God Centered Dad

   If you have read through my previous ramblings, you will see that, while I prefer to speak about God's Word and the state of Christianity in the western world in particular, I will sometimes also delve into politics and world events as I see they may have a spiritual or prophetic connection. Over the last several days we have witnessed the sudden downfall of the Assad government in Syria, which leaves a lot about the future of Syria in question. First some history about Syria, but this is recent history going back only about 50 years. Hafez al-Assad, father to Bashar al-Assad, became the president of Syria in 1971 after working his way up the chain of command of Syria's Air Force. Hafez was a member of the Ba'ath Party, which is famously known as the same political party that Saddam Hussein of Iraq was the leader of. What al-Assad shared with Saddam Hussein was that the people groups to which both belonged were actually the minority in their countries, which while it ...

                                                              (If I don't know what picture to add, I like to look at NASA pictures)    This may not be a very long post (or I may get long winded again), I just want to flesh out a thought that I have had numerous times over the last few years. As Christians, we recognize that Jesus is the second person in the triune Godhead, and that He is God's son, and God. Unbelievers, Jews and Muslims all have a hard time grasping this belief. Unbelievers tend to struggle with the idea of three persons in one, and Jews and Muslims bristle at the thought of there being more than one persona of God.  Regarding the unbelievers, their confusion is not difficult for believers to understand, especially in light of Scripture that tells us that the Spirit must ...

  One of the largest differences that we can see in the Christian faith as opposed to other religious belief systems is the way that the gods of other belief systems are not seeking relationship with their worshippers, but demand obedience as the only way to relationship. This is even true to a certain degree in the Jewish faith system, wherein there are hundreds of purity and ritual laws which are required to be fulfilled in order to show proper reverence to God. Unfortunately, orthodox Jews are missing out on God's plan for them. Christianity is the only faith system that I can think of wherein the relationship comes first and the obedience comes as a result of that relationship. God meets us where we are and encourages us to obey Him because of our relationship with Him, and He has been chasing us in order to establish that relationship ever since creation. We first see God desiring to spend time with the beings that He created in His image right in the Garden of Eden in Genesis...

   We have now entered the season of the Advent of the birth of Jesus the Christ. We get the word 'advent' from the Latin 'adventus' which is an action word meaning arrival or approach. We celebrate Christmas as the arrival of our Saviour in human form onto the earth, to walk among us, to live with us and to live as us. This is God coming to experience life the way that we do, and He shows us how we ought to live by being in communion with the Holy Spirit who guides His every action and Word. Of course, Christmas is one of the primary holidays of the Christian faith, the other being Easter. As such, we do make a big deal of it. We prepare for and celebrate it over the course of a month or so. We decorate our homes, get together with family and friends, we have parties and we give gifts to those we love. There are myriad traditions that exist around Christmas in our homes and in our churches and communities. These traditions help us to remember what Christmas is really a...

   Metals require refining in order for them to achieve their greatest value. All metals are mined from the ground as ore, mixed in with other minerals and contaminants which diminish the purity of the metals. Regardless of the planned use of the metal, there is a process through which the raw metal ore needs to pass for it to perform at its best - this process is called refinement. There are several different processes by which metals of different types are refined, but the process that has been in use the longest, and is still widely used today, is refinement through the addition of heat. Very simply, in this type of refinement, the metal ore is placed in a crucible, a vessel which can withstand extremely high temperatures, and the ore is heated to a point where the metals within the ore are liquefied. In their liquid forms, the different metals can separate from each other by flowing past each other as they settle in different layers, and any other minerals and contaminants...