Does your faith need strengthening? Are you confused and wondering if Jesus Christ is really "The Way, the Truth, and the Life?" "Fight for Your Faith" is a blog filled with interesting and thought provoking articles to help you find the answers you are seeking. Jesus said, "Seek and ye shall find." In Jeremiah we read, "Ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall seek for Me with all your heart." These articles and videos will help you in your search for the Truth.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Membros de uma Gangue Atiraram nele Oito Vezes —Um Anjo Salvou sua Vida

http://anchor.tfionline.com/pt/post/membros-de-uma-gangue-atiraram-nele-oito-vezes-um-/

Michael Ashcraft e Mark Ellis
[Gang Members Shot Him Eight Times—An Angel Helped Save His Life]

Quando iniciados de uma gangue atiraram no músico Marcus Stanley oito vezes numa noite de 2004 numa rua de Baltimore, ele temia, SE sobrevivesse, que sua carreira de músico chegaria ao fim.

Ele tocava piano com o cantor Chris Brown da R&B. Viajava com músicos gospel como Donnie McClurkin, mas não prestava realmente atenção ao evangelho. Era atraído pelo dinheiro e estilo de vida extravagante.

“Eu não estava focado na mensagem. Não estava focado em Cristo,” disse Stanley à CBN. “Estava realmente focado em ter sucesso—ser músico, ser um músico popular, e tocar com um grande artista. O dinheiro era provavelmente a razão principal, porque eu o ganhava rápido.”

Aqueles dias de fama e fortuna chegaram imediatamente ao fim naquela noite em que fui baleado. A polícia suspeita que era uma tentativa de assassinar qualquer pessoa como iniciação em uma gangue.

“Chegávamos tarde cada noite,” disse Stanley à CBN. “Eu estava na verdade indo para uma loja. Percebi que estava sem a carteira e não havia chegado à loja ainda, mas dei meia volta e comecei a voltar para pegar minha carteira e então vi aqueles caras de pé na esquina aquela noite, e eles estavam me observando.”

Um dos seis, o líder da gangue, se aproximou e perguntou:

— O que você está fazendo aqui, cara?

— Só estou esfriando a cabeça, irmão — respondeu Stanley, e continuou andando. A gangue o seguiu e o cercou.

— Olha, agora você vai esticar, cara — retrucou o líder. Sacou um revólver calibre 45 da jaqueta de couro, apontou para Stanley e atirou à queima-roupa.

Stanley caiu no chão, cego pela centelha do disparo. A seguir vieram mais sete disparos.

“Lembro que caí assim que vi o flash do revólver, e então apareceu um anjo na minha frente,” diz Stanley.

Aparentemente o anjo salvou a vida de Stanley desviando as balas.

“Tenho quase 2 metros de altura, de modo que o anjo tinha provavelmente mais de 2 metros,” disse Stanley à CBN. “Era simplesmente uma figura transparente. Eu não vi asas nem nada assim. Vi que era claro, transparente e estava na minha frente.”

Stanley ouviu Deus lhe dizer para não se mexer. Ele segurou o fôlego e esperou os assassinos irem embora. Quando eles fugiram de carro, Stanley finalmente respirou. “Ó Deus … Ó Deus,” clamou baixinho. Ele viu uma poça de sangue se formando ao seu redor e tentou se levantar, mas não conseguiu.

Pela primeira vez na vida ele clamou ao Senhor da Vida—o mesmo Deus que os cantores gospel invocavam.

“Eu estava tipo, ‘Deus me ajude. Ajude-me a viver,’” disse Stanley. “Só me lembro de tentar permanecer consciente. Pensei que isso seria muito importante.”

“Era como um filme. Você vê esse tipo de coisas nos filmes. Vê a luz lá em cima. As pessoas veem sua vida em um flash bem diante de seus olhos. Foi assim comigo, só que comecei a pensar o que aconteceria se eu morresse. E eu pensava, ninguém vai saber o que aconteceu comigo.”

Ele engatinhou da rua até a calçada. Stanley tentou acenar para os carros que passavam, mas ninguém parava para ele.

De repente lembrou que ainda estava com seu celular e ligou para o número de emergência.

Quando a polícia chegou, desenhou uma linha com giz ao seu redor e colocou uma fita para isolar a cena do crime. Apesar de tudo ao seu redor comunicar morte, Stanley começou a orar por vida.

Depois que os paramédicos o levaram às pressas ao hospital, os médicos cortaram suas roupas e Stanley pode ver todos os ferimentos de bala. Meu corpo parece morto, como se eu não poderia estar vivo, mas estou, pensou.

Stanley ouviu o paramédico dizer, “Acho que ele não vai resistir.”

Quando o levaram para cirurgia, os médicos pareciam perplexos por ele ainda estar respirando e consciente.

Antes da cirurgia, Stanley viu uma coisa impressionante. “Lembro de olhar e ver o mesmo anjo que estava na rua e ele tinha os braços cruzados... Ele não fez nem disse nada. Estava como que meneando a cabeça como se dissesse, ‘Vai ficar tudo bem.’” Stanley sentiu imediatamente a paz de Deus.

Os médicos operaram por oito horas para salvar sua vida. Reataram o cólon, removeram metade de seu estômago e pâncreas, e removeram totalmente seu baço, disse.

Depois da cirurgia, ele continuou com os nervos danificados no braço, e perdeu a sensibilidade da mão direita. Pensou que sua carreira musical havia acabado.

Foi extraordinário o fato de ele voltar a andar e até tocar piano três meses depois de fazer reabilitação.

Apesar da intervenção impressionante de Deus para preservar sua vida, Stanley não estava pronto para entregar sua vida a Jesus como Senhor e Salvador. Ele voltou a seguir os seus sonhos no mundo da música.

A necessidade de tomar analgésicos depois da cirurgia o deixou viciado em medicamentos. Cinco anos depois, ele estava tão desgostoso do rumo que sua vida tomara que finalmente resolveu se entregar totalmente a Jesus.

Stanley chegou ao fundo do poço, e desta vez estava pronto para se render. Clamou a Deus e entregou sua vida completamente a Jesus Cristo.

“Cheguei a um ponto que fiquei tão desesperado que pensei, ‘não posso mais continuar assim.’ Foi então que tudo mudou para mim no que diz respeito aos sonhos que eu perseguia, e decidi que precisava de Jesus. Demorou bastante tempo para eu chegar a este ponto,” disse Stanley a CBN.

Mais tarde, ele descobriu que o cirurgião que o operou encontrou a Deus como resultado daquela cirurgia. “Ele reconheceu que não era possível ele ter feito aquela cirurgia sozinho.”

Hoje, Stanley usa seu talento para o reino de Deus. Ele toca e dá palestras para jovens em escolas do ensino médio.

“Não falo sobre a minha música,” diz Stanley. “Mas sim sobre o que Deus fez na minha vida, e pretendo fazer com que ele seja famoso em tudo o que faço e mostrar a sua glória.”


De http://blog.godreports.com/2014/12/gang-members-shot-him-eight-times-an-angel-helped-save-his-life. Pode ouvir Marcus Stanley contar a história no clipe no YouTube no final desta página.

How Christianity Makes Sense of Life

http://anchor.tfionline.com/post/how-christianity-makes-sense-life/

A compilation

Audio length: 8:27
Download Audio (7.7MB)

Christianity is not just an attempt to make some sense of a small part of reality. Christianity is a worldview that offers the very meaning of life. It explains the greatest questions of humanity, and it deals with the most explored topics of our history: life after death, the origin of the universe, the existence and character of God, the universal conflict between good and evil. All this and more is addressed by the message that we call the Gospel.—Stuart McAllister

*

In the Christian worldview, more specifically, God doesn’t remain distant and removed from evil; God actually enters into our world of evil, suffering, and injustice in the person of Jesus Christ. He comes, standing in the place of God, befriending the marginalized, healing the sick, proclaiming hope for those who turn from their dead-end ways to follow him. Jesus dies naked on a cross, rises from the dead to prove his claims true, and promises to return to right all wrongs and to bring about a new creation in which there is no more injustice or evil.—Paul Copan

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Your worldview, in a sense, is the lens through which you ultimately look at reality. That’s what I like about the Christian faith. It corresponds to reality. It coheres as a worldview; it’s logically consistent. I can test it out, and it brings relevance to your life in all of the most vital pursuits that you and I engage in. Don’t be afraid of the sciences. Don’t be afraid of philosophy. Don’t be afraid of studying world religions. All of these ought to be well understood and then meaningfully responded to.—Ravi Zacharias

*

A revolutionary education today would be a back-to-God education, and that’s reallyrevolutionary in this modern day and age! Back to God in creation. Back to real faith in religion, back to creation in science, back to a plan in history, beauty in art, harmony in music, laws in learning to read, right and wrong in behavior, and order in government and God in everything—the Creator of all things, the designer of everything, the planner—so that life again means something.

For God is the only one who can give a real meaning to living. Let’s get back to God in our education, in every subject in every field. I taught school for years, and I brought out God in everything, showing there was perfection in all things and that the perfect one had a hand in the creation of all, and there was a reason for everything.

Back to reasoning, back to a pattern for existence made by a divine designer who makes the plans according to rules, brings about order, and who gives meaning to the universe and purpose to the planets, love to our hearts and peace to our minds, health to our bodies and rest to our spirits, happiness to our lives and joy to our souls, and the wisdom to know that “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,”1 and that mere knowledge is not enough, but how to use it is more important for the glory of God.

We must see God in everything to give it meaning, reason, purpose, plan, design, and a goal, and peace and order and a design for living given us by the great designer in His rules and laws, rights and wrongs and absolutes, without which there can be no peace and no order and no happiness.

Thank God for the absolutes and the rules of the Ruler, that we may know the difference between right and wrong and therefore find happiness through His love and His loving laws and reasonable rules. May God help you to “know Him, whom to know islife eternal.”2 And absolute!—D, Brandt Berg

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An adequate worldview must answer more than how to maximize one’s earnings or one’s pleasure. It must make sense of the tough questions that haunt us in the still and darkness of the night, questions such as: “Why are we here?” “What’s next?” “How should we live?” and “What is required for salvation?” Many people today live lives not of reflection but of hyper-stimulation. They may never have taken the time to examine their worldview, and as they bounce from one activity to the next, they push away the nagging sense that something is missing. So it is that they may not realize, at least not for a very long time, that they are operating on a very “stripped down” view of the world, one that highlights pleasure and power, but ignores those things that endure. …

The best worldview to adopt is the one true one, the one that completely conforms to reality. Christianity doesn’t promise a perfect life in the here and now. Indeed, following Christ is guaranteed to bring trials and hardships … but if what you want is a worthy life now—a life well-lived—and the guarantee of being made perfect by the One who defines perfection, then the Christian worldview will be your ultimate destination.—Al Serrato

*

Watching athletes compete with all their heart always reminds me of what the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:24–27:

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I discipline my body and bring it into subjection so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”

The tasks which face us as Christians are of Olympic proportions. To build God’s kingdom today, we can’t afford to have folks “just along for the ride.” Each Christian must be fully equipped with a biblical worldview, knowledge of how Scripture applies to every area of life, courage, determination, resourcefulness and wisdom. I suspect that most Christians are not getting this kind of training. Is it possible that we Christian runners are falling by the wayside in the race of life?—Dr. Jeff Myers

Published on Anchor March 2015. Read by Debra Lee.



1 Proverbs 9:10.


2 John 17:3.

Monday, March 23, 2015

Job hunting? Don’t overlook nonprofits

By Anne Fisher, Fortune, March 19, 2015

Not-for-profits are adding new jobs at a higher rate than their corporate counterparts.

Now that the economy is getting back on track, charitable giving, which took a nosedive during the downturn, is on the rise again. That means the nearly 2 million nonprofit organizations in the U.S., which already employ almost 11 million people, are ready to grow. Yet, partly because even some of the biggest nonprofits have skimpy or non-existent budgets for recruitment, they’re often invisible to job seekers.

That’s too bad, because about 50% of U.S. nonprofits plan to create new jobs in 2015, according to a new survey from research and consulting firm Nonprofit HR—markedly more than the 36% of for-profit companies that say the same.

Looking for job stability? Nonprofits beat their corporate counterparts hands-down, the study says. Consider: Only 7% plan to eliminate any positions this year. By contrast, 74% of for-profit employers plan at least some layoffs in 2015.

One downside of working at a nonprofit is that most can’t pay as well as businesses can. More than one in four (27%) nonprofits polled gave “inability to pay competitively” as their biggest problem in attracting and keeping talent.

“But not all nonprofits are alike. Some of the very large ones can match the compensation that business offers,” says Barbara Lehrer, president of a staffing and headhunting firm called the New York Beacon Group that sometimes recruits managers from for-profit companies to run nonprofits in New York City and its environs.

Besides, people change jobs for all kinds of reasons other than money, she notes, like “the chance to work for a cause they really believe in, but also the prestige, or a better title, and a chance to apply their skills on a broader scale.”

Sometimes people move to the nonprofit world because, as Brian Marcotte puts it, “I was at a point in my career where I wanted to do something different.”

Marcotte spent 21 years at Honeywell, where he was vice president of global compensation and benefits. Since last May, he’s been president and CEO of the National Business Group on Health, a research and advocacy group made up of 415 employers, including 67 Fortune 100 companies. Among other things, NBGH members share knowledge and best practices on containing health care costs, which had been an interest of Marcotte’s in his corporate job.

Like most of the other organizations Nonprofit HR surveyed, NBGH is hiring, albeit on a modest scale. “We plan to add jobs as we grow,” Marcotte says. “We gained 28 new member companies last year, and five or six so far this year. So we have created a couple of new positions, which we’re trying to fill right now.”

Sunday, March 22, 2015

March 22 Streams In the Desert---L.B. Cowman: God's Timing

"And when 40 years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of Mt. Sinai an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush, saying, I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, & I have heard their groaning, & am come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send thee into Egypt" (Acts 7:30,32,34).


That was a long wait in preparation for a great mission. When God delays, He is not inactive. He is getting ready His instruments, He is ripening our powers; & at the appointed moment we shall arise equal to our task. Even Jesus of Nazareth was thirty years in privacy, growing in wisdom before He began His work. --Dr. Jowett

God is never in a hurry but spends years with those He expects to greatly use. He never thinks the days of preparation too long or too dull.

The hardest ingredient in suffering is often time. A short, sharp pang is easily borne, but when a sorrow drags its weary way through long, monotonous years, & day after day returns with the same dull routine of hopeless agony, the heart loses its strength, & without the grace of God, is sure to sink into the very sullenness of despair. Joseph's was a long trial, & God often has to burn His lessons into the depths of our being by the fires of protracted pain. "He shall sit as a refiner & purifier of silver," but He knows how long, & like a true goldsmith He stops the fires the moment He sees His image in the glowing metal. We may not see now the outcome of the beautiful plan which God is hiding in the shadow of His hand; it yet may be long concealed; but faith may be sure that He is sitting on the throne, calmly waiting the hour when, with adoring rapture, we shall say, "All things have worked together for good." Like Joseph, let us be more careful to learn all the lessons in the school of sorrow than we are anxious for the hour of deliverance. There is a "need-be" for every lesson, & when we are ready, our deliverance will surely come, & we shall find that we could not have stood in our place of higher service without the very things that were taught us in the ordeal. God is educating us for the future, for higher service & nobler blessings; & if we have the qualities that fit us for a throne, nothing can keep us from it when God's time has come. Don't steal tomorrow out of God's hands. Give God time to speak to you & reveal His will. He is never too late; learn to wait. --Selected

"He never comes too late; He knoweth what is best;
Vex not thyself in vain; until He cometh--REST."

Do not run impetuously before the Lord; learn to wait His time: the minute-hand as well as the hour-hand must point the exact moment for action.

For Africa, a Pivotal Plane Crash

By Alan Cowell, NY Times, March 19, 2015

LONDON—It was a tragedy that resonated far from its time and its place.

When Dag Hammarskjold, the secretary general of the United Nations, perished in an air crash in what was then Northern Rhodesia in September 1961, his death laid a first layer in a palimpsest of conflicting narratives that the United Nations this week pledged to revisit with a new review by a panel of experts.

Mr. Hammarskjold’s plane went down eight miles from the airport at Ndola on the Copperbelt of what is now Zambia. He had planned a meeting there with Moise Tshombe, leader of a secession in the neighboring Congolese region of Katanga that was backed by many Western interests. His mission was to end the fighting.

It was a story of Cold War rivalry and human idealism pitted against greed and realpolitik. As the Congo sought to emerge from Belgian rule, Mr. Hammarskjold, a 56-year-old Swede, was a messenger of peace flying into a war zone where United Nations forces fought secessionist troops backed by foreign mercenaries. Did the plane simply crash or was it brought down? Was it simply an accident, the result of human error—or the fruit of human design signaling a gigantic loss of innocence for a continent?

For many Swedes, looking back from today’s vantage, Mr. Hammarskjold’s death was part of a catalog of loss among their elite, from the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg in 1945 to the death of Anna Lindh in 2003, from the assassination of Folke Bernadotte in 1948 to the murder of Olof Palme in 1986. For all of them, high office and idealism exacted the highest price.

When Mr. Hammarskjold died, Africa stood at a crossroads. Only a year earlier, Harold Macmillan, the British prime minister, had declared that the “wind of change” was blowing through the continent. In 1964, Zambia itself declared its independence—part of a process that scored a trail through Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and elsewhere toward the biggest prize of all, South Africa.

The fear of those geopolitical dominoes infused colonial thinking.

Already, Belgians fleeing the Congo brought with them tales of mayhem that seemed only to confirm the worst nightmares of white minorities farther south.

Katanga, said Roy Welensky, head of the colonial-era Central African Federation, which grouped together what are now Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, was “an ideal buffer between ourselves and the wilder forms of pan-Africanism to the north of us.” Without that shield, he said, “the alternatives are too frightful to contemplate.”

Such was the alarm that, as the conflict worsened in Katanga, Mr. Welensky deployed elite troops to the border area and a detachment of warplanes to the city of Ndola. Far to the north of Africa, electronic listening posts in the Mediterranean run by the United States National Security Agency monitored frequencies on the ground.

But this was not just about geopolitics or even the toxic cocktail of race and ideology that drove regional rivalries. The fighting that Mr. Hammarskjold sought to end also posed a familiar question in Africa: Who should benefit from the continent’s riches? That was particularly apt across a swath of Africa where Western mining concerns controlled a trove of uranium, cobalt and other resources.

For centuries, it had been axiomatic in the West that Africa’s resources belonged to outsiders, just as Africa’s markets belonged to those same foreigners who processed raw cotton into cloth or rough diamonds into jewelry.

But the wave of independence, swollen by the Congo’s emancipation from Belgium, traded colonial exploitation for, at best, an ambiguous economic legacy. And today, where Westerners once strutted on an African stage, building roads and bridges to ease their access, China is the dominant player.

All that seemed remote in 1961. But students of modern Africa exploring the dramas of the postcolonial era might start their quest for clues and pointers in the period surrounding that September night, when Transair DC-6B, registration SE-BDY, went down near Ndola.

Where the quest leads, of course, is as laden with unknowables as the crash itself.

After nun rape, India cardinal says protect humans, not just cows

Reuters, March 19, 2015

NEW DELHI (Reuters) The head of India’s Catholic bishops, speaking out after a nun was raped in the east of the country last week, has said the country should be as concerned about the welfare of its people as it is about its cows.

The comments appeared directed against hardline Hindu nationalists who have stirred up animosity against India’s Christian and Muslim minorities, while successfully lobbying for tougher laws against killing cows.

Cows are considered sacred by many Indians, but beef is eaten by some poor and lower-caste Hindus as well as by Christians and Muslims. Campaigns to protect cattle are often used to vilify religious minorities.

“The country has a responsibility towards all of us—every human being—and not just cows,” Cardinal Baselios Cleemis told journalists. The comments, reported in newspapers on Wednesday, were confirmed by his office.

Cleemis spoke before visiting the hospitalized nun who was raped at a convent school in West Bengal, an attack which has triggered protests on city streets and in parliament.

The attack was the most serious in a series of incidents that have spread fear among Christians since activists, emboldened by Modi’s election victory last year, began their “ghar wapsi” (homecoming) campaign to convert followers of “foreign religions” to Hinduism.

Indian Christians emphasize their religion’s long history in India and say it is an integral part of the country. Some Hindu hardliners, however, are seeking to define the country as primarily a Hindu nation, in which other religions are guests.

Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome

By Nicholas Wade, NY Times, March 19, 2015

A group of leading biologists on Thursday called for a worldwide moratorium on use of a new genome-editing technique that would alter human DNA in a way that can be inherited.

The biologists fear that the new technique is so effective and easy to use that some physicians may push ahead before its safety can be assessed. They also want the public to understand the ethical issues surrounding the technique, which could be used to cure genetic diseases, but also to enhance qualities like beauty or intelligence. The latter is a path that many ethicists believe should never be taken.

“You could exert control over human heredity with this technique, and that is why we are raising the issue,” said David Baltimore, a former president of the California Institute of Technology and a member of the group whose paper on the topic was published in the journal Science.

Ethicists, for decades, have been concerned about the dangers of altering the human germline—meaning to make changes to human sperm, eggs or embryos that will last through the life of the individual and be passed on to future generations. Until now, these worries have been theoretical. But a technique invented in 2012 makes it possible to edit the genome precisely and with much greater ease. The technique has already been used to edit the genomes of mice, rats and monkeys, and few doubt that it would work the same way in people.

The technique holds the power to repair or enhance any human gene. “It raises the most fundamental of issues about how we are going to view our humanity in the future and whether we are going to take the dramatic step of modifying our own germline and in a sense take control of our genetic destiny, which raises enormous peril for humanity,” said George Q. Daley, a stem cell expert at Boston Children’s Hospital and a member of the group.

The biologists writing in Science support continuing laboratory research with the technique, and few if any scientists believe it is ready for clinical use. Any such use is tightly regulated in the United States and Europe. American scientists, for instance, would have to present a plan to treat genetic diseases in the human germline to the Food and Drug Administration.

The paper’s authors, however, are concerned about countries that have less regulation in science. They urge that “scientists should avoid even attempting, in lax jurisdictions, germline genome modification for clinical application in humans” until the full implications “are discussed among scientific and governmental organizations.”

Scientists also say that replacing a defective gene with a normal one may seem entirely harmless but perhaps would not be.

“We worry about people making changes without the knowledge of what those changes mean in terms of the overall genome,” Dr. Baltimore said. “I personally think we are just not smart enough—and won’t be for a very long time—to feel comfortable about the consequences of changing heredity, even in a single individual.”

The International Society for Stem Cell Research said Thursday that it supported the proposed moratorium.

The Doudna group calls for public discussion, but is also working to develop some more formal process, such as an international meeting convened by the National Academy of Sciences, to establish guidelines for human use of the genome-editing technique.

“We need some principled agreement that we want to enhance humans in this way or we don’t,” Dr. Jaenisch said. “You have to have this discussion because people are gearing up to do this.”

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