Lamar Howell's Weblog

This message is being exhaled and

transmitted on every frequency known,

in low gutteral sighs and high undulating mega-hurts (more…)

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Friends

I earnestly invite you go to to my facebook and look at the event “Neither Buy Nor Sell on the Anniversary of Roe v Wade.”  I could do a whole treatise on abortion – actually I have. It is on here “There Will Be Blood.”

Justice, justice, you shall pursue! was the mandate to the judges of Israel (Deuteronomy 16:20).

In America now, it is all about the economy. Not about protecting the unborn, prayer in schools, the sanctity of marriage, right and wrong. Everything is eclipsed by money matters. So, in order to get the attention of Americans, particularly policymakers and the media, we must make abortion about the economy.

Wisdom cries out in the streets. It doesn’t whine in the pews like we’ve heard for 30 years.  If we love God, justice, and the weak and helpless enough, we will make our voice heard in the marketplace, or die there as the martyrs of old did, (more…)

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I remember once, as an adult, taking him out into the country to buy a special knife for peeling strips of wood from white oak saplings. I wanted my dad to teach me how to weave wooden baskets, like he used to do when I was a kid. But my dad was too feeble and his fingers were no longer nimble. “I just can’t do it anymore, son.” I know it hurt him to have to apologize and disappoint me. The irony of that is in this next story.

I was at a men’s conference once and we all stood in a circle. The leader said everyone had to say something positive that they got from their dad’s influence. As testimonies made their way around the circle, I had to leave the room. I didn’t have anything to say that I got from my dad, anything beneficial. About a month later, I was doing something with woodworking, and the Holy Spirit said to me, “You got your love for wood from your dad.” I had never put that together, but God did, because only God could think of something I got from my dad.

Why am I telling you this? Because it is healing me. I suddenly realize that in that desperate moment when my dad tried to teach me to make wooden baskets, he imparted to me a love for wood. It was imparted in weakness, feebleness. It was given to me apologetically, through resignation and a father’s shame. But, it was imparted nonetheless. Just like Jesus, when he imparted forgiveness, belonging, and grace from the Father. He did so from the cross, in weakness and in public shame, and perhaps with a strange tinge of resignation — “It is finished”. And that, my friend, is the impartation that matters most.

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Whether we  deny it or affirm it, America is under God’s jurisdiction. We are his property, so to speak.  This argument can be strongly supported by three indisputable facts.

The Legal Authority

King James I commissioned the Virginia Charter in 1607. It stated that the second purpose of the Virginia Colonies (all property in the New World England was laying claim to) was to bring the message of Christ to the natives of the land. (www.lonang.com/exlibris/organic/1606-fcv.htm). This document and mission constituted the legal claim that America was established as a nation under God’s authority.

The Civil Authority

The second reason America is subject to God is because of the actions of the colonists who drew up the Mayflower Compact, which is unquestionably accepted by historians as this nation’s first governmental document. The Mayflower Compact basically says that the colonizing of the Virginia colony (America) was to give fame to God and advance Christianity, and that the new government was created to serve those purposes as well as to insure a civil society. The people, acting in concert with solemn purpose, had the civil authority to establish a contract with God for the new nation, and that is precisely what they did.

The Spiritual Authority

The third reason America belongs to God is because of what transpired on the coast of Virginia on April 29, 1607. Robert Hunt, chaplain of  the Jamestown settlers, planted a cross in the sand at Cape Henry beach. In so doing, he signaled that the church was using her spiritual authority to dedicate the new land to God. (Guide to Military Institutions. Craig, Dan. Mechanicsburg, PA Stackpole Books, p.248, 1977)  http://www.nps.gov/jame/historyculture/the-reverent-robert-hunt-the-first-chaplain-at-jamestown.htm). The colonists essentially gave God the spiritual authority to do as he pleased with the new nation.

In conclusion, God has a legal, civil, and spiritual claim to America. He did not take that authority by power alone, or by innate right. It was given to him deliberately, definitively, and irrevocably by the people.

There is a spiritual principle at work here. Anything that is dedicated to God must be given completely for God’s purposes. The reason this message is so urgent to us now is because of the unattractive alternative: if something is dedicated and misused, then it must be destroyed.

This, my friend, is why God has blessed America for over four centuries. Dare we fail him now?

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Consider the following official attitude of the United States toward our perennial friend Israel:

ABC News’ Karen Travers and Simon McGregor-Wood report:

Vice President Joe Biden issued a strongly worded statement tonight [March 9, 2010] condemning Israel’s plan to build 1,600 new settlement homes in the disputed area of east Jerusalem just as efforts got underway to kickstart Middle East peace talks. (more…)

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Last year, 2009, I went outside on Memorial Day and was enraptured to look up and see that jets from the nearby Air Force base had flown perpendicular to each other, released trails of smoke, and formed a cross across the sky from horizon to horizon.  Honor the fallen.

This year, 2010, I looked up to see a perfect blue sky. There was no cross. What happened? I’d like to find out. Were the pilots under orders to be neutral in matters of religion? Like they were told at last year’s God and Country celebration: Don’t do a fly-over for a sectarian event. Since when did God and Patriotism become sectarian. It is simply one other sign of the forced government secularization of society.

“The heavens, they are the Lord’s! But the earth he has given to the children of men.”

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Americans must get back to carrying out the 2nd part of the original Virginia charter: evangelization of the heathen. We are destined to take the gospel to the world, starting here. When public proclamation of the Truth becomes illegal in the US, we must not back down. Sadly, so few Christians publicly declare the gospel while they can.

One principle we should be very uncomfortable with is this: either we scatter throughout our nation and the world with the gospel, or we will be scattered as refugees. Either way, we will be sent out into the world. What will you choose?

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This is your invitation

into my house in the hill

I’ve a wide entryway

“OPEN”

reads my welcome mat,

it says that I need to be known

I live in my cozy hole in the ground

with windows, and a door that’s round

like a hobbit’s door

Inside there’s bread

and Earl Grey tea

And a table on a dirt floor

It’s just you and me

in sacrosanct underground communion

Learning secrets by disclosure

Unveiling

Finding friendship by exposure

to another, other ways to see life

Listening, stopping, pouring, watching

Breaking bread now and again

Nodding our heads and saying “hmm”

Trimming wicks in oil lamps

Warming up the damp

of the hobbit-hole

Opening the round door again

To let more light from the full moon in

It’s my door, round and wide

To let you – Oh yes –

and your baggage inside.

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