Supporting Chick-fil-A

I don't know if you have heard about the vicious assaults on the Chick Fil-A
company because the CEO, Dan Cathy, made comments recently in which he affirmed his view that the Biblical view of marriage should be upheld. Because of the CEO's personal belief Chick Fil-A has received vicious hate speech and completely intolerant bigotry. In fact, the mayor of Boston has banned Chick Fil-A from Boston. It is completely unconstitutional to be able to completely stop commerce because your own personal beliefs disagree with the personal beliefs of a chief executive officer of a company!

I have always appreciated the stand that the Chick Fil-A company makes by choosing not to open on Sundays so that their employees can go to church if they wish. Despite the pressure coming from the outside to open on Sundays, they still don't. Plus they always treat customers and employees with respect and dignity.

Because of this Mike Huckabee asks those who affirm a business that operates on Christian principles and whose executives are willing to take a stand for the Godly values to show up and eat at Chick-fil-A on Wednesday, August 1 for "Chick Fil-A Appreciation Day.”

Those on the left are free to make statements supporting same sex marriage, abortion, or profanity, but if Christians pronounce traditional values, we're too often considered homophobic, haters, intolerant, you name it. 

I believe in the freedom of Americans to speak their mind and practice their faith. If you do too please celebrate Chick fil-A Appreciation Day by eating at - and inviting your friends to eat with you at- Chick fil-A!

Wednesday, August 1, let's eat chicken not be one!

~Ashlin

Auf Wiedersehen!

Wow, I can't believe the year is more than half over. Is Summer more than half spent too? Yeah, I think it is. It is a good thing I'm not one of those crazy people who believe the Mayans were predicting the world will end this December. I'm glad I don't have to worry about this being the last July I may ever know. But then again, while I shouldn't fret (too much) over the way I spent this July, I'm not promised this won't be my last July.
I mean honestly. So many times we go through life hold tight to thing that we feel entitled too. God, we say, I can't be happy if I don't get married, You owe me at least that much! Right?!

I posted about the short-ness of life not to long ago and I don't want to sound like a broken record.

I'm going to be leaving out of town for a while. I get to be a nanny/babysitter for four really great kiddos, but that means I'm not gonna be posting for a while. Just thought I'd give you a heads up. So this is farewell for a time.

Ecc. 12:13 says, "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter; fear God and keep his commandments, for this is man's all."

The joy that comes from obedience is so far above any earthly treasure we can gain here! Ask yourself, ask the Lord, today how you can spend it for Him? How to show Him you desire His treasure, of unimaginable cost above the passing treasures of this life.

Blessings,
Ashlin

Mortification - by J. I. Packer

Can you believe July will be over in 2 weeks? Wow.
Oh, back to the post...
My mom recently showed me a post on John Piper's blog. It has really blessed me and so I wanted to share it with you. Please tell me what you think.

Oh, and if your internet is as slow as mine you'll be glad I wrote out all that he said, if not you'll enjoy the video.

J. I. Packer: "Personal prayer begins before the Throne of God with my acknowledgement that He is great, glorious, all-powerful, and ready to help me and I am weak, unstable, with no strength of my own to get things right in spiritual terms. And thus I need His help and need it urgently at all points of obedience but certainly at the point in which I am called to mortify sin.

Sin, I understand in that phrase, is sin in the sense of ungodly and anti-God inclinations in the heart. They are positive inclinations to act in disobedience and they are also negative, that is, they are inclinations not to bother about moral and spiritual issues. That kind of inclination used to be called 'sloth', spiritual laziness. And as far as I'm concerned sloth is still the best word for it. But if I want to mortify sin what I must do is first of all ask God to enable me to see the it sin as He sees, that is as spiritual equivalent as dirt in places where cleanliness ought to be, as something very ugly as well as something very guilty. In prayer also I ask, yes I must ask the Lord to direct the Holy Spirit within me, to drain the life out of sin and in prayer I must seek it seems to me both to see and to fellowship with the Lord Jesus whose disciple I am, whose servant I am and Who most certainly echos the Father's directive that I mortify sin. By the way that directive is expressed by two Greek words. One of them comes in Romans 8:13, I think, and it means put to death. and the other comes in Colossians 3:4, if I remember rightly, it's a different word but it also means put to death, and put to death is the basic idea.

If the Father and the Son in mercy show me Their love to me and draw out of me grateful love to Them, if at the same time the Spirit makes me aware that my sinful habits are what they are and that each single one of them is anathema to God. God wants to see the last of it. And through the power of the Holy Spirit He can actually bring that to pass. Well then I pray, continue to pray, I cherish grateful love to the Father and the Son in my heart, I thank the Lord Jesus for the new life that I already have in Him, risen as indeed I am in Christ, in dwelt by the Holy Spirit, called to holiness and promised all the enabling I need to achieve holiness. I expect to find as I pray along theses lines day by day and - well it depends on the sin that is bothering me at the moment, it may be hour by hour. But as I pray regularly along these lines so I look to find and by the grace of God -again and again I do find- that the sinful desire that was grabbing my heart is getting weaker, and love and loyalty to the Lord and a spirit of praise, adoration and thanksgiving is getting stronger and stronger. And I experience at that point what Thomas Chalmers called "the expulsive power of a new affection".

Love to the Father and the Son simply drains the life out of love for sin and for the particular happiness in which sin expresses itself. I never get to the end of mortifying sin because sin in my heart is still marauding, even though it is not dominant. Sin is constantly expressing itself in new disorderly desires, as bindweed is constantly expressing itself in fresh shoots and fresh blooms. Once bindweed has established itself in your garden or hedge it is very difficult to get out because it is always extending itself under the surface of the soil. And sin in the heart is rather like that. But as blooms of sin break surface and I recognize them, I am called to — indeed deep down in my heart I want to — go into action with this prayer procedure for draining the life out of them. And I think this is a discipline every Christian has to wake up to right at the beginning of the Christian life and continue with as long as we are in this world.

So I picked up what I know about mortification very soon after my conversion which was more than 65 years ago. And mortification is still necessary. There are sinful desires associated with old age, same as there are sinful desires associated with youth. I'm older now but sinful desires, like the bloom of the bindweed, do from time to time grow up. And from time to time I have to go back to the beginning and labour in the practice of mortification as described."

Have you ever heard of J.I. Packer? What did you think of all he said?

Have a great week, all.

"Missions is the overflow of our delight in God because missions is the overflow of God's delight in being God. "

"To belong to Jesus is to embrace the nations with Him."

"Go, send, or disobey"
-John Piper

Excuses and An Overdue Post

I realize that my blog may seem somewhat slower than it should be, but I have a few reasons for that. One is that I don’t want to be a hypocryte. I do try to spend a lot of time on the posts I publish on this blog, because I want to be glorifying God in all that I do. I’ll never forget when my dad said, “Hey, that last blog post you did, Ashlin, was really good. It was so true… Maybe you should read it again.” He smiled. “And again, and again.”
Also, I’m sure you all understand when I say life is busy and it is necessary to prioritize. Blogging isn’t one of the best ways to spend my time at this point in my life.
And lastly, I have had posts ready, and I expected them to be posted. I thought I found a way to set the time and date of the post I desire to post and schedule it for that time. I recently checked and realized that the post I had scheduled for Independence and a few other posts, have not indeed been published. I’m very sorry.

Anyway, This Land and Flag was the post that should’ve been posted on the Fourth of July, but wasn’t. I’m sorry about that. I hope this won’t happen again. Here is "This Land and Flag" now.

What is the love of country for which our flag stands? Maybe it begins with love of the land itself. It is the fog rolling in with the tide at Eastport or through the Golden Gate and among the towers of San Francisco. It is the sun coming up behind the White Mountains, over the Green, throwing a shining glory on Lake Champlain and above the Adirondacks. It is the storied Mississippi rolling swift and muddy past St. Louis, rolling past Cairo, pouring down past the levees of New Orleans. It is lazy noontide in the pines of North Carolina; it is a sea of wheat rippling in western Kansas; it is the San Francisco peaks far north across the glowing nakedness of Arizona; it is the Grand Canyon and little trout stream coming down out of a New England ridge.
It is men at work. It is the storm-tossed fishermen coming into Gloucester and Provincetown and Astoria. It is the farmer riding his great machine in the dust of harvest, the dairyman going to the barn before sunrise, the lineman mending the broken wire, the miner drilling for the blast. It is the servants of fire in the murky splendor of Pittsburgh, between the Allegheny and the Monongahela, the trucks rumbling through the night, the locomotive engineer bringing the train in on time, the pilot in the clouds, the riveter running along the beam a hundred feet in the air. It is the clerk in the office, the housewife doing the dishes and sending the children off to school. It is the teacher, doctor and parson tending and helping, body and soul, for small reward.
It is small things remembered, the little corners of the land, the houses, the people that each one loves. We love our country because there was a little tree on a hill, and grass thereon, and a sweet valley below; because the hurdy-gurdy man came along on a sunny morning in a city street; because a beach or a farm or a lane or a house that might not seem much to others were once, for each of us, made magic. It is voices that are remembered only, no longer heard. It is parents, friends, the lazy chat of street and store and office, and the ease of mind that makes life tranquil. It is Summer and Winter, rain and sun and storms. These are flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, blood of our blood, a lasting part of what we are, each of us and all of us together.
It is stories told. It is the Pilgrims dying in their first dreadful Winter. It is the minute man standing his ground at Concord Bridge, and dying there. It is the army in rags, sick, freezing, starving at Valley Forge. It is the wagons and the men on foot going westward over Cumberland Gap, floating down the great rivers, rolling over the great plains. It is the settler hacking fiercely at the primeval forest on his new, his own lands. It is Thoreau at Walden Pond, Lincoln at Cooper Union, and Lee riding home from Appomattox. It is corruption and disgrace, answered always by men who would not let the flag lie in the dust, who have stood up in every generation to fight for the old ideals and the old rights, at risk of ruin or of life itself.
It is a great multitude of people on pilgrimage, common and ordinary people, charged with the usual human failings, yet filled with such a hope as never caught the imaginations and the hearts of any nation on earth before. The hope of liberty. The hope of justice. The hope of a land in which a man can stand straight, without fear, without rancor. The land and the people and the flag, the land a continent, the people of every race, the flag a symbol of what humanity may aspire to when the wars are over and the barriers are down: to these each generation must be dedicated and consecrated anew, to defend with life itself, if need be, but, above all, in friendliness, in hope, in courage, to live for.
Author Unknown

"My Days Are Like a Shadow That Lengthens"

James 1:10-11,14 "...because as a flower of the field he will pass away. For no sooner has the sun risen with a burning heat than it withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beautiful appearance perishes. So the rich man also will fade away in his pursuits....whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away."

Ecclesiastes 6:12 "For who knows what is good for man in life, all the days of his vain life which he passes like a shadow? Who can tell a man what will happen after him under the sun?"

Psalm 103:14-16 "For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.

Isaiah 40:6b-7 "All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, because the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass."

Enduring Things

by Mary E. Linton

And what, then
    is the all-important goal
To which we drive ourselves
    and have no time
To listen to the singing of the soul,
Or rise on spirit's wings,
    to thoughts sublime?
One day the world will grind
    much as before
Without our grim direction,
   and the wheels
Will somehow turn
   when we have passed the door
That leads beyond four walls
   and three square meals.
And what then will we have to take along
Where there and neither pockets
   vaults nor shelves,
When all that we can hold
   will be our song
And what we worked to build
   into ourselves?
Oh, listen to the universe that sings
Through hearts attuned
to Life's enduring things.

"For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, preacious stones, wood hay straw, each one's work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is. If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will recieve a reward. If anyone's work is burned he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire." 1 Corinthians 3:11-15

"Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bagswhich wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no theif approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." - Luke 12:33-34

Seeking His kingdom's glory,
Ashlin