Ray Fowler .org

From Christianity Today:

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a ruling this afternoon allowing the Christian humanitarian organization World Vision to base its hiring decisions on matters of religious belief.

Ninth Circuit Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain authored the three-judge panel’s majority opinion, which declares World Vision a “religious organization” and therefore exempt from the rules on hiring practices that Congress set down in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, mainly because it is a nonprofit entity which self-identifies as religious.

“This is a significant victory for World Vision’s religious hiring rights,” said Dean Owen, World Vision’s director of media relations. “The right of faith-based organizations to hire people who are co-religionists, who are of their own faith, has been law in this country for nearly 50 years.”

So basically, faith-based institutions can make their employment decisions based on faith. Makes sense to me.

Someone, presumably a pastor, visited my blog early Sunday morning after running a Google search on the phrase, “I am tired of preaching.” (Here is the post Google returned: Preaching Tired.) It was a reminder to me that many pastors struggle with the week in and week out preaching of God’s word.

Preaching is hard work. The preparation is demanding — both the preparation for the message as well as the personal preparation of the preacher. And then the act of preaching itself is demanding. The prophet Habakkuk called it a burden (Habakkuk 1:1 – the Hebrew word for “oracle” carries the idea of a burden). C.J. Mahaney once said he heard that a pastor does the equivalent of four hours of work in just one hour of preaching. He then added with a sly grin, “I don’t know if that’s true, but it seems to be a rumor worth spreading!”

How long has it been since you expressed appreciation to your pastor for the weekly work of preaching God’s word? Perhaps today would be a good day to send a note of thanks and encouragement.

P.S. If you’re the pastor who visited my blog yesterday, hang in there. I hope you had a good day yesterday. And here is a good verse for you from the book of Galatians: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6:9)

I don’t know why, but if you go to Google and type in the search terms “kindle features and benefits,” my article on the Top Ten Kindle Features comes up first out of 11,000,000 results. For some reason it ranks even higher than Amazon itself. Not that I’m complaining, but it sure is weird.

Related posts:
    • Top 10 Kindle Features
    • The Bible Memory Version for the Kindle
    • Amazon Kindle’s Most Popular Bible Highlights

(Note: For ebook and audiobook conversions, see Fowler Digital Services.)

• The World’s Prayer Guide. The latest edition of Operation World spotlights a shifting global church. (Due out in October)
• You and I Abstain .com. A dating service for singles who are committed to abstaining from sex until marriage.
• All You Can Jet. Fly all you want for a month with Jet Blue’s $700 “All You Can Jet” deal.

If you or someone you know is working on an ebook or interested in self-publishing, I encourage you to check out Fowler Digital Services. I produce quality ePub and mobi/Kindle conversions which are readable on all standard e-readers including Apple iPad/iPhone, Amazon Kindle, and Barnes & Noble Nook. I am careful to preserve the original format of the print book, as well as provide extra features such as an active table of contents, fully-linked footnotes, and even a page number grid (with links to pages from the print edition of the book).

• ePub and Mobi formats suitable for iPad/iPhone, Kindle and Nook
• quality hand-builds guaranteed to work on all standard ereaders
• active table of contents with NCX navigation
• all files validated XHTML and ePubCheck compliant
• convert from a variety of formats (Word, PDF, Text, RTF, etc.)
• additional services available upon request:
  • fully-linked footnotes, indexing, etc.
  • special images, tables, charts
  • book page-number grid (This unique feature provides links to pages from the print edition of the book.)
  • proofreading, editing, transcriptions, etc.
• will work with you to handle the unique demands of your project

 
ePub and Kindle/Mobipocket copies included with each order.

If I can be of service to you, please do not hesitate to contact me. Click here to learn more about Fowler Digital Services.
 

What does God do with our sin after he forgives us?

1) He covers our sin.

“Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.” (Psalm 32:1)

2) He removes our sin.

“As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:12)

“I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist.” (Isaiah 44:22)

“You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.” (Micah 7:19)

3) He cleanses our conscience.

“Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin … Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” (Psalm 51:2,7)

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)

4) He forgets our sin.

“I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” (Isaiah 43:25)

(From Erwin Lutzer, After You’ve Blown It, pp. 46-51)

The month of Ramadan begins today (August 11 – September 9 for the year 2010). Ramadan is the ninth month in the Islamic calendar and the most sacred month of the Islamic year. Muslims believe that the first verse of the Qur’an (Koran) was revealed to Muhammad during Ramadan in AD 610. Each year at this time Muslims fast during the daylight hours for the whole month. In addition to fasting, Muslims are encouraged to read the entire Qur’an.

30-Days International produces a “30-Days of Prayer for the Muslim World” Christian prayer guide coinciding with Ramadan each year. The booklet contains daily readings with prayer points, informative background articles, a list of titles for further study and a resource section featuring ministries and services focusing on the Muslim world. There is also a Children’s Edition with quizzes, stories and maps. You can order the 52-page booklet here, or you can sign up for the free email version which is distributed daily during the 30 days of Ramadan. Free pdf versions of the adult and children’s editions are also available for download.

I have signed up for the daily emails and look forward to participating in this prayer effort. If you are a Christian, would you consider participating also? Here is an additional challenge. When you consider that Muslims around the world are committed to fasting and reading through the entire Qur’an this month, how much time will you invest in prayer and reading your Bible?

Note: If you are looking for a good book on how to share the gospel with Muslims, let me recommend Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile’s book, The Gospel for Muslims: An Encouragement to Share Christ with Confidence.

As a big Narnia fan and a fan of Samaritan’s Purse/Operation Christmas Child, I think this partnership is a great idea.

Operation Narnia (Video length: 1:06)

Operation Narnia is a partnership with the Samaritan’s Purse program, Operation Christmas Child, to bring the joy of Christmas to kids all over the world! This is the perfect opportunity for your family and friends to spread cheer and hope to needy boys and girls in over 130 countries. With your help, our goal is to deliver more than 8 million shoe boxes, filled with items that will be meaningful to a child – toys, stuffed animals, school supplies, hard candy, and hygiene items. These boxes are then delivered to local collection centers around the country and shipped in time for the Christmas season.

Let me encourage you to participate in this wonderful program for kids all around the world this year. You could also talk to your pastor about getting your whole church involved.

Click here for more Narnia related posts.

I love these paragraphs from Walter Wangerin on “When does marriage begin?” and the significance of the marriage vows:

Marriage Begins with the Vow

Listen: marriage begins when two people make the clear, unqualified promise to be faithful, each to the other, until the end of their days. That spoken promise makes the difference. A new relationship is initiated. Marriage begins when each vows to commit herself, himself, unto the other and to no other human in this world: “I promise you my faithfulness, until death parts us.” That vow, once spoken, once heard, permits a new, enduring trust: each one may trust the vow of the other one. And that vow forms the foundation of the relationship to be built upon it hereafter.

A promise made, a promise witnessed, a promise heard, remembered, and trusted — this is the groundwork of marriage. Not emotions. No, not even love. Not physical desires or personal needs or sexuality. Not the practical fact of living together. Not even the piercing foresight or some peculiar miracle of All-seeing God. Rather, a promise, a vow, makes the marriage. “I promise you my faithfulness, until death parts us.”

Here is a marvelous work, performed by those who are made in the image of God — for we create, in this promise, a new thing, a changeless stability in an ever-changing world. We do the thing that God does, establishing a covenant with another human being: we ask faith in our faithfulness to that covenant. We transfigure the relationship thereafter, transfiguring ourselves, for we shape our behaviors by the covenant. A new ethic has begun for each of us. We have called forth a spiritual house in which each of us may dwell securely. Whether we know it or not, it is a divine thing we do, and it is holy.

From Walter Wangerin, As For Me and My House, pp. 18-19.
    • Click here for As For Me and My House at Christianbook.
    • Click here for As For Me and My House at Amazon.

Related posts:
    ● Statistics on Living Together Before Marriage
    ● Scriptures on Living Together Before Marriage
    ● Living Together Without Sex
    ● What If We Already Lived Together Before Marriage?

BOOKS AND E-BOOKS EDITION.

• E-Book Surge in China. “A survey by the Chinese Institute of Publishing Science found that almost one in four people in mainland China aged between 18 and 70 now primarily used digital formats for their reading material. Among those aged under 29, though, that figure was 50 per cent. And an astonishing 91 per cent of the 20,000 people polled in the survey said they would now not bother to buy printed books if they could find a digital version.”
• 129,864,880. Using a series of complex algorithms, Google counts up how many books exist in the world. Their answer is 129,864,880. At least until Sunday.
• Plagiarism in the Digital Age. “Digital technology makes copying and pasting easy, of course. But that is the least of it. The Internet may also be redefining how students — who came of age with music file-sharing, Wikipedia and Web-linking — understand the concept of authorship and the singularity of any text or image.”

• Christian Stops Robbery by Sharing about Jesus. A young robber went into a South Florida cell phone store hoping to come out with some cash until he was dissuaded by a talk about Jesus. “You know what, … you take whatever you want. I’m just going to talk with you about the Jesus I have … before you leave,” Nayara Goncalves, the store manager, told the man.
• They Reached Me First. Scott Moore shares how his Islamic neighbors reached out to him and his wife at the birth of their daughter. “The doorbell rang. As the dog barked, and as the kids proceeded to run around like chickens with their head cut off, I left Katie to the new baby and answered the door. I was not prepared for my visitors.”
• The Humane Reader. “The Humane Reader is a low-cost device which can bring a five thousand book library into a home or school which has no other access to internet content. The Reader can be produced in quantity for approximately $20 per unit, and uses any existing television set as a display device for Wikipedia or other content.”

      (Note: For ebook and audiobook conversions, see Fowler Digital Services.)

Amazon is now accepting pre-orders for the new Kindle 3G+Wi-Fi ($189.00) and the the new Kindle Wi-Fi only ($139.00). The new Kindles offer substantial improvements over the Kindle 2, including:

• All-New, High-Contrast E-Ink Screen – 50% better contrast
• New and Improved Fonts – New crisper, darker fonts
• New Sleek Design – 15% Lighter (only 8.7 ounces) and 21% smaller body while keeping the same 6″ size reading area
• Battery Life of One Month – A single charge lasts up to one month with wireless off (10 days with wireless on)
• Double the Storage – Now holds up to 3,500 Books
• Built-In Wi-Fi – In addition to the 3G wireless, you can connect to Wi-Fi hotspots
• 20% Faster Page Turns – Seamless reading
• Enhanced PDF Reader – With dictionary lookup, notes, and highlights

  Kindle Up-Close Video (not visible in RSS):

The new 3G model is available in your choice of color — either graphite or white. And the new Kindle cover even includes a built-in, retractable LED reading light. If you are looking at getting into e-books, I believe these are the best e-readers at the best price available today.

Related posts:
    • Top 10 Kindle Features
    • Amazon Kindle’s Most Popular Bible Highlights
    • My Kindle Got Run Over by a Car

(Note: For ebook and audiobook conversions, see Fowler Digital Services.)