1) Dr. Charles F. Stanley's 30 Life Principles
Our Anchor in Times of Storm
Scripture: Hebrews 6:17-20
I. Introduction: There are many different storms in life. You may be facing a conflict at work, financial trouble, or job loss. You might be struggling with poor health or a difficult relationship. The Father doesn’t promise to deliver us from all adversity. But He gave us the Scriptures for our encouragement and comfort. God’s Word is an immovable anchor in times of storm (Life Principle #3). In the midst of hardship and pain, we can rely on the Bible for the stability, guidance, and security we need.
II. What is the cause of storms?
A.
We can bring adversity on ourselves, through sin, poor
judgment, or lack of experience.
B.
Some difficulty is caused by the wrongdoing of other people.
C.
Satan brings hardship in an attempt to draw us away from the Lord.
D.
The Lord causes some adversity. Whether or not the
storm is from Him, He will always use it for our good.
III. What are God’s purposes in storms? He wants to . . .
A.
Get our attention. When we lose our passion for the
Father, He may use troubles and difficulty to gain our focus.
B.
Purify us from sin. Through storms, God can call
attention to areas of our lives that are not pleasing to Him.
C.
Cause us to surrender to Him. The Father may want
you to loosen your grip on something you treasure, because He has another
blessing in mind for you.
D.
Conform us to His image. Through adversity, the
Lord refines our character and makes us more Christlike (Rom. 8:29).
E.
Equip us to serve Him. If you remain close to the Father,
hardships will purify your heart and realign your life with His will
IV. What makes the Bible an anchor for our lives?
A.
It is the record of God’s unfolding revelation of Himself
through the spoken Word, nature, history, and ultimately the coming of His Son
Jesus Christ into the world.
B.
Most importantly, we know who God is because we see how Jesus lived
(John 14:9-10).
C.
The Bible is infallible and inerrant—which simply
means it’s without error. God has given it to us as a guidebook.
V. How does the Word of God anchor us in times of storm?
A.
It comforts us. In the middle of heartache and struggle, try reading the
Book of Psalms. For example, see Psalm 57:1-3.
B.
It reminds us of God’s promises. Scripture assures us
of the Lord’s presence, power, and provision in our lives. (See Matthew 11:28
and Joshua 1:8-9).
C.
It is a compass for our lives (Prov. 3:5-6).
D.
It teaches us how the Father works. Reading about the
saints teaches us how to make wise decisions, and the stories of Israel’s
rebellion help us avoid similar mistakes (1 Cor. 10:1-13).
E.
It gives us God’s viewpoint. By studying how He
used adversity in the lives of biblical characters, we can better understand
how He may want to use our present struggles.
VI. How does the Bible work as an anchor?
A.
You must read it. Just as a ship’s anchor does no
good unless it is lowered, the Word of God can’t encourage you unless you take
time to study it.
B.
You must meditate on it. Think about the Lord’s
promises and how He proved His faithfulness to believers in the past.
C.
Believe what it says. If you allow yourself to doubt God’s
promises, you will never receive all He has for you.
D.
Apply it to your own life first—not the life of
someone else.
E.
You must be willing to obey it.
VIII. Conclusion: You and I live in a wicked, godless age. Unless we are grounded, we will drift in our devotion to the Lord. So anchor yourself to His Word. It will comfort you, remind you of His promises, reveal His ways, and act as a moral compass. Most importantly, it will renew your mind with His eternal perspective. Regardless of what storms come, you can weather them with confidence, anchored to the solid rock of Jesus Christ.
2)
The 30-Day Reading List That Will Lead You to Becoming a
Knowledgeable Libertarian by Robert
Wenzel
Free Economy and Social Order
Most
of us, and all of us most of the time, deal with the market economy as a
definite type of economic order, a sort of "economic technique" as
opposed to the socialist "technique." For this view, it is
significant that we call its constructional principle the "price
mechanism." Here we move in the world of prices, of markets, of supply and
demand, of competition, of wage rates, of interest rates, of exchange rates,
and whatnot.
That
is, of course, right and proper — as far as it goes. But there is a great
danger of overlooking an important fact: the market economy as an economic
order must be correlated to a certain structure of society, and to a definite
mental climate which is appropriate to it.
The
success of the market economy wherever it has been restored in our time — most
conspicuously in western Germany — has resulted, even in some socialist
circles, in a tendency to appropriate the market economy as a technical device
capable of being built into a society which, in all other respects, is
socialist.
The
market economy then appears as part of a comprehensive social and political
system which, in its conception, is a highly centralized colossal machinery. In
that sense, there has always been a sector of market economy also in the Soviet
system, but we all realize that this sector is a mere gadget, a technical
device, not a living thing. Why? Because the market economy as a field of
liberty, spontaneity, and free coordination cannot thrive in a social system
which is the very opposite.
That
leads to my first main proposition: the market economy rests on two essential
pillars, not on one alone. It assumes not only the freedom of prices and
competition (whose virtues the new socialist adepts of the market economy now
reluctantly acknowledge), but rests equally on the institution of private property.
This property must be genuine. It must comprise all the rights of free disposal
without which — as formerly in Nationalist Socialist Germany and today in
Norway — it becomes an empty legal shell. To these rights must be added the
right to bequeath property.
Property
in a free society has a double function. It means not only that the individual
sphere of decision and responsibility is, as we have learned as lawyers,
demarcated against other individuals, but it also means that property protects
the individual sphere against the government and its ever-present tendency
toward omnipotence. It is both a horizontal and a vertical boundary. And it is
in this double function that property must be understood as the indispensable
condition of liberty.
It
is curious and saddening to see how blind the average type of socialist is
vis-à-vis the economic, moral, and sociological functions of property, and even
more that particular social philosophy in which property must be rooted. In
this tendency to ignore the meaning of property, socialism has made enormous
progress in our time. Traces of this may be discovered even in modern discussion
on the problems of enterprise and management, which sometimes give the
impression that the property owner is the "forgotten man" of our age.
The Role of Private Property
The
intellectual constructions of "market socialism" are a good example
of how the most serious fallacies ensue if we overlook the functions of private
property. These fallacies can already be demonstrated on the level of ordinary
economic analysis. But I wish to suggest that it is the whole social climate,
the form of life, and the habits of planning for life which matter.
There
is a definite "leftist" ideology, inspired by excessive social
rationalism, as opposed to a "rightist," conservative one, respecting
certain things we cannot touch, weigh, or measure but which are of sovereign importance.
The real role of property cannot be understood unless we see it as one of the
most important examples of something of much wider significance.
It
illustrates the fact that the market economy is a form of economic order that
is correlated to a concept of life and a socio-moral pattern which, for want of
an appropriate English or French term, we may call buergerliche in the
wide sense of this German word, which is largely free of the disparaging
associations of the adjective "bourgeois."
This
buergerliche foundation of the market economy must be frankly
acknowledged. All the more so because a century of Marxist propaganda and
intellectualist romanticism has been astonishingly and alarmingly successful in
spreading a parody of this concept. In fact, the market economy can thrive only
as part of and surrounded by a buergerliche social order.
Its
place is in a society where certain elementary things are respected and are
coloring the whole life of the community: individual responsibility; respect of
certain indisputable norms; the individual's honest and serious struggle to get
ahead and develop his faculties; independence anchored in property; responsible
planning of one's own life and that of one's family; thriftiness; enterprise;
assuming well calculated risks; the sense of workmanship; the right relation to
nature and the community; the sense of continuity and tradition; the courage to
brave the uncertainties of life on one's own account; the sense of the natural
order of things.
Those
who find all this contemptible and reeking of narrow-mindedness and
"reaction" must be seriously asked to reveal their own scale of
values and to tell us what kind of values they want to defend against communism
without borrowing ideas from it.
That
is only another way of saying that the market economy supposes a society which
is the opposite of a "proletarianized" one, the opposite of a mass
society — with its lack of a solid and necessarily hierarchical structure, and
its corresponding sense of being uprooted. Independence, property, individual
reserves, natural anchors of life, saving, thrift, responsibility, reasonable
planning of life, all these are alien to such a society. They are destroyed by
it, at least to that extent that they cease to give the tone to society. But we
must realize that these are precisely the conditions of a durable free society.
The
moment has come to see clearly that this is the real watershed of social
philosophies. Here the ultimate parting of ways takes place, and there is no
getting around the fact that the concepts and patterns of life which clash
against each other in this field are decisive for the fate of society, and that
they are irreconcilable.
Once
we admit this, we must be prepared to see its significance in every field and
to draw the corresponding conclusions. It is indeed remarkable to see how far
we all are already drawn into the habits of thinking of an essentially unbuergerliche
world. That is a fact which the economists also ought to take to heart, for
they are among the worst sinners.
Enchanted
by the elegance of a certain type of analysis, how often we discuss the
problems of aggregate savings and investments, the hydraulics of income flows,
the attractions of vast schemes of economic stabilization and of social
security, the beauties of advertising or installment credits, the advantages of
"functional" public finance, the progress of giant enterprise and
whatnot, without realizing that, in doing so, we take for granted a society
which is already largely deprived of those buergerliche conditions and
habits which I described.
It
is shocking to think how far our minds are already moving in terms of a
proletarianized, mechanized, centralized mass society. It has become almost
impossible for us to reason other than, in terms of income and expenditure, of
input and output, having forgotten to think in terms of property. That is, by
the way, the deepest reason for my own fundamental and insurmountable distrust
in Keynesian and post-Keynesian economics.
It
is, indeed, highly significant that Keynes attained fame mostly for his trite
and cynical remark that "in the long run, we are all dead." And it is
even more significant that so many contemporary economists have found this
dictum particularly spiritual and progressive. But let us remember that it only
echoes the slogan of the Ancien Regime in the 18th century: Apres nous le
deluge. And let us ask why this is so significant. Because it reveals the
decidedly unbuergerliche, the Bohemian spirit of this modern trend in
economics and in economic policy. It betrays the new hardboiled
happy-go-luckiness, the tendency to live from hand to mouth, and to make the
style of the Bohemian the new watchword for a more enlightened generation.
To
incur debts becomes a positive virtue; to save, a capital sin. To live beyond
one's means, as individuals and as nations, is the logical consequence. But
what else is this than Entbuergerlichung, deracination,
proletarianization, nomadization? And is not this the very opposite of our
concept of civilization which is derived from civis, the Buerger?
Muddling
through from day to day and from one expedient to another, to boast that
"money does not matter" — that is, indeed, the opposite of an honest,
disciplined, and orderly concept and plan of life. The income of people living
on these lines may have become buergerliche, but their style of life is
still proletarian.
A Growing Concept
It
is clearly impossible in the space of a short article to study the impact of
all this in all the important fields. I have discussed it in regards to private
property. It is further very disquieting to see how this concept has permeated
more and more the economic and social policies of our time. One major example
is the Mitbestimmungsrecht (codetermination — the right of workers and
trade-union representatives to participate in the administration of industrial
enterprises and thus to take over some functions of proper ownership) in West
Germany.
To
give an illustration: the director of a large power plant in Germany tells me
how silly he felt the other day when, in wage negotiations with trade-union
officials, he had to deal with the same men who, at the same time, sit beside
him at meetings of trustees of the power plants themselves. He adds that the
structure of enterprises in West Germany approaches more and more that which
Tito seems to have in mind. And that is happening in the very country which is
considered today the model of a successful restoration of the free-market
economy!
Another
example of this gradual dissolution of the meaning of property, and of the
corresponding norms, which can be observed in many countries, is the softening
of the responsibility of the debtor. By lax legal procedure with regard to
execution and bankruptcy, this, more often than not, amounts — in the name of
social justice — to the expropriation of the creditor. It is hardly necessary
to recall, in this connection, the expropriation of the hapless class of house
owners by rent control, and the effects of progressive taxation.
Let
us apply our reflections to another most important field: money. Let us
recognize that respect for money as something intangible is, like property, an
essential part of the social order and of the mentality which are the
prerequisites of the market economy.
To
illustrate my case, I want to tell two stories which I take from the financial
history of France. At the end of 1870, Gambetta, the leader of the French
Resistance after the defeat of the Second Empire, left the besieged capital in
a balloon for Tours to create the new republican army. In his desperate need
for money, he remembered that his admired predecessors of the Revolution had
financed their wars by printing and assignats. He asked the representative of
the Banque de France to print for him a few hundred million notes. But he met
with a flat and indignant refusal. At that time, such a demand was considered
so monstrous that Gambetta did not insist. The Jacobin firebrand and
all-powerful dictator yielded to the determined no of the representative
of the central bank who would not accept even a supreme national emergency as
an excuse for the crime of inflation.
A few months later, the socialist revolt known as the
Commune occurred in Paris. The gold reserves and the plates of the notes of the
Banque de France were at the mercy of the revolutionaries. But, badly in need
of money and politically unscrupulous as they were, they strongly resisted the
temptation to lay their hands on them. In the very midst of the flames of civil
war, the central bank and its money were sacrosanct to them.
The
significance of these two stories will not escape anyone. It would, indeed, be
harsh to ask what has become of this respect for money in our time, not least
of all in France. To restore this respect and the corresponding discipline in
money and credit policy is one of the most important conditions for the durable
success of all our efforts to restore and maintain a free economy and,
therewith, a free society.
Wilhelm
Röpke (1899–1966) was schooled in the tradition of the Austrians and made
enormous contributions to the study of political institutions. His powerful
anti-Keynesian writings in particular underscore what an outstanding economist
he was and the extent to which he was influenced by Mises. Röpke defended sound
money and free trade, and attacked welfare. While some consider him a doubter
on free markets, he was in fact a passionate advocate of laissez-faire.
3) Roger’s
Rangers Rules or Plan of Discipline by Major Robert Rogers
Rule #3
If you march over
marshes or soft ground, change your position, and march abreast of each other,
to prevent the enemy from tracking you (as they would do if you marched in a
single file) till you get over such ground, and then resume your former order,
and march till it is quite dark before you encamp, which do, if possible, on a
piece of ground that may afford your sentries the advantage of seeing or
hearing the enemy at some considerable distance, keeping one half of your whole
party awake alternately through the night.
4) 52 Weeks to Preparedness by Tess Pennington
Week 3 of 52: Emergency
Medical Supply (List 1)
Experts suggest that each home have a basic medical supply that is unique to your family’s needs. Many of us have our fair share of band-aids and antibiotic ointment, but do you have medical supplies that can stop dehydration or bleeding, or diarreah? In the event of a major disaster, such as a hurricane or earthquake, if someone in the home is injured, emergency responders cannot always get to the injured victims in time. Therefore, having necessary medical supplies in the home could save some one’s life if they need immediate medical assistance.
Keep in mind that medicines can break down and spoil if they are subject to natural elements such as moisture, temperature fluctuations and exposure to light. Did you know that aspirin has a tendency to begin breaking down when it is exposed to a slight amount of moisture? Find an area in the home that has easy access and preferably located in a cool, dark area that is out of children’s reach. Also, check expiration dates periodically to ensure the medicines are still good to use. The below list of items will serve as a foundation for future medical supply lists.
Preps to buy:
- Antacid
- Aspirin or non-Aspirin pain
reliever
- Stool softeners
- Kleenex
- Feminine hygiene supplies
- Disposable hand wipes
- Band-aids
- Antibiotic ointment
- Extra baby needs (diapers, wipes,
pacifiers, bottles, medicine, etc)
- 1 week of prescription medications
- Extra pair of reading glasses
(optional)
Action Items:
Buy a local and state map to put in your vehicle.
Create an evacuation route in case you have to evacuate your town due to a disaster. Map out mulitple escape routes to fall back on. Click here to know the signs of when to evacuate/bug out your home or community.
Sign up for a CPR/First aid class with your local area Red Cross or through your local Emergency Management Service department. For those of you who are short on time, you can find online disaster skills training courses that can be done in the convenience of your own home.
5) 110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in
Company and Conversation by George Washington
7th – Put
not off your Cloths in the presence of Others, nor go out your Chamber half
Dressed.
8th – At
Play and at Fire its Good manners to Give Place to the last Commer, and affect
not to Speak Louder than Ordinary.
9th – Spit
not in the Fire, nor Stoop low before it neither Put your Hands into the Flames
to warm them, nor Set your Feet upon the Fire especially if there be meat
before it.
No comments:
Post a Comment