Don includes a section he calls Little Known Facts of History! I speared this from the April issue:

"With a great deal of flattery, the hedonistic philosopher Aristippus won a very comfortable position at the court of Dionysius who was tyrant of Syracuse in southern Italy. One day Aristippus was visiting with fellow-philosopher Diogenes who was preparing a meager meal of lentils, and Aristippus offered some "helpful" advice: "If you would only learn to compliment Dionysius, you wouldn't have to live on lentils." "And if you would only learn to live on lentils, you wouldn't have to flatter Dionysius," replied his principled friend”

Diogenes was known in the ancient world and by modern searchers for truth as the quintessential searcher for truth and a bothersome teller of truth, without consideration of the person on whom he was telling the truth, hence his diet of lentils only. Many preachers live with the understanding that if they were to lay off certain areas and promote other certain areas, the fiscal part of their life would improve. Many know this from the inner pain they suffer daily as the "pricking" from the Holy Spirit rubs part of their spirit raw. Others, while enjoying piece of mind having turned a deaf ear to siren song of the tyrants in high places partake of the "lentils" of the current age.

This is true not only for preachers of any persuasion, but of just about everyone in whatever walk of life. The challenge to stay true to what you believe and to refuse to act as though you hold to tenets which you do not accept as valid is always there and often forcefully put forth. Shakespeare said it well through Polonius:

"This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

God says it like this in Proverbs 23:23:

"Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding."

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2010

By Todd Horne

In 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, Paul is in the middle of a discussion about God's wisdom. But Paul threw down the proverbial gauntlet in the previous verse saying that "the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."

If you are paying attention, you might think that there's not much else left to say. People who think they know more than God are sunk right then and there. Paul debunks them. Why waste any more God-given breath on the matter?

Yet, Paul does continue. Paul is not talking to non-believers. He is not trying to convert anyone here. He is talking straight to the heart of believers. Paul is attempting to sanitize believers and transform them into true disciples.

Pay attention. In these next six verses Paul teaches us one of the greatest truths of all: believers only have hope in victory if they are humble at heart because only then can they see things the way God sees them. There is no other way.

26 For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble;

31 so that, just as it is written, " LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD."

Some 2,000 years before Paul's message to the church at Corinth, the prophet Isaiah, writing in Isaiah 2, encourages believers by linking hope with humility as the key transforming power of God in the human heart. Isaiah links hope with humility because he knows that man, by nature, always uses the idol of self-advancement to stabilize ourselves. But Isaiah spends virtually his entire second chapter pointing out that in order to walk in the light of the Lord -- in order to replace our fallen nature-bred fear and pride with hope and humility we have to do more than just roll out of bed every morning and enter the fray of a world that stimulates itself with idols at every turn.

If he were writing in today's context as one of our contemporaries, Isaiah would tell us that as we come alive to God's promised future, which has nothing to do with corner offices, nice cars, and houses on hills or mountaintops, we dethrone our self-built, fleshly idols, and the Lord alone is exalted within us.

Isaiah looks from the beauty of the beginning, through the wreckage of history, all the way forward to the glory of the consummation of God's plan - the last days. Many believers in Christ think that we are living in those last days right now. One thing is certain: we are much closer to the last days now than we were when Isaiah penned his thoughts and related his vision. A case could also be made, and Paul certainly stated that this was his belief, that when Paul was writing his epistles and preaching to the Gentiles the countdown to the last days had begun in earnest. Another couple of things are also certain, too. God's plan and His ways have never changed, while man does not think, act or behave like God unless Jesus Christ resides in that heart.

When Isaiah forsees the last days, what does he see?

Isaiah sees the worship of God enthused over, while all the religions of man are humbled into nothing. In Isaiah’s day people located their shrines on hills and mountaintops, closer to Heaven. But God chose a measly little hilltop in the land of Israel to be the place where he should be worshiped. It wasn't impressive by the usual standards. And today the church is rarely impressive to man, which brings us right back to where we started -- 1 Corinthians 1:26. But in the latter days the nations will abandon their worldviews and ideologies and gladly give to the church as the world's leader in worship.

He is promising a worldwide miracle as the nations, far from being forced, gladly hurry to worship him and learn his ways. They set no preconditions. They are eager and open. This miracle has already begun. It started at Pentecost 2,000 years ago (Acts 2), it is going on today through Christian missions, and it will be consummated in the latter days with an overflowing river of conversions to Christ.

Scripture Reading: Matthew 17:20

Yet in the words of my youth, "I pick Jesus. No trade backs!" He is the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus working through me is inner strength. Why just this morning, He pushed two mountains over the side of the bed.

Darlene is a writer who travels with her husband, Mark across rural United States as he builds power plants.

Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com CHRISTIAN WRITERS