which is where my wife leaves her pocket book, helped themselves to 81 of them. Apparently, they were laying on top in plain sight. I recreated it at home with my BP mess, it took 5 seconds took take, open, dump, close and return. To take the bottle would have been noticed quickly, which suggests someone who has done this before. One of these small pills has a street value of $30. The matter has been reported and pending an investigation, in the meantime I have enough for 7 days. Then 16 days until the prescription can be refilled. The government's drug prohibition policy requires continuous cycles of hysteria to sustain itself. Fear is it's weapon. Corruption is it's life blood and that does exponentially more harm than people who want to get high.
   The latest big bad wolf is prescription medication. People with genuine need are those most harmed. With the latest "guidelines" in place in NC, I doubt that my medication which was stolen will be replaced and I will be forced to suffer first withdrawal then rendered mostly immobile until April 5th. So if I fall off the face of the earth from March 21 until April 5th, you know why. There is nothing on earth that I despise more than the type of damn thief low enough to steal someone's medicine. Pray as led, please.

Here's our weekly reminder that our corporate prayer session starts at 5 PM EST today, lasting as long we as individuals feel it needs to last.

Check the Prayer Request forum for topics.

This is not my personal need, but my forte: Iain has shared a sense of calling about making videos. He wants to do it right, so this means having more than just a nice tablet. Naturally a laptop would be far more convenient to handle, but anything is better than nothing. Let's pray together in faith that God supplies his need for a computer with decent horsepower to help him edit videos and post them on YouTube.

Yesterday, after listening to me complaining about the crappiness of videos that related to Ironhead sportsters,  Boyboy said "You have a camcorder, make your own". I pondered this for a couple of hours, considering the pros and many, many cons of the YouTube vids and concluded yeah, I can do this better. So, I went to my son's room and said "I've been thinking and you're right, G'man I can do better but, to do it to the standards necessary I need to be able to edit and put graphics on screen, now what do I need". "Better laptops than we have" said he
 Queestyone for you'uns Ed & Jay Jay, what do I need.
  I have the plan for the presentation but, I'm playing my cards close to my chest. I've had too many ideas stolen to write them on an open forum. 
My budget is limited.

The transcript of a podcast episode, in which the host reviews the book The Virtues of Nationalism, by Yoram Hazony, yields a few interesting quotes. Not everything the podcast host or Hazony claims is anything we here at Radix Fidem can take with us. This is to be expected from those who don't share the same covenant with us (I am assuming, probably safely, that Roberts and Hazony aren't heart-led). That doesn't mean they are wrong, but whenever they are right they are most likely right for the wrong reasons.

Regardless, below are some useful insights. I have a very rudimentary theory that others may have formulated before me much more clearly: the existence of the modern nation-state is designed, inadvertently, to shield humans too much from human nature. The environment it creates is "too safe" the allow for humans to develop to formulate the proper insights into how people behave. The nation-state does this by externalizing fundamental social elements: matrimony, violence, war, natural disasters, different opinions and ideas, and concentrates the mitigation of those to dedicated and credentialed industries. We deal with crime by calling the police or misinformation by credentialed information sources. Nothing is addressed by those in close physical proximity to us; it slides up a chain to complete strangers. This is an extremely recent development in human history, and I don't believe we were equipped to perceive or process reality in this manner.

I've mentioned before: the ancients knew much more about the reality, and the reality of human behavior than any of us could. In a very real sense, modern society is anti-social, anti-human, anti-instinct, and anti-God.

From the actual book:

Quote:It is important to notice that the Israelites’ conception of the nation has nothing to do with biology or what we call race. For biblical nations, everything depends on a shared understanding of history, language, and religion that is passed from parents to religion, but which outsiders can join as well. Thus, the Book of Exodus teaches that there were many Egyptians who attached themselves to the Hebrew slaves in fleeing Egypt, and that they received the Ten Commandments at Sinai with the rest of Israel. Similarly, Moses invites the Midianite sheikh Jethro to join the Jewish people. And Ruth the Moabite becomes part of Israel when she is ready to tell Naomi, ‘Your people is my people, and your God is my God,’ her son being the forefather of King David himself. But the ability of Israel to bring these foreign-born individuals into its ranks depends on their willingness to accept Israel’s god, laws, and understanding of history. Without embracing these central aspects of Israel tradition, they will not become a part of the Israelite nation.

Quote:By a nation, I mean a number of tribes with a shared heritage, usually including a common language or religious traditions, and a past history of joining together against common enemies—characteristics that permit tribes, so united, to understand themselves as a community distinct from other distinct communities that are their neighbors. By a national state, I mean a nation whose disparate tribes have come together under a single, standing government, independent of all other governments. These definitions mean, in the first place, that nation is a form of community, a human collective recognizing itself as distinct from other human collectives. Such a community can exist independently of the state and does not have to include every individual living within the state. Second, these definitions mean that the unity thus created is always a composite, because the tribes united in this way continue to exist after national independence. [So, this is not an abstraction.] The nation is not comprised of familiar individuals, but is an impersonal abstraction in the same way that humanity is an abstraction. Yet, at the same time, the nation is also distinguished from all humanity in that it possesses a quite distinctive character, having its own language, laws, and religious traditions, its own history of past failure and achievement. This means that each nation is different from all other nations, and that to the individual who is a member of a certain nation, it is known as a concrete and familiar being, much like a person, family, or clan.

I believe the bots are able to create accounts because they "figured out" how to answer the security questions during registration. A while back I had created custom ones instead of "What's 2 + 2?" which is MyBB's default, and the very obvious spam users virtually stopped coming into existence for a while. So we'll see how long it takes to learn the new ones.

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