MEM

In the Hebrew word for saint is translated as: sacred, holy, holy one, saint, set apart

In the Greek saint is one that is sacred (physically pure morally blameless or religious ceremonially consecrated)

From Webster’s (1828 dictionary) a saint is one sanctified

Note: we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Yeshua Messiah and the blood of the new covenant...

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Many are about to observe the annual anniversary of the new covenant …

[We can only be as holy (sanctified, set apart) as much as we have Yeshua abiding in us.]

"But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads --" - Albert Camus

"Beware of the mistake so many make. They have so many qualifications and limitations, so many thoughts and questions as to what true humility is to be and to do that they never unreservedly yield themselves to it. Humble yourself unto death. It is in the death to self that humility is perfected. At the root of all real experience of grace and true advance in consecration is conformity to the likeness of Jesus, which affects our dispositions and our habits. The reason I mention disposition and habit is that it is possible to speak of walking in the Spirit while there is still evidence of self. True humility will manifest itself in daily life. The one who has it will take the form of a servant. It is possible to speak of fellowship with a despised and rejected Jesus and of bearing His cross, while the meek and lowly Lamb of God is not seen and rarely sought. The Lamb of God means two things: meekness and death. Let us seek to receive Him in both forms." Andrew Murray

Thus we should not deceive our selves thinking we are a saint when our actions deny our words.

How does God feel about issues we face today?

God’s people should be the most fit, healthy, energetic and stable minded people on the planet.  Instead, many who call themselves Christians are no better, often worse than the world and then expect God to do a quick fix on them to make them all better despite it being their consequences for their caretaking or lack of caretaking of their body.  Or they do the martyr’s march - "bearing" the burden of sickness that He has placed on them.  God wants His people healthy, to be victorious with strength flowing in their bones.  But are they willing to be disciplined in eating healthy and give up or sacrifice the things they shouldn’t be eating?  You need to take seriously how important food is. It is your fuel, it sustains the incredible machine your body is. One of Satan’s great tools to distract God’s people is food. Look at how ineffective you feel if you are unhealthy, obese and lack energy.  Work to not just claim but also display victory in your life, to become a more effective witness. Choose to glorify God, not your cravings.

Over one hundred students and chaperones piled off the buses and headed towards the memorial. I noticed a solitary figure at the base of the statue, and as I got closer he asked, 'Where are you guys from?' 
 
 I told him that we were from Wisconsin. 'Hey, I'm a cheese head, too! Come gather around, Cheese heads, and I will tell you a story.'  (It was James Bradley who just happened to be in Washington, DC, to speak at the memorial the following day. He was there that night to say good night to his dad, who had passed away. He was just about to leave when he saw the buses pull up. I videotaped him as he spoke to us, and received his permission to share what he said from my videotape. It is one thing to tour the incredible monuments filled with history in Washington, DC, but it is quite another to get the kind of insight we received that night.)

When all had gathered around, he reverently began to speak. (Here are his words that night.) 
 
 'My name is James Bradley and I'm from Antigo, Wisconsin. My dad is on that statue, and I just wrote a book called 'Flags of Our Fathers ' which is #5 on the New York Times Best Seller list right now. It is the story of the six boys you see behind me. 
 
 'Six boys raised the flag. The first guy putting the pole in the ground is Harlon Block. Harlon was an all-state football player. He enlisted in the Marine Corps with all the senior members of his football team… They were off to play another type of game. A game called 'War.' But it didn't turn out to be a game. Harlon, at the age of 21, died with his intestines in his hands. I don't say that to gross you out, I say that because there are people who stand in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You guys need to know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and 19 years old - and it was so hard that the ones who did make it home never even would talk to their families about it.
 
 (He pointed to the statue) 'You see this next guy? That's Rene Gagnon from New Hampshire. If you took Rene's helmet off at the moment this photo was taken and looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would find a photograph...a photograph of his girlfriend, Rene put that in there for protection because he was scared. He was 18 years old. It was just boys who won the battle of Iwo Jima. Boys. Not old men. 
 
 'The next guy here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant Mike Strank… Mike is my hero. He was the hero of all these guys. They called him the 'old man' because he was so old. He was already 24. When Mike would motivate his boys in training camp, he didn't say, 'Let's go kill some Japanese' or 'Let's die for our country' He knew he was talking to little boys… Instead he would say, 'You do what I say, and I'll get you home to your mothers.'
 
'The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona. Ira Hayes was one of them who lived to walk off Iwo Jima. He went into the White House with my dad. President Truman told him, 'You're a hero' He told reporters, 'How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only 27 of us walked off alive?'
 
So you take your class at school, 250 of you spending a year together having fun, doing everything together. Then all 250 of you hit the beach, but only 27 of your classmates walk off alive. That was Ira Hayes. He had images of horror in his mind. Ira Hayes carried the pain home with him and eventually died dead drunk, face down, drowned in a very shallow puddle, at the age of 32 (ten years after this picture was taken). 
 
 'The next guy, going around the statue, is Franklin Sousley from Hilltop, Kentucky. A fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. His best friend, who is now 70, told me, 'Yeah, you know, we took two cows up on the porch of the Hilltop General Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn't get down. Then we fed them Epsom salts. Those cows crapped all night.' Yes, he was a fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When the telegram came to tell his mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop General Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother's farm. The neighbors could hear her scream all night and into the morning. Those neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away.
 
'The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad, John Bradley, from Antigo, Wisconsin, where I was raised. My dad lived until 1994, but he would never give interviews. When Walter Cronkite's producers or the New York Times would call, we were trained as little kids to say 'No, I'm sorry, sir, my dad's not here. He is in Canada fishing. No, there is no phone there, sir. No, we don't know when he is coming back..' My dad never fished or even went to Canada … Usually, he was sitting there right at the table eating his Campbell's soup. But we had to tell the press that he was out fishing. He didn't want to talk to the press. 
 
 'You see, like Ira Hayes, my dad didn't see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes, 'cause they are in a photo and on a monument. My dad knew better. He was a medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a combat caregiver. On Iwo Jima he probably held over 200 boys as they died. And when boys died on Iwo Jima, they writhed and screamed, without any medication or help with the pain. 
 
'When I was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was a hero. When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and said, 'I want you always to remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who did not come back. Did NOT come back.' 
 
'So that's the story about six nice young boys.. Three died on Iwo Jima, and three came back as national heroes. Overall, 7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima in the worst battle in the history of the Marine Corps. My voice is giving out, so I will end here. Thank you for your time.' 
 

 Suddenly, the monument wasn't just a big old piece of metal with a flag sticking out of the top. It came to life before our eyes with the heartfelt words of a son who did indeed have a father who was a hero. Maybe not a hero for the reasons most people would believe, but a hero nonetheless. 
 
 We need to remember that God created this vast and glorious world for us to live in, freely, but also at great sacrifice 
 
 Let us never forget from the Revolutionary War to the current War on Terrorism and all the wars in-between that sacrifice was made for our freedom...please pray for our troops.
 
Remember to pray praises for this great country of ours and also ....please pray for our troops still in murderous places around the world.
 
STOP and thank God for being alive and being free due to someone else's sacrifice. 
 
 God Bless You and God Bless America. 
 
REMINDER: Everyday that you can wake up free, it's going to be a great day. 
 
 One thing I learned while on tour with my 8th grade students in DC that is not mentioned here is ... that if you look at the statue very closely and count the number of 'hands' raising the flag, there are 13. When the man who made the statue was asked why there were 13, he simply said the 13th hand was the hand of God.

'Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?'

'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him.

'All the food was slow.' 

'C'mon, seriously… Where did you eat?'

'It was a place called 'at home,'' I explained.

'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.'

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table

But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it:

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, never wore Levis, never set foot on a golf course, never traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow).

We didn't have a television in our house until I was 19. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; it came back on the air at about 6 a.m. And there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.

I was 21 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.'

When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had..

I never had a telephone in my room.

The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home But milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers --my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up at 6AM every morning.

On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?

Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.
Ignition switches on the dashboard.
Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall.
Real ice boxes.
Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards. 
Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn signals. 

Older Than Dirt Quiz:

Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about.

Ratings at the bottom.

1. Blackjack chewing gum
2.Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water 
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles 
5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes 
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers 
7. Party lines on the telephone
8. Newsreels before the movie 
9. P.F. Flyers
10. Butch wax 
11. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. (there were only 3 channels [if you were fortunate]) 
12. Peashooters 
13. Howdy Doody 
14. 45 RPM records 
15. S&H Greenstamps 
16. Hi-fi's
17. Metal ice trays with lever 
18. Mimeograph paper
19. Blue flashbulb
20. Packards
21. Roller skate keys
22. Cork popguns 
23. Drive-ins
24. Studebakers
25. Wash tub wringers 

If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young
If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older 
If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,
If you remembered 16-25 = You' re older than dirt!

I might be older than dirt but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.

"We refused to defend the small things because we thought them unworthy of our efforts, and the more ground we gave up, the bolder the enemy became. Soon enough, here the enemy stood at the castle walls, and now the church has gotten so used to running it has gotten so used to giving up ground, that it is having a difficult time mustering up the courage to defend the city itself."

"When we stand our ground, when we defend the truth of God’s word, when we are willing to put our reputations on the line for the sake of Christ, and suffer the mocking and scorn that will surely come from the godless, it is the Lord that will fight alongside us; it is the Lord who will ensure our victory."

When our children were little, if you asked them, "Where did you come from?" they would have answered, "From God." Cute? Even if God were the creator, people don't actually come from God, do they?

In (the scripture above) the people of Israel are reminded that God is their father. But what does that mean? Does it matter? I imagine if we were the random product of natural processes alone, then nothing matters. Life has no meaning. Values, standards, and morals have no actual basis beside preferences and desires.

Yet most people know the truth that there is meaning in life. We know intuitively that relationships, especially our most intimate ones are not the product of impersonal random chance. The reason why so many people are so very hurt by their fathers is because we carry in our hearts an ideal of what fathers should be. Where does that come from?

The father relationship is as crucial as it is because it is derived from The Father of us all (see Acts 17:28). The above reminder to Israel at some level is a reminder to all people. God as the great original progenitor is personally everyone's Father. That he used secondary causes - our natural parents - to bring us into the world is beside the point. You exist because God birthed you.

Every human being has their origins in God. You were specifically designed on purpose and for a purpose. The sense of meaninglessness so pervading life today is primarily due to our being disconnected from this realization. We are not made to simply learn how to cope with life, but as God's children to serve the high purpose of our Father.

Accepting the truth that God is our Father helps us to better understand what life is all about, but that doesn't automatically put us in right relationship with him. Scripture teaches that we come into the world predisposed as rebels against him. No matter how hard we try to feel good about ourselves, we are deeply aware that something is wrong with us. The Scriptures call this problem sin. Sin is more than misdeeds; it is the principle driving our inability to be what we should be.

But God as Father has provided a solution to the problem of sin. In Jewish tradition the Messiah was expected to come to defeat God's enemies, but an essential aspect of this victory tended to be overlooked by our ancient teachers: that to achieve that goal, the Messiah would need to resolve the internal issues that made people God's enemies in the first place. It was necessary for Yeshua to die on behalf of our sins, thereby reconciling us with our Father. And through his resurrection he empowers us to truly live as children of the Father.