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Are You Exhausted Spiritually? "The everlasting God . . . neither faints nor is weary" —Isaiah 40:28 Exhaustion means that our vital energies are completely worn out and spent. Spiritual exhaustion is never the result of sin, but of service. Whether or not you experience exhaustion will depend on where you get your supplies. Jesus said to Peter, "Feed My sheep," but He gave him nothing with which to feed them ( John 21:17 ). The process of being made broken bread and poured-out wine means that you have to be the nourishment for other people’s souls until they...

Check your local listings for times and stations, and please join us in praying that God will bring much spiritual fruit out of this experience.  For a preview, click here.The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist is a Roman Catholic community of women religious. Our community was founded in the Dominican tradition, as a response to Pope John Paul II’s call for new religious foundations to embody the graces of the New Evangelization of the third millennium Church.Through profession of the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, along with a contemplative emphasis on Eucharistic adoration and Marian devotion,...

Lisa Ling visits a convent near Detroit to see what a typical day is like for these sisters.

Moscow, February 9, Interfax - Many intellectuals in the West are embarrassed to confess their faith, Tatiana Goricheva, an Orthodox philosopher, journalist and missionary said. “Academic environment in Europe dramatically differs from ours. Even if a person is a deep believer, he will keep silence about it or offer some snobby excuses for his religious feeling. Thus, a question of faith in Western intellectual circles is a taboo,” Goricheva said in her interview published by the the Foma magazine in February. Sociologist Levi-Stross, a close friend of hers, told, “he secretly meets with like-minded people to talk about their faith.”...

When Niels Chew is installed next week as the newest honorary alcalde of Sonoma and handed his silver-headed cane as a symbol of authority, he can expect to have an easier time than pioneer John H. Nash, who was elected Sonoma alcalde in 1846 shortly after the California Republic had ceded its existence to American military forces. SNIP When a regiment of New York volunteers headed by Col. Jonathan D. Stevenson arrived in California in March 1847, one of its seven companies (Company C) was ordered to Sonoma under the command of Capt. George E. Brackett, who billeted his men...

Below are names of some of our FReepers' loved ones who are serving our country. If you have someone you would like to add, please address a post to Billie; Dutchess; dollycali;The Mayor; GodBlessUSA; JustAmy, and we will add their name to this list. As we pray for them, we pray also for all our nation’s leaders, and military personnel, and their families and friends. May God hold them close to His heart. gator girl........................husband severa.......................... brother Maigrey.........................cousin mystery-ak...........son, husband Inspectorette.......................son Blessed American..........nephew Slip18..........................nephew Diver Dave........niece, nephew ConspiracyGuy........2 nephews Pippin............niece's husband sneakers..........................son weldgophardline...............2 son weldgophardline.....brotherinlaw jamaly.................brotherinlaw Future Snake Eater.......cousin...

Salvation of the Soul 65. What precisely do you mean by the saving of one's soul? The meaning of that requires a brief analysis of man. Man consists of body and soul. The body is material and perishable; the soul is spiritual and imperishable. But the soul is the real you. It is the soul which knows and loves, is happy or miserable. Now as the soul is immortal, it enters at death into an eternal state, whether it be one of supreme happiness, or of direst misery. By "saving one's soul" I mean going from this world in the...

The Archbishop of Canterbury today issued a "profound apology" to the lesbian and gay Christian community. In a powerful address to General Synod Dr Rowan Williams warned that any schism within the church would represent of a "betrayal" of God's mission. But he made clear that he regretted recent rhetoric in which he has sought to mollify the fears of the traditionalist wing of the church. The Archbishop is from the Church's liberal Catholic wing and a man who once espoused equal rights for gays within the Church. More recently he has adopted a conservative line for the sake of...

The premise is that Eli guards The Book of Eli (do not if he wrote it or why his name is also that of the book) that is said to hold the knowledge which could redeem the world. Carnegie and his posse are out to get The Book of Eli and the shenanigans ensue. Carnegie’s adopted daughter, Solara, ends up becoming Eli’s guide. The official Warner Brothers film description states that Eli is “Driven by this commitment and guided by his belief in something greater than himself.” Actually, judging by more recent commercials; it appears that “the book” is the...

My mother-in-law, Barbara, is scheduled for triple bypass surgery Wednesday(2/10) Morning at 7AM Central Time. She is actually registered as a FReeper as DrewsNana, but only posted once about 5 years ago. Please pray for a successful surgery and complete recovery. Pray for peace of mind for her and the whole family - husband, son and daughter(my wife-drewsmom). Also pray for a peaceful resolution among family members to provide her with a clean(smoke-free) environment at home for healing. She also has glaucoma issues. She is a believer and recently concluded one of her emails with"...God , Thank you for loving...

Featured Term (selected at random):HUMANAE PERSONAE DIGNITATEM Document published by the Vatican Secretariat for Unbelievers. Its purpose is to give general principles and particular norms for Catholics who engage in private or public dialogue with unbelievers, e.g., Communist Marxists. Among the specific norms the most practical one affects public dialogues, which may be either unofficial or official, as organized by ecclesiastical authorities. Regarding the latter, "it is only rarely that conditions exist in which such dialogue can take place between Christians and unbelievers." Unofficial discussions require, above all, that the Catholic representatives "be expert in doctrine, have moral integrity, and...

A two-man Washington, D.C. panel has preferred to advance same-sex “marriage” at the cost of religious liberty, the Archdiocese of Washington has charged. The panel ruled that a referendum on a city council bill recognizing same-sex marriage would violate the District’s human rights law. Opponents of the D.C. City Council’s decision, including the archdiocese, have sought a referendum to try to overturn the action. However, two members of the Board of Elections and Ethics ruled the referendum would thwart the Council’s efforts to “eradicate unlawful discrimination” and would violate the District’s Human Rights Act (HRA). “The Civil Marriage Equality Act...

Conservative clergy have warned of a mass exodus from the Church of England and a sharp drop in its income unless divisive plans for the introduction of women bishops are changed.On the first day of the gathering of the Church’s governing body, the General Synod, Anglo-Catholics claimed that “large numbers” would leave for Rome if their demands for concessions are not met. Meanwhile 50 serving priests belonging to Reform, the evangelical group, signed an open letter saying that the situation could force them to cut off funding for dioceses and spend their money on training new vicars outside the Church...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A Vatican official has floated the idea of a shared "ecumenical catechism" as one of the potential fruits of 40 years of dialogue among Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and members of the Reformed churches. "We have affirmed our common foundation in Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity as expressed in our common creed and in the doctrine of the first ecumenical councils," Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, told representatives of the churches. Opening a three-day symposium at the Vatican to brainstorm on the future of ecumenism, Cardinal Kasper said...

Losing her religion Anne Hathaway left the Catholic Church after her brother opened up about being gay. "The whole family converted to Episcopalianism after my elder brother came out," says the actress. "Why should I support an organization that has a limited view of my beloved brother?" So what religion is Anne now? "I'm nothing," she admits. "F- it, I'm forming. I'm a work in progress."

Pray For The Peace Of Jerusalem Tehillim Psalm 122 1 A Song of Ascents; of David. I rejoiced when they said unto me: 'Let us go unto the house of the LORD.' 2 Our feet are standing within thy gates, O Jerusalem; 3 Jerusalem, that art builded as a city that is compact together; 4 Whither the tribes went up, even the tribes of the LORD, as a testimony unto Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the LORD. 5 For there were set thrones for judgment, the thrones of the house of David. 6 Pray for the...

Spurgeon's Morning & Evening - February 9 -------------------------------- Morning Devotional "And David enquired of the Lord." - 2 Samuel 5:23 When David made this enquiry he had just fought the Philistines, and gained a signal victory. The Philistines came up in great hosts, but, by the help of God, David had easily put them to flight. Note, however, that when they came a second time, David did not go up to fight them without enquiring of the Lord. Once he had been victorious, and he might have said, as many have in other cases, "I shall be victorious again; I...

The Haters of Reality – Part I The current battle for the soul of America is raging as never before. We have seen in the last century a mad dash to push our country toward a secular liberal, godless fascist state in which the “elite class” rules over the masses. Our nation was founded on the bedrock of the Bible, Judean/ Christian values and the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God; hence the conflict. These Constitutional apostates and haters of our Constitutional Republic have nearly arrived at their Machiavellian destination. As America apostatizes from the realities of Almighty God,...

"In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple." ~ Luke 14:33 “Let there be no mistake about my meaning. I am not examining what it costs to save a Christian’s soul. I know well that it costs nothing less that the blood of the Son of God to provide atonement, and to redeem man from hell. The price paid for our redemption was nothing less than the death of Jesus Christ on Calvary. “The point I want to consider is another one altogether. It is what a man must...

February 9, 2010                                          Tuesday of the Fifth Week in                                   Ordinary Time   Reading 1Responsorial PsalmReading 2Gospel Reading I1 Kgs 8:22-23, 27-30Solomon stood before the altar of the LORDin the presence of the whole community of Israel,and stretching forth his hands toward heaven,he said, “LORD, God of Israel,there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth below;you keep your covenant of mercy with your servantswho are faithful to you with their whole heart. “Can it indeed be that God dwells on earth?If the heavens and the highest heavens...

Ven. Louis of Granada 1504-1588With Imprimi Potest and Imprimatur TAN BOOKS AND PUBLISHERS, INC. Ch 9. The Ninth Motive for Practicing Virtue: The Thought of Heaven, the Third of the Four Last Things   A motive no less powerful than those we have enumerated is the thought of Heaven. This is the reward of virtue, and in it we must distinguish two things: the excellence and beauty of the abode promised us, which is no other than the empyreal heavens, and the perfection and beauty of the Sovereign King Who reigns there with His elect. But though no tongue can...

  IN THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR SINS With submission and conformity to the will of God we should bear the evil consequences of which falling into sin is often the cause. It may be some indisposition or some more serious effect on our health brought about by over-indulgence; some sacrifice we have to make because of money spent foolishly for selfish ends; some bad turn in our affairs owing to impatient or imprudent conduct on our part; difficulty in resisting temptation and leading a good life because of a long habit of sin we have contracted -- the situation...

Catholic Biblical Apologetics Apologetics without apology! What does the Roman Catholic Church teach about ...? ... and why? This website surveys the origin and development of Roman Catholic Christianity from the period of the apostolic church, through the post-apostolic church and into the conciliar movement. Principal attention is paid to the biblical basis of both doctrine and dogma as well as the role of paradosis (i.e. handing on the truth) in the history of the Church. Particular attention is also paid to the hierarchical founding and succession of leadership throughout the centuries. This is a set of lecture notes...

When a Russian Cosmonaut returned from a space flight he said that he hadn’t seen God out there. An American Astronaut, one who was a Christian, was once asked if he had met God while in space. He answered with full confidence, “I would have, if I had taken off my space suit.” These are not just two contradictory answers to the same question. They are two totally different understandings of the word God and what is meant by it. The Russian Cosmonaut, an atheist, could not believe God existed unless he saw him with his own eyes. Whereas the...

Worldviews are referred to as such for a reason; they are the spectacles through which we view the world and this has been recently demonstrated via the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Danny Glover, Pat Robertson, 14 hypocritical atheist groups and on it goes as they all use Haiti as a mirror that reflects their worldview. Haiti as soapbox – Dan Barker, Annie Gaylor, Danny Glover & Pat Robertson take advantagePart 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 Of interest may also be: “Non-Believers Giving Aid” the uncharitable charity As well as: Audio Bibles, Haiti and atheist hypocrisy

Lucifer, God’s greatest of all God's creation (Ezek. 28:12, 15), in eternity past enjoyed a relationship to Almighty God. I truly believe there was a point in his existence that he loved and adored and the Triune God with all his heart. He had the chief place as Protector of the Holiness of God (Ezek 28:14) and was the worship and choir director of Heaven (Ezek 28:13). Lucifer enjoyed all the heavenly blessings of his rank and position. As events proceeded, though, there came a time when he became proud, arrogant, envious and bitter. In his foolish heart he sought...

PING TO END TIMES, Dreams, Visions, Prophecy ping list and the UFO ping lists ########################### Dear Ones, Have been here so many times over the last decade or two . . . have resisted saying much of anything yet again to much of anyone. Nevertheless, the last week, reading multiple reports from Iran of their ever more pointedly put threats from AhmANutJob on down . . . has been more than a little sobering. And now yet another . . . Here's the FR thread about it: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2447187/posts A number of FREEPERS have communicated with me privately and some...

Obama has saddled up the red Horse of Apacalypse on January 20, 2010 and we are in for a year to remember. Revelation 6:3-4. "And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. And there went out another horse, that was red: and power was given him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword." We are all going to see red. It is a year of fight and flight. The pressure will increase daily....

snip-"Christianity has completely conquered," wrote Kierkegaard, "that is, it is abolished." Mormonism certainly conquered, and Advertisement Zion is abolished.-snip

  BackgroundSaint Maroun, born in the middle of the 4th century was a priest who latter became a hermit, retiring to a mountain of Taurus near Antioch. His holiness and miracles attracted many followers, and drew attention throughout the empire. St John of Chrysostom sent him a letter around 405 AD expressing his great love and respect asking St Maroun to pray for him. The Maronite MovementSt Maroun is considered the Father of the spiritual and monastic movement now called the Maronite Church. This movement had a profound influence on Northern Syria and Lebanon. Saint Maroun spent all of...

Finding Grace February 8, 2010  "But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD." (Genesis 6:8)  This is the very first reference in the Bible to the great concept of the grace of God. In the midst of the most violent and wicked society that history has ever seen, there was one man who was "a just man and perfect in his generations" (Genesis 6:9), and the reason why he was different was that he "found grace in the eyes of the LORD."   In this first mention of such a vital doctrine, it is stressed that the...

February 8 The Holy Spirit: He Can Be Grieved And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. --Ephesians 4:30 Because He is loving and kind and friendly, the Holy Spirit may be grieved.... He can be grieved because He is loving, and there must be love present before there can be grief. Suppose you had a 17-year-old son who began to go bad. He rejected your counsel and wanted to take things into his own hands. Suppose that he joined up with a young stranger from another part of...

Father Jeff Kirby of the Diocese of Charleston, S.C., reads by candlelight in this demonstration of use of a "priest hole," part of an exhibit on the Tudor era at the Venerable English College in Rome. The replica is an example of hiding places built into walls for priests to celebrate Mass and the sacraments in England during the Reformation. (CNS/Paul Haring) By Father Matthew GamberCatholic News Service ROME (CNS) -- When Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Great Britain later this year, he will be greeted by lords and ladies and dignitaries of all kind, including Queen Elizabeth II...

Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella Rome, Italy, Feb 8, 2010 / 03:02 pm (CNA).- The celebrated philosopher and theologian Monsignor Michel Schooyans has published his thoughts on the contemporary misuse of the concept of "compassion." According to Msgr. Schooyans, the Vatican newspaper and the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, are complicit in promoting "pseudo-compassion."Msgr. Schooyans, professor emeritus of theology and philosophy at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium and an expert in bioethics and demography, outlined the "bogus" employment of the concept of compassion in contemporary society by way of his recent work "The Pitfalls of...

Last week, the Deseret News team that traveled to Haiti to report on the January earthquake returned to Utah. While in Haiti they slept in tents, near a runway crowded with relief planes and in the grass with earthquake survivors. They ate MREs, typed their stories on BlackBerrys and called in on satellite phones the destruction they saw. But these minor hardships paled in comparison to the suffering they witnessed. They watched a Utah widow save the life of a 4-year-old boy who had lost his arm. They marveled as a young Haitian bishop tended over his shell-shocked flock of...

SOTU I: Or, How to Peddle a Second Reality Using First-Reality Language By Jean F. Drew Every single man is but a blind link in the chain of absolute necessity by which the world builds itself forth. The single man can elevate himself to dominance over an appreciable length of this chain only if he knows the direction in which the great necessity wants to move and if he learns from this knowledge to pronounce the magic words (Die Zauberworte) that will evoke its shape (Gestalt). — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831) Am I alone in thinking these...

Driving in my car the other day, I turned on the radio and came across one of the local Protestant stations. A preacher was expounding on John 3:5 where Jesus says, “Unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” In his exegesis, he was absolutely sure that John did not mean physical water. Instead, he proposed that John’s water referred to the “word of God.” He cited Ephesians 5:26 and claimed that because Paul referred to “washing her with water by the word,” water was a symbol for Scripture. He transferred...

The video features a star quarterback and a strong pro-life message. But it's not the ad by Tim Tebow and his mother. A 9-minute pro-life video featuring six members of the New York Giants team that won Super Bowl XXI is similar to the ad expected from Tebow, without the surrounding firestorm. Wellington Mara, the son of the Giants' founder, was co-owner of the team until his death in 2005. Along the way, he became an iconic figure in the NFL and was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Mara also was staunchly pro-life, serving on the board of the...

1. Ethnic Israel and True Israel First, in verse 6b he says, "For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel." In other words, Paul’s argument is that the promises of God always hold true for the true Israel, the spiritual Israel, but not all ethnic Israel is true Israel. That’s his first statement of the argument: "They are not all Israel who are descended from Israel." The assumption is: there is a true Israel; God’s saving promises are made to them; and these promises have never failed. 2. All Descendants of Abraham and the Children of Abraham...

Considering the abortion lobby's deluge of pre-emptive protest against the Tim Tebow Super Bowl advertisement, sponsored by Focus on the Family, few might have guessed its actual form, first unveiled last night: a clean, simple, family-oriented message that never mentioned abortion. The brief spot, garnished with light humor, left pro-abortion forces so scattered in their effort to respond that one group even called another's harsh criticism of the ad "absurd." The ad took two forms - one that showed during the pre-game show, and an extended version that played during the Super Bowl. The first spot shows Pam Tebow against...

Church Approves French Marian Shrine Shepherdess' Visions of Our Lady Began in 1664 LAUS, France, MAY 15, 2008 (Zenit.org).- As pilgrims celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Marian shrine at Lourdes, the Church has officially recognized a new pilgrimage site in France. On May 4th, Bishop Jean-Michel di Falco of the Diocese of Gap, officially recognized the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to Benoite Rencurel at the sanctuary of Laus in the area of Hautes-Alpes, France. The pronouncement was made during a Mass in the Basilica of Notre Dame in Laus. Among those present were the apostolic nuncio to France,...

Jesus’ very last words in the Gospel of Matthew form a basis for the foundation and structure of the Church: “Behold, I am with you always, even until the end of the age.� As He says these words to the Eleven, He is taken back up into the glory of Heaven, entrusting His closest collaborators with continuing the mission He had been given by His Father from the foundation of the world. The Eleven (who soon return to Twelve) are to go forth and “teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and...

Refuge of SinnersFrance--------------1666 ITUATED in Dauphiné, in southern France at the foot of the Alps, just southeast of Gap, is the vale of Laus. Its name means lake in the local dialect as there once was one at the bottom of the basin. In 1666 the hamlet held twenty households scattered in little huts. The inhabitants had built a chapel dedicated to the Annunciation, Notre-Dame de on Recontre [Our Lady of the Good Encounter, meaning Annunciation]. It was here that Our Lady chose to appear in another "Good Encounter", several times to to a humble, unschooled girl, Bl. Benoite...

Featured Term (selected at random):LAUS Shrine of Our Lady of the Blessed Valley. Scene of a series of apparitions to a poor French shepherdess, Benoite Rencure, in 1664. In the first apparition, St. Maurice directed the girl to a nearby valley where the Virgin appeared to her over a period of two months and bade her have a church built there in her honor. The edifice was built after numerous miracles of healing had been performed on the site. Three times the shrine has been pillaged but each time rebuilt. (Etym. Latin laus, praise.) All items in this dictionary are...

"What men, then, according to these definitions, should be classed as dispensationalists? The answer to this question might be stated in a variety of ways. Three of these may suffice: (1) Any person is a dispensationalist who trusts the blood of Christ rather than bringing an animal sacrifice. (2) Any person is a dispensationalist who disclaims any right or title to the land which God covenanted to Israel for an everlasting inheritance. And (3) any person is a dispensationalist who observes the first day of the week rather than the seventh. To all this it would be replied that every...

On the day the restored Church was organized, 6 April 1830, the Lord revealed details about the calling of Joseph Smith: Behold, there shall be a record kept among you; and in it thou shalt be called a seer, a translator, a prophet, an apostle of Jesus Christ, an elder of the church through the will of God the Father, and the grace of your Lord Jesus Christ, Being inspired of the Holy Ghost to lay the foundation thereof, and to build it up unto the most holy faith. (D&C 21:1-2) What fascinates me is not just the variety...

"I've come to you this morning with a topic that probably in an earlier age would have sounded a little bit absurd. And that’s the question of whether character matters, whether it has anything to do with public service. Now even as recently as a generation ago, probably no one would give a commencement talk on that address to educated people -- people getting their degree -- because education was considered to be not only the acquisition of knowledge, but the formation of moral character. That’s what education was all about." ..."Twenty-five years ago this summer, I was converted to...

Pray For The Peace Of Jerusalem WHY do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against His anointed, saying,Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.HE that sitteth in the Heavens shall laugh; the LORD shall have them in derision.Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath, and vex them in His sore displeasure.Yet, I have set My King upon My Holy Hill of Zion,Ask of Me, and I will give the the heathen...

The Church of England is to go ahead with the plan to create women bishops without giving in to demands from traditionalists for a separate structure of bishops and archbishops untainted by the hands of a woman. Traditionalists oppose women bishops because they argue that Jesus had no women disciples and that the apostolic succession of bishops, passed down by the laying of hands at ordination, should therefore be male. Traditionalists warned last night that the decision, to be announced at the General Synod today, will trigger an exodus from the Church of England of many thousands of priests and...

Spurgeon's Morning & Evening - February 8 -------------------------------- Morning Devotional "Thou shalt call his name Jesus." - Matthew 1:21 When a person is dear, everything connected with him becomes dear for his sake. Thus, so precious is the person of the Lord Jesus in the estimation of all true believers, that everything about him they consider to be inestimable beyond all price. "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia," said David, as if the very vestments of the Saviour were so sweetened by his person that he could not but love them. Certain it is, that there...