Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker
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āā¦all have sinned and fall short of the glory of Godā -Rom. 3:23 āI am the wayā¦ā -John 14:6 āBelieve in the Lord Jesus, and you will be savedā -Acts 16:31
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Got a chance to see the Columbus Fountain outside Union Station this afternoon. Designed by architect Daniel Burnham, sculpted by Lorado Taft, dedicated in 1912, left waterless since 2007, and renovated and reopened TODAY as part of Trumpās effort to make D.C. beautiful again!šŗšø
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker114,447 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 10 gĆ¼n ƶnce
Helen Roseveare, a missionary who faced intense suffering and persecution during her 20 years of service in the Congo, shares one of the times that she saw God answer prayer in a most unexpected way: "I went to have prayers with our orphanage children as I did every day, and any of the children wanted gathered around me for prayer time, and I'd give them different things to pray about. And this particular day, I told the children of this tiny baby and asked them to pray for the nurses that they would stay awake all night to keep that baby warm. If the baby got cold, it would die. I mentioned that the baby had a 2-year-old sister who was crying because her mommy had died. I mentioned the burst hot water bottle. During prayer time, different children prayed for different things, and then one little 10-year-old girl, Ruth, she prayed in the usual blunt way of our African children, 'Please, God, send us a hot water bottle. Now, God, it'll be no good tomorrow. Send it this afternoon. Now, if it comes tomorrow, the baby will be dead.' I'm sort of swallowing hard, and she said, 'While you're about it, God, would you send a dolly for the little 2-year-old sister, so she'll know that Jesus really loves her?' And that afternoon, the parcel came. It was the first parcel I ever, I've been out there four years, I'd never had a parcel from home. And despite the fact I live on the equator, somebody packing that parcel had been prompted by God to put in a hot water bottle, and a child from my Bible class at home had put in a dolly for a little girl. And it came that afternoon in answer to a 10 year-old child's prayer, and the amazing thing was, you know, that parcel had been on the way five months to get to us. It had left England in July, and it came that afternoon, cause a child prayed."
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker516,505 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 1 ay ƶnce
'Pistol Pete' Maravich sharing his testimony of faith in Jesus Christ in 1987 less than one year before his death at the age of 40: "I want all of you to know this tonight about Peter Maravich. You may never have heard of me. It makes no difference. I'm just one person on this earth saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. I want you to know this, that the change that came into my life was Jesus Christ. It was not winning. I won all my life. I won every trophy, award, everything you can think of, but every time I won something, I wanted something more. I had to win again. It wasn't money, because money'll buy you everything but happiness. It'll pay your fare at every place but Heaven. Material thingsāI've driven everything some of you strive for from Rolls Royces to BMWs to Mercedes to Porsches. It wasn't religion because in the name of religion, Jesus Christ was placed upon that cross. And the purest thing about Christianity is the fact that it's your choice. You can't work. You can't earn. I knew that, and I understood it now. I want you to know this. The last thing I'd like to say is this, next week I'll be inducted into the Hall of Fame. I'll get that big ring. In fact, it's a bigger ring than I would have got for the championship, but I'll tell you something about all the awards. They all pale to the glory of Christ and what He's done in my life. It's amazing what He has done in my life. I wouldn't trade my position in Christ for a thousand NBA championships or a thousand Hall of Fame rings or for a hundred billion dollars. There's nothing like the joy of Jesus Christ in your life."
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker604,310 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 2 ay ƶnce
Historian Tom Holland explaining the revolutionary impact Christianity made on gender and sexuality which is so often taken for granted now in the West: "Because of Christianity, I mean, I think every society has had an idea of binaries, that in sex there are two roles that people have to play to have sex, and for us, it's based on gender. It's based on the idea of there being men and women and that's again an inheritance ultimately from Genesis, God creating men and women separate. But for the Romans, that wasn't the case. For the Romans, the binary was between the male Roman citizen and everybody else, and the male Roman citizen could do what he liked to everybody else... So you know you're a Roman slave owner, you can do what you like to your slaves sexually, any it doesn't matter what the gender of the slave is. It doesn't matter what the age is. You can just treat them as you want, and of course Christianity radically, radically changes that. And you know, if you are a scullery maid in a Roman household (a bit like a Yazidi girl in an Isis household), there's nothing to stop you being raped every day. Nothing to stop you. No legal power, I mean, no sense of moral disapproval at all, and so you can imagine the radical effect of getting a letter from Paul being told, 'you are the like the church.' It's utterly transformative."
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker337,397 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 1 ay ƶnce
![Safe to say that the Late Night shows aren't what they used to be... Billy Graham on Johnny Carson in 1973 Carson: You know it sounds awful, but if you asked me to name all [10 Commandments] right now, I would probably leave one out somewhere. Graham: Oh, I think you could think of all of them, because all of us have broken all of them, so I think we could figure them out. Carson: You think everybody... Graham: Everybody has broken every commandment, yes, sir. The Bible says if we break in one point, we're guilty of all... Carson: Oh, I see. Graham: ...and then when Jesus came after Moses, He explained that the 10 Commandments can be broken in your heart by thought and intent, so in that sense, we're all guilty, and that's the reason the Bible says that everybody's a sinner, even Ed is a sinner. Link to full interview below](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2011922845325205666/amplify_video_thumb/2011922779646672897/img/PwyymZ7ozHSDdveh.jpg)
Safe to say that the Late Night shows aren't what they used to be... Billy Graham on Johnny Carson in 1973 Carson: You know it sounds awful, but if you asked me to name all [10 Commandments] right now, I would probably leave one out somewhere. Graham: Oh, I think you could think of all of them, because all of us have broken all of them, so I think we could figure them out. Carson: You think everybody... Graham: Everybody has broken every commandment, yes, sir. The Bible says if we break in one point, we're guilty of all... Carson: Oh, I see. Graham: ...and then when Jesus came after Moses, He explained that the 10 Commandments can be broken in your heart by thought and intent, so in that sense, we're all guilty, and that's the reason the Bible says that everybody's a sinner, even Ed is a sinner. Link to full interview below
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker742,679 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 4 ay ƶnce
Rosaria Butterfield on why Charlie Kirk was assassinated and why as a Christian you should not take your marching orders from Phil Vischer: "Charlie Kirk died...because of two reasons: Number one, he said things people didn't like, and number two, he championed Christian conservatism and he highlighted the moral bankruptcy of leftist progressivism. If you tell me, like Phil Vischer of VeggieTales, that the problem is political polarization, the solution is coming to the middle...The problem is not political polarization, but that Christians are accommodating lies... The progressive left and true Christianity are not morally equivalent. We don't bring the light to the darkness by meeting in the middle. We defy lies, and we tell the truth."
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker409,713 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 4 ay ƶnce
Oxford professor John Lennox on testing the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ: "Now, my final point is this. I'm a scientist of sorts, and people say to me, 'Come on. You can't believe this stuff.' Because in science and practical science you do experiments. You test your hypothesis. Christianity is not testable. Isn't it? Isn't it? You see, the difference between the two last things I read were the difference between seeing something, those grave cloths, and working out an intellectual conclusion that something utterly remarkable has happened. That's not quite the same thing as meeting the risen Jesus. And you see, ladies and gentlemen, if it is true that Jesus rose from the dead, then He's still alive, and it's possible to meet Him. Now, you can do an experiment, and it's thisāthis Jesus who claims to be risen tells us that if we're prepared to trust Him, repent of the mess we've made of our own lives, and the lives of other people, and we're prepared to receive Him as Lord and Controller of life as the risen Son of God, then He will give us forgiveness. Does the word forgiveness mean anything to you? He'll give us new life and a new power... Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is the test...When you see people with narcotic or alcohol dependence, and they've no food to put on the table in front of their children, and you meet them then a year later, and something has happened. You say, 'What's happened to you?' and they say something like, 'Well, I met Jesus,' or 'I became a Christian,' or they'll put it different ways. When you see that again and again, you add two and two to get four. I wouldn't sit here for a nanosecond if I didn't believe that not only is the resurrection of Jesus intellectually credible, but I believe it's existentially credible because the center part of my life and that of my wife and family is to walk with Him from day to day. Now, that may sound absolute jargon and mumbo-jumbo to you, but we're living in a universe where we discover that we are persons, and every analogy we know tells us that our origin cannot be sub-personal. It's supra-personal. And if we enjoy human friendship, what a magnificent thing it is if God makes a way where we can through faith in Christ become His sons and daughters and enjoy the biggest friendship and the most exciting friendship in the universe, and that is friendship with the risen Christ."
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker211,338 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 2 ay ƶnce
![Rosaria Butterfield boldly sharing truth at the Answers for Women conference this weekend, apparently after eating a breakfast of Grape-Nuts sprinkled with gunpowder: "...It's a sin to tell a lie, but it's also a sin to believe a lie. And so, there is no such thing as a gay man or a lesbian woman or a transgender woman (and then you can fill in all of the different categories that come under the umbrella, LGBTQ). And the reason is because, in Genesis where we have to start, we are given our identity. Our identity is in the image of God, bearing it as a man or as a woman. There are two kinds of people in the worldāa man or a woman. A man who says he's a gay man is a man with a sin pattern that Jesus came to help set him free from if he will mortify it, repent, believe, go to war. It's very hard to do that. I'm not suggesting it's easy, but that is our job, and you know what? It's not just somebody whose indwelling sin is homosexuality who happens to have that call. It's everyone, because we are all born in the sin of Adam. And it is because of the sin of Adam that we have sin in our nature. And that quite frankly means that every person in this room needs to wake up every morning, drive a thousand fresh nails into your choice sin and do that before breakfast and then do the same thing before lunch. And if you do that, Satan's gonna get a little tired of you. But here's the problem, homosexuality is the only sin pattern with a civil rights group behind it. And therefore, people who are deceived, as I was and Christopher [Yuan], by the lusts of our flesh have a cheering community behind you, and this is where you get the rub. You see, it used to be that the church was clear and the world was the world, but because we have wolves in shepherds' clothing, we have way too many young people who are leaving the true church and claiming, 'Well, my same-sex attracted pastor told me it's not a sin to be gay.' And you know, we are to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves. I want to be gentle with the people who are trapped in the lie of LGBTQ, but I am not gentle with the wolves...I quite frankly think they need to get a job selling insurance until they repent..." [Apologies for my shoddy video skills, but sadly, a big monitor was placed on the stage, blocking my view of the speakers for the Q&A.]](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2043456186733735960/amplify_video_thumb/2043456128986824704/img/v5kD2yEp7o6Vkp0I.jpg)
Rosaria Butterfield boldly sharing truth at the Answers for Women conference this weekend, apparently after eating a breakfast of Grape-Nuts sprinkled with gunpowder: "...It's a sin to tell a lie, but it's also a sin to believe a lie. And so, there is no such thing as a gay man or a lesbian woman or a transgender woman (and then you can fill in all of the different categories that come under the umbrella, LGBTQ). And the reason is because, in Genesis where we have to start, we are given our identity. Our identity is in the image of God, bearing it as a man or as a woman. There are two kinds of people in the worldāa man or a woman. A man who says he's a gay man is a man with a sin pattern that Jesus came to help set him free from if he will mortify it, repent, believe, go to war. It's very hard to do that. I'm not suggesting it's easy, but that is our job, and you know what? It's not just somebody whose indwelling sin is homosexuality who happens to have that call. It's everyone, because we are all born in the sin of Adam. And it is because of the sin of Adam that we have sin in our nature. And that quite frankly means that every person in this room needs to wake up every morning, drive a thousand fresh nails into your choice sin and do that before breakfast and then do the same thing before lunch. And if you do that, Satan's gonna get a little tired of you. But here's the problem, homosexuality is the only sin pattern with a civil rights group behind it. And therefore, people who are deceived, as I was and Christopher [Yuan], by the lusts of our flesh have a cheering community behind you, and this is where you get the rub. You see, it used to be that the church was clear and the world was the world, but because we have wolves in shepherds' clothing, we have way too many young people who are leaving the true church and claiming, 'Well, my same-sex attracted pastor told me it's not a sin to be gay.' And you know, we are to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves. I want to be gentle with the people who are trapped in the lie of LGBTQ, but I am not gentle with the wolves...I quite frankly think they need to get a job selling insurance until they repent..." [Apologies for my shoddy video skills, but sadly, a big monitor was placed on the stage, blocking my view of the speakers for the Q&A.]
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker168,671 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 1 ay ƶnce
During an interview in 1974, Corrie ten Boom shared how she once encouraged fellow believers in Africa with one of her father's memorable lessons on why Christians need not fear being strong enough to endure suffering: "I once said to my father (I was still a little girl), 'Daddy, I will never be strong enough to suffer for Jesus.' And Father said, 'When you go to travel with a train to Amsterdam, when do I give you the train ticket? Three weeks before?' I said, 'No, Daddy, the day that I go to travel.' And Father said, 'That's what God does. Today, you do not need to have strength to suffer for Jesus, but the moment you will have the honor to suffer for Him, He will give you all the strength.' And then I was confident. And I said to these people, 'When you have to suffer for Jesus, the Lord will give you the train ticket.'"
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker209,959 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 2 ay ƶnce
In a recent interview with Jim Daly, Ben Sasse answered several challenging questions about how to respond to suffering with both Christian faith and hope: "I don't want to be aggressive with the intellectualist rationalist side, but God tells us in Scripture everything we need to know for faith and life, but He doesn't tell us everything we want to know or everything that we ultimately will know. And He is God. And to whom else would we go? So, I trust Him because He is who He is, and He has been faithful. And so, I won't get every answer this side of eternity... Death is an enemy. Death is wicked. But it's the final enemy. It's our last battle. And after that, there will be no more tears. And so, we will have these answers, and we will know that God used it for His good." Please keep praying for him and his family. (Full link below)
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker189,123 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 2 ay ƶnce
Victor Davis Hanson is back and in fine intellectual form. š "Don Lemon said, 'They just went after me because I'm so well known and famous, and I'm black, and I'm gay.' I don't think they went after you at all. I think you went after yourself, and you're not famous anymore, you're infamous. When you say to anybody 'Don Lemon,' they think of all the stupid things he's said, how he was fired."
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker283,814 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 4 ay ƶnce
John MacArthur at a church in 1988 explaining one of the issues that prevented him from supporting a covenant theologian's view on the future of Israel: "God promised Israel all kinds of things. If you're a covenant theologian, you say, 'But that's not literal. That's all figurative, and that's all talking about spiritual blessings to the church.' The problem with that is, you've got all the literal curses, and now, you've arbitrarily made all the promises figurative. And you've taken all the curses and applied them to literal Israel, and all the blessings and applied them to figurative Israel, namely, the church. And I think that's really an impossible kind of hermeneutic, because you've arbitrarily determined that."
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker269,268 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 4 ay ƶnce
In an interview in 1974, Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian pastor once imprisoned for 14 years, shared an important insight on the reason he experienced such intense persecution under Communist leaders: Pat Robertson: "That was your only crime, that you said, I want to bring men to eternal life, tell them they have an immortal soul, tell them about Jesus?" Wurmbrand: "Well, I would not say that this is the only thing. So much they would have allowed. Nothing would have happened to St. John the Baptist if he would have said only, 'Repent. The Kingdom of Heaven is near,' but when he said, 'You, Herod, are bad,' then he was beheaded. Jesus could have delivered hundreds of sermons on the mount and parables. Nothing would have happened to Him, but when He said, 'Woe unto you, hypocrite Pharisees,' then He was lost. And in preaching the Gospel, you have to do two things: to proclaim the Kingdom, but also to denounce sin. And we did this side, and the greatest sin committed in humanity today is Communism, not only that it has killed 60 million people in Red China and 30 million in Russia, but it poisons youth and children with atheism. It uses brainwashing. It puts Christians in psychiatric exams, not only in prisons where simply they break their will and their mind, and they try to subvert the whole world with Communism. So I preached both sides of the Gospel. I denounced the sin, and at the same time, I extended to them the invitation to come to the Kingdom."
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker172,406 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 2 ay ƶnce
Great balance of showing compassion while sharing truth as Wes Huff responds to the question of why a good God would allow evil: "Well, that is arguably the hardest and most pressing apologetic question there is, because ultimately, the very tidy philosophical and theological answer isn't the right answer sometimes. You know, sometimes the right answer to the wrong question is the wrong answer, because I've encountered situations where someone has brought up a variation of the problem of evil to me, and I've just felt uneasy about maybe the tenor that they're coming at with the question...and asking them, 'You know, that's a great question. Why are you asking that question in particular?' and finding out once again (like the previous question related to it), they're personally hurting. And so, in that sense, I could give a tidy answer about if you're positing that something is good, you're positing that there's an objective good and evil, and if there's an objective good and evil, then you're positing an objective law, and objective law needs an objective lawgiver. So where do we find the groundwork for an objective lawgiver to begin with? Otherwise, you may not like certain things, but to say they ought not to happen is actually an ethical leap to an objective reality that you may or may not have groundwork for. But if that person is struggling because a family member of theirs has cancer, then that particular, maybe tidy, tied-up-in-a-nice-bow answer is not going to speak to them whatsoever. And so that's why that's the hardest question because there are actually very good answers to it, but often it doesn't speak to the person in front of you, because questions have questioners that sit behind them. And one of the pitfalls of my chosen field of ministry apologetics is that sometimes we give answers where we talk at people rather than with people. And there's a danger to that because the Christian faith isn't just an intellectual assent, right? It's a personal relationship. And that should also be played out in the answers that we give..."
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker115,489 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 1 ay ƶnce
Such an important insight from Jeremy Boreing on a common technique being used to deceive and mislead masses of people: "And they're using the techniques that have been used by cults throughout history, which is, it is a weakness in the human being that when someone shows us that we've been lied to, we immediately trust them. If someone comes along and says, 'You've been lied to your entire life,' your immediate thought should be, 'Man, I'm gullible. I should be careful what I believe.' Instead it's, 'Now, you're who I trust. Tell me more.' So it's a very powerful tool, a very powerful form of persuasion to tell people that everything they believe is a lie. It's a lie! Because everything you believe is not a lie, but of course it's true that you've been lied to."
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker197,625 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 3 ay ƶnce
Wow, wow, wow. Prominent atheist, Richard Dawkins, explaining how he came to believe that God didn't exist: "By far the most important, I suppose was understanding evolution. I think the evangelical Christians have really sort of got it right in a way in seeing evolution as the enemy. Whereas, the more, what shall we say, sophisticated theologians are quite happy to live with evolution. I think they're deluded. I think the evangelicals have got it right in that there really is a deep incompatibility between evolution and Christianity, and I think I realized that at the age of about 16."
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker160,942 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 2 ay ƶnce
In an interview with Chuck Swindoll in 2015, Joni Eareckson Tada explained an unexpected desire involving her wheelchair, which she has been confined to as a quadriplegic since 1967: "...I do hope that I can take my wheelchair to Heaven with me. I know that's not theologically correct, but if I could, I would put it right there. And I'd be standing in my new glorified body right here, and I'd be holding the hand of Jesus, and I would feel those nail prints in His palm. And I will say, 'Thank you,' and I know He'll know I mean it, because He will have recognized me as the woman who came to Him every single morning, hemorrhaging human strength: 'I need you, Jesus, desperately.' And I will say to Him, 'Jesus, you were so right when You said that in this world we would have trouble. That thing was a lot of trouble, but the weaker I was on that thing, the harder I leaned on You. And the harder I leaned on You, the stronger I just discovered You to be. And I'm just so grateful that You gave me the privilege of knowing You as not only my Man of Sorrows, but the Lord of Joy, Rock of Gibraltar, real Joy. Thank you, Jesus. And now, if you want, you can send that thing to Hell. Woohoo! Get it outta here!'"
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker90,678 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 1 ay ƶnce
I highly recommend listening to this moving conversation between Chuck Swindoll and his daughter, Colleen Thompson, which took place in 2022, when Swindoll was 88 years old. In it, he shares details about the pain of being raised in a home where he was shown almost no affection and was bluntly informed that he had been "a mistake." His concluding prayer is poignant and reveals the heart of a man who has learned through hardship to be humble, grateful, joyful, and content: "Lord, we are grateful that You do know the way that we take. You never learn that way. You know it. You knew it would be like it is today, and You knew that in eternity past. You're always on our side. No one could love us more than You love us. No one could have more compassion for us or have our good at heart more than You do. So grateful... Remind us of David's words: 'I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined unto me and heard my cry. He lifted me up from a horrible pit and put my feet on a rock and established my goings. He put a new song in my mouth even praise to my God. Many will see it and fear and trust in the Lord.' Thank you, Father, for this day and for helping me get through this story. Thank you for my original family and all of its struggles and difficulties, that my mother never aborted me, that she bore me. And though my mom and dad really didn't know me and who I was, they cared for me. They fed me. They clothed me. They provided shelter for me. Thank you for that. And today, I honor them. For a brother and sister who did so well in life, and now they're with You, thank you for the reminder of their lives. Finally, thank you, Father, for my wife, Cynthia, who has loved me all her life and for our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, such gifts, such hope they bring to us in this stage of our lives. We rest in You, Father, our Shield and our Defender. Through Christ, we pray. Amen."
Melissa the Hopefulš Homemaker92,525 gƶrĆ¼ntĆ¼leme ā¢ 1 ay ƶnce