What is the purpose of understanding history?

In understanding history we learn from our mistakes. We see different things that people did that we don’t want to repeat. We also can be inspired because throughout history we see how everything works out according to God’s plan. During hard times we know that God will always win in the end. We also see how Christ is in the center of history, we learn from the nature and character of God. We can see God’s providential sovereignty throughout history and Christ is the focal point in it all. That is the purpose of understanding history!

-Destiny

Can We Change Ourselves?

I believe that we cannot, in the least, change ourselves unless God allows it to happen. Only God has the power to do change us. Though we may choose to break our old habits and read our Bible every day, which happens only by God’s good grace, we cannot change ourselves unto Salvation. We cannot want to know God because man is inherently sinful. Rom. 3:10 - “…None is righteous, no, not one.” We don’t want to know what God is; who he is. We hate him. Without God first changing our hearts inwardly, we will never desire Him or want to learn more about him.

If you went up to an Atheist and began to ask him what some of his core beliefs were, he might tell you, “I don’t believe in absolutes” or, “I don‘t believe in God.” Now, if he doesn’t believe in absolutes than he is contradicting that belief by saying it because if he says there are no absolutes than what does what he just said mean? He is saying there are no absolutes by laying down an absolute! The Atheist also probably will say that he does not believe in God. And yet when you ask them how this world was made they would say, most likely, “well it evolved into what it is now.” But what if you asked, “how do houses come about? Did they just evolve? How did your billion‘s of microscopic cells evolve?” It just doesn’t connect. His worldview crumbles. They don’t want to acknowledge God & because they do not they become fools. They know that if they did believe in God they would then have to be subject to His Law. So they suppress the truth. An unbeliever cannot suddenly believe in God unless God puts that burning, that desire, into that someone’s heart.

Man is sinful and corrupt. He is dead in His sins. Rom. 6:23 - “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Man cannot do anything for himself. He is wholly incapable. But God is holy and righteous and pure. He is alive and well. He imputes His righteousness on us and He takes our sins upon His Son, Jesus Christ. He pours out al of His wrath, wrath meant for us, upon His Son while we receive mercy and grace. We cannot save ourselves unless God resurrects us. We cannot change ourselves unless God allows that change to take place.

This painting is beautiful!

When I look at this picture I am drawn into it and I feel the hurt that this mother must be feeling. She has a little girl on her lap who looks sick and helpless. They don’t look very wealthy and probably don’t have much food. Perhaps it is very cold out and maybe the mother and daughter don’t have much heat and are barely making it through the winter with rags as their clothing. I can’t help but feel sorry for them and want to help them. I’m in suspense whether or not the little girl is going to be all right.
The painter did an extraordinary job on the painting. The colors make the painting come to life and the viewers are in awe of what is happening. The painting is beautiful!

This is a thing we had to do in Omnibus. Each one of us kids had to find a picture and sort of do what I did with this picture. It was pretty fun!

-Destiny

Loyalty

In the book The Odyssey of Homer, Homer portrays a picture of a very faithful wife in the character Penelope. Though her husband has been gone for 20 years and all say that he is dead, she continues to believe that he is out there and will return soon. The result of this is that she continually refuses the suitors request that she marry one of them. She will not give up on her husband. This brings me to the subject of loyalty.

In many ways our culture has turned away from the true concept of loyalty-friends, marriages, pastors, politicians, and business agreements. Everyone is full of greed, ambition, and selfishness, the three things which destroy loyalty. Companies and businesses do whatever it takes to build themselves up. More than 60% of today’s marriages end up in divorce. Friends will turn around and stab you in the back for their own gain. All these display a lack and loss of loyalty.

One of the greatest examples of disloyalty is seen in Israel. God had delivered Israel from Egypt and had shown them many signs. He made a covenant with them and gave them His law’s. While in the wilderness He provided and protected them through all dangers. When they had no water, He provided it from a rock. When they had no food, He poured down quail and manna. When their enemies were great in numbers, He delivered them into their hands. Continually He kept them under His wings. Yet Ps. 78 says “In spite of all this, they still sinned; despite his wonders, they did not believe…Their heart was not steadfast toward him; they were not faithful to his covenant.” Israel rejected God and His covenant! No matter what He did and showed them, they were a stiff-necked people and rebelled.

Now look to vs. 38 and 39 “Yet he, being compassionate, atoned for their iniquity and did not destroy them; he restrained his anger often and did not stir up all his wrath. He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and comes not again.” God never gave up on us, though He punished us He still atoned for us. It says that He didn’t show all His wrath…just enough to where we were still allowed to live. Then He sent His Son to die for us. We have been given the New Covenant and we must strive to be faithful to it, and not be the Israel of old.

So when you say the words “as long as we both shall live” remember that you are entering into a life long covenant. Marriage is a covenant instituted by God and one must stay faithful to it. Remember Penelope, the ever faithful wife of Odysseus.

-Kaila Anderson