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Ten Years and 7,015 less members ago…
“Don’t Break Down” (McMenis, 2009) Time: 01 minute 23 seconds
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37 Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that You are the LORD God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again.” (I Kings 18:37 NKJV)
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If you are familiar with Tim Tebow foundation’s Night to Shine. It is a prom for special needs people. Our church has participated for 4 years now. This year I was Security. It’s an awesome event to be able to participate in.
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I love what Tim Tebow does!
Many crack jokes because of his pro-football career but he has done so, so much for communities around this nation not to mention his faith in God is inspiring.
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I think that is so amazing!
My aunt suffered from glioblastoma but she was my best friend as a child![Although as a child never understood why Aunt Jacinda would play games and act like a kid]
When I came older to understand, I gained a special place in my heart for special people.
The best part [although sad at same time] Doctors said she would not make it too 21 but she lived to be 35.
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It really is a blessing to of participate in. While I was Security, my wife did registration and was a “buddy” and our son was a doorman for the Red Carpet.
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That is a honor for you!
So glad you were given a chance to participate! && Thanks for sharing!
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Came across this thread today, and I’ll just say that reading through was a big help to me at just the right time. Thanks to everyone whose posted in here
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I’m so glad it was Harvey!
Sometimes we all need some prayer or something to inspire us every once in a while!
I’ll put you in my prayers (I’m not just saying that neither, I know there are some people who say that or perhaps it has become a way of talking to people but I’m foreal…Your names on a written list as soon as done).
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God is Speaking…Are You Listening? (2:42)
Two-Minute forty-three seconds.
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Today’s Inspiration: “Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings; He will not stand before unknown men.” Proverbs 22:29
Article:
http://answersfromthebook.net/please-explain-what-proverbs-2229-means/
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@Randall318 No, I was busy buying a gun and tons of accessories. So in a way I guess I was drunk with greed. 
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I been there! As a matter of fact will try to when get some extra cash.
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“So I realized then that the best thing we can do is enjoy what we have worked for. There is nothing else we can do.[+] There is no way for us to know what will happen after we die.?” [Eccl. 3.22]
They always say you lose meaning in each translation but I’ve been loving this new version. It’s the GOOD NEWS TRANSLATION.
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Dr. DeYoung’s book was so good that I read it twice. I found out quickly that these “vices” identified more to my own self than first wanted to believe[Title at the bottom & works below are owned by publisher].
[Envy: Feeling Bitter When Others Have It Better]
When the envious are forced to confront a self they judge lacking in worth, their unhappiness and grief can be unbearable. They feel compelled to do something–anything–to get themselves out from under it. Usually, this means sabotaging the rival, but even this cannot reduce the envious from stewing in her or his own self-made resentments.
According to one confessional manual, envy can show itself in the following ways: feeling offended at the talents, successes, or good fortune of others; selfish or unnecessary rivalry and competition; pleasure at others difficulties or distress; ill will; reading false motives into others behavior; belittling others; false accusations; backbiting (saying something bad, even if true, behind another back); slander (saying something bad, even if true, in the open about someone); initiation, collection, or retelling of gossip; arousing, fostering, or organizing antagonism against others; scorn of another’s abilities or failures; teasing or bullying; ridicule of persons, institutions, or ideals; and prejudice against those we consider inferior, who consider us inferior, or who seem to threaten our security or position.
There is often a progression in these envious symptoms from thought and feeling to words to deeds and from secret and underhanded to open and forceful according to Aquinas, even typically starts with “detraction,” more commonly known as backstabbing, for instance, a little murmuring in the shadows about the book’s weakness and the authors somewhat shoddy research. The envier’s negative comments may come out in the open, as “reviling,” but the envious usually prefer deceitful or underhanded strategies, like Epstein’s suggestion of the time-honored ploy of “damn[ing]…with faint praise.” If these methods of trying to detract from their rival’s excellence are successful, and if the reputation of the rival is damaged, the envious rejoice at the other downfall (schadenfreude). Of course, they can also revel in their rival’s misfortune even if it happened by accident or by another agency. But there can be something more satisfying for the envious about engineering it, a fact that betrays real malicious intent.
If the envious try to undermine their rival and are not successful then their bitterness intensifies and they resent the other person’s good even more.
[Vainglory: Image Is Everything]
“Most of us know this vice well, even if we have never heard this name for it before. Vainglory is the excessive and disordered desire for recognition and approval from others. Whether we are successful in gaining that approval or not. We all know what it is like to desire public acknowledgment and approval of our own person or our accomplishments.”
Vainglory has many forms today. For example, it is difficult to find someone who has never exaggerated something she has done or made up something about herself to impress those listening. Or perhaps we might say something bad or false about another person to get our friends to think we are funny or entertaining. Or we do something good with (or perhaps because of) the expectation that others will notice it. Or again we do something good that others did notice and feel disappointed by that. We may even do something wrong, illegal, or foolish because we want attention from a certain group of people. Many of us lie to seem better than we are, out of an excessive desire for approval of those judging it. We invest ourselves in building a reputation that is based on shallow, trivial things. Or we something good, get attention for it, and then take all the credit for our goodness for ourselves without the slightest nod to the giver of all good and perfect gifts. We may not know these things under the name “vainglory,” but the definition fits them to a T.
[Sloth: Resistance To The Demands Of Love]
The slothful are inwardly unwilling to be moved: they are stuck between a self they cannot bear and a self they can’t bear to become. Their outward behavior–sluggishness and inertia–reflects the state of their heart.
The slothful person tends to cope by mentally and emotionally “checking out.” This sort of resignation is “not to be confused with laziness,” according to Buechner.
The slothful person ultimately insists on his own way, his own will, his own self-made pseudo-rest. His lack of commitment speaks of an unwillingness to surrender himself to God. It is the resistance that roots the vice of sloth in pride. Unlike other forms of sorrow, grief, or even depression, all of which can be mistaken for sloth, this capital vice results from a choice not to commit oneself, a refusal to give oneself wholly to God and then stay the course. It is the antithesis of Mary’s “yes” at the annunciation, a “yes” that finds her faithful to the end, standing at the foot of the cross. The slothful person tries to find happiness while evading the daily demands of self-giving love. He prefers his own diligent efforts to make himself happy with shortcuts and quick fixes. He chooses to avoid the onerousness of love’s demands by putting them off and trying to find the possibility of fulfillment and happiness. And so, says Gregory, sloth eventually brings one to despair.
[Avarice: I Want It All]
Avarice is being too attached to money and possessions–caring too much about them, as it’s own Latin root reveals (aveo, avere: to crave). Liberality is opposed, however, to carelessness about the real value of things and our responsibility for them, which is the vice of prodigality. The most dramatic example of the latter vice is found in Luke 15, the parable of the prodigal son. The prodigal’s use of money shows him too eager to acquire wealth (he wants his inheritance before his father has died) and then too eager to spend it unwisely on things of ephemeral value. The prodigal is wasteful with his money, for he does not care enough about it or value it enough. (Is it merely coincidental that the money he is careless with was not earned by him?) In contrast to these two vices, then, the virtue of liberality stands on the fine line between excess (too much attachment to money) and deficiency (too little attachment).
In the case of the first hinderance, which makes giving painful is the feeling that money is our own. In Aquinas’s words, “The avaricious person takes pleasure in the consideration of him or herself as possessor of riches.” It’s much easier to be generous with other people’s money, since it’s always easier to judge in their case that they don’t themselves. Similarly, it’s easier to swallow our anger when the belongings that get wrecked or misused or neglected are someone else’s (“Its just a rental”), because what we earn and buy and make our own feel like a part of ourselves. Avarice is not just about having more; it’s about what is mine. Do we possess our possessions, or are we possessed by them?
[Anger: Holy Emotion or Hellish Passion?]
Is it bad to be angry? When we picture anger, it can be ugly and violent, or invigorating and alive with passion. There is something inspiring about Matin Luther King Jr, denouncing injustice from the pulpit. If he had not been angry at racial injustice, his words would have lacked the right force. As one author said of Jesus, “I am unable to commit to any messiah who doesn’t knock over tables.” But anger can destroy too—we are aghast at the frenzied wrath of an abusive parent lashing out at a child, and dumbstruck at the animosity with which ordinary citizens turn on someone who has done them harm. I will never forget a television interview with the vengeful mother of a child who had been killed by a drunk driver. Fists raised, her face contorted with rage, she denounced the justice system for failing to dole out the death penalty. In her wrath, she demanded nothing less than a life for a life—the lex talionis served with relish.
Anger is a complicated case. The Bible tells us that even God burns with anger. Every mass includes a “dies irae”—fear the day of the Lord’s wrath! But the apostle Paul’s “sin lists” invariably include a warning against fits of anger or wrath (e.g., Gal. 5::20; Col. 3:8). And most of what scripture has to say about anger is negative.
The Christian tradition is divided about anger and has been from the beginning. Anger, for Thomas Aquinas, is a natural expression of human passions, one response among many aroused by threats to ourselves and others. Anger is not inherently bad, although it becomes disordered when it attacks the wrong target or gets out of control. Those who take this view of anger are careful to distinguish anger, the passion, a part of normal human emotional makeup, from wrath, the vice, which is anger in its sinful, excessive, misdirected form.
Anger is not simply lashing out at any hurtful things, but a response that tracks retributive justice.
[Gluttony: Feeding Your Face And Starving Your Heart]
As a vice, gluttony is something habitual. It is a routine, a pattern, or a groove that gets worn into character. As a vice, it is a sinful habit. Because we can’t see other people’s habits, we tend to identify things by their behavioral symptoms. Gluttony’s behavioral cues are more complex than we might think, however. We know gluttony must have something to do with eating and maybe drinking too. Our certainty, however, should end there. How does the mundane act of taking in food impact our spiritual life anyway?
If there’s anything simple about gluttony, it is its focus on pleasure. One’s own pleasure. Excessive pleasure. Immediate, tangible pleasure.
Gluttony is really not about how much we’re eating, but about how our eating reflects how much pleasure we take in eating food and why. Eating is meant to be pleasurable, and so is feeling filled after being hungry. These pleasures, the food itself, and the act of eating are all good, God-given gifts. God commanded us to eat in the garden, and the New Testament tells us that eating even foods formerly unclean is unlawful. Gluttony creeps in and corrupts these pleasures when our desires for them run out of control. In 1 Corinthians 6 Paul talks about gluttony and lust in terms of being “mastered” by pleasure, and elsewhere he speaks of making a god of our stomachs (see Phil. 3.17-21). What’s vicious about gluttony is that these pleasures dominate everything else that’s important. The vice degrades us into being mere pleasure seekers. This is what gluttony is really all about.
The main question we should be asking is not, “How much is too much?” but rather, “How dominated by the desire for this pleasure am I?” “How difficult would it be to have to give up or do without it?” The trouble with gluttony is that it reduces eating to an exercise in gratifying my own desires for physical pleasures, consuming whatever I think will make me full and satisfied. Rather than simply enjoying food, we are using it to give ourselves a needed “pleasure fix.”
[Lust: Smoke, Fire, And Ashes]
Lust, by contrast, pretends sex and sexual pleasure are a party for one. Lust makes sexual pleasure all about me. It is a self gratification project. This feature of lust more than any other puts it in opposition to well-ordered sexual enjoyment. In lust, sexual pleasure is divorced from love and mutual self-giving. And when we lust we certainly want nothing to do with giving life and the future commitments that might bring—if we even register the thought that the organs involved are reproductive by design. I want my pleasure, says the lustful one, and I want it now.
This is why it is characteristic of lust to degrade the fullness of sex into a merely physical act. Ricoeur says, “Everything that makes the sexual encounter easy simultaneously speeds it’s collapse into insignificance,” Perhaps the hardest thing to appreciate about sex until one has experienced it is the way sex is more a physical act. The emotional bond of intimacy and the union of persons is all part of the “one-flesh-ness” of the thing. If we strip off its personal and social meaning, which lust demands that we do, we are left with the version of sex found in Cosmopolitan magazine, which offers tips and techniques on how to achieve the greatest orgasm of one’s life and make things “hotter” in bed. Cosmo, Maxim, and the like have nothing to say about what sexual desire and intercourse look like in the concept of love. To anyone who has experienced the beauty and warmth of married intercourse, the Cosmo sex experience looks cold, clinical, and downright abhorrent. Lustful sex makes the other person instrumental in getting what I want, or a necessary audience for my successful performance. As Pieper puts it, lust wants “it,” while proper eros desires a beloved person. Lust aims for the antithesis of real intimacy. No wonder it leaves one feeling used and empty.
Lust is a vice, then, because it does not honor the fullness of sex, and alienates people from each other just when they are supposed to be experiencing intimate union. There’s a betrayal of meaning in lust’s use of sex for nothing but self-gratification, and it is difficult to be lustful without feeling that loss at some level. If one is successful in becoming immune to the goods involved in sex, one has also been successful in becoming less fully human.
Rebecca DeYoung “Glittering Vices: A New Look At The Seven Deadly Sins And Their Remedies” ©️2009
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