Some more of the 'beautiful people'!

You know the old saying,'you can't judge a book by it's cover', I think its true.
............................ We all should be so beautiful.........................

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.
Mother Teresa

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
Mother Teresa

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God - the rest will be given.
Mother Teresa

It is a kingly act to assist the fallen.
Mother Teresa

I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I don't know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will NOT ask, How many good things have you done in your life?, rather he will ask, How much LOVE did you put into what you did?
Mother Teresa

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.
Mother Teresa

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.
Mother Teresa

It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.
Mother Teresa

Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them.
Mother Teresa

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.
Mother Teresa

Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love.
Mother Teresa

There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone's house. That says enough.
Mother Teresa

Gandhi /How then shall we live? WWJD?

"Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to freedom for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away. " Mahatma Gandhi 1948

Translation:
WWJD?
What would Jesus do?




In the 20th Century few people lived the gospel as well as a weak and foolish little Hindu man who came to be known as Mahatma, the Great Soul. Gandhi was deeply impressed by the life and teachings of Jesus and would have become a Christian if it were not for all those he met who proclaimed themselves to be Christ's followers.
Mahatma Gandhi lived a simple life of poverty and prayer. He espoused the essential dignity of every human person and lived to serve his fellow man. By his example and his teachings he was victorious by using moral suasion and non-violent protest.
In an ironic twist of history Gandhi won by livin and appealing to the very tenets of Christ's teaching that were supposed to be at the foundation of the greatest Imperial power of all time, the British Empire. He won the moral victory by convincing his followers to turn the other cheek, over and over again but never giving in to injustice and oppression. His life and self sacrifice shamed the 'Christian' nation of England who then gave the Hindu's and Muslims of the subcontinent their independence.


There are a few excellent examples of Christian leaders in our culture and time that can take their place beside this Great Soul, but I do wish there were more.
Perhaps we could find more examples of great souls among those who do not get recognized as leaders but who are faithful in living loving lives in very difficult situations.
Christ is probably more evident and active among those we call little or insignificant. Perhaps that is why some self-appointed, self-annointed leaders in the Christian world may seem lacking in comparison to people like Mahatma Gandhi.

In Honour of My First Real Response

Today is a Red Letter Day for this Red Letter Christian.

I have just recieved my first real (non-direct family member) comment in response to this blog.

What a feeling, what a day!

Thank You Mr or Mrs. or Ms. or Miss Anon.

In honour of this auspicious occasion I am celebrating by sharing the Next Installment
of everyone's favourite........................................


PIG and RAT!

so hang to your hats here they come..........................



(Tap on image to enlarge picture.)

Word Of Faith (a Modern Heresy) Anti-Selection and the Disabled

original artwork by David Watson (talent on loan from God). Commentary by The IMPOSSIBLEAPE (mouth engaged, brain in neutral)

There is an anti-selection process established in many ‘faith (word) churches’ that is as red in tooth and claw as any Darwinian mechanism ever imagined. The process I am speaking about, weeds out the weak, challenged and sick through disregard and sometimes even humiliation. When the 'halt and the lame' come to such a church and are prayed for, the word of faith congregation is exhorted to believe for a miracle. They have been taught that God honours faith and obedience and that the physical manifestation is an outward sign of inward worthiness. God blesses those who are righteous and faithful. This congregation knows if the suffering individual is right with God and the prayer of Faith is offered up with requisite inner assurance then the healing is guaranteed by God’s powerful, unchangeable word.

But if, God Forbid, that miracle doesn’t come, what then? Who is to blame for the failure of the word to be manifest?

Sometimes the strategy will be one of ‘circle the wagons boys, we might have a fight on our hands. Let's pray harder, believe more and bind the strong man of unbelief who must be hindering God from healing.'
The word church can’t think for a moment that its theology might be wrong. ‘Doubt is the greatest sin of all. What could be clearer, God is love, God is All Powerful therefore HE WILL HEAL ALL who ask. How could His will be anything other than our health, happiness and prosperity?'
Of course the suffering individual must have the faith to receive and keep the healing. The faithful are encouraged to believe that the healing is merely delayed. If after a long period of trusting the miracle has not been delivered, a sense of frustration and internal dissonance can grow.
'Could this be God’s responsibility? Surely He would never have a purpose for an imperfect life. God would never call someone to a ministry of redemptive suffering. Such an idea is almost blasphemous in a word of faith church. 'Jesus did it all on the cross, so name it and claim it and you can be just as healthy, happy and wealthy as we are.'

The afflicted's faith must be weak or perhaps he has unnamed sin in his life or perhaps a family curse has been delivered upon the head of this individual. 'If only the prayer of Faith could be met by the receptive will of faith on the part of the suffering individual, surely they would be delivered.'
Quietly, blame begins to be assigned. If the sick person continues in his ‘rebellious, unhealed state’ the faithful will declare that healing came but it hasn’t been claimed in faith or worse still, the healing was given up because the weak brother loved his sickness more than he loved Jesus 'If only they had been obedient. If only they had been strong and faithful enough. If only they had wanted the healing badly enough, it surely would have been their right to possess it.'

Some well meaning people may begin to exhort the victim to greater faith. 'Surely our hero Benny Hinn can do the deed?' So they pilgrim to some cavernous coliseum.
‘Get out of that chair.’ Screams the miracle worker. Sometimes adrenaline gets the victim out of the chair and everyone is ecstatic as he dances for the gathering’s edification and entertainment. Joyfully the ‘healed’ and the exhorters make their way back home. Next day the condition is no better. Then a new stage begins. If the victim will persist in believing the word doctrines, he may be tolerated, if he is lucky, he will be pitied but eventually one of the parties to this sick relationship will break. The victim may drift away, attending less and less. He may becomes disillusioned and either leave voluntarily or the faithful will tire of the obvious lack of character shown by the victim and begin to ignore the unfaithful person’s presence. The stone cold committee awkwardly, guiltily, unofficially and often sheepishly shuns the unbeliever. They manage to convey a sense that, ‘If the victim can’t become one of us why would he want to stay here and upset our work?’
The victim leaves. The anti-selection process has worked its magic and the herd is able to continue its good work of bringing God’s Power to the world. They can rest assured that their health and comfort is a testimony to their worthiness, their faith and their righteous character. They have excised a danger to the body and all is well until the next victim arrives to create doubts about the validity of the theology.

My mission is to challenge and change that theology. To free the disabled to see themselves as worthy of God’s love as you or I, perhaps more so. I want to tell them that they have a mission and a purpose ordained by God.
If healing comes, and we continue to pray that it does, the healed must never forget that their blessing is no justification for pride and self-congratulations.

When Jesus comes to judge the quick and the dead He will ask how did you treat Him while He was in the body. If you do not recognize Him in the suffering ones around you, then how can you say you love Him whom you do not see?

Please, for all our sakes, recognize the body and respond to it in love, not anti-selection.

And that's about all I have to say about that...........................................

Now you know why, in some circles, I am known as the IMPOSSIBLEAPE....aka Leonard W. Hindle

Good Night and God Bless Us Everyone

LH

The Azusa Street Revival

This Far by Faith PBS Series
(picture of early leaders of the Azusa Street Revivals)

http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/journey_3/p_9.html
1866-1945: From Emancipation to Jim Crow
A Glimpse of the Kingdom of Heaven: The Azusa Street Revival

“Azusa Mission stands for the unity of God's people everywhere. God is uniting His people, baptizing them by one Spirit in one body.” —Apostolic Faith, the newspaper of the Azusa Mission
By 1900, southern churches were completely separated by race; Christianity had divided along the color line. But in Los Angeles, white bishops and black workers, men and women, Asians and Mexicans, white professors and black laundry women gathered at a former AME church building on Azusa Street in downtown Los Angeles. This interracial congregation worshipped under the leadership of a black pastor, William J. Seymour.
For over three years, what historians call the Azusa Street Revival conducted three services a day, seven days a week. Word of the revival was spread abroad through The Apostolic Faith, a paper that Seymour sent for free to some 50,000 subscribers. So many missionaries spread the word from Azusa that within two years the movement had spread to over fifty nations.
Apart from its interracial congregation, Azusa's most striking characteristic was the practice of speaking in tongues, which was seen as a sign that an individual was baptized by the Holy Spirit. Previously, few Pentecostals had spoken in tongues, and the languages they used were foreign but known. Seymour and his followers spoke in unknown tongues, understood only by God, a practice widely adopted by Christians who believed it was a sign that God was breaking down barriers to spread the Gospel around the world.
When Charles Fox Parham, a white Pentecostal pioneer and teacher of Seymour's (he had allowed Seymour to attend his Bible School on the condition that he sit outside a door left partially ajar), visited Azusa Street in October of 1906, he denounced the Revival as a "darky camp meeting." "What good can come from a self-appointed Negro prophet?" scoffed the mainstream newspapers.
Azusa Street dissolved amidst the racial politics of unrequited love. In May 1908, Seymour married Jennie Evans Moore. Clara Lum, Mission Secretary and administrative helper for the newspaper, disapproved of their marriage so much that she left for Portland, taking with her the paper's mailing lists containing the names of 50,000 subscribers. Without them, Seymour couldn't continue publishing.
Meanwhile, splits within Azusa Street developed along theological and racial lines. All of the white Pentacostal leaders separated themselves from Seymour and Azusa. Ms. Lum took his newspaper; his former teacher, Charles Parham, discredited his fellowship; and finally William Durham, a white parishoner, led a faction out of the church. That faction eventually became the Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world. The remaining black worshippers eventually became the Church of God in Christ, the largest black denomination in America.

Seymour came to believe that blacks and whites worshipping together was a surer sign of God's blessing and the Spirit's healing presence than speaking in tongues. The fact that the church had nationally split along racial lines meant that the charismatic ideal of cooperation with the Spirit had been foiled by the forces of racism.

Once the whites defected, the Azusa Street Mission became almost entirely black. Still, its message echoes through history. It made a distinctive contribution to the historical evolution of religion in America by involving blacks, women, and the poor at all levels of ministry, and it was the birthplace of two major Pentecostal denominations.

It's Not About Charity It's About Justice

http://www.wrcanada.org/page.asp?id=4755f8d41e

bono and george
curious, mysterious, hilarious and marvelous






It's Not About Charity It's About Justice

And What does God require,
but to do justice, and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6:8 (English Standard Version)

http://www.makepovertyhistory.ca/e/home.php

The Next Thing

I want to tell you something that may seem so outlandish that it is either from God or it is just my foolishness. Perhaps you can help me decide which it is.

The disabled may be God's chosen means to bring grace to our community. In the past great revivals showed the value of people who had been marginalized, exploited and degraded and those revivals helped put an end to those blasphemies. Since Jesus came in the flesh and we are made in the image of God, it behoves us who say we believe in the gospel, to honour and include every person within our community and to stand up when we see any person or class of persons being pronounced as less than human. That is why we should stand against abortion, and euthanasia and racism and discrimination of every sort.

The incarnation told the people of the Great Awakening that they were made in God's image and they were to bow to no one but God. 'We have no king butJesus’. Faith and The War of Independence brought modern democracy to the world. (please see Steven Waldham's article Jefferson, Madison & Their Evangelical Pals. How Religious Freedom Resulted From an Unlikely Alliance: Evangelicals and Skeptics at http://www.beliefnet.com/story/186/story_18668_1.html for more insights into the relationship between revivals and the progress of political and religious freedom.)

In Europe the French Revolution was sweeping the continent because of the exploitation of the poor by Royalty and by a bloated Church. The people were turning away from God and government. England was about to be the next country to experience the bloodbath. In many ways it deserved to experience a bloody judgement. Poor children had been put into the mines, and exploited in dangerous polluted factories. Blacks were held in slavery. The slave trade was a great source of wealth to the English Empire. Poor debtors were thrown into prison.. Thankfully, mercifully a righteous outrage swept these abominations out of England on the tide of the great Wesleyan revivals. The children were taken from the mines and sent to schools. Slavery was abolished. Poor houses closed and the poor laws rewritten. England was saved and was never the same afterwards. For more information on the role of revival in the politcal, social and economic refprmation inEngland see J.W. Bready's, Wesley and Deomocracy.)

In the meantime, newfound freedom in America was only for some. The Great awakenings of
Pre-Independence America did not fully rouse the Christian heart of the nation. Slavery continued for many years after England had been brought to it senses. But eventually new religious revivals did bring a renewed sense that it was an abomination to own and mistreat fellow human beings who were made in the likeness of God. 'If God died to make men holy, we can die to make men free’ (Battle Hymn of the Republic)

Revivals that mean something actually change things. They don't just sweep in and empty the jails and pubs and fill the churches for 2 or 3 years only to see the trend completely reversed for the next 100. If God visits, the nation can never be the same again.

Despite the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, blacks continued to be persecuted and discriminated against in horrendous ways. Even in churches of the last half of the 19th century blacks and white seldom worshipped together and when they did blacks were forced to sit in the balconies away from good Christian white folks. The church does not have a stellar testimony in history but it does get better and revivals are one way God leads the church into a fuller understanding and practice of the gospel.

The next revivals, the ones that gave rise to my church, were the Pentecostal revivals of Topeka Kansas and Azusa Street Los Angeles. Most of us 'holy rollers' make a great deal about the religious enthusiasms and miss the main point of the exercise. In the ecstatic worship of these revivals blacks were welcomed down from the balconies and the races forgot their differences and learned how to worship God and love one another without thought to colour. At least for the few years that the revival continued. Today you will find that Charismatic Churches usually have a good representation from all ehinic and racial backgrounds. This has been an immensely important step forward in the church's witness to the dignity of all mankind.
In this anniversary year of Azusa we would do well to see what really was accomplished there and to reflect on what God may want to accomplish now.


Perhaps it is the time for the people (made in God's image) whom we have no time for, no interest in, no comfort in being around to be included in the story of God's incarnation. Can we find the truth of the Gospel within the disabled and their lives or are they outside God's kingdom. Are they to be forever forgotten, rejected and of no concern or consequence?
We evangelicals need to show the world that faith is not just having a bible study to prepare us for the next bible conference to prepare for the next revival meeting to prepare us to hunker down in our siege mentality of us against the wicked, wicked world. Love needs to be out there and active. If the faith doesn't get us out there and active, it is a failed faith.

If revival is to come it will be through all of us knowing that His grace is sufficient. We don't need another Benny Hinn superstar. We need Jesus in the flesh and a church recognizing and responding to Him in a real and loving way.

The disabled are the very representation of Jesus as spoken of in Matthew 25. Perhaps we should read that chapter and decide how we are going to live it because Judgment day will be an ‘equal opportunity’ revelator. (If you know what I mean.)

LH

we always hope for better but we usually get what we deserve

Thanks to my sister-in-law Micki for the trenchant political commentary.

The voters said no moe' of the 'same old same old' and now look what we got.


Moe' MOE'!

Some Interesting Thoughts on Community

http://searchingforfaith.blogs.com/my_weblog/

Enduring the Church (Flannery O'Connor) The Church is the only thing that can make the terrible world we are coming to endurable; the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it, but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the Church while at the same time you struggle to endure it. (Flannery O'Connor)

“But in another way, community is a terrible place. It is the place where our limitations and our egoism are revealed to us. When we begin to live full-time with others, we discover our poverty and our weakness, our inability to get on with people, our mental and emotional blocks . . . our seemingly insatiable desires, our frustrations and jealousies, our hatred and our wish to destroy.” Jean Vanier quotes

The Gospel in Three Part Harmony

....... Ask........................Give ...............................Live in Love and in

.....Forgiveness .......... Forgiveness .....................Forgiveness (even in pain)

What's it all about Alfie?

The God Mission and the Church Mission

Are they the same thing?

They don't always line up but when they do it can be a wonderful thing.




The God Mission and the Church Mission Are they the same thing? More about this later.

A Tribute to the people serving the special needs population in Jesus name.

L'ARCHE communities

Everyday people

doing extraordinary things
to help extraordinary people
do everyday things.




God Bless them all.



"When you do it unto the least of these my brothers you do it unto me".