Healthy choices in nutrition and lifestyle is something that all of us can learn to make. It’s not too late for you to learn, no matter what your age! Jim and I started making healthy choices a few years back, and I can truthfully say that we have never felt better! We hope to inspire others to get started on a healthy course. It’s a perfect time for you to make a change! In fact, getting healthy in 2015 is very achievable!
The greatest challenge is just getting started! Continue reading
A Christian man has been jailed in India because of “reasons of public order” despite the fact he has committed no crime.
Police arrested Arvind D’Souza on January 2nd after a group of radical Hindus in Uttar Pradesh began to riot, claiming that D’Souza had been “spreading Christianity.”
The group also said that D’Souza was committing the “forced conversion of women and children through the gift of Bibles.”
Superintendent of Police Amethi Hira Lal told Asia News that he had “found no evidence that D’Souza used force in converting anyone. However, since the fact could undermine public order, they took him into custody in accordance with Article 151 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and placed him under preventive detention for 14 days.”
The president of the Global Council of Indian Christians called the action a serious violation of human rights.
“This is a trend that is spreading more and more in India,” Sajan George said.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says a public school district in New Jersey broke the law when it fired a substitute teacher who gave a middle school student a Bible.
The federal agency said that Walt Tutka was illegally fired in 2013 after he gave a Bible to a student who approached him privately and asked where “the first will be last and the last will be first” was written.
Tutke told Fox News the situation began in October 2012 when he held the door open for students rushing to be first for lunch. He told the last student in line “just remember, the first will be last and the last will be first.”
The student then approached Tutke several times asking where that phrase was written. Tutke looked it up and told the student where in the Bible it was located but the student wanted to find it for themselves.
“I thought that was going to be the end of it, but it wasn’t,” Tutka said. “He continued to speak with me until one day I happened to have my Bible with me right during lunch. It hit me when he stopped me and I said, ‘Look, here it is right here. Here you go.
“It was a gift,” Tutka added. “[He] said [he] didn’t have one; [he] wanted one.”
The EEOC said “there is reasonable cause to believe that respondent has discriminated against [the] charging party on the basis of religion and retaliation.”
A Missouri middle school student has been banned from reading his Bible during free class time.
Loyal Grandstaff, 12, attends Bueker Middle School in Marshall, Missouri. Last month, he was reading his Bible quietly to himself during free time in class when his teacher confronted him.
“I was just reading,” he told local television station WDAF. “I was reading because I had free time. I had time to do what I wanted to, so I just broke it out and read. … I like to read my Bible because it’s a good book.”
“He doesn’t want me reading it in his class because he doesn’t believe in it,” Grandstaff said.
The boy’s father said that the teacher is violating his child’s rights.
“I feel like it violated his freedom of religion but also his freedom of speech,” Justin Grandstaff told reporters. “There’s kids walking around disrespecting their teachers, kids walking around cussing and everything else, and they’re practically getting into no trouble at all.”
Principal Lance Tobin said that he will be investigating the matter because “Bibles are not banned on campus.”
An anti-Christian organization is seeking to convince Congress to dump the Bible as part of their oath ceremony.
“On January 6, Congress will take the ceremonial oath of office, during which each member will solemnly swear, or affirm, that he or she will ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ While members are not required to swear or affirm on a specific text, or any at all, many choose to swear on the Bible,” the Secular Coalition of America said.
“This year, the Secular Coalition will seek to remind Congress that it was elected to support and defend the Constitution, not the Bible or any other religious text. We will be circulating letters on the Hill and lobbying in person to get as many members of Congress as we can to take the oath on the Constitution.”
It’s not the first time that an anti-Christian organization has tried to manipulate the oath of office for a Federal official; the anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation did the same prior to President Obama’s 2012 inauguration.
A recent study showed that 57 percent of Congress identifies themselves as Christian and 31 percent as Catholic.
A disgraced journalist has published a piece smearing Christians that Newsweek has run on the cover of their magazine at Christmas.
The article, called “The Bible: So Misunderstood It’s a Sin”, was written by Kurt Eichenwald, a reporter who left the New York Times shortly before it was discovered he had given thousands of dollars to a source for a story he had written on child pornography. In the piece, Eichenwald smears Christians who follow Scripture.
“They are God’s frauds, cafeteria Christians who pick and choose which Bible verses they heed with less care than they exercise in selecting side orders for lunch,” Eichenwald wrote. “They are joined by religious rationalizers—fundamentalists who, unable to find Scripture supporting their biases and beliefs, twist phrases and modify translations to prove they are honoring the Bible’s word.”
Christian leaders across the country immediately responded to the hit piece timed to hit shelves during one of the most holy times of the year for Christians.
“Newsweek’s cover story is exactly what happens when a writer fueled by open antipathy to evangelical Christianity tries to throw every argument he can think of against the Bible and its authority,” Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler wrote in an article entitled “Newsweek on the Bible: So Misrepresented It’s a Sin.” Oddly enough, Kurt Eichenwald’s attack on evangelical Christianity would likely be a measure more effective had he left out the personal invective that opens his essay and appears pervasively. He has an axe to grind, and grind he does.”
“But the authority of the Bible is not the victim of the grinding. To the contrary, this article is likely to do far more damage to Newsweek in its sad new reality,” Mohler continued. “To take advantage of Newsweek’s title—it so misrepresents the truth, it’s a sin.”
The YouVersion Bible app has released a list of the most searched Bible verses during the year 2014.
According to all searches, Romans 12:2 is the verse read more than any other:
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
The administrators of the program say that 164 million smartphone and tablet users around the world have downloaded the YouVersion Bible app. 87 percent of Christians worldwide who have internet access have been reached by the app.
Philippians 4:8 and Philippians 4:6 finished second and third in the list. The number four verse on the list, Jeremiah 29:11, was most popular in Canada, the U.K., Australia and South Africa.
The app’s creators hope to have the ability to reach all 6,901 languages in the world through a program called Every Tribe Every Nation.
Seven NFL players teamed up with Athletes for Charity to spread the truth of the Gospel during the Christmas season.
The Christian Post reports that Don Carey and Andre Fluellen of the Detroit Lions, Ryan Lindley of the Arizona Cardinals, Kawann Short of the Carolina Panthers, Kevin Pamphile and Alterraun Verner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Reggie Walker of the San Diego Chargers bought Bibles and gifted them to others for Christmas.
This is the third years of the Bible giving event.
The players focused on the purpose of the event when asked about their participation rather than themselves.
“I believe that nobody has a greater or lesser platform in the eyes of God. That man who works at a factory that witnesses to his coworker, or that woman who works at a salon who prays for her customers, is just as important as I am,” Fluellen told CP. “God has blessed me with a gift, just as God has blessed everyone with a gift. We are all responsible for using that gift to show God’s love to others.”
“God placed us here for a reason. Use the time you have on this platform to spread His Word,” Verner told CP. “Being saved isn’t supposed to be exclusive to just us. It’s our job to be disciples and spread the Word to others.”
The Cardinals’ Lindley summed up the definition of success of the event.
“As long as one soul is touched and changed by what we do this holiday season, I will view this as a success,” Lindley told the Christian Post.
There may be efforts to take Christ out of Christmas in this world, but we have within each one of us, individually, everything we need to keep Christ in Christmas. He is in our every moment after all! When we see others, we can choose to beam the love of Jesus into them as we say those words… “Merry Christmas! “ We can shine with His Spirit! It is up to our hearts to show that Christ is still in Christmas!
Nobody can take that from us. And nobody ever will. Continue reading
Turkish officials are seeking an arsonist who attached a building that contained thousands of New Testaments and other Christian documents.
The fire was noticed at 7 p.m. on December 7th at the offices of Bible Correspondence Course in Istanbul, Turkey. The BCC was located in a multistory building that also housed the Kadikoy church.
BCC Turkey says that no one was injured in the blaze and because of the concrete construction of the building there was no structural damage. However, everything inside the building was burned to ash.
“I think whoever did it knew something about what happens up here, because they kind of knew to come on a Sunday afternoon, and that if they were going to have an opportunity where there weren’t going to be a lot of people around, that’s probably the one that was most likely,” Paul Weaver of BCC-Turkey said.
“I think the firemen were genuinely surprised that when they got there they didn’t find a bigger fire, and I call that providence,” he said. “I don’t know what else to call it because I would agree, I think it should have been a bigger fire than what they actually found.”
BCC Turkey officials say that multiple groups within the city have wanted to stop the group from distributing the Bibles.
