A reminder to remember God's Faithfulness and Goodness to us!!
A Good Read!!
Larry

I Wouldn’t Forget If My Neighbor’s House Were Filled With Frogs…Or Would I?

by Mark Altrogge on June 10, 2013

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.  Psalm 103:2

“And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you-with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant-and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”  Deuteronomy 6:10-12

I forget stuff all the time.  
I forget to buy dog food (how could I when I have so much affection for those two filthy curs – I mean, sweet little bundles of love).  I forget to exercise (on purpose).  Last week I forgot to take the trash out on the appointed day.  Nothing like keeping your stinking garbage an extra week.  Sometimes I forget to take medicine I’m supposed to take – good thing I’m such a paragon of health and vitality.
How easy it is to forget God’s benefits. God warned Israel that when they were enjoying the blessings of the promised land to take care lest they forget how he delivered them from Egypt.  Really? How could they forget all the plagues, a pillar of fire and looking at the walls of water on either side of them as they sallied forth on dry land right through the middle of the Red Sea?  If Pittsburgh were overrun by frogs, and even the Steelers had frogs in their bedrooms, I don’t think I’d forget that.  But God knows our tendency to forget, so he warned Israel about forgetting his mighty deliverance.  And you know what?  They forgot.
We should try to develop the habit of regularly thanking God for his blessings. In everything give thanks. Give thanks continually. We should be the most grateful people on the face of the earth.  Paul prayed for his converts to abound in thanksgiving.
A few suggestions:
When you pray begin with thanks. Enter his gates with thanksgiving.  Before bringing all our requests to God, thank him for a few minutes.  Thank him for the blessings of the previous day.  For helping you on that exam.  For protecting your child.  For a great time in church.
Keep a prayer journal – write down things you are thankful for.  Two or three times a week, before I begin my requests, I take a few minutes to write out my thanks.  A few simple sentences.  Nothing profound.  But it helps me focus and remember to give thanks.
Thank God for all he did to redeem you.  For Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension.  For all Jesus endured to bring you to God.
Thank God for your spouse and children if you have them.  For their lives and health and all God’s mercies to them.
Thank God for spiritual blessings. That he pardons all your sins, joins you to Christ, and adopted you as his child.  For the Holy Spirit and power.  For spiritual gifts. For transforming you into the likeness of his Son.
Thank God for his word and hundreds of promises.  For promising to hear your prayers, and to be with you when you pass through flood and fire.  For his promises to counsel you and give you wisdom.  For his promises to bless our children.  For his promise to complete the good work he began in you.
Thank God for your church.  Your friends, your home group leader, Your children’s ministry teachers your pastors.
Thank God for material blessings.  For your health and strength.  For your job and apartment or home.  For your car and gas for it.  For your computer and phone and all kinds of other luxuries and conveniences.
Thank God for how he treats you.  For his patience and long-suffering, faithfulness, compassion and sympathy, and his steadfast love.
Thank God for as many mercies as you can discern in every affliction.  For any relief and help.  For somehow working your pain and sadness for your good and God’s glory.  For humbling you through it.  For   his sympathy and compassion toward you.
Thank God for future blessings.  That you will see Jesus face to face and worship and enjoy him forever.  That God has prepared great rewards in heaven for you.  That you will see loved ones again in heaven.  That you will have a resurrection body.  That Jesus will wipe every tear from you eye.
You get the idea.
Lord Jesus, thank you, thank you, thank you for all your benefits.  Help us to abound in thankfulness.

Further Encouragement!!

I highly encourage everyone to read this post by David Mathis from the blog, "Desiring God". 

M.r B 

Jackie Robinson and the Pattern of Jesus

by David Mathis | April 11, 2013

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It was 1948, during Jackie Robinson’s second season in Major League Baseball, when some bigots in Cincinnati were really giving him the business.
Just the previous year, Robinson had been the one with the monumental courage to break the color barrier as the first African American of the modern era to play in baseball’s highest league. He had endured unthinkable cruelty and injustice for de-segregating the game, and he was succeeding on the field and off. Not only did he bat just a shade under .300 in 1947, and was named Rookie of the Year, but he was holding his tongue, and fists, and not fighting back.
But now, in his second campaign, some still weren’t convinced. Eric Metaxas tells the story of the “signature moment” that happened in 1948.

At one game in Cincinnati, when spectators in the stands were shouting racist comments at Robinson, his teammate Pee Wee Reese pointedly walked over to him and put his arm around him, as though to say to the bigots in the crowd “if you are against him, you’re against all of us.” It was a signature moment, and a statue commemorating it stands today in Brooklyn’s minor-league KeySpan Park. (Seven Men: And the Secret of Their Greatness, 128–129)

No Small Feat

The story of Jackie Robinson (1919–1972) — and with him Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey (1881–1965) — is one of the most powerful tales American athletics has to tell. Robinson overcame what seemed like insurmountable obstacles not only by playing outstanding baseball, but even more significantly, by not retaliating when treated with rank injustice and racism. According to Metaxas, “Jackie’s not fighting back against such filth and injustice was as heroic an accomplishment as anything the sports world had ever witnessed” (126).

It is easy to miss the historical magnitude of that moment in 1947 for the advance of civil rights in America. Consider that when Rickey signed Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the color barrier in baseball, it was a year before President Truman ordered the U.S. military desegregated, seven years before the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, eight years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus, 10 years before President Eisenhower used the U.S. military to enable the Little Rock Nine to attend Central High School in Arkansas, 16 years before MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech, 17 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and 18 years before the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (David Prince, Ferocious Christian Gentleman)

The Shared Faith of Robinson and Branch

Many tellings of the Robinson-Branch story omit the importance of their shared Christian faith, but a few biographers have endeavored to draw this out.

Robinson was a Christian [and] his Christian faith was at the very center of his decision to accept Branch Rickey’s invitation to play for the all-white Brooklyn Dodgers. . . . Branch Rickey himself was a Bible-thumping Methodist whose faith led him to find an African American ballplayer to break the color barrier. . . .[A]t the center of one of the most important civil rights stories in America [lies] two men of passionate Christian faith. (Metaxas, 109)

Branch’s strategy for de-segregation was “non-retaliation” — a precursor to the vision of non-violence to come later in the Civil Rights Movement. But it would not just do to try to follow Jesus’s pattern. Branch was looking for someone with deep faith and proven character. Nothing less than emotionally excruciating work lay ahead. When Branch and Robinson met for the first time to explore the possibility, Branch

grilled him for hours and made him commit to three years of non-retaliation. Rickey . . . pointed him to the biblical account of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. Rickey told Robinson, “We can’t fight our way through this, Robinson. We’ve got no army. There’s virtually nobody on our side. No owners. No umpires. Very few newspapermen. And I’m afraid many fans will be hostile.” (Prince)

Guts Enough to Not Fight Back

Branch needed a man committed to living the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 5:38–41 — the teaching that Jesus himself embodied in going to the cross.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” (Matthew 5:38–41)

Metaxas narrates it like this:

Rickey saw that Robinson had plenty of experience playing with white players and that — like Rickey — he was a serious Bible-believing Christian with a strong moral character. In the struggle that lay ahead, these characteristics would be crucial. He felt strongly that if the person he chose for this extraordinary task could be goaded into saying the wrong thing or appearing in any way as less than noble and dignified, the press would have a field day and the whole project would go up in flames. What was worse, if that were to happen, the whole idea of integrating baseball would likely be set back another ten or fifteen years. Rickey had to be sure he was choosing someone who understood the tremendous import of not fighting back, despite what he would hear — and he would hear plenty. But in the end, he felt he had found the man for the job. (120)

Rickey issued Robinson this pointed challenge: “I’m looking for a ballplayer with guts enough to not fight back” (122).

Not Reviling in Return

Robinson accepted, and by God’s grace, he was able to live out the vision against the onslaught of horrible racism and what Branch called “odious injustice.”
And now the rest is history — and told in book and motion picture alike. Robinson played 10 Major-League seasons. In 1949, his third season, he batted an astounding .342, drove in 124 runs, and stole 37 bases. That season he started in the All-Star game and won the National League MVP Award. He batted .329 in 1953. When it was all said and done, he had played in six consecutive All-Star games and led his team to six World-Series appearances, including a seven-game World-Series win in 1955. He retired from the game after the 1956 season at the age of 37.
Robinson was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, and tragically died of a heart attack a decade later in 1972. He was only 53.
In April of 1997, Major League Baseball “universally retired” Robinson’s number 42, which means the number is now specially set aside in honor of him. No other player, on any team, can wear number 42 — except on April 15 of each year, “Jackie Robinson Day,” when every player dons the 42. This is likely the highest possible honor in the sport.

The Heart of Jackie’s Story

“The heart of the Jackie Robinson story,” says Metaxas, is that “he changed America by successfully living out, both on and off the baseball field, the revolutionary and world-changing words of Jesus” (133).
What made all the difference was both Branch’s recognition of the power of Jesus’s model of non-retaliation in Matthew 5:38–41, and Robinson’s grace-given ability to echo the almost superhuman pattern of Jesus: “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23).

In a time when our culture is telling us money, fame and power are what is needed for personal fulfillment. We all tend to find ourselves placing our hope and security in the created things, instead of the Creator of all things! We fall flat when we find these things do not devliver as advertised, there is an empitness in our hearts that only God can fill.  As Augustine has rightly said, " Our hearts our continually restless until we find our hope in thee." This a very insightful article into the life of Michael Jordan as he turns 50.

Mr. B

Do You Still Want to Be Like Mike?

If you've watched ESPN at any point in the last week, you know Michael Jordan just turned 50. With six NBA titles, five MVPs, ten scoring titles, 14 All-Star appearances, and many other feats posterized on my childhood bedroom wall, Jordan's legacy on the basketball court is unmatched. But life off the court, particularly since his final retirement in 2003, hasn't been so pristine.
In anticipation of Jordan's 50th birthday, ESPN senior writer Wright Thompson spent some time with Number 23. The product is an Outside the Lines article titled "Michael Jordan Has Not Left the Building," a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse into the mind of the man who revolutionized the world of sports.

Unquenchable Fire

Thompson's piece pulsates with the sense that Jordan isn't happy. "I would give up everything now to go back and play the game of basketball," the Hall of Famer confesses. When asked how he replaces it, Jordan simply states, "You don't. You learn to live with it."
For almost three decades on basketball's supreme stage, Jordan lived for the next challenge, the next challenger. Naysayers became friends, for they brought the nightly fuel that reignited his drive to perform, to conquer, to vindicate his name. This insatiable drive to prove himself propelled Jordan to the pinnacle of the sporting world—and motivated him to remain there. Even today, Thompson writes, he cares what his critics say. "He needs to know, a needle for a hungry vein."

Jordan might have stopped playing basketball, but the rage is still there. The fire remains, which is why he searches for release, on the golf course or at a blackjack table, why he spends so much time and energy on [the Charlotte Bobcats] and why he dreams of returning to play.

The man has left the court, but the addictions won't leave the man.

Even 'Yahweh' Ages

Jordan's surroundings only reinforce a perception of otherworldly status. Thompson remarks:

Jordan is at the center of several overlapping universes, at the top of the billion-dollar Jordan Brand at Nike, of the Bobcats, of his own company, with dozens of employees and contractors on the payroll. In case anyone in the inner circle forgets who's in charge, they only have to recall the code names given to them by the private security team assigned to overseas trips. Estee is Venom. George is Butler. Yvette is Harmony. Jordan is called Yahweh—a Hebrew word for God.

Yahweh. I am who I am. I will be what I will be. Not exactly the sort of nickname that fosters meekness.
"My ego is so big now that I expect certain things," Jordan admits. But, as Thompson observes, this is a natural consequence of life at the very top. "Jordan is used to being the most important person in every room he enters and, going a step further, in the lives of everyone he meets. . . . People cater to his every whim."
Imagine that life for a moment. Put yourself in his shoes (Air Jordans, of course). You can't recall the last time you weren't the most important person in the room. No matter where on Planet Earth you go, you're king. Thirty years and counting. What would that recognition do to someone? To you?

The Flicker that Fades

Such an abnormal existence brings certain abnormal hopes, promises, expectations. As Thompson observes:

Most people live anonymous lives, and when they grow old and die, any record of their existence is blown away. They're forgotten, some more slowly than others, but eventually it happens to virtually everyone. Yet for the few people in each generation who reach the very pinnacle of fame and achievement, a mirage flickers: immortality. They come to believe in it. Even after Jordan is gone, he knows people will remember him. Here lies the greatest basketball player of all time. That's his epitaph.
There's a fable about returning Roman generals who rode in victory parades through the streets of the capital; a slave stood behind them, whispering in their ears, "All glory is fleeting." Nobody does that for professional athletes. Jordan couldn't have known that the closest he'd get to immortality was during that final walk off the court. . . . All that can happen in the days and years that follow is for the shining monument he built to be chipped away, eroded. His self-esteem has always been, as he says, "tied directly to the game." Without it, he feels adrift. Who am I? What am I doing? For the past 10 years, since retiring for the third time, he has been running, moving as fast as he could, creating distractions, distance.

In his supercilious 2009 Hall of Fame speech, Jordan called the game of basketball his "refuge," the "place where I've gone when I needed to find comfort and peace." Three years later, the restlessness remains.
It turns out the voracious drive that turned a shy North Carolina youngster into a household name comes with a price tag. And as the flicker of immortality fades, Jordan stares in the mirror, wondering where to turn. "How can I enjoy the next 20 years without so much of this consuming me?" he ponders. "How can I find peace away from the game of basketball?"

From Chicago to Calvary

As a Christian, it's easy to read a piece like Thompson's and feel discouraged, even disgusted, by Jordan's egotism. Yet as psychologists clamor to diagnose Jordan's condition, we feel no surprise. The distance between him and us is, after all, uncomfortably slim. We want to be the most important person in every room; he is. As the apostle might say, who is sufficient for these things?
In the world, status is tethered to performance. It's the same in the gospel. The difference, however, is that our status as believers is not tethered to our performance, but Christ's. Only the gospel can offer the resources to combat our pride, expose our emptiness, and flood our hearts with peace.
"How can I find peace away from the game of basketball?" the aging legend asks.
Michael, you never had peace. Triumph and fame, yes, but not peace. James Naismith invented a game that brought you a sense of purpose, of value, of calm. But it was only that—a sense, a counterfeit of the real thing. You will never find life outside the game for the same reason you never found life in it. It's not there.
The peace you seek isn't available on a basketball court or a golf course but on a little hill outside Jerusalem. There, Yahweh incarnate hung in the place of sinners—wannabe Yahwehs like you and like me.
You've gained the world and found it lacking, Mike. Don't lose your soul.

MUST Reads for ALL Athletes!!!!