Psalms 146: 7,8 who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.

The Psalmist is prophetically describing the ministry of Jesus. When Jesus stood up in the temple, he quoted from Isa 61:1 “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed and qualified me to preach the Gospel of good tidings to the meek, the poor, and afflicted; He has sent me to bind up and heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the [physical and spiritual] captives and the opening of the prison and of the eyes to those who are bound…”

These verses provide the HOPE for those who are oppressed, hungry, imprisoned and blind. The LORD is the rescuer, provider and healer of all.

From the world’s perspective, being a white male, living in America, possessing a college education and living in a home whose mortgage is owned by a bank; I am neither oppressed, hungry, a prisoner or blind. Yet from a spiritual perspective, I AM oppressed by the evil one and by sin. I AM hungry for righteousness. I have been and continue to fight against being a slave to ‘various passions and pleasures’, particularly lust. Like Samson, I fight the spiritual blindness brought on by lust. There always seems to be a multi-dimensionality to all of the Scriptures.

The impoverishment and needs of my soul can only be met through the saving, rescuing, healing touch of Christ in my life. The Gospel of Jesus sets my soul free. Jesus has fulfilled the requirements of the law and in Him; I have been set free. Jesus said that soul nourishment is from Him. He promises that by coming to Him, I will never hunger and thirst again. Paul prayed that the eyes of my heart would be open…

Whether spiritually or physically impoverished and needy, the divine answer is to be found in Jesus.

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Psalms 146: 5 Happy is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose HOPE is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever

“…Who keeps faith forever…” This is an interesting phrase. A search of 15 other translations has a number of different expressions. They range from: “He is faithful forever”; “He is true”; “He is loyal forever”; and “He always keeps His word”; and “His promises are true forever”.

The truth is this. God is trustworthy. He says what He means and means what He says. Psalms 145 says, “The Lord is faithful in all His words…” Rom 3:3 says, “What if some were unfaithful, does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means!!!”

I find this to be especially comforting. When I sin and blow it, my first thought is this. Will God forgive me? Can I come back into fellowship with Him? Immediately a battle starts taking place in my mind and thoughts. Our adversary Satan immediately says, “NO, you have just exceeded your lifetime portion of grace and forgiveness. God is so sick and tired of your sinning that you may as well pack it in and quit. Just give up, you know you will sin again…”

While this is going on, another voice, the inner voice of the Holy Spirit brings to mind the precious Scriptures, the unfailing, true Truth.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning, great is Thy faithfulness.” (Lam 3:22,23) He brings to mind 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness…” The Spirit brings to mind James 5:16 “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effect.”

Praise God that He is trustworthy and faithful. Praise God that my consistency or lack thereof has NO bearing on His character. I am fickle. He is constant. “He keeps faith forever…”

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Heb 3:13 Encourage one another every day, as long as it is called today, lest none of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin

Recently, a beautiful, young, military wife, married for three years with one baby, called and talked with me about her marriage. She had ‘caught’ her husband looking at porn on the family computer. It was NOT the first time. In their last communications, he expressed hesitancy about their relationship, even using the ‘D’ word for divorce! She was blind-sided and shocked. In the course of listening to her pain, through her tears she said, “He is not the same man I married. How could he even think about abandoning us? How could he be so ‘hard’?”
The wife of a senior officer called and wanted a meeting with my wife and I. She sounded desperate and needed someone to talk to. She had found the computer history and secret files that her husband had placed on their computer. It was full of porn. He denied it, lying to her. He was mad that he had been discovered. He too used the “D” word. In listening to her pain and the anguish of soul, she said, “He is not the same man I married. I would have NEVER guessed that this was going on in his life. How could he abandon our children and me? How could he be so ‘hard’?”
Both cases are heart breaking. In both cases, the wives were shocked and confused. Sadly, in both cases, today’s verse applies. The sad but clear truth is that SIN HARDENS the heart. It always has and always will. The one involved in sin may be enjoying the ‘fleeting pleasures of sin for a season’, and may think that they can successfully hide their sin. But ‘God is not mocked, whatsoever a man sows, he also reaps’. One of the natural consequences or fruit of sin is a ‘hard heart’.
We desperately need each other. We need buddies who love us enough to tell us the truth. We need buddies who will pray for us and who will be uncompromising when it comes to sin. We need buddies that we can confess our sins to and who will pray for us. The lack of buddies will lead to comfortableness with sin. The results of this are deadly: broken marriages, fatherless children, and a breakdown of families leading to further deterioration of the culture.

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Billy Graham on Purity….

These quotes are from a Billy Graham evangelistic crusade in 1957. His words are timeless. There is a ‘fire in his belly’ and you have probably never heard Billy speak like you hear in this message….

“And above all discipline your mind… “Thou dost keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee because he trusts in Thee…” Isa 26:3…

A lot of you young men and women have a difficult time with your thoughts… of course you do…

In this day when you cannot go to a magazine stand without blushing to buy a newspaper… In this day, in this country, everything is sex, sex, sex… there is nothing wrong with sex… in the right place, it is God ordained, God given, but we have gone sex mad…

We have taught that morals are relative, that there are no absolutes, and Christians are caught up in the rush…

One Christian girl wrote, “I have forgotten even how to blush…”

There is only one control for your sex impulses and if you lose the battle of the sex impulses, then you have lost the battle of the Christian life…

And at your age, this is a tremendous possibility in your Christian life, because this is your creative force, this is your creative power…

And if it is given to Christ and Christ becomes the master, and Christ becomes the Lord, then you can take the world for Christ.

But if you lose at that point, then you have lost…

I tell you, that I know… I know that Jesus Christ can give power to live a clean, wholesome life…
I know that he can keep your minds pure, I have experienced it in my own personal experience, seen it the lives of others…

Let him take your mind and nail it to the cross… Take this little muscle in your mouth, your tongue and nail it to the cross…
Job said, “I have made a covenant with my eyes, how shall I look on a maid. Take your eyes and nail them to the cross…
Go through your own bodies and make a list, give all your parts to God. Nail them on the cross…

Here is the link to listen to the whole message: http://savannahnavs.com/messages/Billy%20Graham%20-%20Commitment.mp3

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Prostitutes and Pizza

I found this article today and found it disturbing, but not surprising. It provides more evidence of the corrosive nature of pornography on our culture. The marriage of the digital world filled with electronic harems found in the world of porn, supercharges the natural, God given sex drive of young males creating a new generation of barbarians. We need to pray for revival…
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The Washington Post
Surprised by teens who order prostitutes as easily as pizza? You shouldn’t be.
By Petula Dvorak, Updated: Monday, September 10, 11:58 AM
No parent should be shocked that five high school football players hired prostitutes while on a road trip to North Carolina last week.
Nor is it especially surprising that the little johns were from football powerhouse DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville. Religion and prestige are rarely shields from temptation and stupidity.
What’s new in this old-as-time story is that today, thanks to smart phones and the nearly complete submersion of the sex trade into the digital swamp, ordering three prostitutes to your hotel room is as easy as ordering a pizza.
This teen boy fantasy is closer to “Weird Science” than “Risky Business.”
“The Internet is the new street corner, and I tell everyone that going down to 14th Street” — the street once renowned for prostitution in the District — “is nothing more than going to your browser now,” said Sgt. Ken Penrod, a vice detective with the Montgomery County Police Department.
The bold step of actually ordering up a prostitute on an iPhone often begins as early as middle school, when legions of boys start downloading porn onto their smartphones.
Remember when the quest for certain issues of National Geographic or the hunt for Uncle Fred’s Playboy stash used to define porn exploration?
Now that the family computer and its Net Nanny aren’t the only way to get online, the access to porn and paid sex is in the palms of our children’s hands, 24/7, giving the “Droid Does” slogan enhanced meaning.
Mobile porn has become so prevalent among teens that there is even a nonprofit group, Fight the New Drug, and a micro-industry of treatment camps aimed at teens who have a crippling addiction to it.
For teens ogling mobile porn on a regular basis, the next logical step is to act out that fantasy and click on the many ads urging viewers to order up live sex.
As horrified parents, how do we stop this?
The 18 chaperones on the trip with the DeMatha team did bed checks at 1:30 a.m. and then again at 4:30 a.m. They were almost as thorough as the Secret Service planning security for a presidential trip. Oh wait, scratch that. TheSecret Service has its own little problem when it comes to this area.
The DeMatha boys evaded the best efforts of their chaperons by placing their order at 5 a.m.
Gonzaga boys’ soccer Coach Scott Waller told The Washington Post he confiscates all laptops and cell phones when the team is on the road.
Get this: When Good Counsel Coach Bob Milloy took 50 football players to Las Vegas for a game, they had 14 coaches, the school athletic director, trainer and strength coach plus two more adults and two cops he hired just for the trip.
If anything happened in Vegas, it stayed there. But maybe the cops were the final defense keeping it legal. Wait, that is legal in parts of Nevada.
The simple fact is, keeping kids from doing what they want is tough.
And an online debate has been raging about the fairness of DeMatha’s punishment — kicking the five boys off the team.
“They’re just teenagers being stupid teenagers. They should be suspended for a week, give them some community service in the school, and the coach should make them run some laps. Another case of the news media sensationalizing everything,” wrote T_Dubb, in the story’s comments.
That reaction mystified folks like Penrod.
“It. Was. Illegal,” he said. It wasn’t just immoral.
If drugs were the issue, the debate about punishment wouldn’t even happen. And there would be no winks, no “boys will be boys” comebacks in online forums.
This isn’t a problem limited to DeMatha or an anomaly in any way. Parents who think their kids would never dream of downloading porn or hiring prostitutes are kidding themselves.
Penrod’s investigators see kids from all over Montgomery County trawling the online prostitution sites. He remembers one kid who got stung in a case involving a sex worker, and police saw his profile pop up on a prostitution site the very next day after he appeared in court.
The problem here isn’t only about limiting access. There are deeper lessons to address.
The illegal purchase of sex, the fact that most American prostitution is a result of human trafficking and the reality that the plastic, bleached and enhanced world of online sex is a myth that twists ideas of human sexuality and relationships need to be discussed here.
Parents simply cannot toss aside online porn as the equivalent of the curiosity they remember.
Porn is everywhere. You click on a link for “Cute Animal Videos” and bam! you get barnyard acts by naked humans (true story — happened to me with the kids on the iPad this summer). Any child of any age with a Nook a Kindle or an iPad can go from Word Search or Angry Birds to graphic, violent, degrading sex videos in just two clicks.
And for older kids, not only are they awash in unrealistic, desensitizing images, but they are constantly being beckoned to take it to the next level, to go live.
Teens whose families don’t have uncomfortable, but honest discussions about sex, porn and prostitution are putting their kids at risk for some very scary consequences.
That sex talk won’t happen once, or twice. It has to happen often, with a lot more detail today.
Deborah Roffman, a sex educator in Maryland for four decades and the author of “Talk to Me First: Everything You Need to Know to Become Your Kids’ ‘Go To Person’ About Sex,” said she talks to parents a lot about the conversations they have with kids. But recently, she has made one ultimatum.
“I rarely say ‘parents must.’ But in the book I just finished, I said parents must talk to children about pornography.”
“You used to have to go to the other side of town to go to the video store. That was a statement by our society. There were a lot of physical barriers. And that’s all gone now, there are no physcial barriers between the child and adult world.”
The DeMatha players betrayed the school’s strict moral code, humiliated their families, undermined their team and put their futures at risk.
We talk to them about saying no to drugs, drinking and texting and driving.
But when it comes to talking about online sex, too many parents clam up.
Those days are over.
Follow me on Twitter at @petulad. To read previous columns, go to washingtonpost.com/dvorak.

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Holy, Holy, Holy

Isa 6:3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

When I read today’s verse, I think of the classic hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy” played with church organs, normally a beat slow and a bit stodgy. For years, this song has played in my head. Being raised Presbyterian, I heard it frequently played in church. I suppose it is natural for me to think that the angels in heaven would be singing this version of “Holy, Holy, Holy” around the throne of God.

David Crowder is one of the most creative Christian songwriters in the business today. He has a new song “After All (HOLY)” that I discovered and have been listening to almost every free moment. My view of what the angels might be singing around the throne has been expanded. The chorus also contains the triad “Holy, Holy, Holy”.

Give it a listen.

Let the lyrics and tune sink into your soul.

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