My Prayer

“God, harden me against myself,
The coward with pathetic voice
Who craves for ease and rest and joy,
Myself, arch-traitor to myself,
My hollowest friend,
My deadliest foe,
My clog, whatever road I go.”

Amy Wilson Carmichael

QUOTABLE

“An drop of grace is better than a sea of gifts”

John Flavel

My Comfort in Life and Death

That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.

Heidelberg Catechism I – 3

A Republican Worthy of Mention

http://jones.house.gov/

QUOTABLE

“Looking forward into life and to those prospects which seem to be commensurate with your talents…you may justly esteem those incidents fortunate which compel an exertion of mental power, maturity of which is rarely seen growing out of an uninterrupted tranquility. Adversity toughens manhood, and the characteristic of the good or the great man, is not that he has been exempted from the evils of life, but that he has surmounted them.”

Patrick Henry

Hmmmmm….

Strange Days

Alas! it is delusion all;
The future cheats us from afar,
Nor can we be what we recall,
Nor dare we think on what we are.
—Lord Byron

A Saudi Arabian relative of President Bush’s Saudi Arabian friends and business partners sends a mostly Saudi jihadist band to kill 3,000 Americans. In response, President Bush sends American armed forces to destroy Saudi Arabia’s most dangerous enemy, Iraq, which had nothing to do with the attack on Americans. President Bush and his Congress vote to restrict the freedom of American citizens. The President declares Islam a religion of peace and condemns those who think otherwise. Meanwhile, Saudis finance terrorist training in every Western country.

Dr. Clyde N. Wilson

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/wilson.cgi

Yet Another Reason to Stop Voting for These Guys

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/01/a_bush_tax_increase.html

But I Just Needed to Vent

Philippians 2:14 – 16

Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.

Father, forgive me.

A Christian’s Motivation

I ran across this in the Introduction from James Jordan’s “Primeval Saints”.

“The Christian is never motivated by a sense of his own honor, but rather by the honor of Christ. If pride was Satan’s original sin, humility and patient faith are the Christian’s primary duty. The Christian casts his own honor in the dust so that God may be honored, knowing that God and God alone can give him true honor. The Christian, thus, lives by obedience and submission, not by pride and honor and nobility. The Christian lives by someting outside himself -God’s commands, and not by something inside himself – his sense of honor.

Honor is our sense of self-worth, of self-importance. Since we are created as the very images of God Himself, we are indeed worthy and important. But our sense of worth must never come from ourselves. It must always come from God’s calling us to be His.”

Rather convicting wouldn’t you agree.

Do not get into management if you can’t

1. Master your desires.
2. Keep your self-control. A manager must be calm in crises and resilient in disappointment.
3. Use the best ideas of your staff. However, you must be decisive and not wait on others to make up their minds.
4. Handle criticism. Profit from even malicious criticism.
5. Turn disappointment into creative new opportunity.
6. Gain cooperation of others and win their respect and confidence.
7. Exert discipline without making a power play or show of force.
8. Be a peace maker. Can you make peace when argument has broken out.
9. Gain the trust of your people in difficult and delicate situations.
10. Induce people to do happily some legitimate thing that they would not normally wish to do.
11. Accept opposition to your viewpoint or decision without taking offense.
12. Make and keep friends. Loyal friends is an index of your leadership potential.
13. Hold steady in the face of disapproval and even temporary loss of confidence.
14. Be at ease in the presence of strangers. A leader must not get nervous in the presence of his superiors.
15. Be sympathetic and friendly.
16. Initiate and maintain an interest in people. No matter who.
17. Be tactful. A leader and manager must anticipate how his or her words will affect a person.
18. Be strong willed and steady. Do not vacillitate or drift in the wind.
19. Forgive. Nursing resentment and harboring ill-feelings is not becoming of a manager.
20. Maintain Optimism. Pessimism and leadership/management mix like oil and water.
21. Feel a master passion. Leaders/managers need a strong focus.
22. Welcome responsibility.

See not really all that difficult now is it.