If the issue you are wondering about is not specifically addressed in the Bible, then it’s helpful to ask these questions from 1 Corinthians to help you in deciding what to do. Asking these questions (and others like them) will help you make a wise decision based on sound biblical principles.

1. Will it benefit me spiritually? First Corinthians 10:23 says, “All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify.”

2. Will it put me in bondage? First Corinthians 6:12 says, “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.” Any questionable practice that can be habit‑forming is not wise to pursue.

3. Will it defile God’s temple? First Corinthians 6:19-20 says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” We should not do anything with our bodies that would dishonor the Lord.

4. Will it cause others to stumble? First Corinthians 8:8‑9 says, “Food will not commend us to God; we are neither the worse if we do not eat, nor the better if we do eat. But take care lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.” One should refrain from using his freedom in an area which might cause others to sin. For “by sinning against the brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore,” Paul said, “if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, that I might not cause my brother to stumble.”

5. Will it help the cause of evangelism? First Corinthians 10:32-33 says, “Give no offense either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God; just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit, but the profit of the many, that they may be saved.” We must think of the effect any practice might have on our testimony to the lost.

6. Will it violate my conscience? First Corinthians 10:25‑29 contains three references to abstaining from a certain practice “for conscience’ sake.” And Romans 14:23 says, “He who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin.” If we are not sure whether an action is pleasing to God, we should not do it. That way our conscience will remain clear and our relationship to God will not be hindered.

7. Will it bring glory to God? First Corinthians 10:31 summarizes all these principles by saying, “Therefore, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
-John MacArthur

Below is a quote by J. Gresham Machen from the 1930’s laying out the battles taking place in the church. In the quote Machen rightly ascribes these battles to the modernists of his day. What is amazing about this quote is that it perfectly captures many of the arguments of the post-moderns in the church today who claim to be in protest of the modernization of Christianity.

“You will have battles when you go forth as minister into the church. The church is now in a period of deadly conflict. The redemptive religion known as Christianity is contending, in our own church and in the all the larger churches of the world, against a totally alien type of religion. As always, the enemy conceals his most dangerous assaults under pious phrases and half-truths. The shibboleths of the adversary have sometimes a very deceptive sound. ‘Let us propagate Christianity,’ the adversary says, ‘but let us not always be engaged in arguing in defense of it; let us make our preaching positive, and not negative; let us avoid controversy; let us hold to a Person and not to a dogma; let us sink small doctrinal differences and seek the unity of the church of Christ; let us drop doctrinal accretions and interpret Christ for ourselves; let us look for our knowledge of Christ, not to ancient books, but to the living Christ in our hearts; let us not impose Western creeds on the Eastern mind; let us be tolerant [think all views are equally correct] of opposing views.’

Such are some of the shibboleths of that agnostic Modernism which is the deadliest enemy of the Christian religion today. They deceive some of God’s people some of the time; they are heard sometimes from the lips of good Christian people, who have not the slightest inkling of what they mean. But their true meaning, to thinking men, is becoming increasingly clear. Increasingly it is becoming necessary for a man to decide whether he is going to stand or not to stand for the Lord Jesus Christ as he is presented to us in the word of God.”

ht: Christian Theology

Ever wonder what it would be like to fly in a lawnchair?

Kent Couch leaves his gas station in Bend, Ore., on Saturday, July 5, 2008, riding a lawn chair rigged with more than 150 giant party balloons in an attempt to fly to Idaho. He is equipped with a BB gun and a blowgun for popping balloons if he gets too high and three 15-gallon barrels of cherry Kool-Aid for ballast to release if he gets too low. (AP Photo/Jeff Barnard)
~~~~~~~~~~

CAMBRIDGE, Idaho (AP) — Using his trusty BB gun to help him return to Earth, a 48-year-old gas station owner flew a lawn chair rigged with helium-filled balloons more than 200 miles across the Oregon desert Saturday, landing in a field in Idaho.

Kent Couch created a sensation in this tiny farming community, where he touched down safely in a pasture after lifting off from Bend, Ore., and was soon greeted by dozens of people who gave him drinks of water, local plumber Mark Hetz said.

“My wife works at the City Market,” Hetz said. “She called and said, ‘The balloon guy in the lawn chair just flew by the market, and if you look out the door you can see him. “We go outside to look, and lo and behold, there he is. He’s flying by probably 100 to 200 feet off the ground.

“He takes his BB gun and shoots some balloons to lower himself to the ground. When he hit the ground he released all the little tiny balloons. People were racing down the road with cameras. They were all talking and laughing.” Couch covered about 235 miles in about nine hours after lifting off at dawn from his gas station riding in a green lawn chair rigged with an array of more than 150 giant party balloons.

Sandi Barton, 58, who has lived her whole life in this town of about 300, said she and her brother-in-law were the first ones to reach Couch and shook his hand. “Not much happens in Cambridge,” she said, adding that about half the town turned out. “He came right over our pea field,” she said. “He was coming down pretty fast.” She said Couch gave some of his balloons to local children. It was not clear where Couch went after he landed.

It began after Couch, clutching a big mug of coffee, kissed his wife and kids goodbye, then patted their shivering Chihuahua, Isabella, on the head. After spilling off some cherry-flavored Kool-Aid that served as ballast, Couch got a push from the ground crew so he could clear light poles and soared over a coffee cart and across U.S. Highway 20 into a bright blue sky. “If I had the time and money and people, I’d do this every weekend,” Couch said before getting into the chair. “Things just look different from up there. You’ve moving so slowly. The best thing is the peace, the serenity.

“Originally, I wanted to do it because of boyhood dreams. I don’t know about girls, but I think most guys look up in the sky and wish they could ride on a cloud.” Couch’s wife, Susan, called him crazy: “It’s never been a dull moment since I married him.”

This was Couch’s third balloon flight. He realized it would be possible after watching a TV show about the 1982 lawn chair flight over Los Angeles of truck driver Larry Walters, who gained folk hero fame but was fined $1,500 for violating air traffic rules.

In 2006, Couch had to parachute out after popping too many balloons. And last year he flew 193 miles to the sagebrush of northeastern Oregon, short of his goal. “I’m not stopping till I get out of state,” he said. To that end, he ordered more balloons. Dozens of volunteers wearing fluorescent green T-shirts that said “Dream Big” filled latex balloons 5 feet in diameter, attached them to strings and tied clusters of six balloons each to a tiny carabiner clip.

Each balloon gives four pounds of lift. The chair was about 400 pounds, and Couch and his parachute 200 more. “I’d go to 30,000 feet if I didn’t shoot a balloon down periodically,” Couch said.

For that job, he carried a Red Ryder BB gun and a blow gun equipped with steel darts. He also had a pole with a hook for pulling in balloons, a parachute in case anything went wrong, a handheld Global Positioning System device with altimeter, a satellite phone, and two GPS tracking devices. One was one for him, the other for the chair, which got away in the wind as he landed last year.

For food he carried some boiled eggs, jerky and chocolate.

Couch flew hang gliders and skydived before taking up lawn-chair flights. He estimated the rig cost about $6,000, mostly for helium. Costs were defrayed by corporate sponsors.

Associated Press writer Jeff Barnard contributed to this story from Bend, Ore.

“One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organization do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always.”
-A.W. Tozer

ht: Reformed Voices

Seriously folks, these are real church ads.

And finally, there’s one church advertisement that I found from a Baptist church in Illinois that is an answer to all the junk posted above.

ht: DefCon

Another Day by Album Leaf

The 4^th of July is a great American celebration. It is always enjoyable to watch fireworks, eat a lot of barbecue, spend time with family and enjoy a mid-summer relaxation. Our country is truly a great place to live and it is active and merciful grace that we are enabled to enjoy such freedom as we do.

However, when I hear the word Independence Day and its celebration I think of my daily celebration of just the opposite, namely my dependence. For instead of my pride and value coming from a nation and our independence from another nation, it is good to use this holiday to recall, reflect, and marvel at the reality of Christian dependence upon the Lord Jesus Christ.

As a believer I realize that I am depending on Christ for:

It is good therefore to declare dependence upon the Savior; knowing that there is a day coming when those who are gathered together in his kingdom will unite in numbers that will dwarf the fireworks crowds, to declare dependence upon King Jesus, the Lamb who was slain.