A Prayer for Encouragement When You're Barely Hanging OnBy Keri Eichberger "Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing." – 1 Thessalonians 5:11 I prefaced my text with "Prayer request and long text alert," listed a laundry list of my current struggles, and then finished with the following words to my bible study girls:  "All that drama to say... In light of this book we're studying, instead of stuffing my emotions with ‘I'm fine. I'll be fine. God's got this,' I'm resistantly reaching out asking for prayer. Because I'm truly breaking inside. (That was hard to admit). And it's leaking out like crazy around me. (More paranoia and pressure.) I'm digging into scripture and prayer this morning more intently as the kids are finally out of the house. But since I can't be present for our next meeting, I'm sharing my feelings with my people. Sorry for the dump. And yes, I obsessed and prayed over if I should even send this. I'm a mess. And vulnerable, obviously." Wow. That was scary. I trembled as a hit send and waited for someone to say something, anything, in hopes of quickly quieting the voices inside saying What's the point, What will it help, and Who even cares? Lies the enemy wanted me to ponder as I sunk farther into what felt like the tip of depression. Life had started to feel heavier than normal about a month prior, to the point where I felt I couldn't take much more. But much more came. To say I was discouraged and defeated felt like an understatement. I did what I knew best to do. I begged God for help, relief, and comfort. And though he certainly heard my cries and soothed some of my deep aches, I still remained sad and disheartened, more than not.  How about you? Can you recall a time that handed you much more than you could handle or lasted much longer than you thought you could endure? And then more came, or the struggle kept on, leaving you barely hanging on and on the brink of breaking? Whatever that looks like. Oh my goodness, I get it. I was just there. And maybe in the midst of the valley, you certainly prayed too, but for some reason, you mostly kept it at that. Between you and God. And hardly anyone else. I do that. A lot. And listen, running to the Lord is exactly what we should do. Go straight to God with what's causing concern, desperation, and grief. Because he has the power and love to lift us up and fill us in ways no thing and no one can. But there's something else I want to remind us both of today (because I keep forgetting, apparently). God wants to connect us with others, too. He created us for community. He absolutely uses his people to bless his people. And there is absolutely power in prayer. I've seen it. I just experienced it. And it wasn't the first time, nor will it be the last.   I needed a level of encouragement that I was struggling to find. It's as if God knew I not only needed to be comforted by him, but I also needed to find a connection with others. And I'll need it later again and again. Also true, they may need me. Same for you. Hey, if you don't think you have someone to ask to pray for you, to share what's weighing down on you, it would bless me to pray for you. But, I believe your reaching out to someone in your life would bless that someone back.  Friend, keep leaning on the Lord. He is there, offering comfort and, in time, lifting you up. But when you are barely hanging on and need reinforced support, God will also encourage you through your sharing and connecting with your people-his people that he shines in and through just for you, his beloved. Let's pray: Loving Lord, I feel like I'm barely hanging on sometimes. And right now, I think I'm there. I need you. Your comfort and strength. Your peace and joy. I know your Word says you supply all my needs, and I thank you for always being close and holding me up. I know you will not let me fall. And I come to you asking to be uplifted. Asking for the courage to take the step to also request prayer from others. Lord, You use your people to bless, lift up, and encourage your people. To encourage me. But I know I must speak up. Help me draw your strength from the prayers of others, as well as in my intimate, intentional moments with you. Grant me confidence that you will never leave me, that you will always support and sustain me. Thank you so much for your lavish love and your desire to be ever so close to me. You are the anchor of my soul.In your strong name, Jesus, I pray, amen. Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/fcscafeine Keri Eichberger is a Jesus-loving Kentucky girl. She is married to her best friend, Mike, and has a full house of five kids. After years of writing for an online audience, Keri became ordained through Southeast Christian Church, giving her life to full-time ministry. She is the author of Win Over Worry: Conquer What Shakes You and Soar With the One Who Overcomes, and has a passion for sharing faith-filled encouragement through devotional writing. Connect with Keri at KeriEichberger.com or Instagram. Teach Us to Pray is a FREE prayer podcast hosted by iBelieve writer Christina Patterson. Each week, she gives you practical, real-life tips on how to grow your faith and relationship with God through the power of prayer. To listen to her episode on What to Pray in the Morning for a Worry-Free Day, click below! Now that you’ve prayed, are you in need of someone to pray for YOU? Click the button below! Visit iBelieve.com for more inspiring prayer content. The post A Prayer for Encouragement When You’re Barely Hanging On – Your Daily Prayer – July 5 appeared first on GodUpdates.

And they wonder why so many people hate them. July 4th in Washington Square Park. Not a single American flag in the crowd. pic.twitter.com/cBuCsfpPC0 — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 4, 2024 h/t Nita But wait, there’s more from this garbage! BREAKING: outside of City Hall in Philadelphia, pro-Palestinian protestors are lighting dozens of US flags […]

It'll be the final nail in the coffin of 'democracy' in the Democrat party. The post Replacing Biden Will Prove Donors Run the Democrats appeared first on Frontpage Mag.

Trump would go to bed at 1 A.M. The post Biden Reassures Worried Nation by Promising Not to Stay Up Past 8 PM appeared first on Frontpage Mag.

I’ll admit it. I don’t like to wait. “Does anyone?” you might ask. You’re probably right, especially in our fast-paced society filled with immediate app notifications and financial incentives for restaurants and retail stores to shorten wait times. A disdain for any delay appears normal—even encouraged. However, my struggle with waiting seems hardwired in me. My personality tends toward getting things done, and I love the feeling of a completed to-do list. I’m biased toward action. Not waiting is even in my last name. “Vroegop” is Dutch. Many last names of the wooden-shoe folk mean something practical: Shoemaker (maker of shoes), Bakker (baker), DeYoung (the young), Meijer (steward), and Vander Molen (from the mill). Vroegop literally means “early up.” It still makes me smile. My forefathers could have chosen from any number of last names, and they decided to identify our family as early risers—Mark Early-Up. We don’t wait to start our day. Unfortunately, pastoral ministry made my anti-waiting inclination worse. I gravitated to verses about life stewardship and calling. When I read Don’t Waste Your Life, it captivated me with a passionate vision to make my life count for God’s glory. But in the process of not wasting my life, I was wasting my waiting. The last few years surfaced a glaring deficiency in how I thought about and practiced waiting. Out of desperation, I explored what the Bible says about waiting, specifically the command to “wait on the Lord.” While I still have a long way to go, I’ve been discovering how to live on what I know to be true about God when I don’t know what’s true about my life. By God’s grace, I’ve seen waiting isn’t a waste. Here are four principles to keep in mind when gap moments—those times we have to wait for answers to prayer, or on other people—present themselves. 1. Embrace the tension. Waiting is uncomfortable. The gaps of life challenge our desire for control. That’s probably why waiting is universally disliked. Uncertainty, delays, disappointments, pain, and a sense of powerlessness create tension. The gaps of life challenge our desire for control. That’s probably why waiting is universally disliked. One of the Hebrew words for waiting expresses this. Qavah combines tension with a sense of anticipation or looking ahead. The word’s origins are connected to the twisting or stretching of a cord—tension is part of what it means to wait. Many of us are surprised by waiting’s tension. The discomfort makes it seem like something’s wrong. We waste a lot of waiting because we resist or resent the sense of powerlessness. Therefore, the first step is embracing—even normalizing—this conflicting feeling. Instead of being alarmed, escalating our emotions, or resisting the feelings, it’s helpful to welcome the tension as a normal part of waiting. 2. Avoid the ditches. We often waste our waiting through unhelpful or sinful responses. Our lack of control can create a knee-jerk reaction. The strong desire for change leads to several ditches: Anger: Waiting and anger go together. Sometimes it looks like an obvious blow-up, but other times it can settle into a low-grade frustration. Sinful anger is our attempt to regain control through rash action. Waiting makes us vulnerable, and in anger we can try to fill the vulnerability gap by forcing change—regardless of the consequences. Anxiety: If anger takes action, anxiety embraces overthinking. Rather than blowing up, we turn inward with a mental and emotional churning that’s exhausting and debilitating. We try to think our way out of our limitations. Apathy: Anger demands change. Anxiety wants to think. Apathy stops caring. It’s responding to disappointments, delays, and unfulfilled dreams with the self-protective posture of “I just don’t care anymore.” Knowing these ditches in advance helps us avoid our all-too-common responses to the frustration of waiting and keeps us from wasting these seasons. 3. Name your expectations. I love the rendering of Psalm 40:1 in The Message: “I waited and waited for GOD.” Most translations read, “I waited patiently for the LORD.” But there’s no word for “patiently” in the Hebrew text of Psalm 40. The word for “wait” (qavah) is simply repeated, and I find that helpful. Think of patiently waiting simply as a doubled waiting or waiting longer than what you expected. It’s difficult—in the back of my mind, I have an assumption of how long something should take. When my expectations collide with my experience, waiting becomes a problem. One solution is to name our expectations. We can specifically call attention to what we might not even realize is causing an emotional reaction: “I would expect that . . .” This allows us to evaluate if our assumptions are reasonable and to set our potential waiting moment in the right context. Even more helpful, naming our expectations empowers us to commit them to the Lord. 4. Focus your heart. Our struggle with waiting often involves a focus on what we don’t know. Our loss of control, sense of uncertainty, and internal discomfort can become a fixation. Psalm 27 ends with a command to “take courage; wait for the LORD” (v. 14). But the psalm begins with a focus on who the Lord is: “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (v. 1). It’s instructive that the psalmist calls to mind what he knows to be true about God. Waiting highlights what you don’t know, but you do know who God is. The Bible reveals that to us. Waiting on God means I learn to live on what I know to be true about God when I don’t know what’s true about my life. It means focusing my heart on who God is, what he’s like, and why he can be trusted—even in the tension-filled uncertainties of life. I’ve developed a list of “The Lord is . . .” verses that help me wait. Waiting on God means I learn to live on what I know to be true about God when I don’t know what’s true about my life. I don’t know if I’ll ever love waiting. The tension is uncomfortable. Frankly, I’d rather have quick solutions and easy answers. But the more I’ve studied what it means to wait on God, the more I see the value of the gap moments. They provide an opportunity to renew my trust in a God who loves me and cares for me and whose ways are always good. While I wait, I can focus on his trustworthiness, not on my expected timing. The waiting may not be easy, but I’m not wasting it nearly as much as I used to. Mr. Early-Up is learning that waiting is far more valuable than I ever imagined.

A surprisingly large number of conservative intellectuals in the United States are Roman Catholic. Consider, for example, that six of the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are Catholics. Many of these public intellectuals are converts from Protestant Christianity. This leaves some with the sense that the Protestant tradition is somehow deficient. Both the Catholic and Orthodox churches make weighty claims by purporting to be the true church established, continued, and kept by Jesus Christ himself. In Why Do Protestants Convert?, Brad Littlejohn and Chris Castaldo consider nine motivations for Protestant conversions. Despite these claims, the authors argue that the conversion of Protestants often says less about the strength of the Catholic or Orthodox churches that it does about perceived weaknesses in modern Protestant practice. Intellectual Concerns Many more people convert to Roman Catholicism than Orthodoxy, so that move is the focus of the book and this review. The Protestant to Catholic pipeline is a topic of ongoing cultural discussion. However, according to a 2015 Pew study on the U. S. religious landscape, Roman Catholicism is losing more members than it is gaining from any source. Still, the conversion trend is significant. Littlejohn, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and Castaldo, lead pastor at New Covenant Church, note that Catholic converts are oftentimes intellectuals who carry a certain public credibility. Historically, converts like John Henry Newman, G. K. Chesterton, Richard Neuhaus, and Peter Kreeft have written a great deal about their conversion narratives. Thus, Roman Catholicism, compellingly perceived and portrayed, makes some Protestants wonder whether we left some of the best intellectual resources behind during the Reformation. In reality, Protestants have at least equal intellectual resources to other Christian traditions. However, “until we teach them effectively to our pastors, parishioners, and children, we should hardly be surprised when they go in search of greener pastures” (10). The apparent contrast between Roman Catholic and Protestant intellectualism is “in large part the natural result of the self-inflicted wounds of the late 20th century scandal of the evangelical mind, which will take generations to undo” (9–10). At the same time, the Protestant intellectual tradition has largely been overlooked by many contemporary believers. And, doctrines like the belief in “total depravity” have caused some to believe that Protestants disregard the value of human reason, or philosophy. In contrast, the Roman Catholic view appears more positive toward reason, is more openly reliant on philosophy, and thus to some appears better equipped to deal with the social challenges of the day. As Castaldo and Littlejohn admit, “Roman Catholicism still boasts a rich and robust intellectual tradition that can sustain both orthodox faith and evangelical politics” (10). But that isn’t to say that such resources are unavailable to Protestants. Social and Political Factors Protestantism is plagued by social and political confusion. Mainline Protestants have largely abandoned biblical sexual ethics and have adopted progressive ethics contrary to the historical Christian faith. Simultaneously, some non-Christians have adopted the label “evangelical” for political reasons. Even some who self-identify as evangelical Christian demonstrate little knowledge of Christian orthodoxy. An underlying question for many potential converts is what it means to be Protestant. One could certainly be forgiven for supposing Protestantism to be a flimsy, fragmented Christian tradition based on popular perception. Protestants struggle to unite institutionally. Although Protestants participate in “the holy catholic Church”, as the Apostles’ Creed claims, denominational divides can hide the “catholicity” that truly binds the best of the Protestant faith together in Christ. As Castaldo and Littlejohn acknowledge, Protestant “pluralism creates an environment where biblically rooted faith sometimes falls into [an] acrimonious and bitter division that offends the Spirit of peace.” This can make the apparent unity of Roman Catholicism tempting. And yet this unity ignores “Rome’s policy nowadays of turning a blind eye to heretics or sectarians within her own ranks” (56). In other words, the Roman Catholic Church’s institutional unity can sometimes eclipse its internal theological division. Christian history reveals that Protestants have and can have a robust social ethic while affirming a biblical understanding of personal salvation by faith. For some, the attraction of Roman Catholicism is its emphasis on social ethics. The perception for some—especially those converting from forms of fundamentalism—is that Protestants have become hyper-focused on individual salvation while the Catholics have been busy building and sustaining hospitals, schools, orphanages, nursing homes. And yet, Christian history reveals that Protestants have and can have a robust social ethic while affirming a biblical understanding of personal salvation by faith. Protestant Sufficiency Littlejohn and Castaldo offer a compelling case that Protestantism has better social and intellectual resources than Roman Catholicism. This is because the Reformers saw themselves as inheriting the Catholic tradition. For example, John Calvin confidently asserted, “Augustine is totally ours.” We did not lose our heritage in remaining faithful to Scripture over authoritative tradition. We did not lose our heritage in remaining faithful to Scripture over authoritative tradition. Therefore, the answer to an apparent Protestant intellectual void is not to become either Roman Catholic or Orthodox. Rather, Littlejohn and Castaldo call for a rediscovery, retrieval, and renewal of the ways in which “Luther, Calvin and other Magisterial Reformers” call us to organize our religious life to best worship God and serve our neighbor (86). This book celebrates the merits of Protestantism, rightly arguing that its particulars are worth promoting over other ways of practicing Christianity. The general approach of the book is positive and evenhanded. However, there are occasions where the authors don’t adequately connect their proposed causes to the results. For example, at one point they state that “behind many of the defections from Christian orthodoxy or evangelical Protestantism is a basic psychological deficit: friendlessness and fatherlessness” (72). While this observation might be true in certain cases, the statement seems to presume knowledge about an inner spiritual landscape of converts that can’t be known apart from personal interaction. Yet the book’s deeper argument is that hooking into the authority of the magisterium of Roman Catholicism can bring a deep sense of belonging, which is helpful. Why Do Protestants Convert? offers a timely analysis of a cultural trend. Castaldo and Littlejohn show both the embodied weaknesses and potential strengths of the Protestant tradition. Littlejohn closes the book with a theological plea to remain Protestant. He argues that conversion away from biblical, Protestant Christianity “is spiritually dangerous. . . . The issues at stake during the Reformation were not trivial ones” (95). According to the Reformers, the very nature of the gospel was in dispute. The positive case for Protestant Christianity makes this a helpful resource for pastors and ministry leaders trying to disciple church members who are questioning their Protestant roots.

This isn't good.

That's 7% of the US population.

Foreign Affairs Can France’s Rassemblement National Rally Allies? A coalition between the RN and the Gaullists could be mutually beneficial. Credit: SAMEER AL-DOUMY/AFP via Getty Images France’s Fifth Republic is “impervious” to political extremes—or such has been the contention of generations of political scientists. The regime’s institutional design has indeed hampered outsiders. France’s president and lower house of parliament are chosen in two-round contests that are usually held within months of each other. The provision for a run-off and the near-simultaneous election of the executive and legislature act as a firewall against upstarts.  But on Sunday night, for the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, the firewall crumbled: The Rassemblement National trounced both President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling coalition (Ensemble) and a left-wing alliance (the Nouveau Front Populaire) in the first round of elections for the National Assembly. The RN–the perennial bete noire of French politics–scored a third of votes at the national level. In more than three dozen constituencies, the party attained an absolute majority in the initial ballot, removing the need for a run-off. The best-laid plans of Charles de Gaulle had come to naught amid the burgeoning popularity of the “far right.” Macron called these snap elections in the aftermath of a crushing defeat in the European elections, in which the RN doubled the vote share of his party. He cast the race for the National Assembly’s 577 seats as a “Who Governs?” election, believing the RN’s checkered past and inexperience would dissuade enough voters. Macron has now decisively lost that gambit: his Ensemble coalition stands to receive fewer than 100 mandates once the lower house of parliament is selected. After last night’s verdict, only two forces can govern: the RN or chaos.  The RN is unlikely to win an outright majority in the Assembly. The first question facing the party, the first test of rule versus chaos, is whether they will be able to form a governing coalition. Doing so challenges long-held norms of French political culture; yet the prospects are not so hopeless as they once seemed. The RN’s ascent has been at once gradual and vertiginous. Back in 2002, the party’s founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, attracted a mere 20 percent of the vote in the second round of the presidential race. The French public consigned Le Pen père to the fever swamp as a Holocaust denier and an inveterate bigot. Marine Le Pen, who inherited the party from her father, has cared more about capturing power than lobbing antisemitic innuendos over the airwaves. Since taking the reins of the Front National (which she rechristened the RN, in a Gaullist flourish), she has pursued a strategy of dédiabolisation, or detoxification. Le Pen père—in the the tradition of the French right—vociferated against the Fifth Republic, deplored the French Revolution, defended the country’s wartime Vichy Regime, and held Catholic Mass at his rallies. Le Pen fille ends her rallies with chants of Vive la république, promotes herself as a defender of the country’s Jewish community, and recently voted to enshrine the right to abortion in the French constitution. Marine Le Pen’s personal convictions aside, she has proven unwavering in this politics of respectability–so much so that she purged her own father from the party’s ranks.  Marine Le Pen’s RN, freed of paternal encumbrances, can federate many Frenchmen behind its central message: opposition to mass migration and emphasis on the need to restore the authority of the state. The RN’s social profile is no longer restricted to the rogues’ gallery of old: the veterans of Algerie francaise, the nostalgics of Philippe Pétain, the flotsam and jetsam of the Legitimist movement. Le Pen fille’s faction in large measure resembles French society, attracting growing numbers of professionals and elites. The party’s candidate for the premiership is the TikTok star and gendre idéal Jordan Bardella. The party’s new facade has convinced some of the FN’s most determined opponents: Serge Klarsfeld, the famed Nazi-hunter, has appealed to French Jews to back the RN against the left-wing France Insoumise party. In the course of Marine Le Pen’s three presidential runs, the RN has expanded its electorate steadily. Le Pen fille failed to qualify for the run-off in 2012; Macron left her with 33 percent of the vote in 2017; she finally crossed the 40 percent mark in 2022. Macron has pursued divisive policies in his second term that have only aided the RN’s rise, notably a pension reform raising the age of retirement from 62 to 64. Last summer’s race riots further convinced many that mass migration represents an existential threat for the country. The RN’s ascent in the polls has accelerated due to these developments.  Despite the RN’s historic breakthrough, the party’s securing of a majority in parliament is far from a fait accompli. Macron’s Ensemble and the left’s Nouveau Front Populaire have already begun to unite in a front republicain. France’s run-offs can feature three—and even four—candidates in the case of high turnout. The first round results could have produced triangulaires-races between Ensemble, the NFP, and RN in about half of the constituencies. But the NFP and Ensemble have vowed to withdraw third-place finishers in these districts. This accord, announced on live television the night of the election, reduced the RN’s chance of clinching a majority in real time:  The networks BFM-TV and CNews revised down their prediction for the RN’s performance in the second round, from 260–320 seats to 240–270 seats (the party needs 289 seats for a majority). As of press time, Philippe Lemoine, a philosopher and number-cruncher, predicts 265–285 seats for the RN and 16–23 seats for the moderate-right Républicains. The most probable outcome of the second round is a hung parliament. Macron, according to news reports, hopes to assemble a technocratic coalition from among the non-RN parties. But the idea that such disparate factions, running from communists to moderate conservatives, could come to terms seems far-fetched. The French constitution dictates that the new parliament cannot be dissolved for a year. French presidents dispose of broad executive powers, but require a docile parliament to exercise them. Macron’s “arc républicain” might soon descend into chaos and produce a full-blown constitutional crisis. France’s Républicains could save the country from a stalemate. The right-wing party, the much-diminished heirs of De Gaulle, splintered in the run-up to these elections. Eric Ciotti, LR’s erstwhile chief, led several dozen candidates into an alliance with the RN. Ciotti’s move, a break with the republican right’s time-honored cordon sanitaire, precipitated a schism in the party. The LR’s civil war has descended into melodrama—Ciotti at one point locked his opponents out of the party’s headquarters to prevent them from expelling him.  LR’s brass could still follow the same path as their maverick. François-Xavier Bellamy, the party’s standard-bearer in the European elections, has opined that “the far left represents the greater danger” for France. He has refused in private conversations to dismiss the possibility of participating in a coalition with the RN. LR’s other bigwigs have declined to endorse a front républicain, advising adherents to vote their conscience.  On the morrow of the run-off, LR could hold the position of kingmaker, and will have to make a fateful choice: maintain the cordon sanitaire in the name of republican probity or discard it to form a working majority with the RN. LR, which shares much of the RN’s program on migration and security, could advance an ambitious legislative program. LR’s presence in the coalition might also blunt the RN’s latent authoritarian tendencies, ensuring respect for the rule of law and the Fifth Republic’s institutions. The party’s cooperation with the far-right might, on the other hand, deprive it of a raison d’étre and send many of its voters into the arms of Macron’s center. LR’s chiefs ought to pray for the discernment of the late and lamented De Gaulle. The post Can France’s Rassemblement National Rally Allies? appeared first on The American Conservative.