But God also rescued Lot out of Sodom because he was a righteous man who was sick of the shameful immorality of the wicked people around him. Yes, Lot was a righteous man who was tormented in his soul by the wickedness he saw and heard day after day. 
So you see, the Lord knows how to rescue godly people from their trials, even while keeping the wicked under punishment until the day of final judgment.
-2 Peter 2:7-9 NLT
Picture Credit: Zack Clothier
Posted in Daily Scriptures | Tags: Bible, Christ, Christian, Christianity, earth, enviroment, faith, Glacier, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, life, local, Lord, love, Montana, National Park, nature, personal, photography, photos, salvation, survival, wallpaper
But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgment.
-2 Peter 3:8-10 NLT
Photo courtesy of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve.
Posted in Daily Scriptures | Tags: Alaska, beauty, Bible, Christ, Christian, Christianity, devotional, earth, enviroment, faith, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, life, local, Lord, love, mountains, National Park, nature, personal, photography, photos, salvation, survival, wallpaper
We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.
-1 John 1:1-4 NLT
Picture Credit: D Lehle
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Can there be any doubt that God wants to be sought after? The first and greatest of all commands is to love him (Mark 12:29-30; Matt. 22:36-38). He wants us to love him. To seek him with all our heart. A woman longs to be sought after, too, with the whole heart of her pursuer. God longs to be desired. Just as a woman longs to be desired. This is not some weakness or insecurity on the part of a woman, that deep yearning to be desired. God feels the same way. Remember the story of Martha and Mary? Mary chose God, and Jesus said that was what he wanted. “Mary has chosen what is better” (Luke10:42). She chose me.
Life changes dramatically when romance comes into our lives. Christianity changes dramatically when we discover that it, too, is a great romance. That God yearns to share a life of beauty, intimacy, and adventure with us. “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3). This whole world was made for romance—the rivers and the glens, the meadows and the beaches. Flowers, music, a kiss. But we have a way of forgetting all that, losing ourselves in work and worry. Eve—God’s message to the world in feminine form—invites us to romance. Through her, God makes romance a priority of the universe.
So God endows Woman with certain qualities that are essential to relationship, qualities that speak of God. She is inviting. She is vulnerable. She is tender. She embodies mercy. She is also fierce and fiercely devoted. As the old saying goes, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” That’s just how God acts when he isn’t chosen. “I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God who will not share your affection with any other god!” (Ex. 20:5 NLT). A woman’s righteous jealousy speaks of the jealousy of God for us.
Tender and inviting, intimate and alluring, fiercely devoted. Oh yes, our God has a passionate, romantic heart. Just look at Eve.
– John & Stasi Eldredge, Captivating
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Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.
-1 John 2:15-17 NLT
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| 1 1⁄2 | c | instant brown rice |
| 1⁄4 | c | instant wild rice |
| 1⁄2 | c | cooked and dehydrated hamburger (see notes) |
| 1⁄2 | c | freeze dried peas |
| 1 | pkt | knorr cream of spinach soup mix |
| 2 | c | water |
At home:
Package the dry ingredients into a quart freezer bag.
In camp:
Add 2 cups near boiling water, stir well and seal tightly. Put in a cozy for 15 minutes.
For a vegan or vegetarian meal please remove the hamburger and add shredded fresh spinach instead of cream of spinach.
Courtesy of trailcooking.com
Posted in Backpacking Recipes | Tags: backpacking, earth, enviroment, health, hiking, outdoor cooking, recipes, survival, vegan
Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards. Song of Songs 2:15
A little thorn can cause much suffering. A small cloud may hide the sun. Tiny foxes spoil the vineyards; and little sins do mischief to the tender heart. These small sins burrow in the soul and fill it with what is hateful to Christ, and thus our comfortable fellowship and communion with Him is spoiled. A great sin cannot destroy a Christian, but a little sin can make him miserable.
Jesus will not walk with His people unless they drive out every known sin. He says, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”1 Some Christians rarely enjoy their Savior’s presence. How is this? Surely it must be an affliction for a tender child to be separated from his father. Are you a child of God, and yet satisfied to live without seeing your Father’s face?
What! You are the spouse of Christ, and yet content to be absent from His company! Surely, you have fallen into a sad state, for the pure spouse of Christ mourns like a dove without her mate when he has left her.
Here is the question: What has driven Christ from you? He hides His face behind the wall of your sins. That wall may be made up of little pebbles as easily as of great stones. The sea is made of drops; the rocks are made of grains: And the sea that divides you from Christ may be filled with the drops of your little sins; and the rock that almost wrecked the vessel of your life may have been made by the daily working of the coral insects of your little sins.
If you would live with Christ and walk with Christ and see Christ and have fellowship with Christ, pay attention to “the little foxes that spoil the vineyard, for our vineyards are in blossom.” Jesus invites you to go with Him against them. He will surely, like Samson, take the foxes at once and easily. Go with Him to the hunting.
1 – John 15:10
– Alistair Begg
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This may come as a surprise to you: Christianity is not an invitation to become a moral person. It is not a program for getting us in line or for reforming society. It has a powerful effect upon our lives, but when transformation comes, it is always the aftereffect of something else, something at the level of our hearts. And so at its core, Christianity begins with an invitation to desire.
Look again at the way Jesus relates to people. There is the Samaritan woman Jesus meets at the well. She has come alone in the heat of the day to draw water, and they both know why. By coming when the sun is high, she is less likely to run into anyone. You see, her sexual lifestyle has earned her a “reputation.” Back in those days, having one partner after another wasn’t looked so highly upon. She’s on her sixth lover, and so she’d rather bear the scorching rays of the sun than face the searing words of the “decent” women of the town who come at evening to draw water. She succeeds in avoiding the women, but runs into God instead. What does he choose to talk to her about—her immorality? No, he speaks to her about her thirst : “If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water” (John 4:10 The Message). Remarkable. He doesn’t give a little sermon about purity; he doesn’t even mention it, except to say that he knows what her life has been like: “You’ve had five husbands, and the man you’re living with now isn’t even your husband” (John 4:18 The Message). In other words, now that we both know it, let’s talk about your heart’s real thirst, since the life you’ve chosen obviously isn’t working. “The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life” (John 4:14 The Message).
– John Eldredge, Desire
Posted in Ransomed Heart | Tags: art, beauty, Bible, books, California, Christ, Christian, Christianity, desire, devotional, earth, enviroment, faith, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Eldredge, life, literature, local, Lord, love, mountains, National Park, nature, personal, photography, photos, Ransomed Heart, salvation, survival, wallpaper, Yosemite
See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him. Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is. And all who have this eager expectation will keep themselves pure, just as he is pure.
-1 John 3:1-3 NLT
Posted in Daily Scriptures | Tags: Bible, Christ, Christian, Christianity, devotional, earth, enviroment, faith, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, life, local, Lord, love, mountains, nature, personal, photography, photos, salvation, survival, wallpaper
If the way to avoid the murderous rage and deceptive allures of desire is to kill it, if deadness is next to godliness, then Jesus had to be the deadest person ever. But he is called the living God. “It is a dreadful thing,” the writer of Hebrews says, “to fall into the hands of the living God . . . For our ‘God is a consuming fire'” (10:31; 12:29). And what is this consuming fire? His jealous love (Deut. 4:24). God is a deeply, profoundly passionate person. Zeal consumes him. It is the secret of his life, the writer of Hebrews says. The “joy set before him” enabled Jesus to endure the agony of the Cross (Heb. 12:2). In other words, his profound desire for something greater sustained him at the moment of his deepest trial. We cannot hope to live like him without a similar depth of passion. Many people find that the dilemma of desire is too much to live with, and so they abandon, they disown their desire. This is certainly true of a majority of Christians at present. Somehow we believe that we can get on without it. We are mistaken.
– John Eldredge, Desire
Posted in Ransomed Heart | Tags: Bible, books, Christ, Christian, Christianity, devotional, earth, enviroment, faith, God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, John Eldredge, life, literature, local, Lord, love, nature, personal, photography, photos, Ransomed Heart, salvation, survival, wallpaper
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