Fwd: Prayer Request Buck Fowler, Tina Coopers Grandfather

Tina Cooper is asking for everyone to pray for her grandfather, Buck Fowler.  He fell early this morning and broke his hip.  He is at Cartersville Medical awaiting surgery.  Not sure his health will allow a successful surgery.

As we all have been praying for Christians in Syria please take time to read this article. Conditions for our brothers and sisters are even worse

http://beforeitsnews.com/christian-news/2012/12/syrian-christians-face-starvation-deadly-attacks-2462298.html

This weeks lesson and text... Hosea 4 - Please read the entire chapter. This is a very important Lesson series. Spend time in the word this week.

As you read and study this week, please consider please prayerfully consider the following article and questions.

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We should turn from attitudes and behavior that hurt us and displease God.  The question is why many of us don't.  The following article is a summary about a pro football coach's no-nonsense approach to discipline.  Jeff Fisher is former coach of the Tennessee Titans and current coach of the St Louis Rams.  Last week there was "controversy" in St Louis for Coach Fishers benching of 2 key players on the team.  See the summary below and 3 questions that will provide a good segway into our lesson Sunday.

When you treat professional athletes like grown men, there's an expectation for them to actually behave like adults. That's always been Jeff Fisher's way of doing business as a football coach.

As a former player, he understands what rules make sense and which ones are just plain stupid. It's one of the reasons the causes of Sunday's benching of Janoris Jenkins and Chris Givens go well beyond disappointing and race all the way to just plain stupid. We still don't know for sure what the two talented rookies did to get into Fisher's doghouse, but trust me on this, it wasn't for something trivial.

"I think you have to look at each individual and set of circumstances and what the issues were," Fisher told me last spring during rookie minicamp.

You give them clear rules that make sense. You surround them with strong-willed leaders in the locker room and you surround them with smart people outside the locker room who will help teach them how to make better decisions with their lives than they did in the past.

The world is full of guys like Jenkins and Givens. In high school and college I played with a few of them and watched their self-destructive behavior get the best of them. Professionally, I've covered the lives of so many gifted young men who had all the talent in the world, but for some reason allowed demons and bad choices to derail their lives. I don't know if that's what's happening here with Jenkins and Givens, but I do know that every one of those tragic stories I witnessed in the past started out just like this.

The craziest thing is, the Rams have provided all their players with all the proper support systems you can imagine to ensure they don't run into trouble. But all the support systems in the world won't help if the athlete doesn't want to be helped.

A young player who continues to make knuckleheaded mistakes can find himself on a startling free fall from promising starter to benched trouble maker to unemployed in a hurry in pro football. On Sunday, the Rams moved on without Jenkins and Givens without skipping a beat.

That's how quickly things move in pro football. One man's misfortune is another's opportunity, and let's hope that Jenkins and Givens don't have to learn that lesson the hard way.

Please consider these 3 questions as we move toward Sundays lesson.

• Why do you think some people persist in destructive behavior even when they know and have experienced severe consequences for their actions?
• How does Coach Fisher's approach help us understand that God does not give us rules to deny us freedom or pleasure, but for our own good?
• The writer observed that "all the support systems in the world won't help if the athlete doesn't want to be helped." How does this apply to discipleship and our Christian obedience?

Sincerely

Lee Daniel, CIC, CPIA
Harry Daniel Insurance
www.hdins.com
770-382-8954 ext 100
770-386-4081 fax

Contact Me

Exposing a Broken Relationship Hosea 1:1-2; 2:2-5; 3:1-5

Please read from the following text for this weeks lesson.  We will not have time to cover everything mentioned above but we will cover to key points.  I would suggest you read the Chapters 1-3 to get a full grasp of the context of this story.  The core verses are above.

Remember to pray for one another this week.

Christian brother beheaded. Pray for the martyrs.

http://freedomoutpost.com/2012/11/the-religion-of-peace-beheads-another-convert-to-christianity/

Fwd: Class text to study this week.

Please read 2 Peter 2 and Jude. Also if you have time go to youtube look for info on Jonestown. Warning it may be graphic.

God bless

Lee

Suffering... the topic we have all be studying lately in SS

The "problem of suffering" is not a new one, but it trips a lot of people up as they consider how a loving God and seemingly pointless evil co-exist in our world. As we saw this weekend in John 11 , there are theological answers to the hard questions like this.

As Christians, we need to understand three biblical truths about suffering.

1. Suffering is the result of the curse of death on our sin.

Most of the objections raised against God about suffering are built on the assumption that humanity is owed good things and that God is unjust for not giving them to us. That's why we talk about the "problem of evil." Why do bad things happen to us good, innocent people?

The Bible takes an entirely opposite approach. It tells us God created this world without suffering, in a perfect condition called "shalom." But we all voluntarily rebelled against him, and the just result of that rebellion is the curse of death.

What we truly deserve is death. The fact that there is still good in the world—sunshine on our faces and food in our stomachs—that's all grace. And the fact that God has given us a space to repent is unspeakable grace. The Bible doesn't wrestle with the problem of evil so much as it marvels at amazing grace.

As sinners, to put God on trial for our suffering as if he was unjust is twisted form of "chutzpah." "Chutzpah" is the audacity of a man who kills his mom and dad ... and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan! We should not ask, "Why is all this bad stuff happening in the world?" We are the reason why. The question is not, "Why me?" but, "Why not me?"

Now, this does not mean individual instances of suffering are the result of specific sins. He got cancer because he was a bad husband or, She had a miscarriage because she cheated on her taxes. That is not how the Bible tells us to think about our suffering. As a race, humanity lives in a world of suffering because we rebelled against God, and that suffering affects us all.

2. God, in his love and mercy, has reversed the curse by suffering it in our place.

The only truly innocent sufferer in history was Jesus. He lived entirely free from rebellion and should have been exempt from the curse of death. But when he got to the end of his life, instead of being rewarded, he submitted to the curse of death voluntarily. When he did that, he overturned the entire curse and started the process of healing.

That healing begins by cancelling our sin debt. Jesus nailed our sin to the cross and reconciled us to God. That healing dramatically affects our inward psychological state. One day that healing will extend to our bodies in full when we are resurrected perfect and without pain. And Jesus' healing will eventually extend to all corners of our world, as God re-establishes shalom to the earth through the blood of the cross.

3. For Christians, God now uses our suffering redemptively—for his glory and our good.

God uses our suffering (1) for his glory, because there are some things God can demonstrate to the world about himself through our pain better than he can any other way. And he uses it (2) for our good, because there are some things God can best teach us about himself through our pain.

A lot of people balk at this point. "All pain for God's glory and our good? What about the Holocaust? What about 9/11?" But this ignores the first point, that suffering is the just result of the curse of death. We live in a world under the curse of sin, and just like the sun comes up and "randomly" shines on both good and bad people, the curse of death often "indiscriminately" affects us all.

Does that mean God is not sovereign over all of it? No, God is still sovereign, but we have to expand our understanding of sovereignty. If 100 people are standing in a field when the sun rises, all of them are warmed. God typically doesn't shine the sun on a few individuals and leave others out. In the same way, the curse of death is at work in the world—which causes disease, deteriorating relationships, accidents—and it extends to all, often affecting people irrespective of their relative "worthiness." And again, because of principle #1, there are none who can accuse God of injustice in this. The human race, because of its rebellion, is under the rightful curse of death.

Furthermore, in saying that "God uses our suffering redemptively, for his glory and our good," I am not saying every single bad act on earth leads to a corresponding good act, as if every Jewish family that suffered in the Holocaust can say, "See the good that came into my family through that?" The system as a whole serves the bigger picture of God's glory, but we cannot always see how in each specific instance.

For the believer, however, God has promised to use all of our suffering for our good and for his glory. He has taken the sting out of death and suffering and promised to use it all now for his glory and the good of our church. So in every seemingly "random" bad thing, believers can know God is working redemptively for his purposes. This is why Paul can say "all things work together for good to them that love God" (Rom. 8:28) and "God works all things according to the counsel of his will" so we would "resound to the praise of his glory" (Eph. 1:11). This is why Joseph could say to those who committed grave injustices against him that "what you meant for evil, God re-purposed for good" (Gen. 50:20). 

By J.D. Greear, Ph.D., pastors the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, NC. Tagged by Outreach magazine as one of the fastest growing churches in America, the Summit has grown in the past 8 years from 400 to over 5,000 each weekend. The Summit Church is deeply involved in global church planting, having undertaken the mission to plant 1000 churches in the next 40 years. J.D. has authored Breaking the Islam Code and the upcoming Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary.