Echoes From the Campfire

You can know a man if you follow his trail, if you follow long enough. By his tracks on the land the ways of a man are made plain–his kindness or his cruelty, his ignorance or his cunning, his strength or his weakness.”
–Louis L’Amour (The Key-Lock Man)

“Let no one disqualify you, insisting on ascetic practices and the worship of angels, claiming access to a visionary realm and inflated without cause by his unspiritual mind.”
–Colossians 2:18 (HCSB)
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My mercy, what in the world is going on? What is this country coming to? I came across an alarming report and statistic the other day. This is scary.

“Another stunning finding in the report: More than 70 percent of today’s youth are not fit to serve in the military due to obesity, or being overweight, criminal records, a drug misuse or educational deficits.”

Imagine! Seventy percent of today’s youth are not fit to serve in the military. There are five reasons, two of which are connected, but I can narrow it down to different reasons. The first is the home. What is not happening there? Where is the father? With runaway fathers and dead-beat dads, no longer there is this situation confronting us.
Closely related to the home being in jeopardy is that of the school. What values are being taught? What type of discipline is allowed? No wonder we are in the process of raising Snowflakes and they need security and safe zones.
Hats off to those that go against the tide of this statistic. There are some stalwart, strong young people out there, but they are in the minority. Folks, we better wake up! Hmmm, makes me wonder who are not fit to serve in the Kingdom of God.
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“Because there is a sovereign God, we have only three choices: We can ignore God, we can fight God, or we can submit to God. To ignore Him is foolish, to fight Him is silly, and to submit to Him is exciting.”
–Stephen Brown

Part of the problem we are seeing is due to the fact that man seeks to be autonomous. It just isn’t true and it won’t happen, no matter how hard he tries. Man is not God, and he will never be God. He will never be autonomous, for he was created and is sustained by God. He may not like it, he may deny it, but that’s still the way it is.
Man, including most Christians, hate the thought of a sovereign God. That is one reason they applauded when Frank Sinatra sang, “I did it my way.” No! That never happened for God is always in charge. Every life is controlled by a series of various unavoidable events, environments, and hereditary factors. “I was doing it my way, when, oops, Harvey came along.”
In that same mode of thinking, man actually has no rights. Everything is God’s. He gives, He takes away. Man is here today, clamoring for his rights, and tomorrow he is down among the clods.
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This retirement is hard work, so we are going to take a mini-vacation while we are on vacation to the shores of Delaware. So I don’t know when the next Campfire will be written.