“I can’t afford to have thoughts in my head that aren’t in God’s.”
Bill Johnson, Strengthen Yourself in the Lord
Author Archives: ronbrackin2
”While getting answers to prayer is wonderful and important, hearing His voice in the intimacy of prayer is the true source of our strength and life.”
Bill Johnson, “Strengthen Yourself in the Lord”
Happy Sunday, everybody!
What a great day to be grateful, in spite of our circumstances!
“Giving thanks in the midst of an adverse situation, a difficulty intended to undermine your faith and destroy you, enables you to take hold of that situation and set it apart to God and His purposes. When you give thanks, the weapon the enemy meant to use to dislodge you from your divine purpose is put into your hands and becomes the very thing that brings you more fully into that purpose….Thanksgiving accomplishes the divine justice of the Kingdom, where the enemy is destroyed by the very thing he intended to use for our destruction.”
Bill Johnson, Strengthen Yourself in the Lord
“God can’t give things that are not good, because He doesn’t have them.”
Bill Johnson, Strengthen Yourself in the Lord
“The tests that David endured were tests that specifically addressed his ability to keep his focus on his identity and purpose. He was tested by coming into circumstances that directly contradicted God’s Word over his life.”
Bill Johnson, “Strengthen Yourself in the Lord”
“One of the most poignant explanations in Scripture for why Israel failed to walk in their covenant with God is in Lamentations 1:9: ‘…She did not consider her destiny; therefore her collapse was awesome.’”
What about you?
The biggest mistake made by college-bound kids
DALLAS, TX (ANS) – For many parents, back-to-school means shopping lists for everything from laptops, backpacks, and calculators, to paperbacks, pens, and protractors.
For parents of most high school seniors, that which they dreaded most has finally come upon them.
Picking colleges. Selecting majors. SATs. PSATs. ACTs. FAFSAs. And essays, essays, essays.
And of course the obligatory bumper sticker that declares: My daughter and my money go to [College Name], which isn’t really all that funny when you consider that:
- Fewer than 40 percent of college students actually graduate in four years (only 25 percent in Texas ). The grim reality is that it takes most students five or six years to earn a degree, which means tens of thousands of dollars of additional debt (US Department of Education, 2008, National Center for Education Statistics).
- Nearly than half the students who start college quit without ever walking the stage, giving America the highest dropout rate in the industrialized world! (“Education at a Glance,” Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development).
- At more than $1 trillion, student loan debt today is higher than the nation’s entire credit card debt (“Student loan debt exceeds credit card debt in USA,” Susan Tompor, Detroit Free Press, September 10, 2010).
- And once they graduate, 64 percent of workers, 25 and under, say they’re unhappy with their jobs—which locks them into a cycle of low performance, low pay, and more dissatisfaction (The Conference Board research group annual job satisfaction survey, released January 5, 2010).
One reason for all the gloom and doom is found in an innocuous little question on most college application forms. It’s that part where students are asked to pick a major (first, second, and third choice).
How on earth can teenagers be expected to know what they want to do the rest of their lives when most don’t know what they want for dinner or how they plan to spend the weekend?
And here’s where we blow it as their parents.
“No big deal,” we say. “They can always change their major later.”
Not necessarily.
People Right Careers President Mike McCormack.
“When students apply to a large state school, they go into a general application pool, and depending on the criteria, the top 7 or 10 percent get accepted,” explained Mike McCormack, president of People Right Careers (www.peoplerightcareers.com). “Then the college looks at the major they chose. If there are still openings, that’s where they’re placed. If it’s full, the university tries to fit them into their second choice. Fine, so far.
“But between mailing the application and attending new student orientation, or during the first or second year, students often decide that their chosen major is too hard, too boring, won’t pay enough, or they want to be in class with that hot guy or gal. So they try to switch majors.
“Many, however, discover that the college or department they want is already full. And even if there are any openings left, students may have to compete to get in.”
Texas A&M Mays Business School, for example, admits 1,200 students. Top priority goes to qualified incoming freshmen who declared Mays Business School as first choice on their application. Next priority goes to students who transfer from other colleges. Whatever is left over is for Aggies changing majors—and they need a 3.0 GPA in 30 graded hours just to apply. To actually get accepted, they may need a 3.5 or better.
Like many other universities, A&M still has a General Studies program where students can “park” until space becomes available in their desired college or department or until they can get their GPA high enough to qualify. But this, warns McCormack, is being phased out.
“Last year, A&M said they’re doing away with General Studies because they don’t want it as a ‘holding tank’ for students. And that’s creating challenges for the 8,000 or so students who will enter this fall, more than a third of whom typically try to change majors during their freshman year.”
In case you’re beginning to wonder whether there’s any point to filling out the application in the first place, consider that the typical college graduate earns about $650,000 more than the typical high school graduate over the course of a 40-year work life (“Graduation: Weighing the Cost…and the Payoff,” May 18, 2012, Pew Research Center).
Also, experts predict that, by 2022, more than 60 percent of all new jobs will require a college education. Today, only 31 percent of Texans, 25-34, have a degree, compared with a high of 53 percent in Massachusetts and a low of 26 percent in Arkansas (Complete College America).
So what’s a parent to do? How can you maximize your child’s college education and minimize the cost?
One of the most important things you can do is to pick the right major in the first place, something few parents give much attention because they don’t have a clue how to go about it.
“As parents,” McCormack says, “we do everything exactly backwards. We try to pick a college for our children before finding careers that match the way they’re wired, which is a little like shooting an arrow without a target.
Mike McCormack knows what it’s like to be a square peg in a series of round holes.
After earning his Civil Engineering degree, he spent the next quarter century working his way through 10 job titles at 5 companies in 4 industries. By 2001, he realized there must be a better way to match people with jobs. So he started over. Again. But by this time, he had figured out how to leverage his skills, behaviors, and gifts into the career he was wired for and passionate about.
Since then, he has helped hundreds of high school and college students, as well as young professionals, find success and satisfaction in the career for which they were created.
“Nobody expects students to have their whole life mapped out when they leave high school. But they should have a pretty good idea who they are, what they like, and what they’re already good at. Then, parents can sit down with their son or daughter and a knowledgeable consultant and compare all of that to the personalities, preferences, and talents of the highest-paid guys in a couple hundred different careers. Their student can to say, ‘Hey, I like that. I can do that.” And they’ll be on track to pick the right college, select the right major, and make the right decisions that will get them there.”
The first step, finding out how your child is wired, is accomplished at People Right Careers through a state-of-the-art career assessment that examines 27 characteristics in 4 key areas: behavioral traits, occupational interests, spiritual gifts, and analytical styles. This information is then compared with similar information collected from top-performing professionals in more than 200 careers.
Finally, Mike sits down with student and parents and explains how to use this “wiring diagram” to get to and through college and into a successful and fulfilling career.
The trick is to flip the traditional paradigm, he says, to choose a career first and college and a major second.
In the words of Mark Twain, “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.”
Just what is meant by this word, Hell?
They sometimes say, it’s cole as hell.
Sometimes they say, it’s hot as hell.
When it rains hard, it’s hell, they cry.
It’s also hell when it is dry.
They hate like hell to see it snow.
It’s a hell of a wind when it starts to blow.
Now, how in hell can anyone tell what in hell they mean by hell?
This married life is hell they say.
When he comes in late, there’s hell to pay.
it’s hell when a kid you have to tote.
When he starts to hell, it’s a hell of a note.
It’s hell when the doctor sends his bills
for a hell of a lot of trips and pills.
When you read this, you will know real well
just what is meant by this word hell.
Hell, yes! Hell, no! and Oh, hell, too.
The hell you don’t-the hell you do–
and what in hell, and the hell it is–
the hell with yours and the hell with his!
Now, who in hell? and Oh, hell, where?
And what in hell do you think I care?
But the hell of it is, it’s sure as hell
we don’t know what in hell is hell.
E.A. von Kleim
10 Tips on Solving Mysterious Bible Passages from Sherlock Holmes
by Eric McKiddle
What can a fictional detective teach you about how to study the Bible?
A lot.
Last summer, I read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [4] by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Time and time again, Holmes commented to Watson about how to solve mysterious cases in ways that apply directly to studying the Bible.
You probably expect Holmes to take the most sophisticated approach to solving mysteries. But what struck me was that these comments illustrate the most basic Bible study principles.
Here are 10 quotes from Holmes that will equip you to solve mysterious passages of the Bible.
1. The number one mistake to avoid.
Holmes: “I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
Far too often students of the Bible twist verses to suit interpretations instead of formulating interpretations to suit what the verses say.
Don’t approach your passage assuming you know what it means. Rather, use the data in the passage – the words that are used and how they fit together – to point you toward the correct interpretation.
2. The kind of looking that solves mysteries.
Holmes: “You have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.”
Watson: “Hundreds of times.”
Holmes: “Then how many are there?”
Watson: “How many? I don’t know!”
Holmes: “Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.”
There is a difference between reading a Bible verse and observing it. Observation is a way of collecting details contained in a passage. As you read and reread the verses, pull the words into your brain where you can think about them and figure them out.
This habit will shed light on how you understand the text, even if the passage is as familiar as the stairs in your house.
3. Know what to look for.
Watson: “You appeared to [see] what was quite invisible to me.”
Holmes: “Not invisible but unnoticed, Watson. You did not know where to look, and so you missed all that was important.”
Know where to look for clues that will illuminate your passage. Look for repeated words and phrases, bookends (where the beginning and end of the passage contain similarities), and clues in the context around your passage.
Don’t know what to look for? Living by the Book [5]
4. Mundane details are important!
Watson: “I had expected to see Sherlock Holmes impatient under this rambling and inconsequential narrative, but, on the contrary, he had listened with the greatest concentration of attention.”
Don’t ignore parts of the passage that seem insignificant to its meaning. Treat every word as if it contains clues to the interpretation of the passage.
5. Use solutions to little mysteries to solve bigger ones.
Holmes: “The ideal reasoner would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it.”
Once you understand the passage that baffled you, your work is not done!
Now it’s time to locate that passage in the grand narrative of the Bible. How do previous books and stories lead up to your passage? How does your passage anticipate the consummation of all things that results at Jesus’ second coming?
6. The harder the mystery, the more evidence you need.
“This is a very deep business,” Holmes said at last. “There are a thousand details which I should desire to know before I decide upon our course of action.”
In grad school, one professor gave us an assignment requiring us students to make 75 observations on Acts 1:8 [7]. The verse does not even contain that many words!
The professor’s goal was to train us in compiling evidence. Harder Bible passages demand that we collect as much information as possible.
7. Break big mysteries down into little ones.
Watson: “Holmes walked slowly round and examined each and all of [the pieces of evidence] with the keenest interest.”
Difficult passages can be overwhelming. Break chapters down into paragraphs, paragraphs into verses, and verses into clauses. Devote careful attention to each chunk of the passage individually. Then try to piece together the meaning they have when added up as a whole.
8. Don’t be so committed to a solution that you ignore new evidence.
“I had,” said Holmes, “come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data…I can only claim the merit that I instantly reconsidered my position.”
After you’ve put the hard work into grasping a mysterious passage, the case isn’t necessarily closed. Often you’ll run across other passages that shed new light on your passage. Or you’ll hear someone preach those verses in a different way than how you interpreted it.
Always be willing to consider new insights. This will at least help you nuance your understanding of the passage, if not take a different stance.
9. Simple solutions often provide answers to manifold mysteries.
Holmes: “The case has been an interesting one…because it serves to show very clearly how simple the explanation may be of an affair which at first sight seems to be almost inexplicable.”
Many passages that seem mysterious at first end up not being so bad. Their bark is worse than their bite. For example, several passages in Revelation, intimidating to so many, have simple explanations. (Not all, but some!)
10. On the other hand, so-called simple passages may be more complicated than initially meets the eye.
Holmes: “This matter really strikes very much deeper than either you or the police were at first inclined to think. It appeared to you to be a simple case; to me it seems exceedingly complex.”
This is often true of coffee mug and bumper sticker verses. We think they are simple to understand because we see them all the time. But once you dig into them, you realize they are more mysterious than meets the eye.
The Joy of Knowing God Through His Word
Gaining insight into hard passages of the Bible is often an exciting adventure.
But don’t forget that the Bible is less about a mystery to solve and more about an Author to know. As you tackle some of the tougher texts, don’t glory in your knowledge. Glory in God, who graciously reveals Himself through His Word.
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Eric McKiddie is one of the pastors at College Church in Wheaton, IL. He blogs about theology, preaching, and productivity at pastoralized.com[1]. You can follow him on Twitter [2].
