Of salt, and leaven

Those of you who live in the U.S. know that our television broadcast signals are scheduled to be all digital in February of this year. Since I have a rabbit-ear antenna on an analog t.v., I got one of the digital converter boxes a few months ago and have enjoyed watching shows in digital format. One of the local public broadcasting stations (aka PBS) has 2 additional 'channels', one is called Create. I love watching several of the cooking shows they have on Create. (What does all of that have to do with spiritual warfare or EFT, you ask? I'm getting to that next.)

On one of those shows, I forget exactly which one, it may have been 'Baking with Julia' (Julia Child) they were talking about and demonstrating baking bread. There are several ingredients used in baking bread, and a Passover bread omits the leavening. I won't get into that discussion, but all leavening agents were supposed to be removed from the house during the Passover celebration. Jesus broke the bread and gave it to the disciples during the Passover meal before he died and told them to 'take, eat, this is my body...' Jesus was born in Bethlehem, meaning 'village of bread'.

In the discussion of bread making, it was mentioned that salt can kill the action of yeast (which is a leavening agent). That's an interesting thing to know, so I tucked it away as a mental note. I found a couple of web references for that too, as follows: Salt: Salt acts as a yeast retardant, as well as

Salt inhibits the growth of yeast. Never mix yeast into salted water. Since most tap water goes through a filtering process which utilizes salt as a refining/cleaning agent, many cooks use only distilled water for baking. However, if you are baking during the hot summer season and find your dough rising too much, the addition of a little extra salt can control that runaway yeast growth. (from here)

Then while pondering that a couple of days later, some things Jesus said sort of clicked into place. Before that, the saying "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. " (Mat 5:13 KJVA) didn't make a lot of sense to me.

But, when you combine it with other passages such as: "How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees? Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. "(Mat 16:11-12 KJVA) as well as: "In the mean time, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy." (Luk 12:1 KJVA)

I had heard that being the 'salt of the earth' referred to salt being a flavor enhancer. That's all well and good, but I still didn't quite see how following Christ fit into the idea of enhancing flavor. To me, it makes more sense that we are to be 'salt' and stop or inhibit the growth of the 'leaven' (hypocrisy and lies), which very much fits into the idea of spiritual warfare.

I'd been meaning to type this up for a couple of months, but I just read a blog post that discusses a vision. The vision is about pillars in the sea, and that made me think of the sea being made of salt water, and Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt. (Gen 19:26) I don't know if that has anything to do with the vision or not, but it gave me the nudge I needed to finally type up this blog post.

Do you think God can't use you?

I just saw this on the CBO blog (Christian Bloggers Online) and thought I'd post it here too. It helps remind us that the Bible is full of imperfect people that God used. We are saved by grace through faith -- which is a good thing because if I, or any of you had to be a model of perfection to come to Jesus, we'd still be wandering around like lost sheep. I could go on and on, but here's the other post:

The next time you feel like GOD can’t use you, just remember…

• Noah was a drunk
• Abraham was too old
• Isaac was a daydreamer
• Jacob was a liar
• Leah was ugly
• Joseph was abused
• Moses had a stuttering problem
• Gideon was afraid
• Samson had long hair and was a womanizer
• Rahab was a prostitute
• Jeremiah and Timothy were too young
• David had an affair and was a murderer
• Elijah was suicidal
• Isaiah preached naked
• Jonah ran from God
• Naomi was a widow
• Job went bankrupt
• Peter denied Christ
• The Disciples fell asleep while praying
• Martha worried about everything
• The Samaritan woman was divorced, more than once
• Zaccheus was too small
• Paul was too religious
• Timothy had an ulcer…
• AND Lazarus was dead!

Now! No more excuses! God can use you to your full potential…

Besides you aren’t the message, you are just the messenger.

And one more thing… In the Circle of God’s love, God’s waiting to use your full potential.

Your Questions, please

I am going to be doing an approximately 30 minute interview that'll be available on blogtalk radio. I can list 5 questions I would like to have the interviewer ask me -- and I'm a little stumped. It would also be nice to know if there are questions you have that I could address on my website or here on my blog that I could answer. Preferably, they'd be questions relating to EFT, Spiritual Warfare or a combination of the 2.

So I'm asking for your questions -- if you have any. Please leave them in the comments of this message in the next couple of days. Thank you!

EFT over the phone

Since I'm an EFT phone practitioner, I wanted to share 2 articles that were in a recent edition of the EFT Insights e-newsletter. Both of these articles are about people who had PTSD issues, one a Vietnam Vet and another from other traumatic events. In addition, both of these show great results from doing EFT over the phone.

Here's the first one, titled: Trauma-ptsd-dominoes.

The second one is titled: An hour and ten minutes.

About The Message Bible paraphrase

I was shopping at my local Christian Supply store a couple of weeks before Christmas, and noticed that several devotionals, calendars, etc. are quoting from The Message. When looking at Bibles for sale, I didn't see any of the NASB (which I'd purchased a few years ago at the same store), but there was a pretty large display of The Message as well as a NIV / Message combo. (There were also a good amount of KJV and NKJV translations available...)

So, while reading an article on the Berean Call web site, I ran across the following that I wanted to share. I won't be adding this paraphrase to my collection.

Response: Unfortunately, the errors in this paraphrase (it's not a translation) are numerous and serious. The Message cannot be relied upon to tell the truth and, in fact, is dangerously misleading. If Promise Keepers endorses it, that is one more mark against that organization.

Let me give you only a few examples. John 1:1 actually says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The Message renders it, "The Word was first, the Word present to God, God present to the Word. The Word was God, in readiness for God from day one." That garbling is an improvement?! It is confusing at best and misleading at worst, changing the meaning. "In the beginning was the Word" is changed to "The Word was first." First before God? And what does "in readiness for God" mean? In verse 5, "the darkness comprehended it not" is rendered, "the darkness couldn't put it out," changing the meaning entirely.

In verse 14, "full of grace" becomes "Generous inside and out," while "truth" becomes "true from start to finish." "Generous" and "grace" do not mean the same, nor does "true from start to finish" convey the rich meaning of Christ being "full of truth." In verse 29, "which taketh away the sin of the world" becomes "He forgives the sins of the world." There is a world of difference between taking away the sin of the world by paying the debt mankind owed, and forgiving sins! In John 3:5, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit" becomes, "unless a person submits to this original creation-- the 'wind hovering over the water' creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life," again obscuring, complicating, and changing the true meaning. In 3:17, "but that the world through him might be saved" becomes "He came to help, to put the world right again," a destructive change in the meaning.

"Saved" means to be redeemed, rescued from the judgment we deserve for our sins; whereas "to help, to put the world right again" sounds like social or political reformation. In verse 36, "the wrath of God abideth on him" becomes, "All he experiences of God is darkness, and an angry darkness at that." How can anyone experience darkness from God, when 1 John 1:5 says of God, "in him is no darkness at all"? Serious error is added to serious error!

In 1 Corinthians 1:17, "For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel" is perverted to read, "God didn't send me out to collect a following for myself but to preach the Message." It is important that Paul, a former rabbi, is a follower of Christ--The Message says "of God." The main point Paul makes is that baptism is not part of the gospel--The Message misses that completely. "Lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect" is changed to "...lest the powerful action at the center--Christ on the Cross--be trivialized into mere words." There is a vast difference between the eternal effect of "the cross of Christ" as the Bible states it and "Christ on the Cross" as The Message puts it and Catholicism depicts it. Christ is not on the cross; the work is finished! In verse 30, "sanctification, and redemption" is changed to read "a clean slate and a fresh start"--both trivializing and misleading. In Hebrews 11:1, "the substance of things hoped for" becomes "the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living," a totally different meaning, with hope for eternity expunged. In verse 4, regarding the lamb, which speaks of Christ, the "more excellent sacrifice" offered by Abel, the comment is interjected, "It was what he believed, not what he brought, that made the difference." On the contrary, the sacrifice he brought was important to his belief, and without the proper sacrifice there could be no forgiveness no matter what was believed.

In verse 7, "became heir of the righteousness which is by faith" is changed to "became intimate with God," again an entirely different meaning which leaves out the vital phrase "righteousness which is by faith." In verse 16, "God is not ashamed to be called their God" is twisted into "God is so proud of them." Never! Attributing the human evil of pride to God is blasphemy and leaves the dangerous impression that if God is proud then it isn't so bad for man to be proud as well.

In verse 35, "that they might obtain a better resurrection" becomes "preferring something better: resurrection." Again the meaning is changed completely. It makes it sound as though resurrection is dependent upon good works. It was not a question of whether they would be resurrected, but of the reward they would receive in the Resurrection.

These are only a few among many errors, some extremely serious. It is appalling that any mere man would change or ignore the meaning of God's Word under the vain delusion that he could improve upon what God has said and the way He has said it! It is even more appalling that a leading evangelical publisher would publish this blasphemy, Christian bookstores would sell it, and Christian leaders would praise instead of denounce this perversion!