Evidence for God from Science

B. W. wrote:God's great agape love still demands absolute surrender to Him.

Nessa wrote:

B. W. wrote:God's great agape love still demands absolute surrender to Him.

I dont believe love demands its own way as such.

Jesus made no demands on the cross. He freely laid down his life.

God's love is tough but it doesnt demand.

It woos, it pleads, it passionately seeks out, it relentlessly pursues ..I like how Tozer puts it in one of his writings 'hound of heaven'

“Let us say it again: The Universal Presence is a fact. God is here. The whole universe is alive with His life. And He is no strange or foreign God, but the familiar Father of our Lord Jesus Christ whose love has for these thousands of years enfolded the sinful race of men. And always He is trying to get our attention, to reveal Himself to us, to communicate with us. We have within us the ability to know Him if we will but respond to His overtures. (And this we call pursuing God!) We will know Him in increasing degree as our receptivity becomes more perfect by faith and love and practice.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit. "No man can come to me," said our Lord, "except the Father which hath sent me draw him," and it is by this very prevenient drawing that God takes from us every vestige of credit for the act of coming. The impulse to pursue God originates with God, but the outworking of that impulse is our following hard after Him; and all the time we are pursuing Him we are already in His hand: "Thy right hand upholdeth me.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“The doctrine of justification by faith—a Biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort—has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be "received" without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is "saved," but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact he is specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with little.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“...bring us back again into right and eternal relationship with Himself. This required that our sins be disposed of satisfactorily, that a full reconciliation be effected and the way opened for us to return again into conscious communion with God and to live again in the Presence as before. Then by His prevenient working within us He moves us to return. This first comes to our notice when our restless hearts feel a yearning for the Presence of God and we say within ourselves, "I will arise and go to my Father." That is the first step, and as the Chinese sage Lao-tze has said, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His Presence.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“Anyone who might feel reluctant to surrender his will to the will of another should remember Jesus' words, "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin." We must of necessity be servant to someone, either to God or to sin. The sinner prides himself on his independence, completely overlooking the fact that he is the weak slave of the sins that rule his members. The man who surrenders to Christ exchanges a cruel slave driver for a kind and gentle Master whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us. We must bring our self-sins to the cross for judgment. We must prepare ourselves for an ordeal of suffering in some measure like that through which our Saviour passed when He suffered under Pontius Pilate. Let us remember: when we talk of the rending of the veil we are speaking in a figure, and the thought of it is poetical, almost pleasant; but in actuality there is nothing pleasant about it. In human experience that veil is made of living spiritual tissue; it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all. It is never fun to die. To rip through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what the cross would do to every man to set him free.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“Anyone who might feel reluctant to surrender his will to the will of another should remember Jesus' words, "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin." We must of necessity be servant to someone, either to God or to sin.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.”
― A.W. Tozer

“The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven't yet come to the end of themselves. We're still trying to give orders, and interfering with God's work within us. ”
― A.W. Tozer

melanie wrote:

RickD wrote:Food for thought:
Unprecedented bias: The media's intellectual dishonesty in Israel conflict coverage
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/10/ ... -bias.html[/quote

Food for thought?
Hmmmm not quite unless you like hypocrisy at its finest with a side plate of irony.
It's actually pretty funny that it's presented as unprecendented bias, with intellectual dishonesty.
Want to know how to see unprecendented bias and intellectual dishonesty read the article knowing who the author is.....
Joshua Nass
A Jew, founder of voices of conservative youth, a writer for The Jerusalem Post, The Jewish Press, The times of Israel, along with Fox News, who profit substantially for obvious reasons in publishing articles criticising the New York Times,
And let's not forget Joshua last year at the Jewish People's choice awards won the Lover of Israel award.
Who better to get to write an article about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
I'm very sure there is no unprecendented bias or intellectual dishonesty going on there........

1) What those in the media fail to recognize or at least refuse to include in their reporting is the actual reason for this violence. The manufactured reason is that Israel pla1) Journalists have a responsibility to cover issues with accuracy and what we’ve seen thus far has been an infusion of bias and misinformation.

2) People who consistently read mainstream news sources, such as The New York Times, may be surprised to learn they are not as informed as they think they are.

3) It may surprise them to know that the recent spate of terrorist attacks against Israelis did not begin in the past two weeks, but much earlier in fact. It took weeks before many media outlets actually lent any coverage whatsoever to the events. The New York Times waited a month — a month full of violence and blood — to report on the violence in Israel.

4) And now, although all “reliable” media outlets are reporting on the violence, they are not doing so responsibly. They bury stories, downplay the severity of the attacks and fail to give full and relevant context to these events.

5) A prime example of this should be evident to New York Times readers. On Oct. 18, an Israeli solder was stabbed and killed in Beersheba by a Palestinian militant; the New York Times had one article about it. On Oct. 19, an Eritrean man was shot and beaten to death by Israeli citizens who erroneously believed he was a terrorist; on its website, the New York Times already has more than five articles on this incident.

Both murders are disgusting and should be condemned strongly — so why is the New York Times only condemning the act of violence committed by the Israelis?
nned to reopen the Temple Mount to the Jews; however, the Israeli government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly denied this. Nevertheless, that hasn’t stopped the media from presenting the Israelis as the aggressors and provocateurs of this conflict.

7) The fundamental reason for the violence this time around, is the same reason it has been since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. It’s an underlying cancer of hatred for the Jewish people that reaches a boiling point every few years, manifesting itself into acts of terror against innocent Israeli civilians. The root of the problem is not settlement building in the West Bank but the indoctrination of Palestinian youth from a young age to hate the Jew. What I have yet to see covered by any major media outlet are the incendiary depictions of Israelis that exist throughout Palestinian press. The textbooks distributed to Palestinian children in schools teach that Jews are the descendants of apes and swine. Until this cancer is eradicated once and for all, there will never be peace and certainly not a resolution to this conflict.

8 ) But the media doesn’t lend any of this context to its reporting. Instead, the New York Times on its website has an article titled “Wave of Unrest Leaves Palestinian President With No Good Choices.” The article paints Abbas sympathetically as an older man who, like all adults today, can’t seem to control children who are exposed to the decaying influence of the Web. The opening paragraph reads: “A three-week-old uprising by knife-wielding, Internet-generation teenagers against Israelis has left 80-year-old Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas looking like yesterday’s man, unable either to oppose the violence or openly endorse it.” This sentence seemingly equates stabbing innocents with listening to that darned punk music.

9) And it is not just the New York Times painting these attackers as victims and troubled children. Even though the last few weeks have been plagued by numerous incidents of Palestinian teens running with knives attempting to stab Israelis, a recent headline in the LA Times read “Palestinian teens die amid Mideast unrest.” Where’s the context? That headline inaccurately reflects the reality of the situation in Israel. These weren’t innocent Palestinian teens who were killed by Israeli forces; they were terrorists wielding knives stabbing innocent Israeli civilians. The media has a duty to the public to deliver the news in a fair way. It has failed miserably to live up to that professional standard in its coverage of the ongoing conflict in Israel.

10) One recent example of propaganda being spun by the Palestinian Authority and printed without question by the media is the story of Ahmed Manasrah. Ahmed, 13, and his cousin, Hassan Manasrah, 15, stabbed two innocent Israeli civilians, including a Jewish teen, also age 13. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas immediately broadcasted that innocent Ahmed had been “executed in cold blood” by Israeli forces, releasing a video of Ahmed being “killed.” And news sources immediately began bemoaning Israel’s lack of restraint. After all, they said, he’s just a teenager.

But then Israel released video footage of Ahmed and Hassan stabbing two citizens, kicking the teenager once he was already on the ground with a stab wound to his neck. And Ahmed was not “executed.” He was in stable condition and being treated in Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital. The Palestinian Authority released images to the media showing Ahmed dead. In turn, Hadassah Ein Kerem showed the image of the boy alive and in stable condition being treated by Israeli doctors.

And how did the media cover this clear illustration of propaganda and intellectual dishonesty by the Palestinian Authority? The following NBC headline tells you all you need to know: “Dispute Over Viral Video of Shot Ahmed Manasrah Sums Up Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”

11) What does that even mean? Sums it up how? Unless NBC is meaning that this clearly shows how the PA’s propaganda machine lies to the world, I don’t see how this video “dispute” sums up the decades of violence and aggression. Also, the word “dispute” implies that we’re still debating this. There is no debate. Abbas lied.

12) The media needs to begin doing its due diligence and covering the ongoing conflict in Israel honestly. But most importantly, it’s time for them to expose the true source of the terrorist outbreaks that unfortunately emerge far too frequently. The root cause is not Israelis building apartment houses in East Jerusalem. Nor is it the construction of settlements in the West Bank. Rather, it is the culture that glorifies terrorism and murderers which Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority foster. If Palestinian leadership refuses to condemn murderers and terrorists, where is the next generation of Palestinians to look to for a moral compass?

EssentialSacrifice wrote:For all my life Rick, we have lived under the assumption that Israel is our ally and loved as the original home of the God who's both the God of Christianity and Judaism. We are turning our backs on her just as the bible says the world will. I just never thought we'd be among those who have. I don't know what happened with our compassion for the little guy, the under dog in region of absolute terror, but our current administration is absolutely the reason for our withdrawal for both Israel's and the entire mid east player's worst scenario... leave the area, support no one (perhaps Iran) and let the cookie crumble. We have abandoned our best ally in the world to a miserable existence of cat and mouse and wait for the worst with real killers... absolute country/nation destroyers who openly work for the complete elimination of Israel.

...The Czech TV report cited the Arab Spring as the root cause for the flood of Muslim migrants into Europe.

"More and more, the whole thing is turning into the situation that we will experience the much-touted Arab spring from very close up – right here at home," the reporter said. "What's more, many European are alienating large part of their own populace with unfortunate social and multicultural politics, merciless removal of children, unfair seizures and trading on traditional European values and with policies which are usually less friendly toward conservative and traditional native inhabitants and leans toward that portion of inhabitants who have little trouble with globalization and nonchalant liberalization, removal of traditions and Islamization. Yet we will not be able to rely on it, that portion of (population) once the Arab Spring comes here. And that will probably be, as they say, closing the barn after the cows are gone."


Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/10/islamic-inva ... uqMQRVK.99

I'm of the belief that one reason why the U. S. has been so blessed as a nation, is because historically, the U. S. has blessed Israel.