Podcasts about betsie

Wat heeft een varken te maken met klanten aantrekken? Meer dan je denkt. In deze aflevering neem ik je mee naar de tijd waarin ik een culinair mini-hotel runde in de Ardennen en vertel ik hoe varken Betsie zorgde voor een uitverkocht weekend. Niet met ingewikkelde strategieën, maar door een verhaal te delen dat echt bij ons paste.Veel ondernemers proberen klanten aan te trekken op een manier die niet klopt met wie ze zijn. Ze volgen strategieën omdat het “zo hoort”, terwijl ze diep van binnen weten dat het niet werkt. Maar wat als jij klanten kon aantrekken op een manier die moeiteloos voelt? Wat als je durft te vertrouwen op jouw manier?Luister mee en ontdek hoe je jouw creatieve flow gebruikt om klanten aan te trekken—niet door te forceren, maar door te spelen, experimenteren en jouw unieke verhaal te delen.Wat zou jij doen als je helemaal los mocht gaan in je eigen creatieve flow? Ga het eens proberen en zie wat er gebeurt.Laten we verbinden! Je vindt me onder mijn naam Monique Lavec op ⁠LinkedIn⁠ en ⁠Instagram⁠.

Originally aired on January 20th, 2025.

Join cohost Athena and Mims for an interview. Betsie Barker has an approachable style of hospitality that inspired Athena to reconsider what it takes and how to to embrace imparting the gift of hospitality. Listen in to hear how Batsie approaches preparation to host, shares that experience with her family and encourages Athena, Mims and the Torn Tribe to lean in to extending an invitation, open door and warm welcome! Check out the podcasts new Torn Thought Thursdays on socials. Reach out with feedback, torn moments or mends to tornmlb@gmail.com - Listen, Follow and Share the podcast at IG, Facebook and Twitter: @tornmlb. Choose Grace, Torn Tribe!

What does it take to stand resolute against tyranny and injustice? Explore the profound strength of Diet Eman, a Dutch resistance fighter during World War II, whose story embodies the courage and faith needed to face insurmountable odds. This episode of Starting Right with Danny Mac promises a deep dive into the inspiring legacy of Diet, a woman who risked her life for her Jewish friends, guided by her unwavering belief in God's greater plan, as depicted in Isaiah 55:8. Discover how her brave acts, like forging documents and creating escape routes, became beacons of hope during the darkest of times. Her encounters with fellow prisoners like Corrie and Betsie ten Boom in concentration camps reveal the power of divine intervention, even in the bleakest circumstances. Tune in to hear a riveting testament to God's mysterious ways and how Diet Eman's story continues to inspire generations with the message that faith and courage can forge a path through the unknown.We would love to hear your comments. Send us a Text MessageSupport the show

Durch unser langjähriges Sprach- und Kulturstudium haben wir nicht nur gelernt, wie wir uns mit unseren einheimischen Freunden verständigen können, sondern sind auch ein Teil der Gesellschaft geworden. Hier ist das Verständnis von Privateigentum so gut wie nicht vorhanden. Alles wird geteilt, geliehen oder erbeten. Die wörtliche Übersetzung für die Frage »Dürfte ich bitte etwas davon haben?« lautet: »Gib mir meins!«. Nicht einmal die lästigen Läuse sind Privateigentum, sondern werden aus den Haaren der anderen gepickt und in die eigenen gesteckt!Im Januar 2024 hatten wir eine Läuseplage im Haus, die uns über Wochen auf Trab hielt und an der wir fast verzweifelten. Das erinnerte uns an die Geschichte von Corrie ten Boom, die mit ihrer Schwester Betsie in einem Konzentrationslager der Nazis gefangen gehalten wurde. In einer Baracke eng zusammengepfercht mussten sie nicht nur gegen den Hunger und verschiedenste Krankheiten ankämpfen, sondern auch gegen die lästigen Läuse. Betsie erinnerte ihre Schwester an die Aufforderung aus 1. Thessalonicher 5,18: »Seid dankbar in allem!« Doch Corrie fand keinen Grund, warum sie für diese Biester dankbar sein könnte. Was Corrie und Betsie erst später begriffen, war, dass die Wärter wegen der Läuse die Baracke nicht betraten. Die Läuse waren also der Grund, warum die beiden Schwestern ungestört Bibelstunden halten und die anderen Insassen ermutigen konnten! Der Fluch wurde zum Segen.Ermutigt durch diese Geschichte fingen auch wir an, Gott für die Läuse zu danken. Und auch wir merkten, dass die Läuse einen Zweck erfüllten. Sie vertieften nämlich unsere Beziehungen im Dorf, denn es gibt nichts, was unsere Freunde mehr lieben, als gemütlich bei uns auf der Terrasse zu sitzen und uns zu entlausen.Tony KellerDiese und viele weitere Andachten online lesenWeitere Informationen zu »Leben ist mehr« erhalten Sie unter www.lebenistmehr.deAudioaufnahmen: Radio Segenswelle

In deze aflevering van DE BLOEMENPODCAST van ANNEMARIJE & JORIEN bereiden we ons voor op het nieuwe zaaiseizoen. Wat heb je allemaal nodig om in het nieuwe tuinseizoen goed van start te gaan. En een supertip van Betsie over het voortrekken van dahlia's in zakjes. Bekijk het filmpje hier.Meer info over pluktuinen: Opleiding je eigen pluktuin en het boek van Annemarije: Flower Happiness. Meer over de dames Annemarije: flowerhappiness.nl  Instagram: @florabelflowers Jorien: bloematwork.nl en uniekpotlood.nl Instagram: @bloematwork en @uniekpotlood De Bloemen Podcast heeft ook een eigen Instagram account: @debloemenpodcast. Hier kun je via een DM al je vragen naar toesturen. Je kunt ook Vriend van de show worden. Hier is ook ruimte voor het stellen van vragen. Word VRIEND VAN DE SHOW. Met een kleine bijdrage steun je ons om elke week weer een nieuwe aflevering te kunnen maken. En speciaal voor vrienden komen er leuke acties en extra content. Aanmelden kan HIER.

Durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, la familia de Corrie ten Boom escondió a judíos en su casa, arriesgando sus vidas. Aunque finalmente fueron descubiertos y enviados a campos de concentración, Corrie encontró alegría en las pequeñas cosas: el amor de su hermana Betsie, una Biblia escondida, e incluso en las pulgas que evitaban que los guardias entraran a sus barracas. El Adviento nos llama a experimentar un gozo que no depende de las circunstancias. El nacimiento de Jesús trajo una alegría eterna al mundo, una alegría que permanece incluso en medio del sufrimiento. Su presencia nos da razones para regocijarnos, porque sabemos que nuestras pruebas son temporales, pero Su amor es eterno. ¿Dónde puedes encontrar gozo hoy? Permite que las pequeñas bendiciones diarias sean un recordatorio de la gran alegría que Jesús ofrece. La Biblia dice en Filipenses 4:4: "Regocijaos en el Señor siempre. Otra vez digo: ¡Regocijaos!"

Durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, la familia de Corrie Ten Boom escondió a judíos en su casa, arriesgando sus vidas. Aunque finalmente fueron descubiertos y enviados a campos de concentración, Corrie encontró alegría en las pequeñas cosas como el amor de su hermana Betsie, una Biblia escondida e incluso en las pulgas que evitaban que los guardias entraran a sus celdas. El Adviento nos llama a experimentar un gozo que no depende de las circunstancias. El nacimiento de Jesús trajo una alegría eterna al mundo, una alegría que permanece incluso en medio del sufrimiento. Su presencia nos da razones para regocijarnos, porque sabemos que nuestras pruebas son temporales, pero Su amor es eterno. ¿Dónde puedes encontrar gozo hoy? Permite que las pequeñas bendiciones diarias sean un recordatorio de la gran alegría que Jesús te ofrece. La Biblia dice en Filipenses 4:4:"Regocijaos en el Señor siempre. Otra vez digo: ¡Regocijaos!"

“Keine Situation unseres Lebens braucht unfruchtbar zu sein. Durch die Hingabe an Gott lässt sich alles in Segen verwandeln.” Corrie ten Boom Corrie ten Boom (* 15. April 1892 in Haarlem, Niederlande; † 15. April 1983 in Placentia, Kalifornien, USA) war eine niederländische Christin und Widerstandskämpferin, die während des Zweiten Weltkriegs aktiv Menschen, insbesondere Juden, vor der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung rettete. Sie stammte aus einer tief religiösen Familie und arbeitete mit ihrem Vater, Casper ten Boom, und ihrer Schwester Betsie daran, Juden und Mitglieder des Widerstands in ihrem Haus zu verstecken, das als "Versteck" oder "Beje" bekannt wurde. Ihre Familie wurde 1944 von der Gestapo verhaftet, und Corrie sowie ihre Schwester Betsie wurden ins Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück deportiert. Betsie starb dort, doch Corrie überlebte und wurde durch einen Verwaltungsfehler freigelassen. Nach dem Krieg schrieb Corrie das Buch "Die Zuflucht" (The Hiding Place), in dem sie ihre Erlebnisse schilderte. Sie setzte sich Zeit ihres Lebens für Vergebung, Versöhnung und den Glauben an Gott ein. Corrie ten Boom ist eine inspirierende Persönlichkeit, die als Symbol für Widerstand, Glaube und Vergebung gilt. Quelle: ChatGPT Fragen? Schreib an: bibelverse@christliche-gewohnheiten.de

Jesus is telling them to love their enemies, do good to those who hate them, bless those who curse them, and pray for those who spitefully use them. When someone hits them on the face, don't hit back but turn their cheek and allow them to hit them again. When someone demands their coat, give them their shirt also, give to anyone who asks, and when things are taken away from them, don't fight or sue them to get them back. (vv. 27-38)   Basically, Jesus is teaching us, that true happiness and blessedness in life does not come from our circumstances, from people, from things, or even from ourselves (our success, our achievements, or even our good deeds), but it comes from our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. It is only by His grace, and by the control and the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives that we can have the attitude and heart to do the things Jesus is describing above.   Jesus concludes this section in verses 37-38 by saying, “judge not, condemn not, forgive and give. Four things that sum up the attitude we should have toward people who offend, hurt, and abuse us. Two things we should not do and then two things we should do. Two negatives, don't, don't, and then two positives, do, do! Now these days we have been programed to dislike negative preaching in our churches and only want to hear the positive. But if we follow and study the Bible and God's way we must respond to the negative first.   This reminds me of the Ten Commandments, that are the basics of the Moral Law of God for our lives. The first three are negative: No other gods, no idols or images, no misuse or blasphemy of God's name. Then two positives: Keep the sabbath, honor your parents. Then five negatives: don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't lie, and don't covet. The negatives are needed to remind us that we are guilty of breaking God's law and His ways and pave the way for us to trust Him for mercy, grace, and forgiveness, and then for the strength and wisdom to do what we should do to please Him.   So, after the two negatives, don't judge, don't condemn, Jesus says to forgive and give. How do you know if you really have forgiven someone for their offence or abuse of you? (By the way, this does not mean that you don't hold them accountable for their actions. You report their abuse to the proper authorities and remove yourself from them and from further abuse.) At the same time, in your heart, and in your attitude, you turn it over to the Lord, and you also pray for God to deal with them by convicting them of their sin. You pray for their salvation.   When in your heart you forgive others for the hurt they have caused you, it will be evidenced by how you “give” them your prayers. True forgiveness is evidence of God's love at work in our hearts that allows us to be free to give. One of the most powerful illustrations of this kind of love and forgiveness is the story of Corrie Ten Boom. In September 1944, the Nazis deported Corrie and her sister, Betsie ten Boom to the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women in Germany.   Life at Ravensbrück was almost unbearable, as they were abused. But Betsie and Corrie spent their time sharing Jesus' love with their fellow prisoners.  Because of mistreatment Betsie died in Ravensbrück on 16th December 1944, aged 59. The last words she had spoken to Corrie before she died, were, “You must tell people what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still. They will listen to us Corrie, because we have been here.”   After the war, Corrie Ten Boom learned how to forgive those who had caused her so much pain and suffering. Please take the time to go the blogs on my website to read the rest of Corrie's story and also a great article I found on forgiveness. What Forgiveness is and what it is not. https://www.pmiministries.org/post/corrie-ten-boon-and-forgiveness God bless!

Betsie Norris is the Founder and Executive Director of Adoption Network Cleveland: The Ohio Family Connection. Betsie is an adoptee who searched for and was reunited with her birthparents and siblings in 1986, when she was in her mid-twenties. She emerged from that experience with strong convictions about the lifelong journey of adoption for all involved, and the need for systemic change. She found Adoption Network Cleveland in 1988, was a volunteer for the first 7 years, and has been the Executive Director since 1995. Listen is as Betsie discusses the trauma around adoption, how to find support, her personal reunification and search process, as well as what boundaries to set for a healthy experience for all involved parties. Key Takeaways [00:03:15] Adoption as a lifelong journey [00:11:11] Search Challenges & Reunion Experiences [00:23:19] Navigating Family Boundaries [00:25:19] Modern Family Dynamics [00:29:19] Trauma in Adoption [00:38:13] Setting Boundaries During Your Search [00:42:34] What boundaries can look like in an open adoption [00:49:18] Supporting Foster Care Practices Where to Find Betsie Norris & The Adoption Network LinkedIn – Betsie Norris Instagram – @AdoptionNetCLE Website – AdoptionNetwork.org How to find us - Visit our website – hardnopodcast.com – for show notes, which include links to books and other helpful resources. Like what you hear? Please subscribe, rate and review so others can find us, and make sure to follow us on social media. We're @hardnopodcast on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn & YouTube!

Blessings can come from adversity and we must trust God's sovereignty to work those things out. #daybydaylw Interested in learning more about becoming a devoted follower of Christ? Go to follow.lifeword.org! ~~~ “Blessed be the LORD forever! Amen and Amen.” Psalm 89 ends with these words. What does this line mean? What does it mean that the LORD be blessed? It means “May the LORD be pleased forever.” It is a recognition of the absolute sovereignty and providence of God. This is Ethan's way of saying, “God, you know more than me, you are mightier than I am, and I trust you. Thank you for the fleas… Corrie ten Boom and her sister, Betsie, were prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII. Her family was caught hiding Jews in their home, and were thrown into Ravensbruck Camp prison. Amongst her imprisonment, Corrie tells of a time of thanksgiving in her book, The Hiding Place. Corrie and Betsie were able to smuggle a tattered bible into the flea infested barracks, which Nazi officers would never enter. When the passage “Be thankful in all circumstances”  [1 Thess 5:18] was revealed to Betsie, she insisted they be thankful for everything, and began praying aloud. Betsie thanked God for all things, but when she thanked Him for even the fleas, Corrie disagreed. She hated fleas. They were nasty, pesky little bugs that kept biting her legs, and she would not be thankful for them. However, Betsie persisted, and Corrie succumbed to being thankful IN all circumstances. Later, they heard the Nazi officers refused to enter the barracks because of the fleas. The fleas kept them safe from being molested and abused. Dozens of desperate women were free to hear the comforting, hope-giving Word of God, and God made sure their deepest needs were met. Sometimes, blessings come out of adversity. Fleas look different for everyone; financial issues, marital crisis, or health problems can overwhelm our thoughts. God gives many warnings in scripture that un-thankfulness leads to pointless thinking. It takes practice to be thankful in spite our trials or fleas. We must be intentional to cultivate (nourish or fertilize) and practice thanksgiving

====================================================SUSCRIBETEhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNpffyr-7_zP1x1lS89ByaQ?sub_confirmation=1=======================================================================DECIDETE HOYDevoción Matutina para Jóvenes 2024Narrado por: Daniel RamosDesde: Connecticut, Estados Unidos===================|| www.drministries.org ||===================24 DE JUNIONO HAY MAL QUE POR BIEN NO VENGA«Den gracias a Dios por todo» (1 Tesalonicenses 5: 18). Para el cristiano, detrás de cada nube brilla el sol y cada tragedia esconde una bendición.El pavoroso incendio de Londres empezó el 2 de septiembre de 1666. En cuatro días, dos terceras partes de la ciudad fueron destruidas. Doscientos mil personas se quedaron sin hogar y ochenta y nueve iglesias fueron arrasadas. ¿Habría alguna razón para agradecer a Dios en medio de una situación tan terrible? Pero esa tragedia escondía una bendición. El fuego destruyó la antigua ciudad de Londres, con sus cloacas abiertas, sus viejos edificios de madera, sus barrios bajos y calles sucias. La ciudad fue reconstruida con nuevos edificios y mejores sistemas de drenaje.Parece que el fuego tuvo un efecto purificador en el aire. Mató a miles de ratas y destruyó gérmenes de la peste bubónica, la cual había arrebatado la vida de muchos en años anteriores. Lo que pareció una tragedia en aquel momento resultó ser una bendición, pues salvó miles de vidas y convirtió a Londres en un lugar mejor para vivir. Otro ejemplo de bendición salida de una tragedia lo encontramos en lo que sucedió a Corrie ten Boom y a su hermana Betsie, quienes estaban en un campo de concentración alemán durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Un día las hermanas fueron trasladadas a la Barraca 28, que estaba llena de moscas. Ellas no veían cómo podrían vivir en un lugar tan sucio y agradecer a Dios por ello. Betsie leyó el versículo de hoy. —¿No ves? —dijo—. Debemos agradecer a Dios por todo. Algunos días después, descubrieron que, por causa de las moscas, los guardianes no entraban en la alcoba. Así las dos hermanas tenían libertad de leer sus Biblias y testificar, lo cual de otra manera no hubieran podido hacer. Dios tiene un propósito para todo lo que permite en tu vida. Él puede convertir el mal en bien y la tristeza en gozo. Él puede hacer que tu tragedia sea una bendición para ti y para otros. Él es fiel y te dará la fuerza y la paz que necesitas para enfrentar cualquier situación. 

Mulholland Drive is a 2001 surrealist drama/mystery that was written and directed by David 'Garmonbozia' Lynch. The film stars Naomi Watts and Laura Harring as two women investigating the circumstances that brought Harring's character (Rita) to Watts' (Betty, not Betsie's, I promise) door. Along the way, surrealism happens. Ya know, Lynch stuff. Chapters: 00:00 - Opening 00:38 - Movie Trailer 01:37 - The Episode Proper --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mediaobscura/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mediaobscura/support

TRANSLATION MENU: LOOK UPPER RIGHT BELOW THE SOCIAL MEDIA ICONS. IT OFFERS EVERY LANGUAGE AVAILABLE AROUND THE WORLD! ALSO, SOCIAL MEDIA AND PRINT ICONS ARE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST! Pictured above: Fentanyl is a legal painkiller, as well as a street drug. Sixteen years on the streets, living and working with the people...

The second in this 2 part series on The Hiding Place, this episode finishes out the story and pulls some more themes together.  Through the extraordinary faith of Corrie and her sister Betsie, they are able to see the love and grace of God despite the dark circumstances they encounter.  Both go through months of imprisonment because they were part of the Dutch Resistance.  But they have the opportunity to lead Bible studies and encourage other prisoners; even to serve as witnesses to guards and officers.  Finally, a theme of forgiveness is readily present as Corrie must grapple with how to forgive those who did much harm to her and her family.  Through Christ, we see an example we should follow.  Links for items mentioned:The Hiding Place (original movie — free on YouTube):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zNDe30_eKwThe Hiding Place (2023 movie):  https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0CQ6VK4T1/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_rHiding Place museum:  https://www.corrietenboom.com/en/homeThe Hiding Place Book (35th Anniversary Edition):  https://a.co/d/d4hImFm

Sermon Notes Psalm 18:19b NIV He rescued me because He delighted in me. I Peter 4:8 NIV Above all else love one another deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Luke 11:4a NIV Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. Colossians 3:13 NIV Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive just as the Lord forgave you. Luke 17:3b–4 ESV If your brother sins, rebuke him and if he repents forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him. Colossians 3:19 NASB Husbands love your wives and do not be embittered against them. Proverbs 20:5 ESV The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out. John 5:6b NIV “Do you want to get well?” Matthew 18:34-35 NIV In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed. “This is how your my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” You can’t forgive from your heart until you get in touch with the pain in your heart. Psalm 139:23-24 NIV Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Proverbs 18:19a NIV A brother (child) wronged (offended) is more unyielding than a fortified city. Genesis 27:42b NLT “… Listen, Esau is consoling himself by plotting to kill you.” Psalm 123:3-4 NIV Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us, for we have endured no end … of ridicule from the arrogant of contempt from the proud. “When He tells us to love our enemies He gives, along with the command, the love itself.” - Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place I stood there – I whose sins had again and again been forgiven – and could not forgive. Betsie had died in that place. Could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking“? It could have been many seconds that he stood there-hand held out-but to me. It seemed like hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I ever had to do…I had to do it…I knew that…forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. “Jesus help me!” I prayed silently. As she reached out her hand to the former guard, Corrie says that something incredible took place. “The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. ‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart!” I had never known so love so intensely, as I did then, But even then, I realized it was not my love, it was the power of the Holy Spirt.” Colossians 2:13-15 NIV God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. 1 John 3:14 NIV We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Ezekiel 36:26-27 NIV I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

More to Consider Missionary statesman Hudson Taylor had complete trust in God's faithfulness. In his journal he wrote: Our heavenly Father is a very experienced One. He knows very well that His children wake up with a good appetite every morning...He sustained 3 million Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years. We do not expect He will send 3 million missionaries to China; but if He did, He would have ample means to sustain them all...Depend on it, God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supply. Our Daily Bread, May 16, 1992. One of God's faithful missionaries, Allen Gardiner, experienced many physical difficulties and hardships throughout his service to the Savior. Despite his troubles, he said, "While God gives me strength, failure will not daunt me." In 1851, at the age of 57, he died of disease and starvation while serving on Picton Island at the southern tip of South America. When his body was found, his diary lay nearby. It bore the record of hunger, thirst, wounds, and loneliness. The last entry in his little book showed the struggle of his shaking hand as he tried to write legibly. It read, "I am overwhelmed with a sense of the goodness of God." Unknown Often I have heard people say, "How good God is! We prayed that it would not rain for our church picnic, and look at the lovely weather!'" Yes, God is good when He sends good weather. But God was also good when He allowed my sister, Betsie, to starve to death before my eyes in a German concentration camp. I remember one occasion when I was very discouraged there. Everything around us was dark, and there was darkness in my heart. I remember telling Betsie that I thought God had forgotten us. "No, Corrie," said Betsie, "He has not forgotten us. Remember His Word: 'For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him.'" Corrie concludes, "There is an ocean of God's love available--there is plenty for everyone. May God grant you never to doubt that victorious love--whatever the circumstances." Corrie Ten Boom.

Corrie and Betsie are transferred to a concentration camp. How will God bring good from the evil they've experienced? Meanwhile, Piper and the rest of the family head to the science fair. Subscribe to the CEF Podcast, so you don't miss any of our episodes!

In dit interview met Betsie als mede-eigenaresse van Bagels en Beans Enschede en echtgenote van Rob, is het woord voornamelijk aan Betsie. Ze legt uit hoe ze veganisme kan implementeren bij haar lunchroom en hoe ze het werken in een niet volledig vegan zaak toch voor zichzelf kan verantwoorden.

Corrie, Betsie, and Casper make room and preparations to protect Jews in their home, but will it be enough? Meanwhile, Piper makes preparations for the science fair. Uniting kids with the good news of the Gospel through adventures and foundational, biblical truths. Subscribe to the CEF Podcast, so you don't miss any of our episodes!

Leslie continues her Historical Mentors series with a powerful look at the example of Betsie ten Boom. “Spiritualized chaos” is what defines much of modern Christianity. Betsie had every reason - circumstantially speaking - to let frustration, anger, defeat, depression, and chaos rule in her soul and in her outward environment. Yet she chose a different pattern - God's pattern. Betsie allowed the light, joy, peace, and order of Jesus Christ to transform her from the inside out, and it affected everything about her life - from her countenance, to her words, to even creating an atmosphere of beauty in her prison cell. For more resources from Leslie, visit www.setapart.org. To learn about our 2024 Set Apart conference, visit https://setapart.org/2024-set-apart-conference/. To learn about our 2024 Ellerslie training programs, visit https://ellerslie.com/daily/. To support Set Apart Ministries, visit https://setapart.org/support-setapart/.

The Road Less Travelled By Proverbs 4 We'll be looking at Proverbs 4 today. You can find that on page 628 This is Solmon's 5th lesson on wisdom. In these opening chapters, he's been answering the “what,” the “why,” and the “how” questions of wisdom. Last week was another “why” answer. Why pursue wisdom? Because the value of wisdom is beyond what we can even imagine. This chapter, chapter 4, answers another “how” question – “how do I stay on the path of wisdom?” The answer: Cherish wisdom every day of your life. As I read, listen for two things. Listen to the language of keeping or holding on to wisdom and listen for the language of the path or way of wisdom. Reading of Proverbs 4:1-27 Prayer   Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;   Robert Frost's poem, “The Road Not Taken” is perhaps America's most well-known poem. Those are the opening lines. Likely you are more familiar with how it closes: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.   As the literature teachers here would probably tell you, the poem is often misunderstood. When we hear it, we immediately think of the path of life. After all, choosing the right path makes all the difference, as it says. But, as I understand it, Frost was actually making fun of an indecisive friend. This friend struggled to pick any path in the woods. Nonetheless, his poem has become a symbol of life's journey. In a way, it appeals to that inner sense that there are different paths in life…. that we need to choose a path. And, of course, it also appeals to American individualism – choosing a path less travelled. Well, Proverbs 4 is about the path of life. It's about choosing the road less travelled by, the path of wisdom. And it's contrasted with the path of evil. Now, you may have noticed this: At the end of almost every wisdom lesson so far, Solomon concludes by identifying 2 paths. ·      On one hand, he has talked about the ignorant, the fool, the complacent, and the wicked. And he's described their end. They will be cut off or rooted out or disgraced. ·      On the other hand, he's talked about the wise, the righteous, and the upright. They will inherit honor or remain in the land. ·      Two paths – one leading to life and one leading to death We get here to chapter 4, and it what it does is expands on the 2 paths of life. But instead of just describing the two paths – he's already done that. Solomon tells his sons how to stay on the path. This is critically important. You know that famous quote: "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." That's true, but the journey doesn't end with the first step, no it takes step after step. Wisdom begins with the reverent fear of the Lord, but that's just the beginning of the journey. Wisdom is a life-long journey. What's interesting about this chapter is that there are three themes present. However, they're not logically ordered. Rather, these three themes permeate the chapter. So instead of working through this sequentially, we'll take it thematically. What are those three themes? Three “H” words. Hearing, Holding, and Heeding the way of wisdom. Hearing the wisdom of God; Holding to the wisdom of God; and Heeding the wisdom of God. Hearing, Holding, and Heeding. Let me put it this way: these are the three keys that will help you stay on the path of wisdom. Hearing Honestly, I don't want to spend too much time on hearing. This is not the first time we've come across the importance of hearing wisdom. A few weeks ago we considered how we are bombarded today by different messages from our culture. It's hard, isn't it, to filter through everything out there and to hear true wisdom. And, do you remember where we go to listen to God's wisdom? We go to God's commands and his teaching. We find that in his Word. Hearing is essential on the journey of wisdom. I think you would agree with me, that makes sense. Note the very first word of chapter 4. “Hear.” Hear what? “Hear, O sons, a father's instruction, and be attentive, that you may gain insight, for I give you good precepts; do not forsake my teaching.” This is the king of Israel. He's speaking about the teaching that had been passed down through the ages. It was passed to his father, King David. David then taught Solomon, and now King Solmon is passing it to the next generation. You can see that generational connection right there in verses 3 and 4. “when I was a son, my father taught me.” Now, jump down to verses 10. Solmon re-emphasizes the need to “hear” him. There's that word, again, “hear.” Then in 11, he explains: “I have taught you the way of wisdom; I have led you in the paths of uprightness.” He's saying, “my son, these are the things of God: his commandments, his precents, his covenant promises. Hear them. Receive my teaching.” And notice yet again, down in verse 20. Solomon once more reemphasizes the need to hear: “be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings.” Children, you have your life ahead of you. Lord willing, he will give you length of days. There are so many things for you to learn. Good things to learn about the world, about history, things to learn in the various career paths. But the most important thing to learn is about God: All the things he has revealed to us in his Word. Wonderful things about who God is and his love for you in Christ. Kids, your parents and others are teaching you these things. And the very first responsibility you have on your life journey is to listen to God and his word. And I think you all know this, it's not a one-time thing. No, throughout our whole lives, we are to be listening to God - studying his Word (all of it!). We're to listen attentively to it. Let me put it this way, you can't walk on the path of wisdom or stay on the path if you're not listening to the word of wisdom. Hearing is required. There's, of course, more to say about hearing. This won't be the last time we talk about hearing, so I'll leave it at that. Holding Next holding. Not just hearing God's wisdom but holding on to the wisdom of God. Cherishing it constantly all your days. Never letting it go! This idea is all through these verses. Really, it's the main trust of what Solomon is conveying to his children. Yes, hear my teaching, but also hold on to my teaching. First, look at verse 4 “let your heart hold fast my words.” Verse 5. “do not forget” and “do not turn away from the words of my mouth.” Verse 6 – “Do not forsake her.” Solmon is speaking about lady wisdom. And did you notice how personal this is. “love her, and she will guard you.” Verse 8 “prize her highly, and she will exalt you. She will honor you if you embrace her.” In other words, holding on to wisdom should not be a stubborn duty-bound endeavor. Rather, I think the word cherish is the right word here. Hold on to her lovingly because she will give you life. Look down at verse 13: “keep hold of instruction; do not let go; guard her;” and then look what it says, “for she is your life.” On the journey of life, the wisdom of God gives you life. Many of you have heard of Corrie Ten Boom. Perhaps some of you have read her book, The Hiding Place. Corrie and her family lived outside of Amsterdam during World War 2. They were Christians… and they were part of a network of believers who hid Jews from the Nazis. They helped them and others escape. They had a clock business which they used as a cover for their true operations. As you can imagine, the Ten Booms put themselves at grave risk because of their endeavors. The Nazis had taken over the region in 1940, so for multiple years they continued in their efforts to save people. During this time, Corrie and her whole family memorized Scripture. Her father would recite from God's word and often from Psalm 119. He would read this: “Lord, You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word. Deliver me from evildoers”  It, of course, gave them encouragement to continue in their work. But it would also be their lifeline. You see, in February of 1944, the Ten Boom family was arrested. Corrie and her sister Betsie were sent off to Ravensbrook concentration camp. There they endured the harshest of conditions. In her book, Corrie recounts the neglect, the disease, and the starvation. Her sister, in fact, did not survive. Through those dark and difficult days, Corrie describes how God's Word sustained them. She and Betsie would recite the Scriptures they had memorized. It was their life. Not only was it a lifeline for them, but they would also share the Word with the other women. Corrie wrote this: “Nobody can take away from you those texts from the Bible which you have learned by heart.” You see, she heard the word and she held on to the word. It was life for her. If you've never read The Hiding Place, I would encourage you to. Someone told me once that they read it every single year. It reminds them of the priorities in life, of evil in the world, and of being sustained by the Lord and his Word. Back to Proverbs 4. Down in verses 21-23 we find the same theme - holding on to God's wisdom as a source of life. After Solomon calls his son to be attentive to his words, he says, “let them not escape from your sight. Keep them within your heart.” And expanding on that in verse 23: “keep your heart with all vigilance.” Why? Listen to what he says: “for from it flows the springs of life.” We hold onto wisdom, we cherish it, because it helps keep us on the path. So, constantly remind yourself of God's truth and commands. And do that through days of plenty and days of lack, through temptation and sickness and persecution, in times of joy and sadness. Holding onto and guarding wisdom will sustain you on the path of life. Heeding So, first hearing. Hearing is not a one-time thing or for one period in your life. No, it's attentively listening to God and his word all your days. Second, holding onto it. Keeping it. Embracing it. Hiding God's wisdom in your heart. This is also not a one-time thing. No, we're to hold onto it every step of the 1000-mile journey. And third, heeding - heeding the way of wisdom. You can stuff all the Scripture you want in your head, and you can actually believe it. But you also need to respond to it. You need to take action because of it. In other words, heeding is obeying. And just like hearing and holding are found all throughout this chapter… and are described as lifetime pursuits on the journey. So also is heeding. It's captured here in the language of walking. And staying on the path. And not veering to the path of evil. ·      Verse 5, for example: not only does Solmon command his son to not forget his instruction, but Solmon next commands his son to not  “turn away from the words of my mouth” That means to be faithful to them. ·      Verses 11 speak of the “way of wisdom,” which is the way of “uprightness,” as it says.  Theres that idea again that wisdom has a moral component to it. Know the wisdom of God and reflect the wisdom of God. ·      Verse 12 continues the image of walking. When you walk in this way, “your step will not be hampered, and if you run you will not stumble.” In other words, wisdom is an endurance race. It's not a sprint. You'll also notice in chapter 4 that to heed wisdom is to stay on the path. It's not straying onto the wrong path. One time, I was competing in a bicycle road race up in north Georgia. That was a long time ago. I was doing pretty well, I thought… but a few miles in, there was an arrow spray painted on the road to take a turn. It was a little faded, but I thought, “ok, ok, this must be the way to go.” No one else was around, so I turned. The problem was, I hadn't study the course map before the race. The arrow on the road was from the prior year's course. For miles and miles, I rode my heart out. No one was around me. I thought I was killing it, but I had gotten on the wrong path. The funny thing is, eventually it brought me to the finish line but from the wrong direction! So, I just rode up a little ways, turned around, and came back. Look at verse 14. “Do not enter the path of the wicked.” And “do not walk in the way of evil.” “Avoid it,” it says. “Turn away from it and pass on.” Verse 15. And look how the path of wisdom is described in verse 18: “the path of the righteous.” You see, the path itself, is the path of heeding the way of wisdom. And the last 4 verses really capture it all: “Put away crooked speech… and devious talk” This is not like putting dishes away to be used later. No, the Hebrew is much stronger. Literally “remove it.” Let it be no more. He adds… ”let your eyes look directly forward” …”do not swerve to the right or to the left.” Try something later today. Try walking in a straight line while you head is turned and you are focusing on something off to the side. You'll find that it's very hard. On the path of life, there are many distracting, appealing things on the wrong path. Solomon says, don't even gaze over at them. No, face forward and continue straight. And the chapter concludes, “turn your foot away from evil.” Do you see what Proverbs 4 is saying? Wisdom is not a one and done thing. You don't just arrive at wisdom and then coast. No, wisdom is a life journey. It's a way of life. And it requires hearing, holding, and heeding. The sad reality of this chapter is to consider Solmon himself. He wrote Proverbs as a young man, as a young king, with young sons. Yet, the lifelong path of wisdom that he describes is not the path that he persisted on. No, Solomon swerved from the truth. We read from 1 Kings 11 earlier. It describes how Solomon lost sight of God. In fact, in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 17, the kings of Israel were given specific commands: Kings were not to acquire many horses for themselves, lest it caused the people to return to Egypt Also, kings were not to acquire many wives nor acquire excess silver and gold, lest his heart turn away from God. So far, Solomon is 0 for 3. No, instead, do you know what kings were commanded to do? They were to keep a copy of God's law. Let me read you exactly what Deuteronomy 17 commands for the kings: “he shall read [the law] all the days of his life” (in other words, hearing). It continues: “that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes,” (In other words, holding). It continues, “and doing them,” it says (heeding). And then Deuteronomy 17 explains why: “that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.” Solomon broke these. He lost sight of God's commandments and of God himself. And it happened because he failed to hear, hold, and heed God's wisdom all his days. Now, you are probably asking “is there any hope for anyone? I mean if King Solomon with all his God given wisdom couldn't hold and heed wisdom in his life, ca anyone stay on the path? Is there any way?” That is the question. And what I want to say is that Proverbs 4 is not setting us up for failure. No, rather Proverbs 4 is leading us to The Way. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” In fact, do you know how they referred to Jesus followers in the New Testament? They are referred to as those belonging to The Way. In the book of Acts chapter 9, the apostle Paul, before his conversion, was persecuting those “belonging to The Way.” (capital “W”) In Acts 18, Priscilla and Aquila explained to Apollos “the way of God” more accurately. Twice in Acts chapter 19, and twice more in chapter 24, it describes the Christian life as “The Way” – again capital “W.” Following Jesus is the way of God. He is the path of righteousness. But there's something important to understand, though. Don't picture in your mind Jesus walking on a path and you are there following behind trying to keep up. Don't picture yourself tripping and falling, and then having to run to catch back up to him. No, Jesus said, “I am the way.” The way of wisdom is Christ. Following Christ is giving your life to him. It's recognizing your utter inability, because of your sin, to hear, hold, and heed the wisdom of God. Jesus is the one who hears, holds, and heeds the wisdom of God for you. Picture it this way, when you fall (I didn't say “if” I said “when”)… when you fall, Jesus lifts you up and restores you to the path of life… or if necessary, he carries you the rest of the way. I hope you are following me here. None of what I just said takes away from the call of Proverbs 4. Following the one who is the way, makes the way of Proverbs 4 possible. ·      When you come to Christ, you are given ears to hear the way of truth and the commandments of God. The Spirit of God opens up the ears of your heart to hear his truth. ·      You are also given his Gospel to hold all your days. When you come to believe that Christ died for you so that you may live, it is the beginning of a lifetime of cherishing the grace of the cross all of your days. In fact, he is the one who is holding you fast. ·      And last, you are enabled to heed the commands of God. Jesus is the upright one. And through his Spirit in your life, you can reflect his righteousness. Hear, Hold, and Heed the wisdom of God in Christ. Let me end by putting it this way: Following Christ is the road less travelled by, that truly does make all the difference.  

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom with John and Elizabeth Sherrill is a remarkable story of an amazing family's dedication to serving God wholeheartedly. Join Kate and I as we discuss the impactfulness of Casper ten Boom and his family while they operate their watch shop in Holland. The family is always on the alert for ways to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” The ten Booms were unwaveringly solid in this area. They started each day focused on God and His word and ended each day the same way! What an amazing example of the power of routines! Have you wondered what enables ordinary people to do extraordinary things? Corrie gives readers the prepwork for being 'all in' as disciples of Christ. I think that is the linchpin! The linchpin keeps the wheels turning through dust and mud. If an axle's linchpin is removed, even 50%, the results are catastrophic. Our linchpin is God and living a life to glorify Him is the purpose for our existence. The ten Booms were ready, willing to hide Jews even at their own peril. The family successfully hid many Jews during a year and a half before a traitor exposed their operation. The story doesn't end at the raid, it just changes direction. In prison, Betsie and Corrie were able to hold Bible studies, and time after time the demeanor of the women changed and they became more Christ-like. Denying self is a concept that society has really muddied the waters on, but this family clearly had it figured out. This inspiring book is one that readers will not soon forget. It will bless you and your family greatly! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/recapbookchat/message

Luister weer naar het leukste van Graat en de Laat, met alle hoogtepunten van de zaterdagmiddag. Jordy en Christel zijn even met een korte zomerstop, op 30 september kun je om 12.00u weer luisteren naar een nieuw seizoen! 

Jeff Elliott & His Trumpet "Betsie" Jeff Elliott's Website www.jeffelliotttrumpet.com ARWEN LEWIS Website www.arwenlewismusic.com
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2 Timothy 2: 1- 13 God's faithfulness   Introduction: When was a time that you have had to trust the process?   When I hear the phrase trust the process, I think about jobs. You are working hard and waiting for that promotion but it hasn't come yet. And maybe your boss tells you to trust the process. I also think about someone on a new diet. They are following the rules of this diet and it's hard, they are hungry but it hasn't yet started giving you the results that you hoped for.  I think about relationships. Maybe there is a conflict that you are going through and you are hoping it will be resolved soon. You have to trust the process. There are all these situations where we are told to trust the process. And our culture tells us to trust the process. What we most often mean by that is that if you follow a certain set of steps you will most certainly achieve the results that you desire. But it doesn't take long for you to realize that is not always the case.   Most of us have probably had times where we followed the steps trusted the process and things still didn't turn out the way that we were hoping.   That's exactly where our friend Timothy is at. He's in a bit of a rough patch and he is following the process and it's still not working. And so his friend and mentor Paul writes him a letter to encourage him to keep trusting the faithfulness of God even when it doesn't seem to be working. You see Timothy is tired of doing the right thing and working hard and still not getting the results that he should. Maybe you feel the same way.   Background: This morning, we're going to be in 2 Timothy chapter 2 if you want to follow along in your Bibles. As you turn there, I want to give a little bit of background and context to what is going on before we jump in. Timothy is a young man who has been mentored by the Apostle Paul for many years. We're actually going to meet him for the first time in the book of Acts. Paul and Timothy do tons of ministry together and when Paul gets released from prison in Rome he takes Timothy and installs him as the Senior Pastor of Ephesus. Ephesus was a mess at that time. It had been pastored by a group of false teachers who were pushing a religion that was a mix of Greek Philosophy and Judaism. Paul leaves Timothy there to sort things out but he writes him a letter to encourage him which we call first Timothy. Then about 5 or 6 years later, Paul has been imprisoned once again and it awaiting execution by Nero. As he waits in jail, he hears that things are not going well in Ephesus and that his personal friend and protégé Timothy is wearing out. So Paul writes one final letter to Timothy and in the letter he appeals to Timothy to trust in God's faithfulness when things get tough. There's a ton that we can apply for our lives from this so let's get started by reading what Paul has to say to Timothy.   Point One: Trusting God's faithfulness means we don't try to force the results Read 2 Timothy 2: 1-7   Paul challenges Timothy to be strengthened, be strong, hang in there, and keep fighting. Timothy is mostly doing the right things. He is following the steps that Paul laid out for him in 1 Timothy. But he's not getting the results that he desires. So Timothy is in danger here because he's about to start to try and force the results he wants. And we see that in some of the examples that Paul gives. Paul gives him 3 examples of what trusting God actually looks in real life.   All three of these examples that Paul give Timothy are examples where people have to trust a process and trust in something that is bigger than themselves. Soldier Stay focused on what's going on. Just like a soldier is hyper focused on his mission and doesn't worry about the details of everyday life, so Timothy needs to stay focused. Timothy could easily forget that he is in a spiritual battle and get focused on the wrong things. The false teachers were using the church as a platform to build their own personal wealth. Paul has already told Timothy about this. Soldiers have to trust the process even in their training. They basically give up everything to follow order and to trust a process that is much bigger than themselves. Part of trusting the process is staying focused and seeing the big picture. Beyond that, the soldier is responsible for following orders…regardless of the results. Timothy could lose sight of the big picture and end up questioning God's faithfulness.   Athlete Paul then talks about athletes. He mentions that athletes want to win but there are rules to the competition. So he's referencing the fact that in athletics, everyone wants to win. But not everyone is going to win. Some athletes are so desperate to get that win that they will try to force the results. They can either trust the process or trust their training or they can cheat.   How do Athletes try to force the results?   Steroids, other performance enhancing drugs, rigging their athletic equipment to perform better. The classic example other than steroids is if you've been watching the NFL for any length of time you've probably heard about this football that wasn't properly inflated. Athletes like to bend the rules of the competition to force the results that they want.  When are we tempted to compromise to get what we want?               Let's talk about Timothy for a second and then we'll get personal. Timothy's first task as senior pastor is to confront false teachers. Can you force someone to believe what you believe? His second task as Senior pastor is to figure out which widows in the church actually qualify for financial assistance. The problem here is that some have remarried or have other means of providing for themselves. So Timothy has to go around and tell some of these dear ladies that they are no longer going to be receiving financial assistance. How do you think that went over? Imagine a new pastor comes to your church and the first thing he does is tell your Grandma the church isn't going to help her financially anymore. Can you force people to respond well to conflict? Timothy has to have these hard conversations and then trust the faithfulness of God.   When are we tempted to compromise to get what we want? How do we bend the rules to force the results?   Timothy is tired of doing the right thing and not getting the results that he wants. But Paul reminds him that bending the rules is not the way to solve it.                           Marriage                         In scripture we are told that believers should marry other believers. But depending on where you live and who you know, if you narrow you spouse search down to only other believers that can really reduce the number of potentials. So what do we do? We bend the rules. We choose not to trust the faithfulness of God and we try to force the results. Now it seems to work, you can change the rules and get the results you want, but there are consequences.   Sex In the Bible we are told that we are to find Sexual pleasure in the context of marriage. But marriage is a ton of work and it's expensive and painful. Don't get me wrong, marriage is wonderful but it's hard. And sex takes work. You have to be nice and bring home flowers and that's just too hard. And sometimes your spouse says not tonight. But I want what I want and I want it right now. And so something like pornography seems like a great solution. It's there, it provides sexual pleasure without me having to do any of the work, but there are consequences.   Finances We are told in scripture to work hard, pay our taxes and give generously. But we often worry that God will not provide. And so we take matters into our own hands. And we can end up doing things that are unethical and even illegal and certainly don't please God because we feel we must force the results. So this is Timothy. He's a young man with hormones flowing through his veins. He's concerned about his financial stability as a pastor. He has outstanding conflicts in his life. And he's getting tired of waiting for God to show up. So he's about to try to start forcing the results. Which definitely has consequences. Where are you in this? As I struggle to trust God's faithfulness, I want to manipulate the situation and force the results I desire.   Farmer             Following God is really hard work but it is worth it.             A lot of people think being a farmer is this ideal, picturesque life but it's not. It's so hard because you have to wait. Plants can only grow so fast. And you have to do a ton of work before you ever get to see and results.   (Ex. Planting trees and wanting them to grow faster) “Someone told me recently something to the effect of Levi, I know you want an instant tree but you're going to have to wait.”             What a great analogy for the Christian life.             All of this brings us to another truth which is that we trust in the faithfulness of God no matter what because God's faithfulness is not dependent upon our circumstances.   Point Two: God's faithfulness is not dependent on our circumstances Read 2 Timothy 2: 8-13 Paul transitions from the analogies about trying to force the results and reminds Timothy of this powerful truth. God is always faithful. Even when we don't get the results we desire.   Paul points us to Christ and he ends this little section with a powerful statement about God's faithfulness. This is thought to be a poem or hymn about God's faithfulness that the early church was familiar with.   Paul sees his own upcoming death and the death of Jesus as examples of God's faithfulness. Paul says in essence, if you want to know that God is faithful, then look at me and look at Jesus Christ. Paul and Jesus have something in common. They both get killed for doing the will of God.   And then Paul throws in this powerful quote about God's faithfulness. And ironically people like to get all hung up on this quote thinking that it's teaching that people can lose their salvation.   What makes these words so powerful is the fact that human failure is built into the reality of God's faithfulness. We respond to God in a variety of ways. Some people accept him, some people reject him. How people respond to God doesn't threaten his faithfulness. It's part of who He is and so His faithfulness cannot change.   Hebrews – the Hall of faith. They all had amazing faith and they all got different results.   Hebrews 11: 32-38 Why would anyone choose to trust in the process of God's faithfulness if they are not guaranteed to receive the results that they want?             Pain and hardship are as sure as death and taxes. They will happen to you regardless.                         We tend to read our circumstances to see if God is holding up His end of the deal.             (Ex. the old man lost his horse story)             -we are fickle and we read God's faithfulness based on our circumstances.             Thankfully that's not the way it works.                         The Bible tells us that we are supposed to give generously to God.             The Bible tells us to pursue sexual purity.             The Bible tells us to love our enemies and do good to those who persecute us. All of these things are commands that can bring about good results. But they don't come with a guarantee that things will then turn out exactly how we want.   For Timothy he has to ask himself what if the worst should come.             What if these people leave his church? What if the false teachers continue to lead people astray despite his solid Biblical teaching? What if his health should continue to deteriorate? What if his finances worsen?   The Faithfulness of God is never on trial   Trusting in the faithfulness of God is the only way to really deal with all the hardship that life can bring.   Can God open the womb and provide children? Yes. Can He bring along that Godly spouse? Yes. Can He bless you financially? Yes. What if He doesn't? Is He still good? Can He still be trusted? Is He still faithful? I have a friend whose catch phrase is “Praise the Lord”. And if you have spent any time with this person then you have definitely heard them say this phrase. If you know, then you know. And it used to catch me off guard when they would say this because they would say it at the most interesting times. Something bad would happen and they would say praise the Lord…and it really made me start to think. I use that phrase cheaply. What I mean by that is I typically reserve that phrase for when good things happen. It gets much harder to say that when things aren't turning out the way you want them to. And although it gets harder to say it, it has more meaning the more we apply it to the hard situations in life.             My car just broke down…praise the Lord.             I just found out that my spouse has been unfaithful…praise the Lord.             We are going to lose the house…praise the Lord.             The kids are not coming for Christmas…praise the Lord.             My boyfriend just broke up with me…praise the Lord.             My best friend said they never want to talk to me again…praise the Lord.                         My kids just told me they hate me and I'm the worse Dad ever…praise the Lord.             If we trust in the faithfulness of God, we can say these things even though it sounds crazy. The faithfulness of God is not about our circumstances but about His character. And last time I checked, that's not changing.   Similarly, there was a woman named Corrie Ten Boom who was a holocaust survivor. She wrote and spoke extensively about her experiences and about forgiveness and about Christ. Here's what she has to say about God's goodness. “Often I have heard people say, 'How good God is! We prayed that it would not rain for our church picnic, and look at the lovely weather!' Yes, God is good when He sends good weather. But God was also good when He allowed my sister, Betsie, to starve to death before my eyes in a German concentration camp….” -Corrie Ten Boom     In a room this big, how many have lost a baby or a child or a spouse? How many have prayed for healing and not received it? How many have lost their home in a market crash? How many have had a spouse be unfaithful? How many have an outstanding conflict that is still unresolved? It's Memorial Day. How many around the room have friends or family who lost their lives protecting others?   If you are trusting in the faithfulness of God then you will continue to love and serve your spouse even when it's not easy. If you are trusting in the faithfulness of God then you will initiate restored relationship by having a one on one face to face conversation and not trying to force the person to reconcile. If you are trusting the faithfulness of God then you will pursue sexual purity, trusting that God really does know best. If we are trusting the faithfulness of God then we can love our enemies because it's not our job to fix it. It's our job to be obedient to what God has called us to do and trust Him for the results, whatever they may be.   Trusting in the faithfulness of God isn't this abstract random thing that only matters on Sunday morning. It has massive ramifications. Because trusting God's faithfulness means we don't have to fix it. We don't have to manipulate the people and circumstances in our lives to try to force the results we want. It influences what we buy, how we talk about someone when they aren't there, how we treat our spouse when they hurt us. Whether or not we pursue restored relationship. What we look at on our phone or computer. How careful we are when we file our taxes. Either we are trusting God's faithfulness through the good and the bad no matter what the results or we are scheming a way to force the results. But that doesn't even work most of the time and it causes consequences that are painful.   We don't know hardly anything about Timothy from scripture.             Did he find that special someone? If he found that special someone did they have kids? If they had kids how many? Were there kids healthy?      Did all those broken relationships and hard conversations turn out well? Did his finances improve? Did his chronic health issue ever get resolved or did is worsen? Did the false teachers ever stop harassing him and his church?   And the Bible doesn't tell us because the answers to these questions still do not affect the faithfulness of God.                                                 As Christians, we want to develop that kind of no matter what faith.           One of the greatest example of this kind of faith is Horatio Spafford. He was a wonderful Christian Lawyer who owned a ton of real estate in Chicago.  In 1871 his only son died.  A few months later, the great Chicago fire broke out and much of the real estate he owned was either destroyed or damaged. He lost his life savings.  Two years later, He and his family were to set sail to Europe. Spafford was delayed because of business. So he sent his wife and four daughters on ahead. On that voyage their ship collided with another vessel at 2am. The passengers we awakened and rushed to the deck. They soon realized the ship was sinking and tried to put out the life boats. But the lifeboats had just been painted and then set back on the deck to dry. As the paint cured, the lifeboats became glued to the deck. They were only able to break a few loose before the ship sank. It sank in 12 minutes and 226 people perished. Among them were Spafford's 4 daughters ages 12, 7, 4 and 18 months. Anna Spafford survived after she was found floating unconscious in the water. When Horatio heard about the tragedy he boarded a ship to be reunited with his wife. One night, the captain of his ship called Spafford into his office to tell him that they were passing over the place where his four little girls had gone down with the ship. It was on this voyage that Spafford wrote the hymn it is well. In the wake of his grief and tragedy, he fixed his eyes on Jesus and trusted in the faithfulness of God. He wrote these words that you know so well:   When peace like a river attendeth my way When sorrows like sea billows roll Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say It is well, it is well with my soul   Wednesday, November 22nd, 2023 will be exactly 150 years from this event.                         I'm not mature enough yet to respond like Horatio Spafford… But many of you are.             Because I talk to you and you are following Christ through the hardship. You are still here after death, divorce, abuse and financial hardship. You haven't left the faith. You still trust God. You are still loving your spouse even though they have done nothing to deserve it and have hurt you beyond what words will ever say. You are giving generously even though you lost money in the market. You are working hard for the lord even though you are physically in pain just sitting here in church. You are still pursuing a restored relationship with that person who has hurt you and offended you and said those nasty things. And you still offer forgiveness. You are still coming to church even though the people who have hurt you most call themselves Christians and sit next to you in this room.   So where are you at in the process of trusting God's faithfulness? When we trust His faithfulness we don't have to try and force the results and we can accept whatever comes our way and still say, “It is well”   So what's the punchline? Trusting the faithfulness of God will motivate us to action. It will look different for all of us but it means we will do what God has called us to do and trust Him with the results. Maybe you want to do that but don't know how. If that's you we would love to speak with you at the close of the service.   As always, If you would like to speak with someone at the close of the service you can find us at the round tables.   For now, let's pray.       Benediction: May you be blessed as you remember the faithfulness of God which cannot change!      

This is the fifth episode in our Women of Valor series! These women have made a huge impact on Carole's life, and she wants to share them with you.Corrie Ten Boom is most notably remembered for her book, The Hiding Place, which details her family's story of hiding Jews in their home and how she suffered in a concentration camp alongside her sister, Betsie. In this episode, Carole shares about some of the other books Corrie wrote including: In My Father's House, Tramp for the Lord; Common Sense Not Needed; Don't Wrestle, Just Nestle. You will never regret reading one of Corrie Ten Boom's books! Click HERE to shop in the online store!Click HERE to learn about upcoming seminars! Support the showHelp us share the message of homeschool made simple with others by leaving a rating and review. Thank you for helping us get the word out!Follow along on Instagram here!Visit our website to sign up to receive an exclusive discount for your first purchase in our online store!

Today Rachel and Betsie are here to talk about the thrilling finale of THE WAY HOME Check out Betsie's podcast at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hallmark-happenings-podcast/id1573119106 Follow Betsie on twitter https://twitter.com/PodcastHallmark Listen to W Rated podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/w-rated/id1547255034 Our interview with Sadie Laflamme-Snow https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/ADV4385249435.mp3?updated=1673657293 Our interview with Heather Conkie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duhatDBNHjg http://www.patreon.com/hallmarkies Check out our merch: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hallmarkies Send us your feedback at feedback@hallmarkiespodcast.com Or call +1 (801) 855-6407 Follow Rachel on twitter twitter.com/rachel_reviews Follow Rachel's blog at http://rachelsreviews.net Follow Rachel's Reviews on youtube https://www.youtube.com/c/rachelsreviews Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Corrie Ten Boom shares about her incredible testimony. Corrie was born in a dutch watchmaker family who loved Jesus. She accepted Jesus as her savior at 5 years old. While hiding Jews during WW2 their family was turned in by a friend and her family were sent to the concentration camps. Corrie along with her sister, Betsie suffered from the hands of evil men who attacked and harassed them. Betsie died in the camp, but corrie was set free, and spent the rest of her life serving Jesus and sharing about His love and forgiveness.

Corrie Ten Boom shares about her incredible testimony. Corrie was born in a dutch watchmaker family who loved Jesus. She accepted Jesus as her savior at 5 years old. While hiding Jews during WW2 their family was turned in by a friend and her family were sent to the concentration camps. Corrie along with her sister, Betsie suffered from the hands of evil men who attacked and harassed them. Betsie died in the camp, but corrie was set free, and spent the rest of her life serving Jesus and sharing about His love and forgiveness.

Devocional Cristiano para Menores - UN RAYITO DE LUZ PARA CADA DÍA Fecha: 15-12-2022 Título: BETSIE TEN BOOM Autor: Gabriela Brizuela, Ninayette Galleguillos, Magaly Tuesta, Mirta de Samojluk, Cinthya Samojluk Locución: La tía Fabi http://evangelike.com/devocionales-cristianos-para-menores/

Today Rachel and Megan are joined by Betsie of Hallmark Happenings Podcast to talk about Hallmark Christmas movies weekend 1: WE WISH YOU A MARRIED CHRISTMAS, NOEL NEXT DOOR Our Christmas podcasts are at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4f2KtBPzUE&list=PLXv4sBF3mPUDo41tHqhkjHCvedmZwLzHx Follow Megan at https://twitter.com/megand320 Follow Betsie's podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hallmark-happenings-podcast/id1573119106 Follow David at https://www.piecingpod.com/ Follow us on ITunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hallmarkies-podcast/id1296728288?mt=2 https://twitter.com/HallmarkiesPod on twitter @HallmarkiesPodcast on Instagram HallmarkiesPodcast.com Get some of our great podcast merch https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hallmarkies?ref_id=8581 Please support the podcast on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/hallmarkies Follow Rachel's blog at http://rachelsreviews.net Follow Rachel on twitter twitter.com/rachel_reviews Follow Rachel's Reviews on youtube https://www.youtube.com/c/rachelsreviews Follow Rachel on facebook www.facebook.com/smilingldsgirl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I saw and heard a woman speak in a church once nearly fifty years ago. Her name was Corrie ten Boom. She carried the “brand-marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6.17) on her body. While at the notorious Ravensbruck “death camp,” Corrie and her sister Betsie conducted Bible studies with fellow women prisoners in a flea infested barracks. “The guards never came in to stop them, because of the fleas. So Corrie and Betsie thanked God for the fleas!” Flea bites were Corrie's “brand-marks.” Until I suffer like Paul or Corrie, I will never compare my plight with theirs. There is no comparison between me and saints like that.

Today Rachel and Caroline are joined by friend of the podcast Betsie from Hallmark Happenings to talk about the 3 recent Christmas in July movies on Hallmark Channel Check out Rachel Magee and her new book THE BEACH ESCAPE using our affiliate link https://amzn.to/3vm0eqM and go to https://www.rachelmageebooks.com/ Follow Caroline on twitter https://twitter.com/MetacarolineR Listen to Betsie's podcast at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hallmark-happenings-podcast/id1573119106 Follow Betsie on twitter https://twitter.com/PodcastHallmark Check out Betsie's youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP69oqs58BfIzXNysgfAcVw Our Christmas podcasts are at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4f2KtBPzUE&list=PLXv4sBF3mPUDo41tHqhkjHCvedmZwLzHx Please listen to our sponsor Jen Johans and Watch with Jen at https://filmintuition.com/ and https://rss.com/podcasts/watchwithjen/ Follow Jen on twitter https://twitter.com/FilmIntuition Follow us on ITunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hallmarkies-podcast/id1296728288?mt=2 https://twitter.com/HallmarkiesPod on twitter @HallmarkiesPodcast on Instagram HallmarkiesPodcast.com Please support the podcast on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/hallmarkies Follow Rachel's blog at http://rachelsreviews.net Follow Rachel on twitter twitter.com/rachel_reviews Follow Rachel's Reviews on youtube https://www.youtube.com/c/rachelsreviews Follow Rachel on facebook www.facebook.com/smilingldsgirl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

================================================== ==SUSCRIBETEhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNpffyr-7_zP1x1lS89ByaQ?sub_confirmation=1================================================== == DEVOCIÓN MATUTINA PARA ADULTOS 2022“NUESTRO MARAVILLOSO DIOS”Narrado por: Roberto NavarroDesde: Chiapas, MéxicoUna cortesía de DR'Ministries y Canaan Seventh-Day Adventist Church 20 DE JUNIOBARRACA NUMERO 28«El que habita al abrigo del Altísimo morará bajo la sombra del Omnipotente. Diré yo a Jehová: "Esperanza mía y castillo mío; mi Dios, en quien confiare"». Salmos 91: 1-2LO LLAMABAN «EL LUGAR LOCO, donde se abriga la esperanza». Esa era la Barraca 28 de Ravensbruck, el campo de concentración para mujeres en la Alemania Nazi donde se calculó que apareció cerca de cien mil personas entre 1939 y 1945.En medio de ese infierno que era Ravensbruck, la Barraca 28 era el lugar donde un puñado de mujeres se atrevía a abrigar esperanza, aunque, desde el punto de vista humano, no había nada bueno que esperar. ¿Cuál era la base de su esperanza? Las promesas de la Palabra de Dios que, dos veces al día, leían en la Barraca 28.¿Cómo llegó esa Biblia a Ravensbruck? Corrie Ten Boom nos cuenta que era medianoche cuando ella y su hermana Betsie, junto a más de mil prisioneras, arribaron a Ravensbruck en septiembre de 1944. En el punto de inspección, cada mujer debía despojarse de toda su ropa, e ir a las duchas ante la mirada de los guardias.-Señor, ¿cómo podré pasar mi Biblia ante tantos guardias? -- Preguntó Corrie en oración.Entonces, junto con Betsie, pidió permiso para salir de la fila e ir al baño. El permiso le fue concedido. Una vez en el baño, escondió la Biblia bajo una de las bancas. Cuando le tocó su turno para ir a las duchas, ahí mismo la encontró. Solo quedó un problema: a la salida de los baños los guardias revisaron de nuevo. ¿Cómo esconder la Biblia debajo de la delgada tela del vestido? Otra vez oro.-Señor, por favor envía a tus ángeles para que me escuden, de modo que los guardias no me pueden ver.Cuenta Corrie que la mujer que estaba delante de ella en la fila fue inspeccionada. También Betsie, que estaba detrás, pero no a ella. ¡Como si hubiera sido invisible!Fue así como la Biblia llegó a la Barraca 28, «el lugar de la esperanza»: «El lugar donde aprendimos —escribe Corrie-, que un poder superior tiene la última palabra, incluso aquí [en un campo de concentración]». *Quizá te estás preguntando: «¿Y cómo podrían estudiar la Biblia sin que los guardias supieran?». Pues resulta que a la Barraca 28 los guardias no se atrevían a entrar porque estaba infestada de pulgas y piojos. ¡Con razón pueden estudiar la Biblia sin ser molestadas en lo más mínimo! **¿Conclusión? ¡El Dios que usó a los ángeles ya los piojos para ayudar a sus hijas ayer, también puede hacer un milagro por ti hoy! Esperanza mía y castillo mío, eres el Dios de lo imposible, y eres mi Dios. En ti confiaré hoy y siempre. Amén.*Corrie Ten Boom, Tramp for the Lord, Revell, 1974, pp. 22-24. ** Corrie Ten Boom, citada por Steve Halliday y William Travis, en How Great Thou Art, Multnomah, 1999, lectura para el 9 de diciembre.

“Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.” Cornelia “Corrie” ten Boom Member of the Dutch resistance, evangelist, and author   Artwork: Ten Boom's portrait in the Fearless Portrait project consists of an ink drawing of her on a map of the Dutch city of Haarlem. There is a red dot near her nose to mark the location of The Hiding Place, that is the home where she and her family hid Jews from the Nazis.   The story:  At the outset of WWII, Corrie ten Boom was a watchmaker, living with her sister Betsie and her father Casper above their watch store in Haarlem, Netherlands. Known in the city for helping anyone in need, a Jewish stranger knocked on their door seeking shelter. Casper welcomed the woman into their home, saying “In this household, God's people are always welcome.”  The ten Booms soon joined the Dutch underground and for the next two years around 800 Jews passed through their home on their way out of Nazi-occupied territory. The Gestapo raided the house in 1944 and Corrie and Betsy were sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Despite horrific and nightmarish conditions, Corrie and Betsy spent their time sharing the gospel with their fellow prisoners until Betsy died in December 1944 and Corrie was released a few days later.  After the war, a former Ravensbruck guard asked for her forgiveness. She described the moment in her book The Hiding Place, writing:  “It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do. And I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.  “‘Jesus, help me!' I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand, I can do that much. You supply the feeling.' And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. “‘I forgive you, brother!' I cried. ‘With all my heart!'”   Background on ten Boom:   Ten Boom was born on April 15, 1892. Before her death in the squalor of Ravensbruck, Betsy told Corrie about three visions she received from God about what they were to do after they got out of there. Her first vision was of a house for former prisoners, the second was to use a former concentration camp in Germany for the broken people in the country. The third was that they would be released before the new year of 1945. All three came true.  Betsy died on December 16, 1944 and Corrie was released a few days later due to a clerical error (although she had to spend a few weeks in the camp's hospital before she was allowed to leave). One week after Corrie was released, all the women her age in the camp were gassed.  Immediately upon release Corrie opened a home in Bloemendaal for victims of the Nazis. Once this was established, she turned her attention to spreading the gospel and teaching the importance of forgiveness. This included a tour through Germany, where she opened a camp for German refugees in a former concentration camp in Darmstadt. The camp operated from 1946 through 1960.  Corrie traveled the world to speak about her faith, visiting over 60 countries in 30 years. She also wrote dozens of books. She was honored by the State of Israel as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations” in 1967. Casper and Betsy were likewise honored in 2007.  She died on her birthday in 1983 at the age of 91 in Placentia, California, US   Music: This episode contains music by Geovane Bruno and Oleksii Kaplunskyi.    Sources: Christie, V. (2016, November 22). Giving Thanks in All Circumstances – Corrie ten Boom. VanceChristie.Com. http://vancechristie.com/2016/11/22/giving-thanks-circumstances-corrie-ten-boom/ Holocaust Encyclopedia. (n.d.). Corrie ten Boom. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/corrie-ten-boom Life:Beautiful Magazine. (2020, February 6). Corrie Ten Boom: The Power of Forgiveness. https://lifebeautifulmagazine.com/profiles/corrie-ten-boom-the-power-of-forgiveness McDaniel, D. (2015, May 21). 40 Powerful Quotes from Corrie Ten Boom. Crosswalk.Com. https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/spiritual-life/inspiring-quotes/40-powerful-quotes-from-corrie-ten-boom.html PBS. (n.d.). The Question of God . Other Voices . Corrie ten Boom | PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/boom.html ten Boom, C., Sherrill, J., & Sherrill, E. (1971). The Hiding Place. Bantam. ten Boom Museum. (2018, April 18). About the Ten Booms. https://tenboom.org/about-the-ten-booms/ Wikipedia contributors. (2021, November 20). Corrie ten Boom. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrie_ten_Boom Yad Vashem. (n.d.). The Righteous Among the Nations Database: Boom ten Cornelia. https://righteous.yadvashem.org/?searchType=righteous_only&language=en&itemId=4014036&ind=NaN 

Betsie Norris is the Founder and Executive Director of Adoption Network Cleveland: The Ohio Family Connection. Betsie is an adoptee who searched for and was reunited with her birthparents and siblings in 1986, when she was in her mid-twenties. She emerged from that experience with strong convictions about the lifelong journey of adoption for all involved, and the need for systemic change. She found Adoption Network Cleveland in 1988, was a volunteer for the first 7 years, and has been the Executive Director since 1995. With a wide array of programs and services, Adoption Network Cleveland has been recognized nationally as a successful model for effective service and advocacy for members of the adoption community including adoptees, adoptive, foster and kinship families, birthparents and siblings, youth in foster care and related professionals.  Betsie has become a frequent spokesperson in the media and has led the organization to long-term success building innovative programs and having a strong advocacy voice. Major advocacy achievements include leading successful efforts to decrease barriers to permanency for youth lingering in foster care, and changing laws about access to records resulting in Ohio adoptees gaining access to their original birth certificates. Adoption Network Cleveland served as the lead agency of the Adopt Cuyahoga's Kids Initiative, a public-private-philanthropic partnership which was responsible for reducing the number of youth waiting for adoption in Cuyahoga County foster care from 1,700 in 2004 to approximately 500 in 2018. The organization has supported and assisted in thousands of successful adoptee/birthparent, adoptee/sibling and DNA searches and reunions, and has been a leader in supporting families to enhance permanency for children and youth. Over a 25+ year period, Betsie took the lead on legislation to reform Ohio's adoption laws, and as a result all Ohio-born adult adoptees adopted have access to to their original birth certificates, including 400,000 adoptees adopted in Ohio's formerly "closed" period (1964-1996) starting in March 2015. The story of her involvement is highlighted in the short documentary https://vimeo.com/101580095 (An Adoptee ROARed in Ohio: The Betsie Norris Story) by Jean Strauss, which debuted at the Cleveland International Film Festival in 2014. Betsie is co-author of Journeys After Adoption: Understanding the Lifelong Process (Bergin & Garvey, 2002) and her story is featured in several books. Prior to her work in adoption and child welfare, Betsie worked as an RN in child and adolescent psychiatry.  Music by Corey Quinn

Before we move full-speed ahead with Loveuary, let's take a look back and see what were our favorites from the New Year, New Movies line-up. In this episode, I'm joined by Betsie from Hallmark Happenings. To hear more from Betsie: https://www.hallmarkhappenings.com To purchase "Chasing Wind": https://amzn.to/3IGUI6g For other Hallmark movie reviews be sure to check out the Dear Hallmark YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe7R8-e6d13cee5QMo_Oltw Dear Hallmark's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dearhallmark/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/dearhallmark/message

Aprenda estar contente em toda situação e não deixe o dinheiro dominar você. 1° Compre com o clique (nosso coração é seduzido e raramente compramos algo de forma racional); 2 Agradeça pelas pulgas como fez a Betsie irmã da Corre Ten Boom no campo de concentração e 3)° Cristo, somente Cristo, é nosso contentamento pleno.

The story of Corrie and Betsie Ten Boom was immortalised in a book and film entitled The Hiding Place. It tells the story of how the Ten Boom family hid Jewish people in their Dutch home to keep them safe from the Gestapo. Eventually both sisters were caught and imprisoned. Betsie died but Corrie was released as a result of a clerical error after which she travelled the world telling her amazing story of how God's love overcame immense evil. Blair talks to James Wiltshire who is currently making a documentary retelling the story with contributions from the author of the book Elizabeth Sherrill and someone who knew Corrie very well, Janny van der Klis

Please join me today as I consider how the scriptures help us to re-frame our worries so that they do not paralyze us, and learn how to live the life of joy that God in Jesus Christ wants us to live. Learn from the examples of Corrie and Betsie ten Boom, Viktor Frankl and even the world of advertising! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sheila-macgregor/message

We're joined by Betsie of @hallmarkhappenings podcast and we're discussing a new #SummerNights movie.  Check out www.hallmarkhappenings.com Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @1kissmeans4ever. Email us at onekissmeansforever@gmail.com. Listen to Flint Pastures on Apple Music. Make sure to rate and review us!

"Jesus said that the greatest commandment in the Old Testament was, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind” (in Matthew)  The second commandment was, “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matthew 22:39)  So, when we think of love, we usually think it's about feelings – but the real love (like Betsie in the story) is not depended on our feelings. It's more than how we could feel towards someone – because if it was me – I would have been more like Corrie. It's so easy to love when you are in love with a guy, or you love a family member or your friends. But it's so much harder to love those that are evil to us. We can only love them through God – through prayer." 1 Corinthians 13: 4 "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud." Tune in to listen to today's episode. Keep in the loop by signing to our GIGI Notes HERE DON'T FORGET TO SUBSCRIBE  Hosts: Esther & Steph Mix & effects: Stephanie Giselle Artist of the week: Laura Story email us: writegigi5@gmail.com Write by post GIGI Teen Radio PO BOX 6505 Upper Mt Gravatt QLD 4122 music credit: Purple planet music All music played on the podcast radio is covered under the APRA AMCOS Online Mini Licence.

At the start of 2021, Janice Davidson took a big leap of faith when she quit her longtime position as the director of recreation at Crystal Mountain Resort in Thompsonville, Mich. to start her own business, North Mitten Events. Eight months later, Janice describes life as full and busy — and better than ever. “It can be scary for sure, but it feels great. I'm doing what I believe in — things that I feel that are great for our community, both our planet and our people, and I'm really excited to be here,” says Janice, a race director, runner, and mom of two school-age kids who lives on the Betsie River in Benzie County. Janice returns to the MRG Show to talk about her latest endeavor: bringing back a popular trail run in her beloved area of northern Michigan. The Betsie Valley Trail Run — a half marathon, 10K, 5K and 1-mile fun run — takes place on Sunday, Sept. 19 on the Betsie Valley Trail near Thompsonville. As Heather mentions during the show, she ran the half marathon back in 2010, when it was under different race management. It also happened to be Janice's very first 13.1, in 2011.  Along with sharing all of the details of this fall's event — the race course is flat and incredibly scenic — Janice talks about life as a business owner, how things have changed for her in the past several months, and an exciting new role she is taking on this winter (she breaks the official news during this conversation!). She also talks about her love of nature and how important spending time outdoors is to her and her family. “I think nature helps us in every way. So getting outdoors, absolutely, and remembering that that's really part of my focus, to help protect our planet and get out there and enjoy it.” there's so many opportunities in northern Michigan to explore and to just be.” You'll also get a special podcast-listener discount code for the Betsie Valley Trail Run. If you're looking for a fall race, you're definitely going to want to check out this one. Heather is hoping to be there, too! FIND NORTH MITTEN: Check out the North Mitten Facebook page here. Learn more about Crystal Mountain and register for the race here. FIND MRG and HEATHER: @michiganrunnergirlshow on Instagram @michiganrunnergirl on Instagram @michigan-runner-girl on Facebook

Elle l'appelait Bonney et, avec Napoléon, elle pouvait tout se permettre : renverser ses papiers, se saisir de son sabre, lui poser des questions indiscrètes. Elle s'appelait Betsy Balcombe, elle était anglaise, jolie comme un cœur, parlait français et n'avait pas quinze ans. Quand il débarque à Sainte-Helène, le 17 octobre 1815, Longwood House, la maison qui lui est destinée, n'est pas encore remise en état. Alors on va provisoirement loger Napoléon dans un petit Pavillon qui se trouve sur le domaine des Briars. C'est là qu'habite la famille Balcombe. Napoléon va nouer une affection toute particulière avec Betsie...

In deze aflevering vertelt Jaap (Thoekie FM) over zijn plaat Betsie - Johnny.

Hey

Elle l'appelait Bonney et, avec Napoléon, elle pouvait tout se permettre : renverser ses papiers, se saisir de son sabre, lui poser des questions indiscrètes. Elle s'appelait Betsy Balcombe, elle était anglaise, jolie comme un cœur, parlait français et n'avait pas quinze ans. Quand il débarque à Sainte-Helène, le 17 octobre 1815, Longwood House, la maison qui lui est destinée, n'est pas encore remise en état. Alors on va provisoirement loger Napoléon dans un petit Pavillon qui se trouve sur le domaine des Briars. C'est là qu'habite la famille Balcombe. Napoléon va nouer une affection toute particulière avec Betsie...

Featuring tracks from Grum, Fatum, Andy Duguid & Chelsea Holland, Orkidea, Darren Tate, Binary Finary, M.I.K.E. Push, Amos & Riot Night, Cold Blue, Asteroid, Ferry Tayle & Betsie Larkin, Sneijder & David Forbes, Above & Beyond and many more. Visit www.albatrancesessions.com for full tracklistings.

In deze eerste podcast van de gemeente Zwijndrecht praat burgemeester Hein van der Loo met Betsie de Waard, coördinerend verpleegkundige in het Albert Schweitzer ziekenhuis over het coronavirus. Zij ziet elke dag hoe groot de impact van het coronavirus is bij haar patiënten. Het bericht #01: In gesprek met Betsie de Waard, verpleegkundige in het Albert Schweitzer ziekenhuis verscheen eerst op Gemeente Zwijndrecht.

Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie were interred in Ravensbruch Concentration Camp,  in 1942 for aiding Jews to escape the Nazi holocaust.   Corrie's book, The Hiding Place, is devoted to their time there.  While most are familiar with who Corrie is, Betsie is the less well known of the two sisters.  Mostly because she died in the camp in 1944. But, it was Betsie who often taught and encouraged Corrie during their imprisonment.  Today we look at one of the most important lessons that Betsie and Corrie learned from an unexpected, and very annoying source.

Saskia speaks to one member of The Betsie Beers, Landi Lu. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

1 THESS. 5:16-18  --  REJOICE. PRAY. GIVE THANKS.   Video RecordingShared some of this with Cru students recently. Challenging season we’re in!I want to look at one really short passage in 1 Thessalonians 5. Memorized in college. Helps me to this day!Whole letter is awesome; take 15 minutes to read itToday – just 3 tiny but powerful versesRead 5:16-18 “16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”Right away notice, this isn’t just peripheral advice, take it or leave it.            “This is the WILL OF GOD in Christ Jesus for YOU.”Honestly, at first glance, all 3 of those seem almost impossible and ridiculous.Rejoice ALWAYS. Really? Always?Pray without ceasing. Really? Without ceasing?Give thanks in ALL circumstances… Really? All?Almost sounds like it’s written by someone with their head in the clouds who hasn’t gone through much hard stuff. But was that true?We know Paul went through some super intense challenges, but 1 Thessalonians was likely his first letter (that we have in the Bible) – so had he just not faced many challenges yet? Is that why he sounds so cheery? NOPE! Not smooth sailing for him, or the Thessalonians either:1:6 “you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit2:2 “Though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi…”2:14 “For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews…”3:4 “For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass, and just as you know.”3:7 “for this reason, brothers, in all our distress and affliction we have been comforted about you through your faith.”Rejoice AlwaysDoes “rejoice” = “be happy”? Like you should be happy all the time and just giggle when terrible things happen?Of course not. Clearly there are times to weep and mourn.What does he mean then?It’s easy to rejoice in good times – natural – don’t need to be told!Family is healthy, bellies are full, house is warm, laughing…What about hard times?Battling physical illness or mental illness…Lose a job; financial struggles; heater breaks; car breaksRelational tension – family, friend, coworker…Feel unsettled about the futureCan you rejoice then?? Does Paul really mean ALWAYS?Paul really means ALWAYS - Romans 5:1-8“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die – but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” This is the Gospel. The Good News of God showing His love toward us in sending his Son to suffer for us – if we put our faith in Him – the Holy Spirit enables us NOT ONLY to have peace with God, and forgiveness of sin, and eternal life…But EVEN to REJOICE in our sufferings.To have joy and hope, regardless of circumstances.Does NOT mean “be happy always”; joy is deeper;We can rejoice even in suffering IF we have the right perspective on God.But even if you know and believe this intellectually, it still seems super hard when you’re facing challenging circumstances.The next two parts have been helpful for me, even very recently.Pray Without CeasingCan’t do anything else? Of course not. Pray throughout your day, every day.Growing up I just prayed before meals, before bed, church.Struck by examples of others praying at “random” times.Driving w/ guy from church on way to workWalking across campus with another studentBegan to shift for me – college – walking, driving, etc.ASK: What is your instinctual reaction to hard circumstances?Where does your mind go?Paul would say, that should trigger prayerPrayer puts the focus on God, not just me/circumstancesAnd HE is the one who can actually help me in my circumstances 4:4-7 – 4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.Same pattern as 1 Thess 5 – rejoice, pray, thanksDon’t be anxious – easier said than done right? Key: prayer & thanksLearned to pray on knees – early in marriageAngie (depression), me (tried to fix not just listen & pray)Finally – got on my knees – answers, peace – should’ve prayed 1st!Give Thanks in ALL CircumstancesNot FOR all circumstances… IN all circumstancesNeuroscience & psychology – studies show gratitude actually changes the brain… But science is only observing what God already pointed out through Scripture thousands of years ago. This isn’t a new idea.Basics of not taking things for granted – what I model to my kids – food, water, beds, blankets, pillows…Helps w/ everyday “small” stuff– forgot my mtb shoes; could naturally just be in a bad mood – prayer and giving thanks shifted my attitude and blessed my relationshipsHelps with the big stuffSister Katie died –Grieved. But prayer led to clear perspective; realized I could still be thankful. Led to rejoicingRejoice Always, Pray without Ceasing, Be Thankful in all CircumstancesSome are doing pretty well with this – your role then is to help others. They’re all around you. They’re here today.Don’t just give platitudes “Just trust God. Just pray. Be thankful.”That’s true, but the point isn’t to put on a spiritual Band-Aid.Listen, show care, model thanksgiving, pray for them & with them…One day it will probably be you that needs your eyes lifted.You might be thinking, this is nice Billy… but you don’t know just how bad it’s been for me…Corrie & Betsy Ten Boom –WWII – Hid Jews in Holland (“The Hiding Place”); got bustedSent to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Barracks 28.Corrie smuggled a Bible – they’d read w/ other womenOne night – rancid straw beds - fleasBetsy – immediately began praying – surprised CorrieThen remembered that morning’s reading – 1 Thess. 5“Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; be thankful in all circumstances”Betsy – let’s start thanking God for everything here!Corrie – like what? (nauseous over the stench)Betsy – We got assigned here together (Oh yah, thank you Lord)That Bible in your hand (Oh yah…)These cramped barracks so more can hear Bible (sarcastic thanks)Betsy “thank you for the fleas, and for…”Corrie – whoa! Too far. Even GOD can’t make me thankful for fleasBetsy “Be thankful in ALL circumstances… not just pleasant circumstances…”As the days went on, security was still super tight everywhere EXCEPT Barracks 28, so slowly they began to have more and more freedom to read the Bible with other women. Eventually they started having two services per day. Never knew why they weren’t checked on by the guards.One day Betsy discovered the reason & told CorrieThe women were having a problem with their work and asked a supervisor to come to the barracks to settle itBut she said, “No way I’m going in there! It’s crawling with fleas!”From The Hiding Place:“My mind rushed back to our first hour in this place. I remembered Betsie’s bowed head, remembered her thanks to God for creatures I could see no use for.”Barracks 28 at Ravensbruck was known as “the crazy place where women have hope.” And hope they had—a living hope.Hope in the midst of darkness.Hope in the midst of persecution.Hope in the midst of unimaginable evils.Many women in Barracks 28 knew and believed that “there is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.”Some of you are in the pit right now. I want you to know it’s not too deep for God’s love. I believe He wants you to know that you can have hope.That’s want that for myself and I want it for all of you:– hope & peace, no matter what we’re going through– and I want it for all our family and friends and neighbors and coworkers who aren’t here…And I believe God wants to use YOU in their lives to help them experience that too through a relationship with Jesus.

2020 artist abundance. Meet my friends - Betsie, Maia & Cortney. Here's our advice to stay afloat during these challenging times! #abundance #positivity #mindset SHOP --- ★ Bookings, voice lessons & mentorship: voiceofjennylyn@gmail.com ★ Ebook, "A Pretty Voice - 8 Steps To Beautiful Singing": https://etsy.me/2ZMruRw ★ Jennylyn Jewelry: https://www.etsy.com/shop/JennylynJewelry PODCAST --- ♫ Apple Podcast (also on Stitcher, Amazon, Spotify, etc.): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chung-music-podcast-jennylyn-chung/id1228996371?mt=2 SOCIALS --- ♡ Website: http://jennylynchung.com ♡ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/JennylynChung ♡ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennylynchung    

This week on the podcast, Dave catches up with pop singer BETSIE GØLD to hear about her new single 'Overwhelming', plus there's a first play from 50's inspired songwriter Tom Webber & loads of new music from Oxfordshire! Here's this weeks tracklist: • Superheart - Lilo Girlhood - Sisters Sudders - Breathe Hattie Briggs - Don't Cry Until It's Over Isaac Stuart - Do You Like It When We Lay Like This? Lauren Marlow - Right Hand Man Tom Webber - Stop And Think About It Betsie Gold - Overwhelming Teknomakrus - Coping Mechanism Sleeper Service - Evan Donald Campbell - Steady On Lucy Leave - Thumbs The Holy Fools - Down Cana Way • If you're making music in Oxfordshire, send us your music with the BBC Introducing Uploader: https://www.bbc.co.uk/introducing/uploader

On this Second Act you’ll get a few potty jokes and one quick game of Can’t Beat Jack.  Have you ever had to make a call from inside the restroom? Well, you’re not alone. Be careful tuning in to the first segment of the show, when Caddy and Donna cover a recent trip to Benihana.  Moving right along, the show plays a new game: Are You Smarter Than A [6th] Grader? It’s because there was recently an article that has everyone worried. Apparently the average parent is no better at math or science than a 6th grader. On a serious note, the reason it makes it onto the show is because of the increased pressure and stakes that grade school students are experiencing. When traditionally there has been movement as kids graduate from year to year, now folks may be less-inclined to focus on school. Grades, motivation and future inspiration seem like they’re taking a dip.  Betsie Richards comes on the show to play a game of You Can’t Beat Jack. The category is “people who are -gists.” All ties go to Cadillac Jack and we foresee that becoming a problem. Call Caddy at 7704646024 or tweet @ATLCadillac and tell him what you think. Just don't do it from Benihana. 

Leah Stewart-Hill, soprano, is a performer and vocal educator based in Louisiana. She has more than nine years of experience teaching voice on the collegiate level. She is founder and director of Studio 2219, a music school she operates with her husband, Dr. David Hill, a pianist and vocal coach.Since 2018, Leah has been a cast member in Stephen Burke’s original musical, The Hiding Place, singing the role of Betsie ten Boom in the show’s national tours. Her other roles include Erste Dame in Die Zauberflöte, Angelica in Suor Angelica, Mimì in La bohème, Adina in L’elisir d’amore, Micaela in Carmen, The Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, and Young Psyche, a role written for her, in Larry Taylor’s Eros and Psyche.Leah was introduced to Young Living Essentials Oils in 2019 and quickly became fascinated by their impact on her health and vocal wellness. As a result, she is passionate about sharing essential oils and their many benefits for vocalists—on and off the stage.Leah received a B.A. and M.A. from Pensacola Christian College and an M.M. in Voice Performance from James Madison University. Connect with Leah!https://www.instagram.com/alifeofessentials/ Contact us here!https://linktr.ee/rachelsandlermusicFor podcast inquiries: aspiringartistpodcast@gmail.comFor music & lessons inquiries: rachelsandlermusic@gmail.com

Het is weer zover: John het Platenkanon, de buurman, de oud ijzerboer moest weer op de bank slapen. Benny Telstar, de tarwebunzing, zat weer kogeltje lam bij Lamme Leo aan de Bar in de Knallende Knuppel en kwam daar tegen: Betsie, zal wel weer slecht aflopen.. En dan is daar natuurlijk Freddy Frituur, de man met het beste advies: alles op 180 graden. Oja, Jolke krijgt nog een paar raadseltjes voor de kiezen.

Welcome back to the VOCAL GIRLS PODCAST! This week I'm speaking to pop artist, BETSIE GØLD. Betsie is defining a new generation of what she calls ‘bitch pop'! Her live history boasts main-stage slots at festivals like Reading and Leeds and Truck and she even opened for her musical heroes Bon Jovi on their tour in 2017! Her recent single 'Friday the 13th' is an ode to superstitions and how even at the best of times, it can feel like the universe is against you. In this episode I talk to Betsie about how she's been finding lockdown, her musical journey so far and her playlist choices. You can listen to Betsie's playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0dAxYCti0NJk1drqGc4HjF?si=m-y4dVM3T7KkA4B_7PVyPQ / This series is an Artists in Isolation special and given social distancing rules, all episodes are recorded over the phone. You can check out VOCAL GIRLS at vocalgirls.com and follow us on Instagram and Twitter @vocalgirlsclub. Music for the podcast is by Joe Garside / Design for the podcast is by Jordan Smith of Block H3.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/vocal-girls-podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Point Betsie Light Station is on the northeast side of Lake Michigan, north of the city of Frankfort. The lighthouse, built of cream city brick from Milwaukee, began service in 1858. The station was greatly enlarged in 1894 to about triple its original size. Point Betsie and Sherwood Point became the last light stations on Lake Michigan to be fully automated and de-staffed in 1983. In 2004, ownership of the property was transferred to Benzie County. Friends of Point Betsie Lighthouse has cared for the property under a partnership agreement. Point Betsie Light Station (courtesy of Friends of Point Betsie Lighthouse) In addition to a small number of paid staff, Point Betsie Lighthouse has around twenty-five volunteers working as tour guides and in the gift shop, making it possible for the station to be open to the public for an extensive schedule from late May to late October. Visitors get to climb the tower for a view of the Lake Michigan shoreline. Chuck Clarke is the treasurer on the board of directors of the Friends of Point Betsie Lighthouse, and he has been involved with the lighthouse since before the Friends group was founded. Courtesy of Friends of Point Betsie Lighthouse

In this episode we meet our hosts, Amanda, Sofia and Betsie.   The episode is titled “The Road Less Travelled.   The Road Less Travelled Is about living a life of spiritual growth and requires a loving nature and being open to new perspectives, including the helpful and mysterious force of grace. Taking the road less traveled isn't easy – it takes effort, will and a strong sense of self-discipline. The ladies discuss their life journeys that have led them to where they are now. They talk about their challenges and how discipline, personal development and spirituality have helped them down the road to becoming the best version of themselves. The episode opens with each of the hosts going through their early childhood experiences and the impact this has had on their life.  They talk about how to recognize past traumas that are preventing us from achieving our full potential.   The show provides practical tips and solutions on how to overcome your fears, face the light and in turn discover who you really are, before you became someone else. It encourages us to take off our masks and delve deeper into our souls in order to heal past traumas and set ourselves free. Support this podcast

Thank you to Betsie Richards for introducing today’s show! Betsie is a long-time friend and Caddy talks about some of the fun times they have had together over the years. Truly an amazing person. Virtual doctors. This is a new phenomenon for a lot of us. Donna talks about a friend who experienced this for the first time, and…oopsies! Hear about what NOT to do when the doctor joins the Zoom call, and plenty of strange new coronavirus stories to share. Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen went through a few rough spots a couple years ago. Tom actually went on The Howard Stern Show recently and talked a little bit about it. Caddy and Donna talk about what it means that even “the perfect couple” can have marriage trouble and how we can all learn from that. Caddy explains what he didn’t understand about the game Uno, Brittany Aldean social media post gets some blowback, and Roscoe is digging some awfully big holes in the back yard. All that and more on today’s episode! Cadillac Jack. New show, same ride. Enjoy! Today's show is brought to you by Real Estate Expert Advisors, HURT 911, Dinner A’Fare and Gallery Furniture. Hype songs sponsored by Core 57.  Follow Caddy on Twitter @ATLCadillac Leave a message for the pod by calling 770-464-6024. We might play it on a future episode! Please rate and review the show! It helps other people find us.

Here’s three facts you should know about BETSIE GØLD! 1. Wrote her first song called ‘You Left Me’ when I was 13- it was emo af 2. Absolutely hates cilantro! 3. Named her rescue cat ‘Butters’ after the South Park character BETSIE GØLD – Ur The Party Live (Live) – We Found New Music

Here’s three facts you should know about BETSIE GØLD! 1. Wrote her first song called ‘You Left Me’ when I was 13- it was emo af 2. Absolutely hates cilantro! 3. Named her rescue cat ‘Butters’ after the South Park character BETSIE GØLD – Ur The Party Live (Live) – We Found New Music

This week on Points North: The foundation of the historic Point Betsie Lighthouse in Frankfort is crumbling. High waters and waves cracked the barrier that protects it from Lake Michigan. Plus, there are not many commercial fishers left in the Great Lakes. In Michigan, they have long been at odds with the state Department of Natural Resources. Now people who catch fish to sell say the state is attempting to put them out of business. Large waves and Lake Michigan’s record high water level is breaking down the barrier that protects the historic Point Betsie Lighthouse in Frankfort. Key parts of the structure are fractured and falling apart. Supporters of the lighthouse are trying to get repairs done but a lengthy process may stand in the way. Read the full story here. A drone captured an aerial photo of Fishtown in Leland, Michigan. Credit Gary Langley, an FAA certified sUAS pilot Edit | Remove Commercial fishers are in an uproar about legislation that passed the Michigan House of

FOUR FISHING REPORTS!!! We've got fishing reports for Traverse City, Alpena, Betsie River, and Lake Gogebic fishing all have great fishing opportunities.

On this episode right after Pugs and I record the ladies show up buzzed and loving life. We talk Gummies, Betsie's party me saving thanksgiving. alilchubbypodcast.buzzsprout.comalilchubbypodcast@gmail.comSupport the show (https://cash.app/$Doeja5)

Corrie and Betsie ten Boom were courageous, compassionate Dutch Christians who helped harbor Jews from the Nazis in Holland during World War 2. After the sisters were arrested for doing so, they were imprisoned at Ravensbruck, a German concentration camp. After reading Corrie Ten Boom's, "The Hiding Place", Jay Allen says one specific story stood out to him.

Veterans Day 2019 This Veterans Day Born To Talk Radio Show podcast is an important reminder as we salute and honor America’s veterans for their patriotism, love of country and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good. The show today features two women that have done just that. They served in the Army... The post Veterans Day Salute to Betsie Warren & Susan Durham appeared first on Born To Talk.

Veterans Day 2019 This Veterans Day Born To Talk Radio Show podcast is an important reminder as we salute and honor America’s veterans for their patriotism, love of country and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good. The show today features two women that have done just that. They served in the Army... The post Veterans Day Salute to Betsie Warren & Susan Durham appeared first on Born To Talk.

In die episode drink Roedolph en Christiaan ‘n Zwakala LIMPOPO LAGER en ‘n Drifter THE LEGEND LAGER. Hulle gesels met verras gas Betsie oor deepfakes, die Apollo 11 maanlanding en Avengers Endgame wat Avatar verby gevat het. Join ons Superbru kompetisie en wen lekker pryse - https://www.superbru.com/worldcup_predictor/pool.php?p=12093509 Die episode is geborg deur - https://www.namibkameeldoringbraaihout.com/ Vind hier die notas wat ons in die episode gebruik het: Deepfakes - https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/cb0yot/jim_carrey_deepfake_of_the_shining/ Apollo 11 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8760684/ Avengers boxoffice - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/ Biere gedrink in hierdie episode - Zwakala LIMPOPO LAGER - https://www.zwakalabrewery.com/brews Drifter THE LEGEND LAGER - https://www.drifterbrewing.co.za/core-range-1

He will again have compassion upon us. He will tread down our iniquities, and cast all of our sins into the depths of the sea. Micah 7:19Sin and Confession“I can’t believe I did that! What was I thinking?” I moaned miserably to God, my mental voice rising to nearly a shriek as I came to the word, “thinking”. “What got into me that I would do such a stupid thing? Beyond stupid – I’ll call it what it was – sin, plain and simple.”“Oh, never mind,” I mumbled in disgust as I continued my mental “conversation” with the Lord. “I know exactly what got into me – the devil! The enemy of my soul put the idea into my mind and tempted me, and I listened to him and went along with it, led like a dumb sheep to the slaughter. Lord, I’m so sorry!”Around and Around We GoYet there I was later in the week, remembering what I had done, still grieving over it, and angry at myself.There are many verses in both the Old and New Testaments that speak of God forgiving our sins. Besides the verse from Micah, 1 John 1:9 says that, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Yet there I was, not taking Him at His word.So why do I get myself into this vicious cycle? Why do any of us?God completely forgives our sins, but He also takes it a step further, as you will see.I want to leave you with this quote from the late, great, Corrie ten Boom who, with her sister, Betsie, was thrown into a concentration camp in Holland for the “crime” of hiding Jews from the invading Nazis (I highly recommend their story, The Hiding Place). Among many other wonderful “Corrie quotes” this one stands out for us today and illustrates God's "extra step":“God casts all our sins into the depths of the sea. Then He puts up a sign: NO FISHING!"Read the full devotion at https://devotableapp.com/daily-devotion-micah-719-into-the-depths-of-the-sea/

We have spoken about holiness over recent weeks, but one thing I constantly mention is that, rather than being legalistic, judgemental and arrogant about the absolutes we believe God’s Word teaches, we must temper our strong stand with love. So today I want to begin sharing on love, God’s love in us.   1 John 4:16-20 (ESV Strong's) So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.   The Beatles sang “All you need is love,” and then they broke up. Nevertheless, no song typifies the cry of the human heart and the sentiment of our culture like that one, and love is a term, often misused, that is on everybody’s lips. In the recent campaign to legalise homosexual marriage, the slogan “love is love” took centre stage.   And who can disagree that love is the supreme virtue, and that if it reigned, the world would be a better place? Love is the prevailing theme in all of our books, movies, TV show and songs. According to Billboard, love has been the dominant theme of more than 60% of successful pop tunes since 1958. I recently shared this at Carlos and Linda’s wedding, both being musicians, so I thought I would use song lyrics to illustrate just how dominant love is as a theme in our culture…   What is this crazy little thing called love? Is it a many slendoured thing, because I wanna know what love is, the greatest love of all, because love will keep us together. And what’s love got to do with it? It means that if I’m all out of love, your love will lead me on, and what the world needs now is love, sweet love. In fact it must have been love, the power of love, that makes me keep on loving you. Some say, I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that, but then how deep is your love? If you’re thinking out loud, if love is all around us, then true love, endless love is when I say I will always love you, ou, ou.   THE MEANING OF LOVE   But what do we mean by “love”? For many in our culture, love is mostly a feeling of positive regard for others, or kind treatment of other people. Christians don’t disagree with John Lennon that all we need is love; we just have a more profound understanding of what love we actually need. 1 John 4:10 (ESV Strong's) In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.   This is not an arrogant statement. I am not saying our love is better than someone else’s. However, English is a very inadequate language when it comes to describing many things, and especially love. In English we have one word… love. So we say, I love my wife, I love Vegemite. I love Jesus, I love football, I love my church. It’s the same word. In Greek the language of the New Testament, there are 7 words for love, although only 4 are used in the Bible… lets start with 3 not in the Bible… 1.      LUDUS Ludus is playful or uncommitted love, involving overt flirting or seducing, without commitment. The focus is on fun, so it is not necessarily sexual, but it is uncomplicated and undemanding.   2.      PRAGMA Pragma is a kind of practical love founded on reason or duty and longer-term interests. In this love, sexual attraction takes a back seat in favour of personal qualities and compatibilities, shared goals, and making it work. In the days of arranged marriages, pragma was very common, with princes and princesses marrying not for love but for political advantage. 3.      PHILAUTIA Philautia is self-love, which can be healthy or unhealthy. Today we would probably equate this with self esteem, good or bad. Ok, now for the types of love mentioned in the Bible, in ascending order… 4.      EROS Eros is erotic, sexual or passionate love, and is the type most akin to our modern construct of romantic love. In Greek mythology, it is a form of madness brought about by one of Cupid’s arrows. It is the gooey feeling inside, the flutters in the stomach, and sexual arousal. While many men just want this type of love, most women hope it grows into one of the next two kinds of love. 5.      STORGE Storge is family love, especially the love between parents and children. It is dependent on familiarity and dependence upon, rather than hanging on personal qualities. It’s the love that says, I may not like you or agree with your choices, but I will love you because you are family.” 6.      PHILIA  Philia is friendship love, or shared goodwill. It is friendship founded on mutual benefit, companionship, dependability and goodness. In Aussie lingo it is mateship, inferring close and reliable friends, and in this sense my wife can also be my closest friend. 7.      AGAPE   The highest form of love is agape love, which is unconditional and even unmerited love. It’s the love God has for us, and it is independent of who we are, what we do or what we say. This kind of love stands firm and gives its all, even when it is not reciprocated… John 3:16 (ESV Strong's)  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.   The word agape is demonstrated in Luke 15, where the Father waits and then welcomes so lavishly the wayward son, who is not deserving  any love. It is unconditional love! And it makes the recipient of that love very content and secure!     FEED MY SHEEP   John 21:15-19   A really interesting play between the two most common forms of love in the Bible occurs in John 15.   Peter, you might remember, had publicly denied Christ 3 times, and then the cock crowed. Jesus, after His resurrection, now publicly asks Peter 3 times if he loves Him, and then each time commands him to feed the sheep. It is forgiveness and public restoration, but if we delve deeper, there is an interesting use of two Greek words for love. Twice Jesus uses agape, and Peter answers phileo. The final time, Jesus uses philia… let me paraphrase the passage like this…   John 21:15-17 (ESV Strong's)    “Simon, son of John, do you love me unconditionally more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you as a brother.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me unconditionally?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you like a brother.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you truly love me like a brother?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you like a brother.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.   Could it be that Jesus, calling Peter to unconditional love, saw the difficulty Peter had responding and “lowered the bar” to allow Peter to connect? Some commentators think so. Interestingly, the next verse after this talks about the sacrifice Peter must make, even giving his life, which is an agape form of love!   WHAT DOES LOVE LOOK LIKE? Let’s be honest, when God speaks of His love He is talking about the highest form of love. He offers us unconditional, unending, unwavering love in the for, of His Son Jesus, and He asks us to show this kind of love to those around us. John 15:13 (ESV Strong's) Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.   Love not demonstrated is nothing more than a feeling, and love demonstrated during times of pain and trials, self sacrificing love, agape love is something even the world will take notice of!   WHAT DOES CHRIST’S LOVE LOOK LIKE?   John 15:9 (ESV Strong's) As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.   The visible expression of God’s love is seen in His Son Jesus Christ. So let’s look at the love of Christ…   1.      CHRIST’S LOVE IS DIVINE   Jesus’ love is divine in origin, it’s not something human, but supernatural…   1 John 4:16 (ESV Strong's) So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.   It does not say that God loves, it says that God IS love.  So love is who God is, and that love has existed between the members of the Trinity for all eternity. That means God’s love never fades or fails.   Psalms 136:1 (ESV Strong's) Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.   When you come to Jesus, a whole new dimension of love opens up to you. After 30 years of walking with Christ, I must confess I still cannot fathom love so divine, so profound and so timeless.  We need a love that will not let us down, and this is the love God gives us in Christ.   Ephesians 3:17-19 (ESV Strong's) that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.   2.      CHRIST’S LOVE IS SELF-GIVING   Second, Christ’s love is self-giving. We see this in Jesus’ life and especially in his crucifixion—Christ gave his very life for us.   Human love may include feelings of positive regard for another, and it may even include kindness, but divine love takes kindness to the ultimate degree. It involves the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the sake of another.   Romans 5:8 (ESV Strong's) but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.   3.      CHRIST’S LOVE IS IMPARTIAL   Jesus Christ’s love is impartial. Jesus did not die only for his friends, He died for the entire world (see Jn 3:16), a world in rebellion against God that hated and despised Him.   Paul explains it well… Human love is usually extended toward those we believe are deserving of it.   Romans 5:7-8 (ESV Strong's) For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.   We tend to love only those who love us. But God’s love is fundamentally different: while we were sinners, even enemies of God, he sent his Son to die for us. This is agape love, not something that you earn, not even something you deserve, it is love that transcends what we do or say, and it is available to all.   If a Muslim enters our church, can you love him? If a gay person or a transgender comes in here, can you love them? We say yes in principle, but how could you demonstrate that love? Would you have a gay person to your home for dinner? God’s love is impartial, and Christ ate with sinners when He was on earth. He never condoned their sin, He just loved them!   4.      CHRIST’S LOVE IS CREATES THE VALUE OF THE OBJECT     Fourth, Christ’s love creates the value of its object. This is an important fact that we as believers often overlook.   Some people assume that God loves us because he sees something valuable and sacred in us. We reason, “We must be worth something if God loves us.”   The truth is that God does not love us because He sees something of value in us… no, we are worth something simply because God loves us, because we bear His image. Martin Luther said that God’s love creates our attractiveness; it is not our attractiveness that generates God’s love. We are fallen and undeserving of God’s love. Yet he loves us unconditionally with His agape love. God loves us because He is love, not because of anything within us!     Think of the story of the Prodigal son. He wanted out of the family in order to gain his inheritance. His self-centredness and moral destitution didn’t merit his father’s affection. But his father persisted in loving him, so that as soon as he saw he was returning home, his father ran to embrace him.   Luke 15:20 (ESV Strong's) And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.   This is a picture of God’s love for us. Just as the father ran to his son, welcoming him with open arms, so God stretched out his arms on the cross and welcomed us home. Today, this divine love is available to you too, and when you come to Him you will find true value as a human being forevermore.   5.      CHRIST’S LOVE IS UNDETERRED   Loving someone when they throw it back in your face is hard. It’s hard enough to love someone when they do not even notice you’re alive, but loving someone who actively attacks you and seeks your destruction is a superhuman, even a divine thing.   Jesus in the cross, in pain and agony, facing certain death, looked upon those bent on His destruction, those who hated Him more than anything in the world and said,   Luke 23:34 (ESV Strong's) And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”   Christ’s love was undeterred, it never gave up, it loved when it was abused back.   6.      CHRIST’S LOVE NEVER FAILS   The beautiful passage of 1 Corinthians 13 includes these verses…   1 Corinthians 13:7-8 (ESV Strong's) Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.   The love of God never fails. Human love, even that of the best intentions, fails. People get hurt, people move on, people pass away… at some point human love fails.  Whatever you face right now, God’s love never fails. However hard things are, however mean or evil people might be, whatever you think of yourself, God’s love never fails. Why? Because God is love and God is eternal, and He never fails.   Christ is the alpha and Omega, He has no beginning and no end. If you don’t give your life to Jesus, you will go to hell. I didn’t say it, God says it, and despite inflation, the wages of sin remains the same… death (Romans 6:23).   But if you come to the love of Christ, His love manifests in you and, because He promises to take you to Heaven, your love becomes eternal too, because it is His love in you.   7.      CHRIST’S LOVE IS AVAILABLE FOR YOU THROUGH THE HOLY SPIRIT   I cannot explain Christ’s love for us, but I know we all desperately need it. We need to be saved from our sin, we need to know we have Heaven when we die, and we need to know we have heaven in our hearts right now. Every single one of us needs to know we are loved, to sense this uncompromising, unending, unconditional love that God has for us.   We know we need it, and in this place we sense His love. But how can we share this same love with a sick, twisted and dying world? God in His infinite wisdom chooses to show His love through His people.   John 13:34-35 (ESV Strong's) A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”   We are God’s billboard for His love. But this is not about trying to manifest enough love for someone you hate or dislike. It is this… knowing God so closely, so intimately that His love just shines through us.   That is undeterred, divine and supernatural love, and that is the love of Christ. In this church, in every church, we need that kind of love.   Let me share a story about undeterred yet divine love shining through.   A REAL LIFE EXAMPLE   Romans 5:5 (ESV Strong's) hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.   God’s love poured into our hearts, or as the King James says, shed abroad in our hearts... let me share a real life story of God’s divine, agape love taking over where human love fails.   Corrie Ten Boom was imprisoned in Ravensbrück concentration camp during World War 2 for helping  Jews escape Nazi persecution. Her parents and sister died there, but due to a clerical error, she miraculously survived. After the war she became a Christian speaker, and after speaking at a Munich church in 1947, a bald man stepped forward to greet her.   She knew this man well; he’d been one of the most vicious guards at Ravensbrück, one who had mocked the women prisoners as they showered. “It came back with a rush,” she wrote, “the huge room with its harsh overhead lights; the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor; the shame of walking naked past this man. And now this same man was pushing his hand out to shake hers, and saying: “A fine message, Fraulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!” And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course — how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?  But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. I was face to face with one of my captors, and my blood seemed to freeze. “You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk,” he was saying. “I was a guard there… But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein” — again the hand came out —“will you forgive me?” And I stood there — I whose sins had again and again to be forgiven — and I could not forgive. Betsie had died in that place — could he erase her slow terrible death simply by asking forgiveness? The soldier stood there expectantly, waiting for Corrie to shake his hand. She wrote,  “I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do. For I had to do it — I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us.” Standing there before the former S.S. man, Corrie remembered that forgiveness is an act of the will — not an emotion. “Jesus, help me!” she prayed. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.”  Corrie thrust out her hand. Then she reported this… ”And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. “I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart.” For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then. But even so, I realised it was not my love, it was His love in me. I had tried, and did not have the power. It was the power of the Holy Spirit.     WE ALL NEED TO SHOW HIS LOVE TODAY   Have you tried to love someone who seemed unlovable? Have you felt devoid of love, yet known you have to show God’s love despite how you feel.   Love is a decision, not a feeling. And where our love stops, God’s love takes over!   I have even this past few weeks been attacked without mercy, and I found myself needing to forgive and to show the love of Christ to those who seemingly hate me. Some of you here face this challenge, the challenge of showing God’s love to someone who seems unlovable, someone who maybe even returns hatred for your love, venom for your kindness. Maybe you have tried before, and been hurt, yet you know this person, family member, friend or maybe ex-partner, ex-friend or possibly even a total stranger, need to see God’s limitless love shining through you.   1 John 4:19-21 (ESV Strong's) We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.     Sometimes it is easier to die for Christ than to live for Christ. It is easier to say you love someone than to demonstrate it, and it is easier to perform an act of love than to live it our day by day!   Today I want to challenge those here facing 5e daunting task of loving those who don’t love you back, of loving those who seem to persecute you. I want to pray that God’s supernatural love flows through you as it did Corrie Ten Boom.                       So the love of God is a different kind of love than we normally conceive. And what’s even more astounding is that God calls us to imitate him by loving others in the way he has loved us. It’s not about loving feelings or kindness toward those who deserve it. Love is unconditional, to be given to the undeserving and even to those who oppose us. “I tell you,” Jesus said, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44). It nearly goes without saying that this type of love is impossible to practice. It’s a different order of love altogether. We would need divine power to love divinely. But of course, this is just the thing the Bible assures us of possessing, the love of God poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (see Ro 5:5). It can be said that the Christian life is nothing more than learning to let God’s divine love permeate everything we do and say. All you need is love? Yes—but a love that is more than we can imagine.

Betsie Gerrits is hoofd werkgeversdienstverlening UWV WERKbedrijf. In dit fragment vertelt zij wat UWV WERKbedrijf doet voor werkgevers.

How to Forgive & Be Forgiven My Fight with Forgiveness This was an intimidating podcast episode to create. Before I even began podcasting I sent a survey out to friends asking what topics I should cover within the realm of faith, ethnicity, and culture. When one friend submitted the topic forgiveness I cringed. It’s an area I’ve had to grow in and it does not always come naturally, especially in situations regarding ethnicity and discrimination. In fact, it was only several months ago that I came to a crossroads with God about this topic. I knew in order to be used effectively to create change I could not be bitter or blindly defensive, but I could not get over the history of wrong. The centuries of oppression over multiple people groups that have left consequences in our nation still powerfully effective today. Then, and don’t remember how, I came across Corrie Ten Boom’s story. Corrie Ten Boom was arrested by the Nazis when she and her family were caught hiding Jews in their home during the Holocaust. She was sent with her sister to the Ravensbruck concentration camp were her sister died days before Corrie was released. After Corrie’s release she set up a recovery home for concentration camp survivors and traveled widely preaching God’s forgiveness and the need for reconciliation. At one of her engagements where she spoke on forgiveness a man approached her who she immediately recognized as a guard at the camp where she was imprisoned. He did not recognize her. Below is the story of her encounter directly from Corrie Ten Boom’s autobiography, The Hiding Place. Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent. ... "You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk," he was saying. "I was a guard in there." No, he did not remember me. "But since that time," he went on, "I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein, ..." his hand came out, ... "will you forgive me?" And I stood there — I whose sins had every day to be forgiven — and could not. Betsie had died in that place — could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking? It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do. For I had to do it — I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. "If you do not forgive men their trespasses," Jesus says, "neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses." ... And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion — I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. "Jesus, help me!" I prayed silently. "I can lift my hand, I can do that much. You supply the feeling." And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. "I forgive you, brother!" I cried. "With all my heart!" For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then. Reprinted with permission from Guideposts. Copyright © 1972 by Guideposts, Carmel, New York 10512. All rights reserved. (www.guideposts.com)   I barely got through the story without breaking down because I knew after weeks of anguished prayer over the issue of forgiveness this was God’s answer. I had no excuse. Somehow the fact God requires us to forgive,

How to Forgive & Be Forgiven My Fight with Forgiveness This was an intimidating podcast episode to create. Before I even began podcasting I sent a survey out to friends asking what topics I should cover within the realm of faith, ethnicity, and culture. When one friend submitted the topic forgiveness I cringed. It’s an area I’ve had to grow in and it does not always come naturally, especially in situations regarding ethnicity and discrimination. In fact, it was only several months ago that I came to a crossroads with God about this topic. I knew in order to be used effectively to create change I could not be bitter or blindly defensive, but I could not get over the history of wrong. The centuries of oppression over multiple people groups that have left consequences in our nation still powerfully effective today. Then, and don’t remember how, I came across Corrie Ten Boom’s story. Corrie Ten Boom was arrested by the Nazis when she and her family were caught hiding Jews in their home during the Holocaust. She was sent with her sister to the Ravensbruck concentration camp were her sister died days before Corrie was released. After Corrie’s release she set up a recovery home for concentration camp survivors and traveled widely preaching God’s forgiveness and the need for reconciliation. At one of her engagements where she spoke on forgiveness a man approached her who she immediately recognized as a guard at the camp where she was imprisoned. He did not recognize her. Below is the story of her encounter directly from Corrie Ten Boom’s autobiography, The Hiding Place. Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent. ... "You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk," he was saying. "I was a guard in there." No, he did not remember me. "But since that time," he went on, "I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein, ..." his hand came out, ... "will you forgive me?" And I stood there — I whose sins had every day to be forgiven — and could not. Betsie had died in that place — could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking? It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do. For I had to do it — I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. "If you do not forgive men their trespasses," Jesus says, "neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses." ... And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion — I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. "Jesus, help me!" I prayed silently. "I can lift my hand, I can do that much. You supply the feeling." And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. "I forgive you, brother!" I cried. "With all my heart!" For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then. Reprinted with permission from Guideposts. Copyright © 1972 by Guideposts, Carmel, New York 10512. All rights reserved. (www.guideposts.com)   I barely got through the story without breaking down because I knew after weeks of anguished prayer over the issue of forgiveness this was God’s answer. I had no excuse. Somehow the fact God requires us to forgive,

In this episode we interview Betsie Bolger. There is money to be had on eBay. There is also money to be lost. In this episode of the Profit First Podcast, eBetsey, also known as Betsie Bolger, walks us step by step through the process of becoming a highly profitable eBay seller.

Who Is Our God? His Attributes So we come to Ephesians 5:1. We come to one of the most remarkable commands that the Apostle Paul ever gave to any group of Christians. There, in these verses, we're commanded to “be imitators of God.” Maybe you've read that for many years, or even just now as you heard Tom reading it, it just washed over you and you didn't realize just how remarkable that is. The Bible says that “God created the heavens and the earth by the word of His power,” that, “He sits enthroned above all the surface of the earth, and all the nations before Him are like a drop from a bucket and like dust on the scales compared to His majesty and His great power,” Isaiah 40:22. Psalm 99:1 says, "The Lord reigns; let the peoples tremble. He sits enthroned upon the cherubim. Let the earth quake." Moses records that Almighty God, the creator and sustainer of heaven and earth, descended on Mount Sinai in fire and spoke out of a cloud and out of fire, and the ground beneath their feet shook as God spoke these words, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me," and the sight was so terrifying that Moses said, "I'm trembling with fear." The holiness of God caused the seraphim in Isaiah's vision in Chapter 6 to cover their faces, not daring to look upon the glory of God, though they had never committed any sin, and they weren't defiled in any way or they had never been rebellious. And yet, they were covering their faces and their feet in the presence of the holiness of God, the infinite gap between God, the creator, and all of us, his creatures. No one has captured it better than A.W. Tozer in The Knowledge of the Holy. He said, "Forever God stands apart, in light unapproachable. He is as high above an archangel as He is above a caterpillar, for the gulf that separates the archangel from the caterpillar is but finite while the gulf between God and the archangel is infinite. The caterpillar and the archangel, though far removed from each other on the scale of created things, are nevertheless one and alike in that they're both created. They both belong in the category of that which is not God and are separated from God by infinitude itself." And we're commanded to imitate God. The Westminster theologians who gathered together. They wrote these words about God: "There is but one only living and true God who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit without body, parts or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will for His own glory. God has all life, glory, goodness and blessedness in and of Himself. He is alone in and unto Himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which He has made, not deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting His own glory in, by, unto and upon them. He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom and to whom are all things, and has most sovereign dominion over them to do by them, for them and upon them whatsoever Himself pleases. In His sight, all things are open and manifest. His knowledge is infinite, it is infallible and independent upon the creature and to whom is due, from angels and men and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service or obedience He has pleased to require of them." We Are Not God Well, we are not God We are not God. These things cannot be said in total of us. Theologians have tended to divide the attributes or the descriptions of God into two categories: communicable and incommunicable. Incommunicable are those things that are true of God but will never be true of us, cannot be true of us, and communicable attributes are those things that are described of God, and we can in some way reflect them. For example, we are not self-existent. God exists in and of Himself and He needs nothing created from the outside to come in, like we need food and air and water to stay alive. God doesn't need anything created to come into Him to sustain His existence. He is self-existent, but we are not, for “in Him we live and move and have our being.” We are dependent on God for our existence. We are not immutable. God never changes. Malachi 3:6, "I the Lord do not change." But we are constantly changing. Indeed, we must change. Actually, the text in Ephesians 5:1 says, "Become imitators of God as dearly loved children." We are not immense, omnipresent beings that fill the universe with our existence, but God is. Jeremiah 23, he says, "'Am I only a God nearby,' declares the Lord, 'and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?' declares the Lord. 'Do I not fill heaven and earth?' declares the Lord." But we are not sovereign. We don't get to do whatever we please and be accountable to no one for our decisions as God is. In Daniel 4:35, Nebuchadnezzar said, "He does as He pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him, 'What have you done?'" We are accountable to God. We are totally under his sovereign will. So there are these incommunicable attributes of God and many others, but there are also communicable attributes. There are ways in which we are commanded to be exactly like God, and as we come to Ephesians 5:1 and 2, we come to the centerpiece of that communicable attribute, and that is love. We are commanded to love, to live a life of love, to walk in love as God has loved us in Christ. We are commanded to be like God, and this makes sense, for in creation, in Genesis 1:27, we were all, as human beings, created to be like God. We are created in the image of God. And again, in salvation and earlier in the last chapter, in Ephesians 4:24, it says, "Put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." So we are to imitate God. Now, this is amazing because the Apostle Paul in other places tells people to imitate him, and we need role models. We need men and women to stand up in front of men and women in the Body of Christ and say, "Imitate me." We need mentors. And Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 4:16, "Therefore, I urge you to imitate me." That takes a lot of boldness, doesn't it? "Imitate me. Be like me." In another place, he says, "Imitate me as I imitate Christ." So the implication is we're seeking to imitate Christ. Christ is our role model. We want to follow after Him, and so in the text as well. But here we're commanded to imitate God. And how is that? Well, in an immediate context it is that we are to walk, or to live a daily life that's characterized horizontally to other people with self-sacrificial love, especially in forgiveness of those that sin against us. Sometimes I think the chapter divisions hurt the flow and we don't fully understand the context, so I think it might be better to just remove the chapter division from Chapter 5 and just flow on from Ephesians 4:32 on to 5:2. "Be kind and compassionate to one another," it says in verse 32 of chapter 4. "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ, God has forgiven you. Be imitators of God, therefore as dearly loved children and live a life of love [or walk in love,] just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." Context Now I never tire of saying exactly where we are in the book. It's important for us to understand context. And so we're in the middle of an ethical or moral imperative section of the book of Ephesians in which we Christians are told how we are to live. This is built on the foundation of the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. We're going to talk more about that later in the sermon, but on the foundation of Christ’s blood atonement for us and the foundation before that of God's sovereign grace in choosing us before the foundation of the world, to be adopted as His sons and daughters, and the foundation of the saving work of Christ and then this vision of a holy temple rising to become larger and larger with living stones quarried from Satan's dark kingdom from all over the world, every tribe and language and people and nation, we the living stones built into this spiritual house to be a temple, a spiritual house in which God lives by His spirit, on the foundation of that, Ephesians 1-3, we have Ephesians 4-6. Beginning in Ephesians 4:1, it says, "As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." Then one chapter later, now in this verse, Ephesians 5:1, "Live a life of love. Imitate God and live a life of love or walk in love as Christ loved us and gave Himself." This is the kind of life we should live. Now this morality, this Christian ethic, flows from the Gospel. We are commanded in chapter 4 verses 17-24, "I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They're darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more." That's the nature of the darkness that was in us apart from Christ. That's the nature of the darkness of the people we're going to try to reach with the Gospel as Nathan was just talking about, our neighbors, our co-workers. Their hearts are hardened. They don't walk in love. They don't live a life of self-sacrificial love. They're filled with bitterness and unforgiveness toward people who have sinned against them. They harbor that bitterness. They feed it. They nurse their grievances and I think often about them. But he said, "You didn't come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard him and you were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self," as we've already said, "created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." And so, then that flows out into morality in all areas of life. In verse 25, "Put off all falsehood and instead speak truthfully to your neighbor." Verse 26, "Put off sinful anger. Don't let the sun go down while you're still angry." And verse 28, "Put off stealing, but instead work hard and bless and benefit your neighbor by your labor so that you can share with those in need." And then verse 29, "Put off all corrupting speech, [anything that's corruptible and wicked] and instead speak only those things that build up your neighbors and give grace to those who hear that it might benefit them." And put off this unforgiveness, this wickedness, this anger of all level, any kind of malice or anger or brawling or any of these things. Be kind and compassionate to one other instead, forgiving one another, just as in Christ, God has forgiven you. Imitating God’s Love And so, these moral imperatives I think, atheists that want to be moral, or Greek philosopher types that want to live an upright life, Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard Almanack-type morality, they can do that, the horizontal thing, and we can imitate some of that, but for us, it's all founded on our vertical relationship with God, on the fact that we have the indwelling Holy Spirit, whom we are not to grieve, and how we are to imitate our adoptive Heavenly Father and walk like Him. It's a whole different type of ethic. And so, we're told here to imitate God or be imitators of God in His love. Look at verse 1 and 2, "Be imitators of God therefore as dearly loved children and walk in love." God is Love Here, we are to imitate, I think, the central attribute of God as He presents Himself to us. God is love. 1 John 4:16, "God is love. Whoever lives in love, lives in God and God in him." This is the strongest statement about love in the Bible, 1 John 4:16. “God is love.” God certainly commands love and He exemplifies love and He teaches us about love, but 1 John 4:16 says God actually is love, and from this, as I meditate on it, I see He's the source of all love there is in my heart. He's the source of everything, and as I come to this ethical command that I'm to live a life of love or walk in love, it's not long before I realize that I don't, that there is still some of that residual darkness in my heart, a hardness in my heart, and that I don't love my neighbor as I should, as myself, and so to know that God is love, that if I want to be transformed, if I want to live a life of love and walk in love, I need to get closer to God. He is the source of all love. Now, what do we mean by love? Well, I've come to see it this way. It has to do with our heart, the essence of our, the centerpiece of our being, our minds, our hearts, our souls, and their ability to either be attracted to something or repulsed from something to a greater or lesser degree, like magnetic attraction or repulsion such as we talk about liking or loving something, being attracted to it, or disliking, or hating something. We all have that nature created in the image of God. We can be attracted to or repulsed from something to a greater or lesser degree. We're made like this. And so, love is on the positive side of attraction. It's that my heart is drawn to something, attracted to it, but then this ethic, this morality of love, moves beyond heart attraction into cheerful sacrificial action that benefits the person that I'm loving. So, it's heart attraction resulting in cheerful action. That's the essence of love, and God is the source of all of that love. God's heart is attracted to all that He has made. He is attracted to His universe. He's attracted to the things that He shaped and molded with His own hands. “So, after God had created everything in six days and looked out over everything that He had made, and behold it was very good, and you see a sense of God's attraction to the works of His hands, and even after the fall, even after sin entered in, there's still that love of God toward His creatures, all of them.” And so, in Psalm 145, verses 13-17, it says, "The Lord is faithful to all his promises and loving toward all he has made. The Lord upholds all those who fall and lifts up those who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you O Lord, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and you satisfy the desires of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and loving toward all He has made." So God's heart goes out toward His creation and He is delighted. He finds personal joy in doing His creation good. So that's the essence of love. We are commanded to have our heart go out horizontally toward others, and to find personal delight in doing good to people around us. It's not enough to just do good, we have to find personal delight or joy in it. “God loves a cheerful giver.” He wants us to love loving one another, if we could use that redundant expression. He wants us to be cheerful in giving to one another. So God's love is on display every time He feeds one of His creatures, every time the sun rises and then warms a field of wheat or barley, every time there's a feeling of a breeze on your face or the rain soaking the earth and sustaining life. All of these things are gifts from God, and God gives it to people whether they love Him or not. He gives it to His enemies. “He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” He is generous toward everyone that He's made whether they acknowledge Him or not, and God overwhelmingly has loved His enemies, human beings who do not acknowledge His gifts. They owe him thanks. They ought to be thankful. They ought to worship Him and glorify Him as God and give thanks to Him, but they don't, and yet God is generous to them. It says in Psalm 103:5, "He satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles." Well, God has loved us, we who are Christians, at an even infinitely higher level. Even before we were born, even before the creation of the world, God set His love on us in Christ. Look again. Go back at Ephesians 1:4 and 5. It says, "He chose us," He, God the Father, chose us, in Christ, "in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight." “In love, [in love,] He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will.” God Loved Us Before We Were Born So what I'm saying is that God's heart went out toward us by name before the creation of the world. And He set His affection on us and delighted to do us good. He delighted to do us good. And so He loved the world like it says in John 3:16, "God so loved the world" or in this way, "God loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." And so He loved His elect by setting His electing love on them, and by sending Christ in the world, and by offering His Son as an atonement for our sins. As Romans 5:8, says "God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners...", and again, 1 John 4:10, "This is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sin.” So God loved us directly in saving us. God put up with all of your sins for the days, weeks, months and years before you were regenerated, covered them. He was gracious and patient to you in all that time and He loved you by sending the Gospel to you, maybe again and again, He sent messengers of the Gospel to you, who sought to persuade you to trust in Christ. Maybe it was your parents, maybe a brother or a sister, maybe it was a friend, someone in college, maybe a co-worker. And God reached out to you again and again, and then if you're a Christian, He loved you, ultimately by sending the Holy Spirit to take out that heart of stone, and give you the heart of flesh, so that you would love Jesus and believe in Him, and trust in Him. It's because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, it says in 1 Corinthians 1, "It's because of the Holy Spirit's work on you that you believe in Jesus." God has been so loving to you and in all of this, God was delighted to do it. It's something that's hard for us to understand, but God really enjoys saving people. I love what Jesus says in Luke's Gospel, He says, "Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." It's been one of the most fruitful verses I've ever meditated on, on the pleasure of God in saving me. He enjoys saving me, He enjoys forgiving me, He enjoys “washing me with water through the word.” He enjoys presenting me to Himself as holy and blameless. And He will enjoy raising my corpse from the grave, and making it glorious and radiant in His glory. He enjoys creating a Church and then He will enjoy creating the New Heavens and the New Earth as a home for His bride to live in forever, He enjoys this, He delights in it. Now: God Commands Us to Imitate His Love And so, we are called on to imitate God in His love, this lavish display of God's love comes with an inherent command, “if God has so loved us, we ought to love one another.” That's what's going on in Ephesians 5:1. 1 John 4:11, "Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another," and this is especially poignant, when it comes to the issue of forgiveness of sins. We saw this last week, but I don't think I can say it too much. We are commanded to be gracious and merciful and forgiving to people who sin against us. Whether they're Christians or non-Christians. But especially within the Body of Christ, we are commanded to be gracious and to be forgiving toward those who sin against us. As we saw last time, God is likened to a king to whom we owed an incalculable debt. The 10,000 talents, and God forgave all of that debt just out of His grace and mercy and with it, comes an obligation, the vertical relationship of forgiveness carries with it a horizontal imperative, we ought to so love one another. We ought to forgive one another. We ought to not find some fellow servant who owes us a third of a year's wages, and choke them and say, "Pay me what you owe me." This life of love should be one of tenderness and compassion to other sinners, we should feel the weight of their misery in sin and yearn to set them free. The love of God in Christ should constrain us to reach out. Like Nathan was saying, like we've been saying, we want to reach out, not just this week but throughout the year, to people who are in bondage, to people who are without hope and without God in the world, to show mercy to them and show compassion, even if they treat us very poorly. Let me tell you, throughout church history, Christians have amazingly loved their enemies in ways that has had converting power. So actually, it might be better if you ventured out in evangelism in the workplace and get smacked down this week. Or by your neighbors and get badly treated. And then love and forgive, and who knows but a month later, they might be in some medical emergency, and you'll be the only one that shows any consideration for them, or maybe their spouse, or their child, and they'll remember how badly they treated you and how gracious and loving, you're being toward them. I was incredibly rude to Steve Chamberlain who led me to Christ and the Lord never lets me forget it. So don't tell me you don't want to witness remember how you treated Steve, now go out and share your faith. But it actually was instrumental it doubled back on itself because I realized, “Why was I being so rude to this guy. What did he ever do to me, he's actually only been kind to me.” That was the beginning of seeing my own sin, and the need I had for Christ, actually the way I treated him so badly, and the way he was so kind to me, was actually instrumental to my salvation. So we see this again and again, Stephen as he is being stoned to death cries out saying, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." You must believe that that had an impact on Saul of Tarsus, who heard him say those words. An Anabaptists Self-Sacrificial Love There's a story of an Anabaptist man named Dirk Willems, Anabaptists were persecuted by almost every authority in Continental Europe, back then, and this godly man, Dirk Willems was fleeing for his life, across a frozen lake, and suddenly his pursuer, he heard his pursuers getting closer and closer, but he heard a crack in the ice and then the unmistakable sound is that man fell through the ice, and Dirk Willems stopped, he was free now, he could get away, but he went back on the clearly dangerous ice, and got close to where he'd fallen in and he rescued this man and saved his life pulled him out, but the time he took to go back and pull that man back out of that freezing water, allowed some others that were chasing as well to lay hands on him. And though this man that Dirk Willems had pulled out of the freezing water, pleaded with them to let him go, and he eventually came to faith in Christ at any rate, Dirk Willems was burned at the stake for his heterodox beliefs according to them. So he basically traded his own mortal life, so that at least one man could have eternal life. Just the forgiveness that is shown. Burdened to Forgive: Corrie ten Boom I read an account and some of you have read it too of Corrie ten Boom, who is a Dutch woman, who with her family risked much to protect the Jews during the Nazi occupation during World War II. Eventually, they were discovered and they were arrested and they were put in the concentration camp at Ravensbruck, and it eventually led to the death of her sister, Betsie. She never forgot that, obviously, it was on one of most terrible experiences of her life, but in the years that followed God gave her a ministry of speaking about her experiences in the concentration camp, and her experiences in her Christian walk, and the amazing forgiveness that God gives In Christ and how God takes our sins and throws them into the depths of the sea. And we never see them again. Well, to her horror at one particular church service, after it was done, a former SS guard came up, and she recognized him and he came up smiling and said, "Isn't it wonderful how God takes all of our sins and throws them in the depths of the sea, and we see them no more? Well, I've become a Christian and I want to say will you please forgive me for what I did to you and your family?" And he stuck out his hand like that. Well, she stood there looking at his hand and this is what she said, she said "I knew I had to forgive him. The message that God forgives has a prior condition that we forgive those who have injured us. Jesus said, "If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father in Heaven forgive your trespasses." I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but I saw it as a daily experience since the end of the war, I had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality, and those who were able to forgive their former tormentors were also able to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what their physical or emotional scars. But those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and horrible as that, but now there I stood. And as I looked at that man's hand extended toward me, there was a coldness clutching my heart, but I realized that forgiveness is not first of all an emotion. I knew that too forgiveness is an act of the will, it's a commitment, and that the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. So I prayed, "Jesus help me," I prayed silently. "I can lift my hand, I can do that much. You must supply the feeling." And so, she said, "woodenly mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me, and as I did something incredible took place. There started to be a feeling in my shoulder like electrical current that flowed down my arm and sprang into our joined hands and then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being and it brought tears to my eyes. "I do forgive you brother, with all of my heart." For a long moment we grasped each other's hands. The former guard and the former prisoner I have never known God's love so intensely as I did at that moment.” Now, by the way, I think that is exactly why we will remember everything that happened on earth. Because we will feel God's grace and power and forgiveness and saving work of Christ far more powerfully when we remember the details of the stories or the things that happened here on earth. Apart from that, how can we celebrate God's grace? What would it even mean if we have no memory of all the sufferings that sin caused in this world? So, we are to walk in love as God has loved us. Is there someone you need to forgive? I asked you this last week, you had a week to think about it. Is there someone you're still bitter toward? As Beloved Children We Imitate God Because He Adopted Us God is commanding you in Ephesians 5:1 to imitate God in His loving forgiveness of those that have sinned against you, and He's commanding you to do it as beloved children, as dearly loved children, He says. We are the adopted children of God. “In love, He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ.” 1 John 3:1, "Behold what manner of love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God", and that is what we are. This is a motive for our walking in love because we bear the family likeness. More than that, we bear the family name, and Jesus said, "By this will all men know that you're my disciples, if you love one another if you walk in love in this kind of forgiveness, then everyone around will know what it means to be in the family of God. You're putting the Father's name on display, His reputation, by how you live, and we are to imitate Christ's love." He goes from the Father to the Son. "Be imitators of God, therefore as dearly loved children and live a life of love or walk in love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." So ultimately, Christ is the example of walking in love. Imitating Christ’s Love Christ is the Greatest Example of God’s Love At every moment, He loved the Lord his God vertically with all of His heart, soul, mind, and strength. And then horizontally, loved His neighbors as Himself. Think about His healing ministry, His healing ministry, was so successful and so famous so pervasive that huge crowds from multiple cities around wherever He was poured out every day to be healed by Jesus, it was so much and so overwhelming that people couldn't even get physically near Jesus, even to touch Him. He did this out of compassion, out of love. How do you know that? Well, in Mark 1: 40-42, it says "A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees. If you are willing, you can make me clean. Jesus filled with compassion, reached out his hand and touched the man. I am willing, be clean and immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy." You know, Jesus could have healed 10,000 people with a word, you know that, don't you? 10,000 people, “You're all healed go home.” But Jesus wanted to be able to look people in the eye and say, "I love you, I want a relationship with you. I want to touch your hand and heal you. I don't have to touch your hand, but I want to. I want to look you in the eye and I want a relationship with you." It was out of love that he did those healings, same thing with his teaching ministry. And one of the accounts in Mark chapter 8, Jesus landed and when he saw a huge crowd that they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd, He had compassion on them, and taught them many things, so His teaching ministry, was an evidence of His love for other people. So also His feeding ministry in Mark chapter 8. He said, "I have compassion with these people. They've been with me many days, three days now. And if they go home, they'll collapse on the way, feed them." Everything Jesus did was motivated by love for God and others, He walked in love, He lived a daily life of love and especially you see that in His sacrificial love on the cross, and not just this time of year, not just holy week, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, leading up to Easter Sunday. Sacrificial Love at the Cross Do we Christians contemplate the death of Jesus? Jesus gave Himself up for us, as a fragrant offering, it says, in sacrifice to God. Have you noticed how similar this verse is to Galatians 2:20? Galatians 2:20 says, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, and the life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me, and gave Himself up for me." But this verse says that “Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us. I think both of those things are worthy of meditation.” There is an intensely personal love that God has for each of His sheep. He knows us by name and we can say honestly from Galatians 2:20, "He loved me, and gave Himself up for me, so I should love others and give myself up for them." But then we can expand and say, "Well there's a lot of us, there's a multitude greater than anyone could count. He loved us and gave Himself up for us, as well. And it says that He gave Himself up as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” As a Fragrant Sacrifice The Atonement: The Centerpiece of Salvation The Old Testament again and again, animal sacrifices were spoken of as a fragrant offering well pleasing to God. Like Noah, remember when he took some of the clean animals and he offered them up and the aroma of the pleasing sacrifice went up to God, the pleasing aroma. Now, you shouldn't imagine that God just has a taste for meat. God doesn't have a taste for meat. He just loves the smell of a barbecue, just oh God, no that's not it. He's looking at the heart of Noah and his faith, and the sacrifice and his willingness to give at that point, and that's the offering of Jesus. Jesus gave Himself up to the Father on our behalf, the fulfillment of all of the animal sacrificial system. He gave Himself up. He died in our place that we sinners trusting in him might have forgiveness of sins. The Aroma of a Pleasing Sacrifice Now that's an aroma wafting heaven-ward from what Jesus did, the life He lived and the death He died. It's an aroma, a fragrant offering to God. What is the aroma wafting heaven-ward from your life? What does your life smell like to God? Let's put it that way. Is it fragrant? There are a number of things that are said to be wafting heaven-ward like our prayers are caught in a ball, they're like incense that goes up. Our prayer life can waft heaven-ward. Revelation 5:9 says, "The prayers of the saints are caught like incense. And our service to other sinners." It says in Hebrews 13:15, "Therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that confess His name and do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices, God is pleased." So there you have two-fold sacrifice. Vertical, praising His name, it's like a fragrant offering, a heart of worship, and then horizontally, doing good to others, whatever that means, is a fragrant offering and sacrifice with which God is well pleased. Even money given to missionaries is spoken of in Philippians 4:18, He talks about the money that Epaphroditus brought and he said they're a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God. So the money you give to church workers, to mission workers, or to any other brother and sister in Christ, is doing some kind of ministry is a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God and our evangelism. 2 Corinthians 2:15 and 16, "For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and to those who are perishing, to the one we are the smell of death, but to the other the fragrance of life." How Then Shall We Live? So, we are called on to live a life of love. What is the fragrance that floats from your life? What's the fragrance of your home life? What's the fragrance of your marriage? What's the fragrance of your parenting? What's the aroma of how you live towards the poor and needy, toward lost people? What about toward those who sin against you, hurt you, in some way? What is the fragrance wafting from your life? As we come to this text, this is a very plain, straightforward text but it challenges me. Do I find my delight in blessing other people? Am I a cheerful giver? Something that my son Calvin and I were, we've been talking about, we were going through discipleship and we've been talking about love and it's something that I said, "Pray for me, I want to pray for you too, but I want to find my joy, my delight in blessing others. I don't want to complain when serving others, I don't want to be negative. I want to be joyful and delight in forgiving others, that's the kind of life I want to live, and that's the kind of life I want this church to live. I want us to be a beacon of hope in this community. I want us to live a life of love just as God loved us in Christ and gave His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Close with me in prayer. Prayer Father, these words will continue to challenge us the rest of our lives. We know that you have loved us and we know that you have forgiven us through Christ, and you loved us when we are most unlovely, when we were in some ways repulsive. Father, thank you for that love, and I pray that now you would do a work through the Holy Spirit of God, of love in our lives. Help us to love one another, to find joy and delight in blessing others, to find personal happiness in alleviating other people's suffering, whether that's through evangelism or through mercy ministry, or through simple forgiveness, I pray that you would enable us to alleviate the suffering of people that we find around us. Help us to live a life of love, to walk in love, just as Christ did. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Tracklisting:01. Orkidea Ft. Ben Lord - Neo Romance (Extended Mix) [Black Hole]02. Solarstone & Gai Barone - Fata Morgana (Extended Mix) [Pure Trance Progressive]03. Markus Schulz & Nifra - The Creation (Prague - Transmission Theme 2015) [Coldharbour]04. Hans Seo - Portaits (Original Mix) [AVA Recordings] TRANSMISSION TUNE05. Betsie larkin & Dennis Sheperd - Let It Rain (Original Mix) [Magik Muzik]06. Ikorus - Booksquirm (Original Mix) [Create Music]07. Giuseppe Ottaviani - Sunward (Original Mix) [Vandit] THROWBACKBluefire Transmix:08. Flynn & Denton - Twist Of Faith (Original Mix) [Kearnage Recordings]09. Bluefire - Dreamnasia (Photographer Remix) [Breathe Music]10. Dreamy - Among Them (Original Mix) [Redux Recordings]11. Bryan Kearney - Te Amo (Amir Hussain Remix) [Kearnage Recordings]

Welcome back, my friends! It's time for another BluzNdaBlood Show! This show is simply celebrating the beginning of spring with some great blues music! Intro Song Igor Prado Band & Delta Groove All Stars, “You Better Believe It”, Way Down South, 2015 Delta Groove Music                 First Set Richard “Rip Lee” Pryor, “Shake Your Boogie”, Nobody But Me,Electro-Fi Records Breezy Rodio, “When My Heart Beats Like A Hammer”, So Close To It, Wind Chill Records        Jon Spear Band, “I Can't Help Myself”, Old Soul,  Thanks to Betsie at Blind Raccoon for the CD! Second Set  FUNKY SET! RC and The Moonpie Band, “F in Funk”, Individually Wrapped, Houndsounds Music Chris Daniels & The Kings, “Funky To The Bone”, Funky To The Bone, Moon Voyage Records Jeff Chaz, “I Smell Somethin' Funky”, Chronicles, IceHouse Records, Thanks to Frank Roszak Third Set  FROM THE VINYL VAULT!!! Joe Turner and T-Bone Walker, “Every Day I Have The Blues'”, Bosses Of The Blues – Vol. 1, 1989  BMG Music Jumpin' Johnny and the Blues Party, “Knocks Me out (Fine, Fine, Fine)”, Where y'at?, King Snake Records, 1988 Lazy Lester, “Lester's Shuffle”, Rides Again, 1987 King Snake Records Fourth Set                 Toots Lorraine, “Built For Comfort”, Make It Easy, Greaseland Records, Willie Dixon Cover Brandon Santini, “My Backscratcher”, Live & Extended, VizzTone Records Ghost Town Blues Band, “My Doggy”, Hard Road To Hoe Thanks as always to Michael Allen Engstrom for allowing me to use his fantastic artwork on my web site and social media. Check him out at http://www.Crossroadsbluesgallery.com 

Would you like an article about yourself in the New York Times Betsie Gambel can make that happen. Would you like to own Mardi Gras Josh Mayer will take care of that for you. Peter, Josh, and Betsie delve into PR, branding, marketing, advertising, NOLA Mad Men and Women, and lend their substantial skills to startup business Clear the Clutter. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracklisting for Vicky Devine - EOYC 2013 1. Ferry Corsten Featuring Betsie Larkin - Not Coming Down (Acoustic Radio Edit) [Flashover Recordings] 2. Nifra - Strangers (Vocal Mix) [Soundpiercing] 3. Vicky Devine - What To Do? [Black Hole Recordings] 4. Full Tilt & Orla Feeney - OTT (Original Mix) [Full Tilt Recordings] 5. Randy Boyer & Kristina Sky - Set It Off (Original Mix) [Vandit] 6. Laura May Featuring Suze Foden - Nothing Else To Give (Dub Mix) [LW Recordings] 7. DJ Ange - Elsker [Perfecto Records] 8. Myon & Shane 54 with Aruna - Lights (Club Mix) [Ride Recordings] 9. Claudia Cazacu & Vicky Devine - Glamour [Liquid Recordings] 10. RAMelia featuring Susana - Tribute to Amelia [Future Sound of Egypt] 11. Sophie Sugar - Fallen Too Far [A State of Trance] 12. Lisa Lashes & Vicky Devine - Kaleidoscope [Fraction Records]

Welcome to another instalment of Sydney Trance, Sydney's #1 Trance Podcast. This week we welcome Tonto from Sydney. Tonto has prepared a 1 hour long guest mix catering for those of us who aren't afraid of 138BPM. We hope you enjoy the show and make sure to hit us up on Facebook or Twitter and let us know what you thought. Track List: 1. Aly & Fila, Bjorn Akesson - Sand Theme 2. Ruben De Ronde - Forever in our Heats (Spotlighted by Jorn Van Deynhoven) 3. Giuseppe Ottaviani ft Betsie Larkin - Toys (on air mix) 4. John O'Callaghan Ft Sarah Howelss - Find Yourself (Cosmic Gate remix) 5.Giuseppe Ottaviani - Earthbeat (original mix) 6.Talla 2XLC Ft Skye - Rise (Photographer Remix) 7. John O'Callaghan & Giuseppe Ottavinai - Ride the wave 8.Gareth emery ft Lucy Saunders - Sanctuary 9. Paul Oakenfold - Full Moon Party 10. Dash Berlin - Tills the sky falls down (arctic moon remix) Make sure to hit us up on facebook or twitter and let us know what you thought. Have you joined our FaceBook Group? Sydney Trance

[00:00] miss nine ft kyler england- stranger (dohr and mangold rmx) [04:05] shato and paul rockseek- found you [07:31] alexander popov ft kyler england- my world [12:54] boom jinx,maor levi ft ashley tomberlin- when you loved me  [17:17] john ocallaghan and full tilt ft karen kelly- breathe [24:06] tydi and maison and dragen ft toni nielson- walk on water [29:22] super8 and tab- l.a. {bigdirty tune of the now} [33:54] myon and shane 54 ft aruna- lights (club mix) [39:10] andrew rayel ft jano- how do i know [46:07] andy moor ft betsie larkin- love again (andrew rayel rmx) [50:46] above and beyond- walter white [54:46] beat service ft neev kennedy- not this time [60:41] estiva- smiley smilesworth [64:24] tritonal ft cristina soto- piercing quiet (super8 and tab rmx) [70:35] tydi ft sarah howells- when i go (arnej rmx) Been a few months, but I got the itch again thanks to Above and Beyond.  NCM 031 coming straight at ya from a suburb of Boston, called my house.  Just wanted to throw on some fresh sing along head nodding music to start your summer off.  Was totally feeling this when I mixed it and I hope you do too.  I missed mixing something and it just felt like something was missing from my life.  Now I have some fresh stuff to listen to while studying over the summer- bigdirty is a college student now and hanging out with 18 to 22 year olds can put the young back in ya.  Probably my mentality anyway.  This one starts and explosion in your face from the get-go so beware.  I hope ya love this one people and I will try not to be a stranger to the mix again. Get interactive with the night club musical Facebook page is available at http://www.facebook.com/nightclubmusical  Stay up to date with the latest vocal trance tunes when or prior to their release. Feel free to upload your own too. As always listen to this LOUD. 

Faia and Aisu deliver a bi-weekly audio journey showcasing the world of dance music. Experience the elements.Track list 1. Dead C.A.T Bounce, Emily Underhill - Nothing To Say [Original Mix] 2. Bjorn Akesson - Gunsmoke [Original Mix] 3. Sydney Blu, JD & Betsie Larkin - Nightlight [Original Mix] 4. MEM - Flatline [Original Mix] 5. Armin Van Buuren feat. Fiora - Waiting For The Night [Clinton VanSciver Extended Mix] 6. Timmy Trumpet - Infinity [Royaal & Venuto Vs Audiophreakz Remix] 7. Spencer & Hill - Smackdown [Original Mix] 8. Dan Stone - Mantra [Johnny Yono Remix] 9. Juventa - Bitsmash [Original Mix] 10. Ferry Corsten, Betsie Larkin - Stars [Roger Shah Pumpin' Island Remix] 11. Gabriel & Dresden, Betsie Larkin - Play It Back [Ken Loi Remix]

Jill Krysinski and Betsie Weisse both hold Masters Degrees in Education, and firmly believe that all kids should be educated on environmental issues, starting in pre-school. Jill is a high school science teacher who has won awards from the Earth Day Network and the National Environmental Education Foundation. Her science club has established a bus tour – run on biodiesel the kids help create – in which high school students travel to various elementary and middle schools to teach younger kids about environmental issues. Betsie is a second grade teacher, and has been Jill's best friend from college. They have recently teamed up to create a series of books aimed at kids from pre-school through third grade on topics like recycling and energy conservation. Tune in to learn more about their books, their mission, and how you can get involved

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a sermon on Luke 17:11-19. The sermon focuses on thankfulness to God and the sin of thanklessness. - Sermon Transcript - I stand before you today a thankful man. I love that hymn we sang earlier. It characterizes my heart. This morning, my heart is filled with thankfulness. Isn't that a great hymn? And being able to say those things to God through faith in Jesus Christ. And if your heart isn't filled with thankfulness right now, it's my goal that at the end of our time today, it will be, that your heart will be overflowing with thankfulness to Almighty God. Even if you walked in here this morning unregenerate, you don't know Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Still, my prayer for you is that your heart would be filled with thankfulness, having found the Savior today, and that you would trust in Jesus Christ and you would find forgiveness of sins, and then a fountain would be opened in your heart of thankfulness that will last for all eternity. So I'm taking a break from our series in Matthew. I felt led by God today to just preach a single sermon on thankfulness. We just passed a kind of an ambivalent holiday in our secular society—Thanksgiving. It was a number of years ago, I was watching a football game on Turkey Day, they call it, you know. And the commentator, the color commentator, and the play by play guy were wrestling just with the whole Thanksgiving thing, didn't seem to know who to thank. They were aware of the fact that you needed to thank someone, and they came up with the idea that we should be thanking each other for all the ways that we bless each other in our lives. And I'm thinking, "Oh my goodness." Even worse was one of those revisionist histories of Plymouth Plantation in which some revisionist historian was saying that the pilgrims got together to thank the Wampanoag Indians for all the help they had given them over the previous year. Now, I don't deny that they probably expressed gratitude to them as they did probably to each other, and that's appropriate to do, but that's not why they gathered. Now, these are the people that sank down on their knees in the wet sand in December 1620, after they survived the rough passage across the North Atlantic and gave thanks to Almighty God that they were even alive. And then a year later, the same thing that they had survived and now there was a good harvest to sustain them. So they knew who to thank and so do you, don't you? I hope you do. We thank God for everything. All thanks be to God who saved us and loved us. Do we thank God, though, as much as we should? What should we thank God for? Well, what does the scripture say? In Ephesians 5:20, it says, "Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." So we should thank God for everything. Well, when should I thank God? Well, Ephesians just told us always, but there's another verse as well. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 says, "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." So we should be thanking God for everything and always. "We thank God for everything. All thanks be to God who saved us and loved us. Do we thank God, though, as much as we should?" But you may struggle with that, you may think, "Should I really thank God for everything?" I came across a story a number of years ago about Corrie Ten Boom, who with her sister Betsie and her father were arrested by the Nazis. They were Dutch, and they were harboring Jewish fugitives, and they were arrested for that, and they were put into the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, one of the worst concentration camps in all of Germany, and it was a devastating trial in their lives and they struggled with it. There were all kinds of physical issues. Corrie and Betsie were in the woman's compound. That area was so infested with lice and fleas that as soon as you walked into the structure, they would swarm on you and begin to bite you. It was absolutely disgusting. It was a rough place, a place of physical torture, place of death, as they well knew. They would labor long hours for nothing. Occasionally care packages would come and the women would fight like wild beasts to get whatever was inside that. It was a brutal life and very, very difficult, and Betsie was constantly urging Corrie to give thanks to God, to be thankful. Just continually thank God for everything. And Corrie was having a hard time. She was depressed. She was struggling with her attitude, as well you can imagine, and she said, "One thing I will never thank God for are the fleas." And Betsie said, "Corrie, you should even thank God for the fleas. Even for the fleas." Well, they had smuggled somehow a Bible in there, and these women were courageously having Bible studies within their dorm area, and they were risking their lives because they would be executed if they were found with a Bible and having these Bible studies. So they're very timid and very quiet about it, but the longer it went on, they noticed that they were never bothered by the guards at all. As a matter of fact, the guards never came into the women's area. And one day Betsie came with great excitement to Corrie and said, "I want you to know I've finally discovered the reason why the guards never come in here, the reason is, and I overheard the guard saying, it's the fleas, Corrie. They don't want to get bitten with the fleas, so thank God for the fleas." And from then on, she did, she thank God for the fleas. It gave them an opportunity to have a ministry in the name of Jesus Christ in one of the darkest places on the face of the Earth, maybe in all history, a Nazi concentration camp, and it was the fleas that God used to carve out a place of peace where they could do that ministry. So we should be thanking God for everything. And if we should thank God for the fleas, how much more for those things that are counted by everyone to be blessings? Everyone knows that they're blessings. We should be, above all people, the most thankful, but as I look in my heart, I don't find that attitude dominating all the time, not like it should. I don't find my heart as thankful as it should be, and so they say that you preach the best sermons that you preach to yourself. So I'm just going to preach to myself, and if you all want to listen, that's fine, but I went to Luke 17 because I found there the issue of both thankfulness and thanklessness, and I thought it would be a good sermon to preach to myself, okay? So I'm going to preach this to myself, and as they say, "If the shoe fits, then wear it," alright? I. Compelled to Thankfulness I want to begin by this issue of thankfulness, speaking positively, that we are compelled to thankfulness Now we have this account before us of these 10 lepers, and I believe the foundation of thankfulness is a true appraisal of our desperate condition apart from Christ. That we are desperately needy and we need Jesus now. Leprosy is a good picture of that. It's a tragic illness. And I would say of the ancient illnesses that we know, the most feared above all. They feared this one. This leprosy, it attacks the nerves, it reduces sensitivity, it produces degeneration of cells. Leprosy can be progressive, causing permanent damage to the skin and nerves, and limbs and eyes. Skin lesions, grotesque, are the primary external symptoms, and for Jews in particular, it was devastating. Not only do they have the physical damage caused by this, but because of the great fear of contagion, of infectious disease, and because of the law of Moses, they were cut off spiritually from their people. They were permanently unclean, and so they could not worship in the temple. They could not take part with their families. They were cut off from society. It was a totally desperate situation, and friends, that's where we find the tap root of true thankfulness. Just know how desperate you are apart from Jesus, and combine that with how lavishly you've been provided for in Jesus, and then you have all the ground for thankfulness you'll ever need. You'll be compelled to thankfulness. "Just know how desperate you are apart from Jesus, and combine that with how lavishly you've been provided for in Jesus, and then you have all the ground for thankfulness you'll ever need. You'll be compelled to thankfulness." I believe that lepers are a picture of ourselves in our sin. I think that all of Jesus's miracles to some degree are really spiritual analogies. They are like living parables. Yes. They display His power and his deity. But he could have done that to anyone any number of ways. He could have done celestial portents, all kinds of things. Instead, he goes to the healings, and I think it's because it just shows us in our sin apart from God, we are like spiritual lepers. We're outcast, excluded, unclean, grotesque. The problem is we don't really believe that. We look with the eyes of flesh and we think that we're pretty good, generally fine, need a little touch up here and there, but generally okay, and I think that's why we're not as thankful as we should be. But this chapter, Luke 17, gives a plain demonstration of the healing power of Jesus Christ. Jesus is traveling along the border between Samaria and Galilee, and he comes upon this interesting group of 10 lepers. Again, they are outcast, they're unable to mingle in society, and for that reason, societal barriers have been broken down. You've got at least one Samaritan together with these Jews. They don't care, they're all outcasts, and they find themselves desperately needy, and they stand at a distance as they were required to do—a physical reason to protect the uninfected community and also spiritual reason, as I said from the Law of Moses. They were unable to be close but had to cry out unclean, but it's also again a picture of ourselves spiritually. Says this in Ephesians 2: 12-13, "Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who are once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ." Oh, that's the ground of our thankfulness. So here are these lepers and they're standing off at a distance, and they're crying aloud to Jesus begging for mercy. Look at verse 13, in Luke 17, "Jesus Master, have pity on us." Now, pity or compassion is the most common emotional state ascribed to Jesus Christ. He was a very emotional man. He had a full emotional life, but the most common emotion was compassion. I think that's why He was called the Man of Sorrows and familiar with suffering. He took on our sorrows, he took on our sufferings in and of himself, the happiest of beings, rich beyond imagination, powerful beyond imagination, sitting at the right hand of God, but he came to earth to take on our miseries, and he was compassionate. And so they're asking for mercy; they're asking for compassion. And so Jesus, moved by compassion, gives them a command, “Go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony to them.” You know, it's an interesting thing as he commands this, that they go and offer a sacrifice for cleansing that hadn't happened when he gave the command, and it's a bit of a faith test as they're supposed to turn and just start to walk, but all 10 of them do. And so they begin walking, and the power of Christ comes silently in the text, so you don't even see it. It just suddenly happens in between this verse and that, but suddenly one of them notices as he's walking that he's been cured, his flesh has been renewed, he's healed, he's cleansed, and he's immediately overwhelmed with emotion, cries out. Look at verses 15-16, "One of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice; he threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him ­– and he was a Samaritan." Now he knows that he's healed, but he also knows something else that healing came through a person, it was relational, there was an individual responsible for it. Like the leper, our healing has been mediated to us through the person of Jesus Christ. We owe Him our thanks. We ought to thank him. And the leper knew that. And so he comes back relationally. Didn't your mom teach you this when somebody gives you something, come back and say, "Thank you"? Well, this Samaritan apparently had a good mom that taught him these things. I don't know about the other nine, we'll get to those in a moment, but this one knows that this healing has come to him through a person, and you thank people for things that they do. Our healing has not come to us impersonally, it's not come from a medicine bottle, it's not come from a vending machine. Now, our cleansing, our spiritual healing came when a person named Jesus Christ stood in our place and took our lashing and took our condemnation, our sentence of judgments, and took our ridicule and our spittings, and our crown of thorns, and took our nails and took our death on himself. Jesus died in our place. He suffered under the wrath of God. He shed his blood, and he died for us, that we might have forgiveness of sins. Are you trusting in him today? Do you know him as your Lord and Savior today? I could be speaking in a crowd this large to many who have never trusted in Christ, who are here in an unregenerate state, and you're in great danger. You may not know that you're in great danger, but the Scripture testifies that you're in great danger. Jesus' sufferings are a picture of that, so we have a sense of what we deserve for our sin. We deserve hell, and Jesus came that we might not have to suffer, that there would be no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Oh, I ask you, trust in him. I already said openly what my hope was for you, that you would walk out of this place today with a heart filled with thankfulness to Jesus Christ. Trust in him. You don't even need to do any good works. You don't need to go anywhere. You can just sit there in your pew and listen to the Gospel. Jesus died for you. Call on the name of the Lord, and you will be saved. Trust in him, and your sins will be forgiven. Well, that's the ground of my thankfulness, and my ground, my reason for thankfulness is far greater than the Samaritan's. I'm not saying he's not going to be saved or his faith didn't also bring him spiritual salvation. I'm just talking about his physical healing. His body was cleansed of a certain disease. He was, as a result of that, allowed to come back into human society and to go on with his normal life as a Samaritan. What did we receive, brothers and sisters? We received full forgiveness of all of our sins, past, present, and future. We are welcomed by Almighty God. We have a place waiting for us in the new heaven, the new earth. We will sit at table with Jesus Christ. Our souls have been cleansed of sin. We're not slaves of sin anymore. We can tell sin to take a hike authoritatively the rest of our lives, and it'll do so. You watch and see. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. You've been given that authority. Oh, and a thousand other spiritual blessings. Our reason for thankfulness is infinitely greater than the Samaritan's, but he did what he was supposed to do. He went back and said thank you to Jesus. Have you done that? Do you do it every day? II.Convicted of Thanklessness (Luke 17:17-18) So I come to the second part of this sermon convicted, and that is convicted of thanklessness. There is a problem of thanklessness right in the text. The parable or the story, sorry, ends on a distressing note—the problem of thanklessness. Look at verses 17-18, “Jesus asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" Now, why didn't it occur to the other nine to turn back and give Jesus thanks for what he'd done? Why the thanklessness? Could it be the same root is always the same root, is all of our problem – self-centeredness? "Look at me, I'm cleansed, I'm healed. I can go back and be with my family. I am happy. I'm going to go show them myself to the priest. I am I am, I am." Focused on his own individual situation. Forgets about the one who gave it to him. And so off they go, forgetful. Perhaps at a deeper level, we do not thank God because we think we deserve the blessings that he's lavished on us. By this way of thinking, any adverse problem, anything that causes us difficulty is an aberration, something noteworthy. We talk about it much. It's called complaining. And we don't expect them, like there's some strange thing that's come in our life. We expect the good; we're shocked by the bad. The good things we get, we feel that we've earned them or deserve them in some way, and we forget how totally dependent we are on God for life and breath and health and everything else. I know it happens to me. I forget that we depend on God to send the rain to the farms, so that the vegetables and the animals that we eat for food can grow and survive. A farmer knows. I'm not saying every farmer is a believer in Christ. I'm just saying they know that they're dependent on forces they can't control. But we think, we surmise that there's a constant stream of food supply to Kroger and Food Lion and all that. We don't need to worry; it's always going to be there. And so we run under the problem in Deuteronomy 8, when God said to Moses, “Beware, when you enter the Promised Land and you begin to eat food, a harvest that you didn't plant and drink from vineyards you didn't plant and live in homes you didn't grow, that you will forget God and think that you deserved it all.” I think that's a danger for American Christians. I think that may be one of the reasons we don't give thanks. "We expect the good; we're shocked by the bad. The good things we get, we feel that we've earned them or deserve them in some way, and we forget how totally dependent we are on God for life and breath and health and everything else." Now, thanklessness, I think is a great sin. It's a greater sin than we think it is, and a measure of that is the prominence that it plays in Romans 1-3. Now, in those chapters, the Apostle Paul is laying the groundwork for the universality of sin. Everybody has sinned. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Culmination statement in Romans 3:23, there is no one righteous, no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away. Universality of sin, Romans 1-3, so that we need a savior. But right at the beginning of that whole section, it says in Romans 1:21, "For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened." They should have thanked God for his physical creation. They should have thanked God for his eternal quality, for his invisible nature. They should have been thanking God, but they didn't. It's a great sin, thanklessness. We do not love God. We do not think about God. We do not cherish God as we ought to, and apart from Christ, people live lives ignorant of all of his many blessings and hardly ever think of him at all, and we as Christians, sadly, have the same habits of thanklessness. We just forget. Jesus stands over this thankful Samaritan, wondering about the rest of them. "Were not 10 healed? Now where are the other nine?" Does He really notice that kind of thing? Is he that meticulous in his observation of what is given and what is not given? Oh yes, he is. You remember when he's watching that elderly widow putting in the two copper coins, he's watching what's put in. He's watching still, friends. He's still noting what gets put in and what doesn't, and He's paying attention to who runs back and throws themselves down at his feet and says, "Thank you, Jesus, thank you, thank you for what you've given me." It matters, he notices it. And so the thanklessness is exposed. Now, what do we mean by thanklessness? How does it reveal itself in everyday life? Well, let's start with grumbling and complaining. I've already mentioned it. Do you ever do it? I'll confess that I do it from time to time. It's called anti-worship. You know what I'm saying? It's the opposite of worship. Instead of praising God, you're complaining about some earthly circumstance. And whenever you complain, you're exposing a root thanklessness in your heart. Whenever you speak words of murmuring against God, you're displaying a lack of thankfulness. So also, whenever you covet the blessings given to another person, when you see their happiness, their successes, their honors, their possessions, and you're jealous of them, you are betraying a root thanklessness in your heart for the things God has given you. We also display ingratitude in our pride, whenever we boast about our achievements or our possessions or anything that God's given us. We forget a basic rule in Scripture. Corinthians put it very plainly, "What do you have that you didn't receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?" I'm going to ask a different question. If you did receive it, why don't you thank him for it? Is there anything in your life you have you didn't receive, and if you did receive it, then why don't you go and thank him for it? There's two different ways to hear that, by the way. You could hear it in a condemning, convicting sort of way. "Why don't you do it?" Or more of a suggestion for the future, "Why don't you go give thanks to God?" Let's hear it that way, alright? Because God is forward-looking, and so therefore, I'm brought to the need for repentance. I want to repent from this sin. I want to give thanks. I don't want to be forgetful. You know how it is, you wake up in the morning, you do forget to have your quiet time, you forget to thank God that you're just alive that day. You get in the car and you forget to thank God that you have a car. You arrive at your destination, forget to thank God that you got there safely. You go to the bank and deposit your paycheck and forget to thank God that you have a job and you have that money so that your basic needs, some of your wants are met, and you have some money to give to others to the needy. Forget to thank God for these things. Pass another birthday, forget to thank God that he gave you another year. We're self-centered, thankless throughout the day. Even excessive grief during trials can show thanklessness. We should be thanking God for the fleas. We should be thanking God for the trials, because by doing that, we are praising God who gave them to us. The trials, we need them. "Count it pure joy," said James. We should be thanking God for these trials. And instead, we lament bitterly, and I'm not saying it's wrong for us to grieve over the loss of a loved one, I think we should. I'm just mindful of, for example, the funeral sermon that George Muller preached for his wife, his beloved wife, his partner in ministry. He cherished that woman, and he got to preach her funeral sermon. That's hard to do, to minister the Gospel, and he got up and preached her funeral sermon in his text with Psalm 119:68, "You are good and do good." And the text came down in three parts, three-part sermon. "The Lord was good and did good first in giving her to me to begin with, and secondly, in leaving her so long to be with me all those many years, and third, the Lord was good and did good in taking her from me to be with him in heaven." Now, that's a thankful sermon, isn't it? In the midst of a profound grief, he's thanking God for all of those things. That is convicting to me. It trains me to learn how to bear up under suffering and trial with a thankful heart. And so, therefore, I think the text is calling all of us to repent. Don't judge those nine that ran off happily to the priests. Find yourself there, that's all. Let Jesus' question search your heart. "Were not 10, where were the other nine?" I wonder if there's almost a heavenly arithmetic here, that I give thanks to God for nine-tenths of the blessing or one-tenth of the blessing and I don't for nine-tenths, I wonder if that's what it is. I don't even know if I make it to 10%, that I thank God for 10% of the blessings. So I'm convicted of thanklessness. We're also commanded to thankfulness. This text isn't just giving us an interesting story saying, "Oh, isn't it nice that the one came back?" There's a hidden command here that we ought to thank Jesus for what he's done. III. Commanded to Thankfulness But we don't need hidden commands, we are commanded to be thankful in many places in Scripture, many, many places, we are commanded to give thanks. Now it starts with a heart of thankfulness. And out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. You say, "Thank you God for," such and such. But it starts in the heart. You recognize that you're a sinner saved by grace. You recognize you don't deserve any good thing, and then you start to see what God has given you, and it just starts to move. And after a while, you just can't help yourself. You're going to say, "Thank you God for these blessings." So what are these commands? Well, 1 Thessalonians 5:18 I already quoted. It's right there in your outline, "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." I don't think it could be any plainer, friends. Give thanks in all circumstances. Or this one, Hebrews 12:28-29 says, "Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire." You're receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Every physical blessing you have in your life can be shaken, can be taken. But we are receiving a kingdom that can never be shaken or taken. It's a gift of God. It's an eternal place, the new heavens and new Earth. We're receiving it as a gift by grace, so we ought to be thankful, says the text, and if we are thankful in that way, that's what the word "so" means, so worship God acceptably. That's acceptable worship if we're thankful to God for the kingdom were receiving. Oh, give thanks to Him. Or this one, Psalm 107:1, "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures forever." Colossians 3:17, "Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." It covers every moment of your life, your prayer life, [Philippians 4:6] "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God." This is how we should pray. This is how we should work, and this is how we should live. "Every physical blessing you have in your life can be shaken, can be taken. But we are receiving a kingdom that can never be shaken or taken. It's a gift of God. " IV. The Consummation of Thankfulness Now, what is the consummation of thankfulness? When and where will we finally be consumed in thankfulness? Well, you know the answer. That's in the heavenly realms, right now, that's what they're doing up there. The spirits of righteous men made perfect. What are they doing? They're on their faces giving thanks to Christ. What are the 24 elders doing? What are the living creatures doing? What are the angels doing? It's just an effusion of thankfulness. Constantly thanking God for who he is and for what he has done, the greatness of their God. They see it so clearly. Revelation 4:8-10 says, "Day and night they never stop saying, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.' Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne and who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and they worship Him, who lives forever and ever." They give him thanks and praise. And in the future, the new heaven, the new Earth, there's going to be the assemblage of people from every tribe and language and people and nation standing around the throne, and they'll be dressed in white robes representing their purity through faith in Christ. And they're going to be there, giving thanks to Christ. Listen to Revelation 7:11-12 says, "All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and glory and power and strength be to our God forever and ever." And that countless multitude dressed in white was joining them in that thanksgiving. That's where we're headed, friends. Oh, we'll be cured of thanklessness then. We will be outside of ourselves, no longer self-focused. We will see what Jesus did, we will see how much he deserves our thanks and praise, and we'll never stop thanking him and giving him praise. V. Content of Thankfulness Well, what is the content of our thankfulness? What should you say? What do we say? I want to thank God. What should I thank God for? Well, there's just so much. We already learned in Ephesians 5:20, we should be giving thanks for everything. So that's a start, isn't it? But you might say, "That's a little vague – everything?" Well, I mean, just try it. If you're really blank, just look around the room and start praising God, but I mean get beyond the furniture, you know the chair, the carpet, my shoe, my computer. Alright, but yes, you can thank God for all those material possessions, but you've been trained better than that theologically. Start lifting your eyes, start ascending in your mind to spiritual blessings. As it says in Psalm 103:2, "Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits." So I included in your bulletin this morning, a Thanksgiving sheet that I did some time ago, one page front and back of really small type, which I'm having a harder and harder time reading. Thank God I'm having a harder and harder time reading it. But to thank God for Walmart and $7.95 glasses that you know, they feed my glasses habit. I'm addicted to Walmart glasses, I buy them every time I go. I just keep losing them, and then they keep popping up again, thanks be to God. All kinds of things to say thank you to God, but there it is. I broke it into categories—thanking God for himself. Start there. Thank God for who he is, his own nature. Thank God for his holiness, that God is perfectly separated from all evil and high above all His creation. Thank God for his immutability, that He never changes. Thank God for his love of righteousness and his hatred of wickedness, that he's that kind of God. Thank God that he has the power to accomplish all his holy will and that there's no power that can stand against Him. Thank God for all of those things. Thank God for his eternal plan, that before the foundation of the world, he crafted a plan that includes your personal salvation, and nothing's going to stop that. Thank God for that. Thank God that nothing surprises him. There's no twist or turns in the road that He didn't foresee or calculate. Thank God for his eternal plan. Thank God for his mighty acts in history. Let's start with creation. God spoke and they came into being, all the physical things of the world—the sun, the moon, and the stars, this beautiful planet we live on with all of its creation. Thank God for each one of those things. He made each one of them by his mighty power in his wisdom. Thank God also for those special acts of salvation in history, what we call redemptive history, how he rescued Noah in the flood, and how he called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans, and he made a promise to him that through his offspring, all peoples on Earth will be blessed. And thank God that he rescued the Israelites out of bondage by Moses and by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and how he made the water wall up on the right hand and the left. Thank God for those things. He's the same God now. He's not going to do that today, I don't think. He's free to do anything he wants, but he did it then, and he's the same God. Thank him for doing it. Thank God for all of these mighty acts in redemptive history. Thank God for Jesus Christ, that God sent his only begotten Son, born of a virgin, who lived a sinless life, who did great miracles like the one in our text today, to display his compassion and his power. Who taught great things such that they said, "No one ever spoke like this man." Great teaching, Sermon on the Mount, the parables, all the things he taught. But especially that as I've already told you, he died in our place, our sinless substitute. Taking on the wrath of God, he died, he shed his blood. Thank God for all of that. Don't let a day, don't let an hour go by, where you don't say, "Thank you, Jesus, for Calvary. Thank you for shedding your blood. Thank you that I'm forgiven today because of you." The most courageous act in history in Gethsemane, "Father, if it's possible, let this cup be taken from me, yet not as I will, but as you will." He drank that cup. The most courageous decision ever. Thank him for it. It's right to give him thanks. Thank him for his mighty resurrection and his promise, "Because I live, you also will live." Thank God for your future, thank God for your future in Christ. Thank God for the Holy Spirit, the indwelling Spirit. Is what I'm saying to you making any sense to you? Do you feel anything moving inside? Do you want to give him thanks? Well, then, the Spirit is at work in you. Is the scripture making sense to you? The Spirit's at work illuminating his truth. It's because of the Spirit that you're a Christian today, and it's because of the sovereign activity of the Spirit, that new brothers and sisters in Christ are being added to the church all the time. Praise God for it, the mighty power of the Spirit, and thank God that the indwelling spirit is just a deposit guaranteeing our full inheritance in the future. Thank God for the Holy Spirit. Secondly, you can thank God for his spiritual blessings. I broke these into two categories, those you have now, already, and those you don't have yet. And you can thank God for both. Alright, thank God for the spiritual blessing you already have for the Bible. Thank Him that you have this book that speaks the truth, and that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you can understand what he says. Thank God for our local church. Thank God for spiritual gifts. Thank God for brothers and sisters in Christ who watch over one another in brotherly love in your life. Thank God for all of those things, spiritual blessings you already have, and thank God for those spiritual blessings you don't have yet. That's most of them friends. Most of them are in the future. Your best days are yet to come. Thank him for that. Thank God for the bodily resurrection. You're going to have a resurrection body free from any disease, or pain, any decay. Thank God for that. Thank God for your future. And the new heaven and new earth. I can scarcely imagine what it's going to be like. And then you've got your temporal blessings. Yes, you should thank God for them. No, they're not as significant as those spiritual and eternal blessings that we have, but they are significant. So thank God for his provision for your bodies, for the health that you have, for your daily food, for the physical beauty of the earth. Thank God for each of these things. Thank God for your families. For marriage, husband and wife relationship, for a sustaining Christian marriages through forgiveness and love and renewal by the Spirit. Thank God for children, which I wrote marvelous, fascinating, challenging, and rewarding gifts of God. Amen. Amen and Amen. A gift of God, thank God for it. I just love what happens to the faces of people when children walk in and they'll just start to smile. Oh it's sweet, isn't it? That's a gift of God. Thank God for it. And thank God for society, that we live in America. It's a blessed country, and the blessings have come from God. We can't take credit for them. We ought to thank God for them, and thank God for the order and the peace of our society. And yes, there are problems, of course, there are problems. But thank God for the blessings, that's all. And thank God for the desire of your heart. God's given you more than you can possibly imagine. Many, many things that you love that are part of your life. Thank God for each one. VI.Committed to Thankfulness Finally, I just want to urge you to be committed to thankfulness. Make this a habit. If you don't like this sheet, I don't know how you could not like it, but if you don't like it, make your own. Okay? What kind of person wouldn't like that sheet? Come and talk to me. You need help, all right? But if you don't like the sheet I made, then make your own, okay? Make your own, but use it, just focus every day. It's a commitment. Psalm 7:17, "I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness." It's the decision you make. Psalm 56:12, "I am under vows to you, O God, I will present my thank offerings to you." You just make a commitment. I made a promise to say thank you to God every day. I'm going to do it. So just, I urge you, practically get up in the morning, begin your day on your knees thanking God that you're alive, that you're a Christian, that you have forgiveness of sin. Start there. Have your quiet time saturated with thankfulness. Then move on through your day looking for ways to thank God. During your quiet time, scour the scriptures for things you can thank God for, just find them. Blessings flowing with a heart of thankfulness, and especially work on your mouth. Restrain your speech life when tempted to complain, then thank God instead. When tempted to boast, thank God instead. When tempted to covet, thank God instead. When tempted to murmur about the trials you're going through, however bitter and deep, thank God for them instead. They are fitting you for heaven. Thank God. Close with me in prayer. "When tempted to boast, thank God instead. When tempted to covet, thank God instead. When tempted to murmur about the trials you're going through, however bitter and deep, thank God for them instead. They are fitting you for heaven. Thank God." Father, I thank you for this time that we've had to be together. Thank you for the Word of God. Thank you for the way it tells us the truth. Father, make us mindful of our blessings. Make us thankful Lord, and we can ask this, Lord, because every disposition of our own hearts that's gracious and godly and good has come to us from you, so we thank you for that. Lord work in us the spirit of thankfulness. I pray that when unbelievers or outsiders, non-church members come in, they would just say, "This is a thankful place. It's a happy place. The people just are constantly saying, 'Thank you,' to God for his many blessings." I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.