The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

  1. LIFE’S SPAN “The [young person] hopes to live a long time, the [older person] has already done so. I already have memories, years, and life at a mature stage – all concrete things. The young only have hope for these things. But my God, what does “a long time” mean? The longest lifetime, I suppose, we take from Methuselah in the Bible. Wasn’t he supposed to have lived 969 years? But for me, any time which has a definite end to it (as life does) does not seem long-lasting, and once your end has arrived, then your past time disappears, leaving behind only your virtue and the good things you have done. These things are long-lasting; the span of your life is not. The hours, the days, months, even years pass. Past time never returns and we can’t know what future time will bring. Time is not the important thing of life. We must take as enough whatever amount of time we are given for living.  To give a good performance, an actor does not have to appear in the last part of the movie: he can earn good reviews from what he does in any part of it. And neither must life be drawn out until some venerable time for the final curtain. A short time of life is enough to live well and honorably. If you do live longer, don’t complain; farmers don’t complain when the pleasantness of spring has passed, and summer and fall arrive. Spring is the time of growth, indicating the crops to come; the other seasons are designed for harvesting and gathering in the crops.”

Excerpt From: Marcus Tullius Cicero, Lance Rossi & Richard Gerberding. “How To Be Old.”

  1. MONEY CONFUSION “Another source of confusion in discussions of peoples’ economic differences is a failure to distinguish income from wealth.

At a practical level, raising income tax rates to make “the rich” pay their undefined “fair share” is an exercise in futility, since income taxes do not touch wealth. It is a tax on people who may be trying to accumulate wealth, but people who already have accumulations of wealth, either personally earned or from inheritance, are exempt.

Praise for billionaires who say that they are in favor of higher income tax rates is completely misplaced, when those higher tax rates will not touch their billions, even if such tax rate increases are a serious burden to other people, who are trying to get ahead and accumulate something to leave for their families after they are gone.” Excerpt From: Sowell, Thomas. “Wealth, Poverty and Politics.”

  1. EXERCISE “As exercise is combined with peaceful inner thoughts, including steady repetition of a word or phrase that is rooted into your deepest passions and motivations, the pull toward the exercise gets even stronger.

Medical research has established that exercise itself raises levels of biochemicals and hormones “known to serve synaptic plasticity and learning.”

So if you work out regularly, you can expect the connections in your brain to improve and your ability to learn to expand.”

Excerpt From: Kenneth Cooper, M.D., MPH & Tyler Cooper, M.D., MPH. “Start Strong, Finish Strong.”

  1. SECULAR WEST “No martyr’s blood is shed in the secular west. So long as the church knows her place and remains quietly at peace on her modern reservation. Let the babes pray and sing and read their Bibles, continuing steadfastly in their intellectual retardation; the church’s extinction will not come by sword or pillory, but by the quiet death of irrelevance. But let the church step off the reservation, let her penetrate once more the culture of the day and the … face of secularism will change from a benign smile to a savage snarl.”

Excerpt From: Moreland, J.P. “Love Your God with All Your Mind (15th anniversary repack).”

  1. CHRIS SEIDMAN

“The Lepers [Luke 17] were healed ON THE WAY to see the priests – NOT BEFORE they left. CHANGE HAPPENS as you go along.”

“God doesn’t promise us tomorrow. But He does promise us eternity.”

  1. LAWS DON’T CHANGE “Once a law is on the statute books it is well nigh impossible to get it repealed. Indeed, that is the whole point of having law: it should not be easy to ignore or get round.

A contemporary example of the irreversibility of a law once it has been passed is given by the landmark Roe v. Wade 1973 ruling, legalizing abortion in the United States. The name Jane Roe is a pseudonym given for her protection, but it is now well known that she is Norma McCorvey. She became a Christian twenty years later and changed her mind about abortion. But she could not get the law reversed, even though she had been the one in whose name it was drawn up.

What happened to Daniel shows us that, in the hands of unscrupulous men, what should be a strength of the law can become a weakness. It alerts us once more to the core message of the dream [of Nebuchadnezzar] – no human system of governance is perfect.”

Excerpt From: John C. Lennox. “Against the Flow.”

  1. PROVISION “But my God shall supply all your need’ (Philippians 4:19), and this has exactly suited the wishes of the best and wisest men, who desired no more at His hand. Wise Providence considers our condition as pilgrims and strangers, and so allots the provision that is needful for our passage home. It knows the mischievous influence of fullness and excess upon most men, though sanctified, and how apt it is to make them remiss and forgetful of God so that their heart, like the moon, suffers an eclipse when it is at the full.”

Excerpt From: Flavel, John. “The Mystery of Providence.”

  1. “Between visible and invisible anguish, the visible nearly always wins, even when the invisible suffering is far greater. Whenever I see a crowd of candle-holders standing vigil outside a prison where a murderer is about to be executed, I wonder why these people never do the same at the home of the murdered persons family. And then I realize that one reason is that the murder victim is invisible—as was the murder itself—while the murderer and his execution are visible. Excerpt From: Prager, Dennis. “Think a Second Time.”
  2. “Satan seeks to interrupt our prayers. Our battle with prayer is not entirely our fault. The devil knows the stories; he witnessed the angel in Peter’s cell and the revival in Jerusalem. He knows what happens when we pray. “Our weapons have power from God that can destroy the enemy’s strong places” (2 Cor. 10:4).

Satan is not troubled when we write books or prepare sermons, but his knobby knees tremble when we pray. Satan does not stutter or stumble when you walk through church doors or attend committee meetings. Demons aren’t flustered when you read this book. But the walls of hell shake when one person with an honest heart and faithful confession says, “Oh, God, how great thou art.”

Satan keeps you and me from prayer. He tries to position himself between us and God. But he scampers like a spooked dog when we move forward. So let’s do.

“Humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come close to God, and God will come close to you.” (James 4:7–8

“The LORD is close to everyone who prays to him,

to all who truly pray to him.” (Ps. 145:18)

Excerpt From: Lucado, Max. “Outlive Your Life.”

  1. A CAUSE “When I die, when I’m lying on my deathbed, what am I thinking?” Joe said. “Well, I’d like to be thinking that I’ve accomplished something during my time here. You know, I didn’t die with the most toys. I didn’t die with the most money. But I left something behind me. I had a cause. And my children, I know that they all learned the importance of having a cause.”

Excerpt From: Marx, Jeffrey. “Season of Life.”

 

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The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

  1. TRUST & MONEY “While trust permits many mutually beneficial forms of cooperation, trust without trustworthiness is a formula for disaster. The level of honesty in a given society limits the radius of trust in that society, and this can have an economic impact that outweighs many tangible advantages of a given society. The Soviet Union, for example, was one of the most richly endowed nations on earth, if not the most richly endowed, in natural resources. Yet, the standard of living of the Russian people was significantly lower than that in Western Europe, the United States or Japan—even though Japan is one of the most poorly endowed nations when it comes to natural resources.

The cost of corruption in an economy does not consist solely, or even primarily, of the bribes paid, the money stolen or the goods pilfered. The main costs consist of the things that are not done—the businesses that are not started, the investments that are not made and the loans that are not granted, because the rate of return on such economic activities would have to be much higher to make such activities worthwhile in a very corrupt economy than in an economy in which the risks of being deprived of the fruits of one’s efforts were much lower.”

Excerpt From: Sowell, Thomas. “Wealth, Poverty and Politics.”

  1. MANMADE? Two scientists excitedly exclaimed to God, “We can make a man now. We don’t need you anymore God. We can make one just like you did!”

“Oh really”, said God.  ” Show me more.”

“Ok. Well first, we take some dirt….”

God interrupts, “No, no… I’m afraid you’ll have to get your own dirt.”

–C. Seidman

  1. GAMBLERS “Gamblers often up their bets when luck isn’t going their way; they’re willing to take a bigger risk to avoid losing money. IN the same way, stock prices bounce up and down more drastically during falling markets than during rising ones: If you’re a stock trader who’s lost a lot, the temptation to gamble big in the hopes of recouping money is very powerful.”

Excerpt From: Belsky, Gary. “Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them.”

  1. PIZZA, PIZZA Once asked into how many slices he wanted his pizza cut. Yogi Berra said, “Better make it four; I’m not hungry enough to eat eight.”
  2. WORD COUNT “A study found that American children in families where the parents are in professional occupations hear 2,100 words an hour, on average. Children whose parents are working class hear an average of 1,200 words an hour—and children whose family is on welfare hear 600 words an hour.13 What this means is that, over the years, a ten-year-old child from a family on welfare will have heard not quite as many words at home as a three-year-old child whose parents are professionals.

It is painful to contemplate what that means cumulatively over the years, as poor children are handicapped from their earliest childhood. It is not just in the quantity of words they hear that they are handicapped. They are also handicapped in both the quantity and the quality of their parents. Only 9 percent of American women with college degrees who gave birth in 2013 were unmarried. But 61 percent of women who were high school dropouts and gave birth that year were unmarried.”

Excerpt From: Sowell, Thomas. “Wealth, Poverty and Politics.”

  1. ALL BELONGS TO GOD “God let Abraham go through with it up to the point where He knew there would be no retreat, and then forbade him to lay a hand upon the boy. He said in effect, “It’s all right, Abraham. I never intended that you should actually slay the lad. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there. I wanted to correct the perversion that existed in your love. Now you may have the boy, sound and well. Take him and go back to your tent. Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing that thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me.”

We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord out of fear for their safety; this is especially true when those treasures are loved relatives and friends. But we need have no such fears. Our Lord came not to destroy but to save. Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.

Our gifts and talents should also be turned over to Him. They should be recognized for what they are, God’s loan to us, and should never be considered in any sense our own. We have no more right to claim credit for special abilities than for blue eyes or strong muscles. “For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?”

Excerpt From: A. W. Tozer. “The Pursuit of God.”

  1. TRUTH? “A woman and her husband were invited to her rich aunt’s home for dinner. The wife insisted that the husband treat the aunt politely. Her dessert was an original recipe. It was terrible. The husband responded, “I must say this is the best cake I have ever tasted.”

On the way home his wife told him that she had not meant that he had to lie to her aunt.

The husband replied, “I told the truth; I said, I must say this is the best cake I ever tasted.”

Excerpt From: Hodgin, Michael. “1001 Humorous Illustrations for Public Speaking.”

  1. GOSPEL MOVEMENT Launched by business leaders:

A BUILDING CONTRACTOR from Nazareth.

Four FISHERMEN from Galilee.

A TAX COLLECTOR from Judea.

A TENT MAKER from Tarsus.

A PHYSICIAN from Troas.

From: The Masters Program

  1. HISTORICAL BLUNDER “The worst political blunder in the history of civilization was probably the decision of the emperor of China in the year 1433 to stop exploring the oceans and to destroy the ships capable of exploration and the written records of their voyages. The decision was the result of powerful people pursuing partisan squabbles and neglecting the long-range interests of the empire. This is a disease to which governments of all kinds, including democracies, are fatally susceptible.”–Freeman Dyson
  2. PRESENT FUTURE “We worry about the future at the expense of the present.” –Cicero

 

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The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

  1. SOCIAL MEDIA EFFECT “Psychologists found that groups who communicate electronically deal with dissenting opinions very differently than groups who meet face-to-face. People holding dissenting opinions expressed their arguments most “frequently and persistently” when they communicated online, the researchers concluded. “At the same time, minorities received the highest level of positive attention and had the greatest influence on the private opinions of members in the majority and on the final group decision when they communicated face to face.” The fact that expressing a dissenting view in person is much harder socially, in other words, gives that opinion much more credence in the group’s deliberations. It’s the same way in other kinds of communications. The fact that anyone can e-mail us for free, if they have our address, means that people frequently and persistently e-mail us. But that simply makes us value face to face communications — and the communications of those we already know and trust — all the more.”

Excerpt From: Gladwell, Malcolm. “The Tipping Point.”

  1. CHRISTIAN APPAREL “Parents have to make a choice as to what is more important: pleasing their kids’ taste and sensibilities, or satisfying God’s standards as defined in the Bible,” pollster George Barna explains. “When the decision is made to keep their children happy, Christian parents are often left with a pit in their stomachs.”

Excerpt From: Bob Hutchins & Greg Stielstra. “Faith-Based Marketing.”

  1. BOLDNESS “Peter and John had been with Jesus. The resurrected Jesus. In the Upper Room when he walked through the wall. Standing next to Thomas when the disciple touched the wounds. On the beach when Jesus cooked the fish. Sitting at Jesus’ feet for forty days as he explained the ways of the kingdom.

They had lingered long and delightfully in the presence of the resurrected King. Awakening with him, walking with him. And because they had, silence was no longer an option. “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (v. 20).

Could you use some high-octane boldness? If you want to outlive your life, you could. As long as you are stationary, no one will complain. Dogs don’t bark at parked cars. But as soon as you accelerate—once you step out of drunkenness into sobriety, dishonesty into integrity, or lethargy into compassion—expect the yapping to begin. Expect to be criticized. Expect to be mocked. Expect to be persecuted.

So how can we prepare ourselves? Simple. Imitate the disciples. Linger long and often in the presence of Christ. Meditate on his grace. Ponder his love. Memorize his words. Gaze into his face. Talk to him. Courage comes as we live with Jesus.

Excerpt From: Lucado, Max. “Outlive Your Life.”

  1. DOGS “I am suspicious of people who do not like dogs, but I trust a dog when it does not like a person.” — Bill Murray
  2. EN-VIRONMENT VS. IN-VIRONMENT “Cuban refugees who found themselves at the bottom, when their exodus began in 1959, had children who, by 1990, earned more than $50,000 a year twice as often as white Americans. Forty years after these Cuban refugees arrived in the United States, the total revenue of Cuban American businesses was greater than the total revenue of the entire nation of Cuba. Similarly, as late as 1994, the 57 million overseas Chinese produced as much wealth as the one billion people in China.”

Excerpt From: Sowell, Thomas. “Wealth, Poverty and Politics.”

  1. HONK “A man’s car stalled in the heavy traffic as the light turned green. All his efforts to start the engine failed, and a chorus of honking behind him made matters worse. He finally got out of his car, walked back to the first driver, and said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t seem to get my car started. If you’ll go up there and give it a try, I’ll stay here and blow your horn for you.” Excerpt From: Hodgin, Michael. “1001 Humorous Illustrations for Public Speaking.”
  2. STUFF “There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets “things” with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns “my” and “mine” look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things , and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.

Our Lord referred to this tyranny of things when He said to His disciples, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.

Excerpt From: A. W. Tozer. “The Pursuit of God.”

  1. GOOD KIDS “The problem with regard to parents raising good children is not that most parents don’t want their children to be good people. It is that few parents actually make their child’s goodness their primary concern. Most parents are more concerned with their child’s being a brilliant student or a good athlete or a successful professional.

As parents, we clearly communicate to our children what we care about most. Unfortunately, even responsible and loving parents often fail to make it clear that they care about their children’s honesty and decency more than they care about their grades.

It is difficult to raise a good student, but it is much more difficult to raise a good person. It is a relentless job. In the long run, however, the parents of good children who are moderately successful are far happier than the parents of highly successful children who are moderately good.”

Excerpt From: Prager, Dennis. “Think a Second Time.”

  1. WHAT ABOUT U.S.? “In many parts of the world, particularly in the West, equality before the law is something that is now taken for granted as one of the basic human rights for citizens of a democracy. The origins of this important tradition are not so much to be found in Medo-Persia but much earlier, in Daniel’s homeland of Israel. It was a fundamental tenet of the people of Israel that everyone was subject to the law regardless of status. Through Moses God gave laws governing the behaviour of all, including the king:

“And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law…. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:18–20.)”

Excerpt From: John C. Lennox. “Against the Flow.”

  1. A STRATEGIC DAD “He has a clear and compelling definition of masculinity and a code of conduct for being a man. He understands the importance of whatever transcendent cause he has in his life. It’s strategic fatherhood … a clear definition and understanding of what it means to be a man and how a man lives.

So it’s strategic in the sense that it’s something the father—or any man—has to actually think through. This is not something that just happens on its own.

It’s intentional.”

Excerpt From: Marx, Jeffrey. “Season of Life.”

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The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

  1. A CALLING “There’s a difference in being asked to do something and a calling.”                –Unknown
  2. “Only 0.2 percent of the mainly Muslim nation of Turkey follows Jesus. Ironic. The land once knew the sandal prints of the apostle Paul and provided a stage for the first churches. Three-fourths of Christians live in the third world, often in anti-Christian environments. More Chinese take part in Sunday worship than the entirety of western Europeans. Lebanon is 39 percent Christian; Sudan, 5 percent; Egypt, about 10 percent. Many of these risk their life to worship. Would I give up my life? Why, some days I don’t want to give up my parking spot.”

Excerpt From: Lucado, Max. “Outlive Your Life.”

  1. HUMANE SOCIETY? “A significant aspect of modern life became clear: With the breakdown of religion, the belief that human beings are created in the image of God is no longer taught. From where, then, does the belief in human sanctity derive? What nonreligious reason could be offered for regarding people as more valuable than animals?

As a result of that encounter, I understood why I had never liked the famous antiwar button of the Vietnam War generation, “War Isn’t Healthy for Children and Other Living Things”— it was a subtle identification of children with all other living things.

Shortly thereafter, I began asking high school students throughout America: “If your dog and a person you didn’t know were drowning, which would you first try to save?” In fifteen years of posing that question before students in secular schools, no more than a third of the group has ever voted to save the person.”

Excerpt From: Prager, Dennis. “Think a Second Time.”

  1. 9-11 “As one witness described the sight of men and women leaping out of windows: “It was raining people.” That alone pushed me to tears as I sat in solitude on my couch. Another witness added the detail that many of the jumpers had fallen in pairs: “People were holding hands jumpings.” Unbelievable, I thought. Only seconds to live, one final act remaining, and it was still all about relationships. Those people needed each other. We all need each other.

The people on the hijacked planes who had used cell phones to say their final goodbyes before crashing. In frantic calls to family and friends, all had shared three simple words they wanted to leave behind: I love you. There had not been a single news account of anyone on those planes spending his final moments rehashing what a great athlete he’d been as a youngster, how many girls he’d scored as a teen, how much money and power he’d amassed as an adult. Nobody was calling their brokers.”

Excerpt From: Marx, Jeffrey. “Season of Life.”

  1. DISEASE “It was said of a kindly Spanish priest, who went among the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere in friendship, as a missionary, that he was probably responsible for more deaths among them than even the most brutal conquistador. It was not uncommon in parts of the Western Hemisphere for half or more of a given tribe of indigenous people to be wiped out by European diseases to which they had no biological resistance.”

Excerpt From: Sowell, Thomas. “Wealth, Poverty and Politics.”

  1. COMPLAINT DEPT A young monk had taken a vow of silence. Yet the monastery rules allowed him to say two words on each anniversary of his induction into the order. On the first anniversary he was asked, “My son, what would you like to say?” He responded, “Food cold.” On the second year, the young monk had the same opportunity. The head monk asked, “What would you like to say this year, my son.” He said, “Bed hard.” A third year arrived, and the annual  two words were again afforded the otherwise devoted monk. When asked, he said, “Robe dirty.” The head monk finally exclaimed, “You know you’ve been here three years, and all you’ve ever done is complain.”  — Chris Seidman
  2. REJECTING GOD “When human beings reject God they die spiritually, and that death touches, spoils, distorts, twists and eventually destroys all that makes human life what it is – from the moral to the aesthetic, from family relationships to work.

We have only to think of some examples of what is accepted as art or entertainment nowadays to understand that rejection of God leads to the death of civilized culture. It leads to the inversion of values; where a pile of excrement is hailed as avant garde art, and blatant immorality is hailed as marvellous theatre. The darkness is such that there is little or no understanding or appreciation of what has happened – man has descended to the animal.

Putting this into reverse is what is meant by “repentance”, which in the Greek is metanoia – “change of mind”. It involves a lifting of our eyes and mind towards heaven, which is exactly what Nebuchadnezzar did at the end of the period of his discipline:

“At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honoured him who lives for ever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”

At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendour returned to me. My counsellors and my lords sought me, and I was established in my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble. (Daniel 4:34–37.)”

Excerpt From: John C. Lennox. “Against the Flow.”

  1. PUNISHMENT “If no sin were punished here, no Providence would be believed; and if every sin should be punished here, no judgment would be expected.” — Augustine
  2. LIBERTY STRUCTURES “If the structures of liberty are well built, they last as long as they are properly maintained, whereas the spirit of liberty and the habits of the heart must be reinvigorated from generation to generation. Conversely, whatever the strength of the structures of liberty, they may always be overrun in the end by the will of the people. Put differently, a nation’s constitution is like a covenant, and there are always at least two parties to a covenant. A nation’s constitution may therefore remain strong and clear, yet still be nullified by the citizenry failing to uphold its side of the covenant.

It is possible to be free at the constitutional level in terms of the structures of liberty but to lose freedom and become servile or anarchic at the citizens’ level in terms of the spirit of liberty.

Human appetites are by nature “insatiable” because human beings are “able to desire everything” but unable “to secure everything.” As a result, “their desire is always greater than the power of acquisition.

In a democratic republic, the rulers and the subjects are one and the same, so freedom depends constantly not only on the character of the nation’s leaders but also on the character of its citizens.”

Excerpt From: Guinness, Os. “A Free People’s Suicide.”

  1. MALE EMOTIONS “Normative male alexithymia—goes a long way in explaining why many men struggle with relationships. The word alexithymia has Greek roots. It means the inability to put emotions into words. As described by psychologist Ronald F. Levant, who has written extensively on masculinity: “Normative alexithymia is a predictable result of the male gender role socialization process. Specifically, it is a result of boys being socialized to restrict the expression of their vulnerable and caring/connection emotions and to be emotionally stoic.” Levant cites a significant amount of research showing that males actually begin life more emotionally expressive than females. Infant boys are more easily startled and excited, exhibit less tolerance for tension and frustration, cry sooner and more often, and change moods more rapidly than do infant girls. The socialization process takes hold with remarkable speed, though. By the age of two, boys are already showing verbal signs of tuning out and suppressing their emotions.”

Excerpt From: Marx, Jeffrey. “Season of Life.”

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The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

  1. CLOSE FRIENDS? “If you belong to a group of five people, you have to keep track of ten separate relationships: your relationships with the four others in your circle and the six other two-way relationships between the others. That’s what it means to know everyone in the circle. You have to understand the personal dynamics of the group, juggle different personalities, keep people happy, manage the demands on your own time and attention, and so on. If you belong to a group of twenty people, however, there are now 190 two-way relationships to keep track of: 19 involving yourself and 171 involving the rest of the group. That’s a fivefold increase in the size of the group, but a twentyfold increase in the amount of information processing needed to “know” the other members of the group. Even a relatively small increase in the size of a group, in other words, creates a significant additional social and intellectual burden.”

Excerpt From: Gladwell, Malcolm. “The Tipping Point.”

  1. THE CLASSICS “A ‘classic’ is a book everyone praises but no one reads.” –M. Twain
  2. THE WORD “Beware of knowing the words of God, without knowing the God of the words.” — Chris Seidman
  3. BOOK VALUE A man told his friend about a worn bible he found in his attic and sold at a rummage sale. His friend asked, “What kind of bible was it?”

“I don’t know. It said ‘Guten-something’ in it.”

“WHAT! Don’t you realize that was a Gutenberg bible! One was just sold at auction for over $4 million!” Exclaimed his friend.

“Oh no, don’t worry….this one was not valuable…it had all kinds of notes scribbled in it by some guy named Luther.”

— Unknown

  1. PRAYER “Did God call us to preach without ceasing? Or teach without ceasing? Or have committee meetings without ceasing? Or sing without ceasing? No, but he did call us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17).

Did Jesus declare: My house shall be called a house of study? Fellowship? Music? A house of exposition? A house of activities? No, but he did say, “My house will be called a house of prayer” (Mark 11:17 NIV).

No other spiritual activity is guaranteed such results. “When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action” (Matt. 18:19 MSG). He is moved by the humble, prayerful heart.”

Excerpt From: Lucado, Max. “Outlive Your Life.”

  1. FALSE MASCULINITY “As a young boy, I’ m going to compare my athletic ability to yours and compete for whatever attention that brings. When I get older, I’m going to compare my girlfriend to yours and compete for whatever status I can acquire by being with the prettiest or the coolest or the best girl I can get. Ultimately, as adults, we compare bank accounts and job titles, houses and cars, and we compete for the amount of security and power that those represent. We will even compare our children and compete for some sense of fatherhood and significance attached to their achievements.

We compare, we compete. That’s all we ever do. It leaves most men feeling isolated and alone. And it destroys any concept of community.

The typical male over the age of thirty-five has what psychologists would say is less than one genuine friend, not even one person, on average, with whom he can reveal his true self and share his deepest, most intimate thoughts.”

Excerpt From: Marx, Jeffrey. “Season of Life.”

  1. TV VIOLENCE “While TV may report some of the flaws in police states, it can only show the flaws of democratic and near-democratic countries.

The greatest evils in the world occur in countries that do not allow Western cameras to report such events. Therefore, almost all the violence that one sees as news on American and Western television takes place in free or relatively free countries. Thus, the violence shown on TV news nearly always takes place in those nations that have the least political violence and repression. Riots in Israel are covered, as are murders in the United States, and political violence in South Korea.

But the political violence in these countries is dwarfed by that of totalitarian states such as North Korea and China, and police states such as Syria or Libya.”

Excerpt From: Prager, Dennis. “Think a Second Time.”

  1. XTIANS MISUNDERSTOOD “According to Larry Poland of Master Media, his company’s research found that only 2 to 3 percent of the people who work in media are evangelical Christians. That compares with about 26 percent of the general population who are evangelicals. He added, “Most media don’t have any evangelical friends, don’t read evangelical publications, and have never been to church.” So, for more than half of the nation’s regular churchgoers, members of the media are basically ignorant. They just don’t know evangelicals or their world, they have no idea what constitutes a news story from that very large community, and yet they report what they determine is news about evangelicals.

Imagine sending a reporter who has never seen a football game and knows nothing about the sport to cover the Super Bowl. As the quarterback dropped back to pass, we’d probably get a report on what the cheerleaders were wearing, and that’s exactly what happens when members of the media attempt to cover Christian ministries. Instead of reporters practically living with their assigned beats, as in sports, business, and political reporting, members of the media spend little time in church, know very few of the leaders and key organizations in the Christian community, which contributes to incomplete and inaccurate reporting.”

Excerpt From: Bob Hutchins & Greg Stielstra. “Faith-Based Marketing.”

  1. CAUSE OF INCOME INEQUALITY “Sometimes the preoccupation with the receipt of incomes, to the neglect of attention to the production of the output, can lead to attempts to explain the receipt of very large incomes by “greed”—as if [merely] an insatiable DESIRE for vast amounts of money will somehow cause others to pay those vast amounts for the purchase of one’s goods or services.

Among the many possible causes of differences in income and wealth, whether among peoples, regions or nations, one of the most obvious is often ignored. As economist Henry Hazlitt put it:

“The real problem of poverty is not a problem of “distribution” but of production. The poor are poor not because something is being withheld from them but because, for whatever reason, they are not producing enough.”

Excerpt From: Sowell, Thomas. “Wealth, Poverty and Politics.”

  1. WHO YOU ARE “We do not live in the past, but the past lives in us.”

— Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

 

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The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

  1. ATHEIST DELUSIONS “The darkening of intellect is a topic that is picked up in the New Testament, when Paul describes how rejection of God ultimately has a negative effect on the mind. He speaks of those who, although they knew God … did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools… (Romans 1:21–22).

The mention of “thanks” here is pivotal. Saying “thank you” to someone indicates a certain dependence upon them. Expressing gratitude to God is likewise an acknowledgment of indebtedness and dependence upon him. It is here that humans in their pride tend to go wrong. They will not acknowledge that they are dependent upon someone higher than themselves. We have no masters, is their cry.

Paul claims that rejection of God has a detrimental effect on reason. Many atheists, who think that their position is an oasis of reason and clear-headedness, would loudly protest. It is important for me to say that I am not suggesting that atheists cannot think. Some, however, particularly those of the “New Atheist” brand, make a great fuss of what they think is the damage that belief in God does to the mind. Their descriptions of religious belief (like “virus of the mind”) are not uncommon. It does not seem to occur to them that the shoe could be on the other foot.

When it comes to thinking about God, why do some otherwise rational, intelligent people seem unaware that they become irrational? For instance, some of them persist in claiming that Jesus never existed, even though the overwhelming weight of ancient historical scholarship is to the contrary. They insist on offering the public a choice between God and science, when elementary logic should tell them that theology and science are not alternatives but complementary.”

Excerpt From: John C. Lennox. “Against the Flow.”

  1. MERCY JOB “Now to have an honest and lawful employment, in which you do not dishonour God in benefiting yourselves, is no small mercy. But if it is not only lawful in itself, but suited to your genius and strength, there is a double mercy in it. Some poor creatures are engaged in callings that eat up their time and strength, and make their lives very uncomfortable to them. They have not only consuming and wasting employments in the world, but such as allow them little or no time for their general calling, and yet all this does but keep them and theirs alive. Therefore, if God has fitted you with an honest employment in which you have less toil than others, and more time for heavenly exercises, ascribe this benefit to the special care of Providence for you.”

Excerpt From: Flavel, John. “The Mystery of Providence.”

  1. PRAYER POWER “Our passionate prayers move the heart of God. “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16). Prayer does not change God’s nature; who he is will never be altered. Prayer does, however, impact the flow of history. God has wired his world for power, but he calls on us to flip the switch.”

Excerpt From: Lucado, Max. “Outlive Your Life.”

  1. REVOLVING INTEGRITY “No matter which way you turn, or what situation you’re in that turns you, people will see that you have the same integrity in every situation.”

Excerpt From: Marx, Jeffrey. “Season of Life.”

  1. FREEDOM “Nothing brings more pain than too much pleasure; nothing more bondage than too much liberty.” –Benjamin Franklin

“The greatness of a nation, its true civilization, is measured by the extent of its obedience to the unenforceable.” –Lord Moulton

  1. AMERICA DECIDE “History is asking this last question of America now: What kind of a people do you Americans think you are? We are now nearly eight decades after the Great Depression, seven decades after Pearl Harbor and World War II, four decades after the tumultuous and influential sixties, two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the bipolar world, one decade after September 11 and in the midst of two of the most revealing and fateful presidencies in American history. The sifting of America has come to a head, and the question “Who are you?” or “What kind of a people do you think you are?” or “What kind of society do you want America to be” is now the central question Americans must answer.”

Excerpt From: Guinness, Os. “A Free People’s Suicide.”

  1. WISDOM “Knowledge can be Googled, but wisdom comes from above.”

–Mike Huckabee

  1. TV “Most people, as they deepen their lives, watch less television. An active and interesting life is far richer and more exciting than almost any television.”

–Dennis Prager

  1. PERSPECTIVE “We see the parade through a knothole in the fence-our Lord directs it from the grandstand. Our culture celebrates the overnight success. But in God’s eyes, there is no such thing. –Unknown
  2. INVISIBLE “As a Jew, I am pleased that the Western world has not forgotten the Holocaust. But why has there been almost a total lack of sympathy or even interest in the more than forty million Russians, Ukrainians, and others murdered by the Soviet Communists?

The answer leads us back to the question of visibility. We have many photos and films of Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps, some of them taken by Allied soldiers liberating the camps. (During the war, when no such visible images existed, there was little concern in the West for the Nazis’ victims.) Yet, because the Soviets were on the victorious side in World War II, there were no photographs or films of the Soviet labor and death camps (the Gulag Archipelago) shot by liberating troops.

To regain some balance in the sympathy we apportion to those who suffer, we must become conscious of our natural tendency to care more about the suffering of those whom we see, and consciously sensitize ourselves to concern ourselves with the suffering of those whom we cannot see. One way to begin achieving this is by not relying on television news, especially of international events. The more one relies on television for one’s perceptions of the world and its evils, the more skewed one’s perceptions of human suffering will be.”

Excerpt From: Prager, Dennis. “Think a Second Time.”

 

 

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The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

  1. CHOICES “We [generally] have 100% control of our choices; we have no control of the consequences of our choices.” –Nick Sabin
  2. HUMAN ANIMALS? “The Bible insists that human beings are unique, since they are made in the image of God. To use biblical terminology, God is spirit (John 4:24); human beings are part spirit and part flesh; animals are flesh.

Princeton bio-ethicist Peter Singer vehemently disagrees, and he traces many of our contemporary problems in practical ethics to the biblical view that human beings are a special creation. Singer writes:

“Whatever the future holds, it is likely to prove impossible to restore in full the sanctity-of-life view. The philosophical foundations of this view have been knocked asunder. We can no longer base our ethics on the idea that human beings are a special form of creation made in the image of God, singled out from all other animals, and alone possessing an immortal soul. Our better understanding of our own nature has bridged the gulf that was once thought to lie between ourselves and other species, so why should we believe that the mere fact that a being is a member of the species Homo Sapiens endows its life with some unique, almost infinite value?

There is no reason to think that a fish suffers less when dying in a net than a foetus suffers during an abortion, hence the argument for not eating fish is much stronger than the argument against abortion. (1995, page 209.) The life of a newborn baby is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog or a chimpanzee. (1979, pages 112–13.)”

On closer inspection Singer’s view rests on a profound misunderstanding of biblical teaching. He imagines that God made humans to be arbiters of everything so that they can do what they like, including the exploitation of animals. However, this is not the biblical view. Human beings, made in the image of God, are answerable to God as stewards – even for their attitude to animals and their use of the earth.”

Excerpt From: John C. Lennox. “Against the Flow.”

  1. MASKS “Jesus never spoke to anyone else with such intensity. But when he saw the religious hypocrite, he flipped on the spotlight and exposed every self-righteous mole and pimple. “They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men” (Matt. 6:5).

This is the working definition of hypocrisy: “to be seen by men.” The Greek word for hypocrite, hupokrites, originally meant “actor.” First-century actors wore masks. A hypocrite, then, is one who puts on a mask, a false face.

Jesus did not say, “Do not do good works.” Nor did he instruct, “Do not let your works be seen.” We must do good works, and some works, such as benevolence or teaching, must be seen in order to have an impact. So let’s be clear. To do a good thing is a good thing. To do good to be seen is not. In fact, to do good to be seen is a serious offense. Here’s why.

Hypocrisy turns people away from God.”

Excerpt From: Lucado, Max. “Outlive Your Life.”

  1. KIDS’ FEELINGS “Many parents have come to value their children’s feelings over their behavior.

How the child feels should be important to the child, to the parents, and to a handful of others. But to the rest of the world’s more than five billion people, the only thing that matters is how the child acts.

To be a good person, self-control is infinitely more important than self-esteem. The child-rearing expert John Rosemond has coined the term “Vitamin N” to describe parents saying no at appropriate times. Our children’s characters need Vitamin N as much as their bodies need Vitamin C, and as much as their psyches need self-esteem.

Many parents are more interested in being loved than in being responsible parents. But just as it is impossible to be an effective leader if you are afraid of being disliked, you cannot be an effective parent if you need never to be disliked.”

Excerpt From: Prager, Dennis. “Think a Second Time.”

  1. LEARNING “I never let my schooling interfere with my education.” –Mark Twain 1920. MERCY “It is a greater mercy to descend from praying parents than from the loins of nobles.” –John Flavel 1921. EAR VS. EYE “The Hebrew Bible was profoundly aware of the eye’s superficiality. “Do not go astray following your heart and your eyes,” it warned, because they “cause you to prostitute yourselves.” This is why graven images were forbidden in the Ten Commandments. The Bible trusts only the ear: “Hear, oh Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone”—hear, not see.

That is why radio is far more capable of supporting sustained thought. The ear can be satisfied by thought, but the eye cannot be. Thoughts do not intrigue the eye.”

Excerpt From: Prager, Dennis. “Think a Second Time.”

  1. COMFORT “A hospital administrator was startled to see a patient fleeing down the hall out of the operating room, his loose hospital gown flapping in the breeze behind him. He stopped the patient and said, “Do you mind telling me why you ran away from the operating room?” The patient looked at him with startled eyes and said, “It was because of what the nurse said.” The administrator said, “Oh, what did she say?” “She said, ‘Be brave! An appendectomy is quite simple.’” The administrator said, “Well, so what? It is quite simple. I would think that would comfort you.” The patient said, “The nurse wasn’t talking to me; she was talking to the doctor.” Excerpt From: Hodgin, Michael. “1001 Humorous Illustrations for Public Speaking”
  2. PUNISHMENT “Augustine: ‘If no sin were punished here, no Providence would be believed; and if every sin should be punished here, no judgment would be expected.”

Excerpt From: Flavel, John. “The Mystery of Providence.”

  1. TEN COMMANDMENTS “If we get the first commandment right, all the others have a way of falling into place. This is true for the first four, those that define our relationship with God, that is, the vertical ones. Getting the first commandment right also helps our relationships with others, which are addressed in the horizontal commandments, or the last six. When we give the Lord priority in our lives, we will not have difficulty with stealing or lying or adultery or any of the others.”

Excerpt From: O. S. Hawkins. “The Joshua Code.”

  1. TECHNO-WORLDVIEW “Being connected meets a core spiritual need to connect with a force greater than themselves and they believe the Internet is the fount of all truth. Searching the Internet for personal answers, direction, and worth has increasingly supplanted seeking God’s input through prayer. The high priests are the technology, which facilitates transactions with a power greater than themselves. They don’t get ideas from acknowledged leaders or chief proponents who represented those ideas, as people would have done in Bible times or many of us did in our youth. Rather, they’re being led by and taught by their technology to believe that a way to transcend the everyday machinations of life is to simply login.”

Excerpt From: Koch, Kathy. “Screens and Teens.”

  1. PUTTING “Professional golfers are so concerned with a loss that they are more aggressive in avoiding a bogey than they are in scoring a birdie. Dangle the “bonus” of a birdie—the gain of a stroke—and it’s all well and good. Says Pope, “It’s as if they say, Let’s get this close to the hole and see what happens.” But threatened with the “deduction” of a bogey—the loss of a stroke—they summon their best effort. “They’re telling themselves,” says Pope, “This one I gotta make.”

When professional golfers missed their putts for a birdie, they tended to leave the ball disproportionately short rather than long. This was evidence of their conservative approach. They were content to set up an easy par by leaving it short and not risk overshooting, which might leave a more difficult putt for par. When the same putts for par were missed, it wasn’t because they fell short.”

Excerpt From: Tobias Moskowitz & L. Jon Wertheim. “Scorecasting.”

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The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

  1. WHO GOD CALLS “God doesn’t call the qualified. He qualifies the called.

Don’t let Satan convince you otherwise. He will try. He will tell you that God has an IQ requirement or an entry fee. That he employs only specialists and experts, governments and high-powered personalities. When Satan whispers such lies, dismiss him with this truth: God stampeded the first-century society with swaybacks, not thoroughbreds. Before Jesus came along, the disciples were loading trucks, coaching soccer, and selling Slurpee drinks at the convenience store. Their collars were blue, and their hands were calloused, and there is no evidence that Jesus chose them because they were smarter or nicer than the guy next door. The one thing they had going for them was a willingness to take a step when Jesus said, “Follow me.”

Excerpt From: Lucado, Max. “Outlive Your Life.”

  1. ACTIONS VS. MOTIVES “The solution to much of humanity’s problems, is this: We should judge actions—our own and those of others—not motives.

On the global level, assessing motives rather than actions has led to serious moral distortions. Take, for example, the differing assessments of capitalism and Communism.

Communism resulted in the loss of freedom by more nations, and the deaths of more individuals, than any other doctrine in history’. Yet because it was perceived by many people as emanating from good motives—abolishing poverty, achieving greater equality, etc.—many people refused to accord it the revulsion that its deeds deserved.

On the other hand, capitalism has enabled more people to experience freedom and prosperity than any other economic doctrine. It should therefore be widely admired. Yet it is often vilified. The reason? It is based on selfish motives—profit.

Defenses of Communism and opposition to capitalism have emanated from the same flawed logic—judging motives, not deeds.”

Excerpt From: Prager, Dennis. “Think a Second Time.”

  1. HAPPINESS “if you give to charity, research suggests that you’re more likely to report a higher level of happiness then less generous types; and people who spend money on experiences—vacations, scuba lessons, concerts—report higher levels of happiness than people who just buy things.”

Excerpt From: Belsky, Gary. “Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them.”

  1. GOD’S SOUP KITCHEN “God does not give us what we deserve. He has drenched his world in grace. It has no end. It knows no limits. It empowers this life and enables us to live the next. God offers second chances, like a soup kitchen offers meals to everyone who asks.

Excerpt From: Lucado, Max. “Outlive Your Life.”

  1. GREAT INHIBITOR “This is a hedonistic age, and we are encouraged on all sides to follow our desires, whatever they are – to “do our own thing”. God is represented as the Great Inhibitor, and people are encouraged to rid themselves of these “non-existent gods” that stifle human flourishing. The only limit on behavior is that which is set by the law of the land.”

Excerpt From: John C. Lennox. “Against the Flow.”

  1. WHY DECLINE? “THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA is still the pinnacle nation in the world today. It is not, however, the first pinnacle nation to face a decline. Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Great Britain, France, and Spain all enjoyed their time at the top of the world, so to speak — in many cases, for several hundred years. Then, as they began to decline, they all experienced some peculiar similarities: an inordinate emphasis on sports and entertainment, a fixation with lifestyles of the rich and famous, political corruption, and the loss of a moral compass.

Excerpt From: Ben Carson, M.D. “America the Beautiful.”

  1. SORRY OFFICER “It was midnight after registration day at the college when the policeman noticed a couple in a lingering embrace in the campus parking lot. Mildly surprised at the scene before the school year had even begun, he approached the car.

“Sorry, officer,” the driver explained. “We just left our youngest son, our baby, there in the dorm. It’s the first time Mother and I have been alone for twenty-seven years.”

Excerpt From: Hodgin, Michael. “1001 Humorous Illustrations for Public Speaking.”

  1. YAWN “Yawning is a surprisingly powerful act. Just because you read the word “yawning” in the previous two sentences—and the two additional “yawns” in this sentence—a good number of you will probably yawn within the next few minutes. Even as I’m writing this, I’ve yawned twice. If you’re reading this in a public place, and you’ve just yawned, chances are that a good proportion of everyone who saw you yawn is now yawning too, and a good proportion of the people watching the people who watched you yawn are now yawning as well, and on and on, in an ever-widening, yawning circle.”

Excerpt From: Gladwell, Malcolm. “The Tipping Point.”

  1. MEN “Masculinity, first and foremost, ought to be defined in terms of relationships,” Joe said. “It ought to be taught in terms of the capacity to love and to be loved. If you look over your life at the end of it … life wouldn’t be measured in terms of success based on what you’ve acquired or achieved or what you own. The only thing that’s really going to matter is the relationships that you had. It’s gonna come down to this: What kind of father were you? What kind of husband were you? What kind of coach or teammate were you? What kind of son were you? What kind of brother were you? What kind of friend were you? Success comes in terms of relationships.

And I think the second criterion—the only other criterion for masculinity—is that all of us ought to have some kind of cause, some kind of purpose in our lives that’s bigger than our own individual hopes, dreams, wants, and desires. At the end of our life, we ought to be able to look back over it from our deathbed and know that somehow the world was a better place because we lived, we loved, we were other-centered, other-focused.”

Excerpt From: Marx, Jeffrey. “Season of Life.”

  1. MERCY JOB “Now to have an honest and lawful employment, in which you do not dishonour God in benefiting yourselves, is no small mercy. But if it is not only lawful in itself, but suited to your genius and strength, there is a double mercy in it. Some poor creatures are engaged in callings that eat up their time and strength, and make their lives very uncomfortable to them. They have not only consuming and wasting employments in the world, but such as allow them little or no time for their general calling, and yet all this does but keep them and theirs alive. Therefore, if God has fitted you with an honest employment in which you have less toil than others, and more time for heavenly exercises, ascribe this benefit to the special care of Providence for you.”

Excerpt From: Flavel, John. “The Mystery of Providence.”

 

 

/by

The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

  1. HOW WOULD YOU DO? “In my visits to Russia, particularly in the years immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I came across people who had suffered detention in the Soviet Gulag. The first such man I met had spent several years detained in a Siberian labour camp for the crime of teaching children from the Bible. He described to me that he had seen things that no man should ever have to see. I listened, thinking how little I really knew about life, and wondering how I would have fared under his circumstances. As if he had read my thoughts, he suddenly said: “You couldn’t cope with that, could you?” Embarrassed, I stumbled out something like: “No, I am sure you are right.” He then grinned and said: “Nor could I! I was a man who fainted at the sight of his own blood, let alone that of others. But what I discovered in the camp was this: God does not help us to face theoretical situations but real ones. Like you, I couldn’t imagine how one could cope in the Gulag. But once there I found that God met me, exactly as Jesus had promised his disciples when he was preparing them for victimization and persecution.”

What Jesus said is of immense importance:

“Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles. When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” (Matthew 10:17–20.)

“Of course, Jesus did not mean that his disciples were to face every situation unprepared. Jesus is speaking of situations where believers are threatened by court appearances, persecution, or worse, and have no opportunity to make special preparation. He promises to give them the courage and the wisdom to say the right thing. That promise means much to believers in many parts of the world today.

The cost of resisting idolatry is high. But it does not compare with the cost of rejecting God

Excerpt From: John C. Lennox. “Against the Flow.”

  1. BIRTH OF PC “Once there was no longer anything singularly precious about Socrates, Beethoven, or sliced bread, once these underpinnings that supported the Western hierachy of cultures buckled, the leveling impact of cultural relativism became the order of the day.

Amid a purposeful blur of cultural perspectives—among which only the anti-Western is deemed superior—the principles of multiculturalism have flourished and spread, undermining both our attachment to and confidence in Western culture across the land. Hence, Columbus’s remarkable voyage of discovery to the western hemisphere is taught to fourth-graders through the eyes of a mocking West Indian girl (Chevy Chase, Maryland); the father of our country is deconstructed into a slaveholder unfit to name elementary schools after (New Orleans),8 or hang portraits of in government offices (Brooklyn)9; and on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the National Museum of American History showcases permanent exhibitions that emphasize American slavery, slaughter, and strife. (Just next door, interestingly enough, a permanent exhibition at the Natural History Museum called African Voices omits mention of African slavery, slaughter, and strife.)”

Excerpt From: West, Diana. “The Death of the Grown-Up.”

  1. UNSEEN “We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of any other. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world but we doubt that it is real in the accepted meaning of the word.

The world of sense intrudes upon our attention day and night for the whole of our lifetime. It is clamorous, insistent and self-demonstrating. It does not appeal to our faith; it is here, assaulting our five senses, demanding to be accepted as real and final. But sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts that we cannot see that other reality, the City of God, shining around us. The world of sense triumphs. The visible becomes the enemy of the invisible; the temporal, of the eternal. That is the curse inherited by every member of Adam’s tragic race.

At the root of the Christian life lies belief in the invisible. The object of the Christian’s faith is unseen reality.

We must shift our focus from the seen to the unseen.”

Excerpt From: A. W. Tozer. “The Pursuit of God.”

  1. POWERFUL LIFE “May you live in such a way that your death is just the beginning of your life.”

— Max Lucado

  1. CHARACTER “A society can survive the collapse of its economy, but not of its citizens’ morality. An America that emphasized character development in its public and private spheres was able to survive the poverty of the Great Depression. A vastly wealthier America that neglects character development is steadily sinking. And this neglect can be attributed in large part to the widespread belief that people are basically good and the destructive beliefs that accompany it.” Excerpt From: Prager, Dennis. “Think a Second Time.”
  2. CHILD’S UNDERSTANDING

– The fifth commandment is: Humor thy father and mother.

– Lot’s wife was a pillar of salt by day, but a ball of fire by night

– Mary was the mother of Jesus, and sang the Magna Carta.

– Salome was a woman who danced naked in front of Harrods.

– Holy acrimony is another name for marriage.

– Christians can have only one wife. This is called monotony.

– The First Commandment: Eve told Adam to eat the apple.

– It is sometimes difficult to hear what is being said in church because the agnostics are so terrible.”

Excerpt From: Hodgin, Michael. “1001 Humorous Illustrations for Public Speaking.”

  1. CONVICTION “When Hernando Cortez landed at Veracruz, Mexico, on April 21, 1519, he ordered the ships in his fleet to be burned. His reason? His goal—his conviction—was to conquer Mexico for Spain. He knew he and his men would face many obstacles. They would be forced to confront Aztec, Cuban, and Mayan warriors. As long as there were ships to retreat to, retreat would remain an option. But retreat wasn’t an option for Cortez. His conviction, and his decision to burn the ships, eliminated at least one option. That symbolic gesture rallied his troops to focus all their resources on achieving victory. In an amazingly short amount of time, Mexico was theirs.”

Excerpt From: Stanley, Andy. “When Work and Family Collide.”

  1. FEAR GOD “The most common Old Testament word for fear means “to stand before God with reverence and respect.” The most common New Testament word for fear is closely akin to this. It speaks of a reverential awe that becomes the controlling motivation of our lives.”

Excerpt From: O. S. Hawkins. “The Joshua Code.”

  1. CHOICES “In one minute Instagram users post 216,000 new photos and YouTube users upload 72 hours of new video. You read that right—every minute we have 72 more hours of video to choose from. Spotify allows us to choose from among more than 20 million songs and iTunes Radio has more than 27 million. There are almost 1 billion websites. It’s no wonder teens believe they deserve choices!”

Excerpt From: Koch, Kathy. “Screens and Teens.”

  1. TECH AT NIGHT “Fatigue can be a very real side effect of too much screen time. Because technology too often distracts them while studying, kids stay up later to get work finished. Also, too many are sleeping with their phones and waking with every incoming text. Others are gaming in the middle of the night. Two-thirds of eleven- to seventeen-year-olds take their tablet, smartphone, or laptop to bed and talk to friends online, play games, and watch films. Only a third does homework on the devices.mOur internal light cues and sleep-inducing hormones are influenced by the glowing lights emitted by screens. When the lights are bright, the brain can even be tricked to think it’s daytime.”

Excerpt From: Koch, Kathy. “Screens and Teens.”

 

/by

The Wisdom Chronicle

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

  1. POISON IVY “At a summer religious camp for children one of the counselors was leading a discussion on the purpose God has for all of his creation. They began to find good reasons for clouds and trees and rocks and rivers and animals and just about everything else in nature. Finally, one of the children said, “If God has a good purpose for everything, then why did He create poison ivy?” The discussion leader gulped and, as he struggled with the question, one of the other children came to his rescue, saying, “The reason God made poison ivy is that He wanted us to know there are certain things we should keep our cotton-pickin’ hands off of.”

Excerpt From: Hodgin, Michael. “1001 Humorous Illustrations for Public Speaking.”

  1. IT’LL NEVER HAPPEN “Speed: “What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?” (The Quarterly Review, 1825)

Television: “While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially, I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need not waste time dreaming.”(Lee Deforest, scientist and inventor, 1926)

Transportation: “As a means of rapid transit, aerial navigation could not begin to compete with the railroad.” (William Baxter, Jr., Popular Science, 1901)

Automobiles: “The ordinary ‘horseless carriage’ is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the near future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle.” (The Literary Digest, 1889)”

  1. LIVE RIGHT “So live that you wouldn’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.” — Unknown
  2. BALANCE “I’ve seen too many men and women cheat their families only to find that the companies they worked for weren’t nearly as loyal to them as they were to the companies.

Loyalty in the marketplace is rarely reciprocated. It’s sad when men or women are forced out of organizations they bled for to return home to the families they’ve neglected.

Why give your ultimate loyalty to an organization where your value is conditional upon your ability to perform? Why betray those whose loyalty is unconditional? Why devote so much of yourself to something you know you’ll leave, and so little time to those you’ll eventually come home to? It doesn’t make sense, does it? Yet without a conscious decision to do otherwise, that’s exactly what most of us are prone to do.”

Excerpt From: Stanley, Andy. “When Work and Family Collide.”

  1. DANIEL’S BUDDIES “God had not merely delivered the three friends from the fire – though he could have done so, as they had said earlier to Nebuchadnezzar. God had delivered them in the fire. Their suffering was real, but it all occurred before they got to the fire. The horrors that they had naturally anticipated and surely feared had not occurred.

There is an important matter of principle here. God is a great deliverer – but he will not deliver us from having to make our own decisions. This is not because he is impotent but because he wants us to be strong. The development of our character depends crucially on the fact that we make responsible decisions before God for ourselves. For God to “decide” for us would be to de-humanize us and essentially turn us into amoral robots.

When children are very small, parents often have to decide for them in order to teach them. But it is sad when we see a situation where parents have to decide for grown-up children, since that is often a sign that something has gone wrong in the development of their character.

So there is a sense in which God, precisely because he loves us, will not save us either from the need to make such decisions or from the decisions themselves. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had to make up their own minds as to whether they were going to put God first. That does not mean they had no guidance. Their guidance was all the accumulated experience of God’s trustworthiness up to that fateful moment. They therefore had decided to trust him once more, no matter what it cost. Then God convincingly vindicated them.”

Excerpt From: John C. Lennox. “Against the Flow.”

  1. HOW CHANGE HALF THE WORLD? If you wrote 9 people today & each of them wrote to 9 different people tomorrow and this continued for just 10 days—you’d reach 3,486,784,401. The other 4 billion could be reached on day 11.

The modality for change is so easy – communicate. And when it is done in a personal way with a note – preferably handwritten – the influence we can have is tremendous. Go out of your way to communicate encouragement to one person a day by sending them a snail mail note, and see what life-changing things occur. [jw]

  1. REAL TRUST “Trust in the LORD with all your heart,

and  do not lean on your own understanding.” — Prov. 3:5

“With all your heart indicates that trust goes beyond intellectual assent to a deep reliance on the Lord, a settled confidence in his care and his faithfulness to his Word. Do not lean on your own understanding further explains trusting in the Lord. One’s “understanding” in Proverbs is his perception of the right course of action. The wise will govern themselves by what the Lord himself declares, and will not set their own finite and often-mistaken understanding against his.”

Excerpt From: Crossway. “ESV Study Bible.”

  1. MODERN TECH VS. YESTERYEAR “Is it really so different from when we were teens ourselves? After all, we listened to the opinions of our peers—or of celebrities we read about or saw on television. The vast difference lies in quantity! Today’s young people are coping with a deluge of widely divergent influences, while we had a much smaller circle of people influencing us, and they were probably more unified in their preferences. And the influence is nearly constant! Before there were cell phones, young people had time off from their peers—times when they were at home with just their families. Now teens are with their peers and with online influences 24/7 since they can access their social media and the Internet all day long.

Because of this large array of influences in their daily experience, today’s young people tend to be more conflicted about who they are and what they value. It’s even harder for parents to know their kids well—and for teens to benefit from the opinions and wisdom of the parents who love them because they’re listening to so many voices.”

Excerpt From: Koch, Kathy. “Screens and Teens.”

  1. RULES BRING FREEDOM “When does a train move most freely? A train is most free when it stays on the tracks that have been set out for it, not when it is trying to move through a field. The same is true with us. Like the train on its tracks, we move most freely when we have clearly defined tracks or standards by which to live.”

Excerpt From: O. S. Hawkins. “The Joshua Code.”

  1. JESUS’ PURCHASE PRICE “The word ‘redemption’ comes from agora, the Greek word for “the marketplace.” In its verb form in Revelation 5:9, the word indicates that Jesus Christ entered the marketplace and purchased us out of the market to be His very own. How much do you think you are worth to Him? What would He pay for you? Our redemption had a large price tag affixed. The cost was Christ’s own blood.”

Excerpt From: O. S. Hawkins. “The Joshua Code.”

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