Making Life Work

By: John Klassek

    We had almost finished dinner at the restaurant when a man in a black suit approached us and asked whether he could perform a few magic tricks for us. I politely declined his offer.

    He then quite happily made his way to the next table. I couldn’t help but to curiously watch him ply his tricks there, and what he did was quite amazing. He threw a red ball into the air and it simply disappeared! The look of surprise and fascination was evident on the faces of everyone seated at that table. “Is seeing believing?” I wondered.

    A friend of mine once lamented that he had never seen any miracles in his life. He implied that our belief in what really matters might be enhanced by being witness to some supernatural...

From Ronald L. Dart’s Born to Win Notes

The Bible is an ancient book. It has stood the test of time, and has survived a few attempts to suppress it, or even get rid of it. This book deserves to be approached with awe and respect, even by people who don’t believe it. And even more by those who do.

A lady called Ron after she had heard a Born to Win program and was very complimentary. She appreciated most his honesty with the Scriptures. He couldn’t help wondering if honesty with the Scriptures was all that unusual. As Ron mused on this, he thought that if there is any cause to be less than honest with the Bible, it probably grows out of church or denominational affiliation. This is not intended as a criticism of church membership or affiliation,...

 

By: Ronald L. Dart

    Do you take your faith for granted? Or is it like a lot of married couples. We have been together so long, we can complete sentences for one another. We can take one another for granted, and at some level, that is good. I can take it for granted that my wife will be faithful to me. I can take it for granted that she won’t bust the budget. I do not even need to check on her credit card purchases. I only look at them to be sure there is no fraud. After 51 years of marriage, there aren’t a lot of surprises, nor should there be.

By: Ronald L. Dart

”And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” (Mark 9:24 ).

    Jennifer's husband was going into the hospital on Monday for open heart surgery. He was a little young to be having heart problems, but the surgeon said that his youth was in his favor. There were risks, of course, but they did this surgery several times a week at this hospital. They were good at it.

By: Lenny Cacchio

    Peter was free! The jails doors swung open and he walked right past the guards, out the gates, and to the house of his friends, who had spent the entire night in prayer for this very thing! (Acts 12:1-13) And yet this episode is anything but a shining example of faithful prayer.

    James tells us that the "effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much", and he tells us to pray "nothing wavering", that to waver is to be tossed about the sea, and in such a case we should expect nothing from the Lord (James 5:16, 1:6-7).

    But God in his mercy and love often answers prayers even when we do waver. God sprang Peter from prison by an unassailable miracle in answer to the fervent prayers of the brethren. Even...

By: Lenny Cacchio

Dinesh D’Souza is an author and political pundit whose newest book is entitled What’s So Great About Christianity. Note that the title does not end in a question mark. Noted atheist Christopher Hitchens recently appeared on stage with D’Souza to debate the question of religion. 

I was able to view an eight minute clip, and while I do not know how D’Souza fared in the entire debate, I do claim disappointment in how he dealt with on of Mr. Hitchens’ challenges.

Hitchens claims that the Church aided and abetted the rise of Fascism in the 20th Century. People such as Franco and Mussolini were practicing Catholics and had reached various agreements and accommodations with the Vatican regarding their policies and activities....

By: Lenny Cacchio  

    No, I don’t accept it all on faith.  The God of the Bible does not expect you to chuck your reasoning powers at the sanctuary door.  Rather, we read of Paul’s admonition to the Thessalonians to "test all things; hold fast what is good" (I Thessalonians 5:21 NKJV), or as the old King James has it, "Prove all things."

    "Prove" can mean lots of different things.  Writers such as Lee Strobel offer proof of God through rules of evidence which he presents admirably in his "Case For" books – The Case of Christ, The Case for Faith, and The Case for a Creator.

    Geniuses such as Isaac Newton saw the laws of physics as proof of an ordered universe and thus the need for a supreme lawgiver.

    Apologists such...

By: Lenny Cacchio  

    Our God is a patient sort, and that goes for our prayer lives too. As Paul once wrote,

    “The Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” (Rom 8:26-27 NKJV) That’s almost like saying that God sees our hearts even if our tongues don’t say it right.

    But God is patient even if our hearts aren’t quite where they ought to be. Anciently there was a man who was known as Deceitful. This was not just a nickname, and he wasn’t one of the Seven Dwarfs. “Deceitful” is what “Jacob” means in Hebrew. Jeremiah so uses that word in chapter 17 of his book: “The heart is deceitful above...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    The current word of insult these days is “Fundamentalism”.  Fundamentalists are accused of acts of intolerance, abandoning science, keeping their women barefoot and pregnant, and attempting to supplant the US Constitution with a “theocracy”. 

    Editorials and commentators here and there draw a connection between “Fundamentalist Christians” and “Fundamentalist Islam” with the pretext that both promote terrorism and therefore both bear a moral equivalency.

    I am a Christian, and I take that calling seriously.  I have studied Christianity from every angle, reading agnostics, atheists, apologists, and historians.  I have talked with people from scores of denominational backgrounds and from other nations and cultures. ...

By: Ron Saladin

    I was on my way home from work when I got the page—911. I hurriedly dialed home to hear that five year-old Christopher had a bad puncture wound under his left jaw. He had catapulted off his bicycle into the edge of a log. Lots of blood. I hurriedly asked if he was breathing okay; the answer was yes. I was 30 minutes away.

    When I arrived, I looked at the wound. It was bleeding more from the inside than the outside. My wife, Cynthia, had rolled up a cloth and put it into Christopher’s mouth to absorb some of the seeping blood. The wound looked odd—smooth tissue, almost like the inside tissue of a cheek. We were off to the emergency room at St. John’s in Washington, MO.

    The doctor suspected a broken jaw, and...

By: Lenny Cacchio

Faith sometimes takes a strange shape.      One time early in Jesus’ ministry he and his disciples boarded a ship on the Sea of Galilee, when a windstorm blew and buffeted the ship mercifully.  Several of the disciples were seaman and surely had weathered such that frequent that sea, but this apparently was worse than most.  The boat was filling with water and was in danger of sinking.   But through it all, Jesus was in the stern of the ship, fast asleep.  They cried, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" (Mark 4:35-41).

    I find it easy to identify with the disciples’ reaction.  Like them, I know that Jesus is the Christ. I have seen him doing his work in others’ lives and my own.  He tells me that...

By: Lenny Cacchio  

    Try this experiment. Walk into your place of employment with a wad of one-dollar bills and try to give them away. See if people take them. I tried it once. "Anybody want this?" It was hard to find a taker. Someone finally took me up on the offer, but then promptly handed it back. "What’s the catch?" she asked. "Are these real? Why are you doing this?"

    Finally, I put a stack of ones in the kitchen with a sign that read: "Free.Take One." When they figured out that there were no strings attached, they got together and decided to use the money to buy donuts for the office. I don’t even like donuts.

    People tend to be suspicious of freebies. No one goes around giving stuff away and expecting nothing in return....