* - 1 Green Menu Taco Bell's New Green Menu Takes No Ingredients From Nature

Taco Bell's New Green Menu Takes No Ingredients From Nature

Tony Bennett: "The Way You Look Tonight"

This song was written by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields. i just purchased the CD "Oscar Peterson plays the Jerome Kern Song Book" Oscar does his version of this song but I couldn't find it so here's the song sung by Tony Bennett. I have always loved this song.

How Cable News Covered This Past Week

"But That's Just Your Interpretation"

Anybody ever raise that objection when you're explaining the gospel? "But what you're getting from the Bible -- it's just your interpretation. Why should I or anyone else believe that?"

This objection aims to dismiss your truth-claims as overrated. It's a strategy for leveling out all assertions as no more than mere personal opinions: "You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to."

Here are some things to keep in mind.

One, stay focused on what C. S. Lewis called "mere Christianity" -- the core truths of the gospel that are super-clear in the Bible. Avoid pet doctrines and denominational nuances. Your unbelieving friend might be throwing this objection out there because you really are advocating just a personal hunch.

Two, validate the objection, then neutralize it. "Sure, there's interpretation in what I'm saying. But no one can know anything without interpreting it, without running it through the sieve of personal understanding. It's like the sunlight shining through a stained-glass window. The colors show up, but the light is still real and the sun is really out there. So okay, you're getting the gospel through me, and I'm not very good at this. Big deal. The point is, it isn't JUST my interpretation. There is truth in what I'm saying."

Three, make the truth personal, and offer it personally to your friend. "I always have to watch myself, to minimize the distortion-factor in my thinking about Christ. So, thank you for reminding me of that. But here's what I can't get away from. As I read the Bible, the reality of Christ comes storming through to me so clearly I just can't dismiss that power as an 'interpretation.' I have to deal with him, because he's dealing with me. If you'd rather keep it safe, at the level of 'interpretation,' I don't blame you. He is totally rocking my world. But here's where I come down. I'd rather have him messing with me than lose him by treating him as an abstraction. His love is the only good thing in my life I'll keep forever. Want to talk about that? Want to talk about what he can mean to you too?"

Fractured Fairy Tales Staring S.C. Governor Mark Sanford

Bob Dylan - Tangled Up In Blue - Bootleg Series Vol. 2 - 18

How The Press Covers Obama

Simul justus et peccator

[sim’-uhl yoos’-tuhs et peck’-aw-tore]

(Latin simul, “simultaneous” + Latin justus, “righteous” + Latin et, “and” + Latin peccator, “sinner”)

At the same time righteous and a sinner. The phrase was coined by 16th century German Reformer, Martin Luther. In his Lectures on Romans, Luther put it this way, “The saints in being righteous are at the same time sinners; they are righteous because they believe in Christ whose righteousness covers them and is imputed to them, but they are sinners because they do not fulfill the Law and are not without sinful desires. They are like sick people in the care of a physician: they are really sick, but healthy only in hope and in so far as they begin to get better, or, rather: are being healed.”

God Wants to Work Through You

A.W. Tozer:

Unbelief says:

Some other time, but not now;
some other place, but not here;
some other people, but not us.

Faith says:

Anything He did anywhere else He will do here;
anything He did any other time He is willing to do now;
anything He ever did for other people He is willing to do for us!

With our

feet on the ground,
and our head cool,
but with our heart ablaze with the love of God,

we walk out in this fullness of the Spirit, if we will yield and obey.
God wants to work through you!
The Counselor has come, and He doesn't care about the limits of

locality,
geography,
time
or nationality.

The Body of Christ is bigger than all of these.
The question is:
Will you open your heart?

Eric Clapton - Everyday I Have the Blues

Have you seen Jesus lately? - - by Charles Spurgeon

"But they did not know who He was." Luke 24:16

The disciples ought to have recognized Jesus, they had heard His voice so often, and gazed upon that marred face so frequently, that it is amazing that they did not know Him. Yet is it not so with you also? Have you seen Jesus lately? You have been to His table--and you have not met Him there. You are in a dark trouble, and though He plainly says, "It is I--do not be afraid," yet you do not recognize Him. Alas! our eyes are blinded! We know His voice; we have looked into His face; we have leaned our head upon His bosom--and yet, though Christ is very near us, we are saying, "O that I knew where I might find Him!"

We should know Jesus, for we have the Scriptures to reflect His image. Yet how frequently we open that precious book--and have no glimpse of our Well-beloved! Dear child of God, are you in that state? Jesus walks through the glades of Scripture, and desires to commune with His people. Yet you are in the garden of Scripture--but cannot see Him, though He is always there!

Make it your prayer, "Lord, open my eyes--that I may see my Savior present with me!" It is a blessed thing to desire to see Him. But oh! it is better far to gaze upon Him! To those who seek Him--He is kind; but to those who find Him--He is precious beyond expression!

Is This Not A Happy Business

"Faith does not merely mean that the soul realizes that the divine word is full of all grace, free and holy; it also unites the soul with Christ, as a bride is united with her bridegroom. From such a marriage, as St. Paul says, it follows that Christ and the soul become one body, so that they hold all things in common, whether for better or worse. This means that what Christ possesses belongs to the believing soul, and what the soul possesses belongs to Christ. Thus Christ possesses all good things and holiness; these now belong to the soul. The soul possesses lots of vices and sin; these now belong to Christ. . . . Now is not this a happy business? Christ, the rich, noble and holy bridegroom, takes in marriage this poor, contemptible and sinful little prostitute, takes away all her evil and bestows all his goodness upon her! It is no longer possible for sin to overwhelm her, for she is now found in Christ and is swallowed up in him, so that she possesses a rich righteousness in her bridegroom."

Martin Luther, quoted in Alister E. McGrath, Christian Spirituality: An Introduction, pages 158-159.

Arminianism

(ahr-mih‘-nee-uhn-iz’-um)

A summary of teachings that are attributed to 17th century Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius. Arminian theology took issue with the teachings of John Calvin on 5 points, articulated in the Five articles of Remonstrance of 1610. The doctrines can be summarized as universal (prevenient) grace, conditional election, unlimited atonement, resistible grace, and uncertainty of perseverance. This eventually led to the Synod of Dort of 1618-1619, which resulted in the State church upholding what later became the 5 Points of Calvinism, while condemning Arminianism. Arminian theology later received official toleration by the State and has since continued in various forms within Protestantism.

Doyle Bramhall ll - Oh Death - Crossroads Guitar Festival 2007

ShamNow - Goverment Health Care

Hope In A Decadent Age

"All that is meant by Decadence is 'falling off.' It implies in those who live in such a time no loss of energy or talent or moral sense. On the contrary, it is a very active time, full of deep concerns, but peculiarly restless, for it sees no clear lines of advance. The loss it faces is that of Possibility. The forms of art as of life seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through. Institutions function painfully. Repetition and frustration are the intolerable result. Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces."

"Behold, I am making all things new." Revelation 21:5

See Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present, page xvi.

A Tortured Existence - Thoughts About Michael Jackson

So the king is dead. What a sad end to a sad life; a pathetic end to a pathetic life (by which I mean to use pathetic in its true sense as “arousing pity and sympathy). I don’t know that I have ever seen, in one man, such a combination of self-love and self-loathing, shocking narcissism combined with equally shocking self-hatred. Truly Michael Jackson was unparalleled.

Andrew Sullivan offered a few interesting thoughts.

There are two things to say about him. He was a musical genius; and he was an abused child. By abuse, I do not mean sexual abuse; I mean he was used brutally and callously for money, and clearly imprisoned by a tyrannical father. He had no real childhood and spent much of his later life struggling to get one. He was spiritually and psychologically raped at a very early age - and never recovered. Watching him change his race, his age, and almost his gender, you saw a tortured soul seeking what the rest of us take for granted: a normal life.

But he had no compass to find one; no real friends to support and advise him; and money and fame imprisoned him in the delusions of narcissism and self-indulgence. Of course, he bears responsibility for his bizarre life. But the damage done to him by his own family and then by all those motivated more by money and power than by faith and love was irreparable in the end. He died a while ago. He remained for so long a walking human shell.

I loved his music. His young voice was almost a miracle, his poise in retrospect eery, his joy, tempered by pain, often unbearably uplifting. He made the greatest music video of all time; and he made some of the greatest records of all time. He was everything our culture worships; and yet he was obviously desperately unhappy, tortured, afraid and alone.

I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours’ and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out.

I hope he has the peace now he never had in his life. And I pray that such genius will not be so abused again.

From beginning to end, Jackson led a tortured life and he led much of it in full view of the public. As much as he was secretive, being whisked about behind masks and tinted windows, the sheer volume of cameras and the unending interest in his life meant that his every step was recorded. We saw him change his skin color, change his face, and almost change his gender. Through it all, we gasped at his obvious self-loathing, expressed in his desire to change everything he is and was and manifested in his increasingly bizarre behavior. He was a tortured soul and I doubt we can even imagine what was going on inside that increasingly twisted heart, that increasingly conflicted mind.

Michael Jackson was in so many ways a product of this sick celebrity culture (that he helped create) that will never rest satisfied until it has both created and then destroyed the newest celebrity. We want our celebrities to start strong and finish weak, to begin with a bang and then fizzle, pop and sputter, all for our enjoyment and entertainment (Susan Boyle stands as the most recent example of this). Jackson gave us so much to talk about, so much to enjoy. More than any other celebrity he embodied the “vanities” of Ecclesiastes. He was at one time known for what he did so well and then was known for being a freak; he was at one time fantastically wealthy and then utterly broke; he was once loved and then despised. He had it all and yet, it seemed, he had nothing. All of it was meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

Andrew Sullivan ended his reflection on Jackson by saying, “I hope he has the peace now he never had in his life.” I hope the same. Truly, I do. I never cared much for Michael Jackson. I listened to his music occasionally in life but, after losing my childhood collection of 45’s, I didn’t ever buy one of his songs or albums. But it was impossible to miss him completely as even decades after the peak of his fame, his face was often in the news and even a simple skim of the headlines would show that his strangeness was increasing year-by-year. Through all of this I haven’t ever hoped for much on his behalf. But I hope now that he has finally found peace. Sadly, though, his life showed no evidence that he had found the One who is peace, the one who offers true peace. And if that is the case, the true horror of it all is that Jackson will spend all of eternity in the same twisted mind that tortured him for most of the fifty years he was given here. Those fifty years seemed to drive him to the brink of utter insanity; the thought of an eternity in that state is too horrific to imagine. We may like to think that death inevitably brings peace to a tortured existence. But Scripture gives us no reason to find hope except in the One who offers hope by saying “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” May you find that rest today so you can enjoy that rest eternally.

By Tim Challies

Why Changing The Outside Is Not Enough - Some Thoughts About Michael Jackson

What Jackson did to himself is what we all do to ourselves outside of Christ. The difference is that Jackson's failed attempts were all worn obviously, in public view, on the changing tapestry of his face, while we may mask ours better.

As you shrink from the Frankenstein shock of Jackson's visage, reflect: mankind was created in God's image (Genesis 1:26-28), and still bears that image (Genesis 9:6). But in seeking to take God's place and make themselves gods (Genesis 3), our foreparents did to their whole beings what Michael Jackson did to his face: they horridly disfigured themselves and all of us, leaving a repulsive mockery of what we were meant to be.

The only solution for us is not a succession of endeavors to remake ourselves. Each attempt leaves a worse spectacle than the previous, and moves us further from what we truly need.

The only solution for us is the solution to which Michael Jackson never submitted himself, as far as is known: to be born anew, under the good hand of our Creator. We do not need new faces. We need new natures. We need the miracle of regeneration, not the tragedy of manmade makeovers.

And this can only come through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Anonymous people from at least six continents pass through these pages every day. My prayer for you, whoever you are, is that you will take your hurts and brokenness and crimes against God to the only place when you can find forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation: to the Lord Jesus Christ.
By Dan Phillips, ToRead The Rest

' I'm So Glad ' SKIP JAMES (1931) Delta Blues Guitar

Repel Fleas And Hereticks - Frontline Plus

How To Avoid Being Shallow

"Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, chapter 8.

I believe the Lord takes every one of his children to this place of bare trust in his Word. Without it, we would remain shallow. Through it, we emerge more deeply surrendered to God as God, more deeply settled and quietly certain and surprisingly satisfied.
I also believe that many of us are in that place of intense pressure right now.

God will keep us.

Thanksgiving

“He who loves not wine, woman and song is a fool his whole life long." Martin Luther

"Everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving." 1 Timothy 4:4

No Country for Burly Men

How feminist groups skewed the Obama stimulus plan towards women's jobs.
by Christina Hoff Sommers
A "man-cession." That's what some economists are starting to call it. Of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men. Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan, characterizes the recession as a "downturn" for women but a "catastrophe" for men.

Men are bearing the brunt of the current economic crisis because they predominate in manufacturing and construction, the hardest-hit sectors, which have lost more than 3 million jobs since December 2007. Women, by contrast, are a majority in recession-resistant fields such as education and health care, which gained 588,000 jobs during the same period. Rescuing hundreds of thousands of unemployed crane operators, welders, production line managers, and machine setters was never going to be easy. But the concerted opposition of several powerful women's groups has made it all but impossible. Consider what just happened with the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Last November, President-elect Obama addressed the devastation in the construction and manufacturing industries by proposing an ambitious New Deal-like program to rebuild the nation's infrastructure. He called for a two-year "shovel ready" stimulus program to modernize roads, bridges, schools, electrical grids, public transportation, and dams and made reinvigorating the hardest-hit sectors of the economy the goal of the legislation that would become the recovery act.

Women's groups were appalled. Grids? Dams? Opinion pieces immediately appeared in major newspapers with titles like "Where are the New Jobs for Women?" and "The Macho Stimulus Plan."
Read The Rest

Tombstone - Doc Holliday "I'm your Huckleberry"

Bob Dylan - Ring Them Bells