Christ's Free Servant

Summit nixed after doubts raised about Iraqi PM POSTED: 1:59 p.m. EST, November 29, 2006 AMMAN, Jordan (AP) -- President Bush's high-stakes summit with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was put off Wednesday after public disclosure of U.S. doubts about his capacity to control sectarian warfare. http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/29/bus...p.ap/index.html

You know, if I did not know this was real time and a real letter from a real life person, I would think this was part of the script of Carpathia out of the Left Behind Series. Wow! This is how I expected the antichrist to sound.

Actual letter: Ahmadinejad's Letter to the American People In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful O, Almighty God, bestow upon humanity the perfect human being promised to all by You, and make us among his followers. Noble Americans, Were we not faced with the activities of the US administration in this part of the world and the negative ramifications of those activities on the daily lives of our peoples, coupled with the many wars and calamities caused by the US administration as well as the tragic consequences of US interference in other countries... http://blogs.chron.com/chroniclesofwar/200...to_the_ame.html

HOMELAND INSECURITY 45,000 terror-threat illegals released into U.S. population Half from countries of 'special interest' let go between 2001, 2005, says report -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: November 29, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern

Iran leader appeals to Americans on Iraq http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061129/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_us 2 hours, 23 minutes ago

I also believe that the Lord sends us messeges. I know He has been giving them to me in many ways in such rapid fire that I want to share with everyone but they come so fast it is hard to keep up. Dreams can be one way to communicate with us as answer to prayer or something that we need guidance about certain issues that may weigh heavy on our mind. It is often difficult to interpret and on the other hand our emotions and events at a particular time in our life can emphasize what dreams we remember and which ones we don't. As a Christian, I attribute everything to the Lord and believe there is a message there somewhere. In all my dreams though, there is water, sometimes large bodies of water, sometimes small streams, and water has to do with emotions but always it is calming even though I may be going through a difficult time. I read somewhere that if you are uncomfortable in your dreams and there is water, you may feel out of control in your life. But it is always soothing for me and these are the mysteries of God's messages that we may not understand at the time but may hit us later as it may relate to something and we already have the answer as God prepared us. As far as visions or prophetic dreams, I believe some are gifted but I do think there is a message in every dream you seem to remember vividly. Now, this one does not make any sense but I had a vivid dream about cake, the frosting, the taste, how pleasant it was. We dream all the time but only remember some and some we can barely remember details, but cake? Why can't I get this dream out of my head? It seems silly now, but maybe later it will have meaning. Cjrose, Why do you assume the water has to do with emotions? Scripturally speaking, water is associated with baptism, which symbolizes the washing of rebirth in Christ, and it is also associated with the Holy Spirit, who is the one who cleanses us and gives us New Birth. I think we should see the water as the comfort of the Holy Spirit if comfort is to be implied by the dream, rather than the comfort of our own emotions. Water can also symbolize judgment, such as in the flood of Noah's time. The Psalms often talk about water in reference to some kind of judgment, such as when God drowned the Egyptians. I would think that the rest of the dream would help you to determine the meaning of the water, whether it is for comfort, judgment, leading of the Holy Spirit, filling of the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, etc.

Just a thought, but WHITE is also symbolic for purity, so perhaps this was a message from God that dipping your finger in His righteousness is Sooooooo good and that you will want to keep dipping!!

Oh, but that is how Satan works. Don't you see this? He desensitizes us to this by disguising it as a harmless kids' movie. We think, oh the kids won't catch this, but it is there being planted in their brains, take my word for it. My oldest granddaughter is only 8 years old, and believe me, she is very perceptive. Don't think they did not hear the lyrics to those songs. They heard them and they probably know them, because they are everywhere. And, don't think that those messages are not in their minds, even if they are not fully aware of what they mean right now. You see, Satan does not blast us with his lies. He disguises them as "harmless" so that we accept them, and then we accept more and more and more and before we even know it, we have accepted a whole bundle of his lies. Test it. Try turning your TV off for a month, spend that time in the Word of God, and then turn it back on and see what you "notice". You will be amazed at what you have come to accept or even more so, what you did not even notice the first time you watched it.

Thank you! My daughter used to have a site that she got that kind of information from, but then they started charging for it, so we stopped using it. Our theatre listings on Excite.com used to give the rating and the reason for the rating, but now they only give a rating and most of the previews or write-ups on movie guides do not tell you the negative content, but only the positive. So, thanks so much! This will help us to preview the content before we "shop" and then can't "return" the item. Once it is in our minds, it is there. We can only replace it with much prayer and time in God's Word.

Thank you so much!! I checked out the site, and it was great! If you scroll down past the review, there are tons of readers opinions about the movie listed by "positive", "neutral," and "negative." It was very informative, and a good way to check out a movie before going to see it. My d-i-l asked me to check out "Ice Age 2" and "Flushed Away," and I'm glad we did, because they both had adult themes/language in them, as well. There is a lot of discussion on this site about how children's animated films are no longer for the children, but they are appealing to the adults. It is sad!

I Soooooo agree with you!! Jesus definitely drew lines in the sand when it came to immorality, idolatry and godlessness - all of which are in this animated feature film.

Good plan! I wished I had read this before we went this morning. What a waste!

I agree! There is so much of this in children's movies, too. I have 3 granddaughters ages 4, 6 & 8, so I know. They like to get on Barbie.com when they are over here sometimes just to play the games on there, but some of the music that comes from that site has horrible lyrics for little girls to be listening to. Children today are exposed to far too much. It's dangerous!

One of my d-i-l's thought it would be a fun family thing to take the grandchildren and the adult children to see "Happy Feet" this morning, so we took 3 cars of people (11 in all) and drove to NC where the ticket price was supposed to be a lot cheaper, but they raised the price two weeks ago. We sat down for two hours of what we thought was a kids' movie, but oh, did we get a surprise. All the adults (8 of us) picked up on the not-so-subtle messages throughout the movie - messages that belief in God is bad, man is bad, animals are good, being "different" is good (could "Happy" be another word for "Gay"?), that we should rely on nature to teach us, not on God or any higher being, that church is associated with ignorance, hatred, intolerance and the bad treatment of animals and land/water, etc. There was also the message that we should not condemn sin and that "repentance" is a bad word. I saw God being mocked and his messengers being mocked, too. I saw the gay agenda being promoted in the main character who, because he was born with "happy feet" instead of the ability to sing, could not mate and could not have offsrping. My daugther listed off all the messages she saw in it, and there were more than what I'm listing here. We were all disgusted by it's blatant use of a kids' movie to promote a liberal political agenda. It's amazing how they can get so concerned about Penguins but you never see any movies being made about the attrocities of abortion, do you? Not out of Hollywood, anyway. We all just walked away feeling as though we wasted the morning. If I had not been there with all my kids and grandkids (minus 3), I would have walked out of it. Afterwards my middle son, who is usually not that perceptive, asked me if this was something like "Pleasantville." I told him I felt it was a toned down version of some of the same messages as were in Pleasantville (one movie I did walk out of) and that if I were with my grandchildren at a movie like that, I would have picked them up and we would have all walked out together. I feel horrible that our youth are being fed this garbage. It makes me angry, in fact, that they use children's films to promote their lies. I'm all for saving the environment and for preserving animal life, don't get me wrong, but this was over the edge, if you know what I mean.

This made me think of this passage from Jeremiah 1:13-16:

http://www.prophecyupdate.com DEBKAfile: Iran, Syria, the Iraqi insurgents, Shiite militias and al Qaeda on the move as Bush ponders next step in Iraq Our Middle East sources report that all these elements are using the hiatus in Washington to snatch the initiative on Iraq and other regional issues. In Jakarta, President George W. Bush said Monday, Nov. 20, "I haven't made any decisions about troop increases or troop decreases." Before day's end, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad summoned the Iraqi and Syrian presidents to a weekend summit, a gesture to demonstrate that Tehran rather than Washington is now making the rules for progress in the Iraq crisis. Bush's let-everyone-wait stance was reflected in the way high Pentagon officials speaking to the Washington Post talked about Gen. Peter Pace, head of the joint chiefs of staff, and the commission of 16 high US officers who served in Iraq or the Persian Gulf he appointed to examine three options: injecting more troops into Iraq, shrinking the force but staying longer or pulling out. The panel was asked to say what is going right or wrong with the war and elaborate on options for progress. Gen. Pace plans to draw on these ideas for his thoughts and recommendations to the secretary of defense and the president, a process which is still immature. For their part, generals on the spot, Maj.Gen William B. Caldwell, spokesman for the US military in Iraq who usually speaks for the war commander Gen. John Abizaid and general George Casey, US commander in Iraq, have said that adding more U.S. forces would ''achieve a short-term solution, but it's not going to achieve a long-term effect. ... The key to this thing is we have got to get the Iraqi security forces able to operate in an independent manner, on their own.'' On Monday, Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat, pushed anew for the military draft to be reinstated. There have been indications that the special Iraq Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, will recommend a broader role in the region for Syria and Iran. The Iraq Study Group is likewise in no hurry to issue its report. Reporting from the Middle East, DEBKAfile notes that none of Iraq's neighbors are hanging about waiting for a US decision. They are making waves as though American and British troop withdrawals from Iraq are already in sight. By the time the Bush administration picks an option, the Middle East will have moved on, rendering the recommendations from the various US panels irrelevant. Some steps already in motion are: 1. Ahead of the Tehran summit this coming weekend, Syria and Iraq have agreed to restore diplomatic relations. 2. The Sunnis and Shiites are locked in battle over the domination of Baghdad, both camps gathering in all their manpower and resources from inside and outside Iraq. 3. The US military and Iraqi army are playing no part in this battle royal. They are operating on the fringes of the main combat sectors and stepping in only when their own security zones are threatened. In other words, large sections of the Iraqi capital have slipped out of the control of the Americans and the al Maliki government. This situation prevails also in other main cities. 4. It means in a nutshell that time has run out for building and training a competent Iraqi army capable of operating on its own to bolster central government, defend it and fight Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda. 5. The faint hope of driving a wedge between Tehran and Damascus - on the basis of the former's backing for Iraq's Shiites and the latter's for its Sunnis - has likewise gone up in smoke. The Syrian and Iranian governments are now fully synchronized and equally determined to keep the US-British alliance from attaining any sort of success in Iraq. 6. Their collaboration against the US extends to other parts of the Middle East. In Lebanon, they have activated their pawn, Hizballah, to topple the pro-US anti-Syrian government headed by Fouad Siniora. In the Palestinian areas, Iran and Syria are pumping in hundreds of military instructors and tens of tons of explosives, missiles and cash to dethrone Mahmoud Abbas and demolish his Palestinian Authority. By escalating their missile attacks, Hamas and its radical partners are bent on forcing Israel to launch a full-blown war on the Lebanon War model to crush their strengthened terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Iran and Syria are therefore in full flight keeping the different Middle East pots on the boil and the pro-Western governments in jeopardy.

Crystal, Fear is of the enemy, not of God. The way to combat fear (which is basically just Satan's lies to us) is with the truth of God's Word. Fear means we don't trust God. We don't trust in his promises. We don't trust in his Word. We don't believe that he is who he says he is. We don't believe he made us who he said he made us to be. Satan lies to us all the time and tries to get us to believe that we don't have an Almighty God for whom nothing is impossible. So, when you are feeling afraid, fill your mind with the Word of God, quote it out loud so that Satan can hear it and claim God's promises. The bible says that if we resist Satan he will flee from us. Sometimes we have to resist him more than once, especially if he is used to us giving up easily. But keep resisting him. Put on the armor of God, especially the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Stop listening to Satan's lies and believe in God's Sovereignty.

This passage came to mind: I Peter 4:12-19: "Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. 13But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. 14If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. 15If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. 16However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name. 17For it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18And,

And all the people said "Amen"! Thank you, cjrose, for those wonderful words of encouragement. May we all find hope and healing from what she has shared with us. Timetraveler, I am so sorry for your pain. I know this may sound trite, but I could not help but think of Job when you described how you have lost nearly everything. His initial response was: "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." Although difficult, this truly needs to be our response. I pray that you will be able to cry this all out to Jesus, that you will be able to accept his sovereignty in this, and that you will be able to move ahead with your life in seeking God as you are now doing. I know it hurts like crazy and I truly do feel your pain. I know you must grieve and I do not deny you that time of grief. But, I do hope and pray that you will be able to release your pain to God and that you will grow through this as cjrose has so eloquently stated. God bless you in this journey of faith, hope and healing!

He grew on me. We began as acquaintances, that grew to friendship, and the love just came in time. I don't know how long it took, months perhaps, or how I knew, but there came a day that I knew he was the one for me. I remember that I wrote him a note with a hook on it and marked it Day #1, and the next day he got another hook with Day #2, and so on and so forth. We were in college and we passed each other notes at our mailboxes. He still has those notes to this day - 35 years later. He was hooked very early on. Perhaps he was just a better judge of character than I was or he had less fears about relationships than me. All I know is that it took longer for me. But, once I was hooked, I knew it in my heart that he was the one for me.

Bob, The phrase "gods of our stomachs" refers to anything we put before God that is satisfying our own fleshly desires rather than following the desires and plans of God for our lives. It is putting our own wants above obedience to God. The term "god" can mean anything or anyone we place above our devotion to the one, true and only God. "For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things" (Phil 3:18-19). As far as how we should pray if we want to know God's thinking on a subject, the Bible teaches that we are to ASK, SEEK, and KNOCK which are all active words. The way you described your prayers was more passive in nature in that you thought something and felt God read your thoughts and that he placed a thought or impression on your mind, but that can be so subjective. How can you be certain it is God you are hearing? I don't doubt that God can read our minds and that he can put his thoughts in our minds, but so many other thoughts can enter our minds as well. I don't see scripturally where this should be our general practice for communicating with God, because it is passive, rather than active. It is not seeking. It is not asking. And, it definitely is not knocking. God wants us to ask because he wants us to seek after Him. He wants to communicate with us through His Word. He desires for us to spend much time in His Word, because it is there we learn His will for our lives. Matt 7:7-8: "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." I John 3:21-22: "Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him." I John 5:14-15: "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us

Bob, Thank you so much for your thoughtful response. I am presently pressed for time, but I'll try to get back with you on this a little later. It may be tomorrow, as I have a full schedule in front of me today. Talk soon!

I never knew there was a connection between sugar intake and dreams. Hmmm, I'll have to see about that one. Usually I just have water in the evenings, but I have to splurge every now and then and have some chocolate just for survival, you know. I do have some really weird dreams sometimes. Some have been from the Lord, and others just from whatever weirdness is in my brain, I guess.

OH, YES!! ABSOLUTELY!!

YES, He did! And, YES, HE IS!!