February 29, 2016 #PrayerRequest

February 29, 2016 #PrayerRequest

My fellow Christians and non-believers alike, I have a special prayer request for all who desire the Lord’s hand in our lives daily, throughout our nation and throughout the world as a whole.

So much is going on in this world today from apathy and corruption to hatred, murder and terrorism.  Many of us state that we’re tired of it and we want someone to do something about it.  I agree but I believe that “someone” is each one and all of us.

I believe that we as a nation of peoples and citizens of the world need to take action and conduct a time of adjoined prayer.

I am asking everyone to set aside 9:00 pm (1800) (where ever you happen to be in this world at your 9:00 pm (1800), where many people will be praying at one time for a 24-hour period) for a few minutes of prayer in which, we start with acknowledgement and praise to the Lord, our sovereign God, creator of everything from just His spoken word; let us give thanks to him for His creation and His sacrifice of His Son, Christ Jesus as payment for the sins of all people; thanks to him for His grace and forgiveness for whoever believes in the sacrifice of Jesus, that he died and was resurrected, conquering even death, and that we accept this gift from Him with a humble heart; let us ask for our own forgiveness and for Him to tenderize our hearts to forgive others that we know or believe have done us wrong; let us pray for a resolution and true unity of our families, communities and nations; let us pray for God’s will to be done by all and that He bring us the return of Christ Jesus, Sovereign Ruler, King of Kings and King of Glory sooner rather than later.  Let us pray that He ends the suffering of our children.

You will not be alone–If you are a single person, your prayers will be adjoined by the Holy Spirit to the families, friends, groups and other peoples throughout the world as part of one voice, one prayer to the One True God.

Matthew 18:19 (NIV)

“Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.

I will speak to as many people as I can and pray daily over the next 40 days for the Lord to open the hearts and minds of as many people that are willing.  You are welcome to join me in these daily prayers, as well.

1 Kings 8:28 (NIV)

Yet give attention to your servant’s prayer and his plea for mercy, Lord my God. Hear the cry and the prayer that your servant is praying in your presence this day.

If you are willing, forward, copy and paste, transfer, speak to your family and friends and ask others to join in a worldwide prayer for the defeat over evil in our individual lives so that we may make a true Spiritual difference in our individual worlds.

For those of you who say that you do not believe, now…get a head start while there is still time for there will come a day when:

Philippians 2:9-11 (NIV)

9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,

10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

I make this request in humility as a son of the Living God, in the name of Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior, Amen.

 

 

Don’t Fall For It…

This is going to be short and to the point.

(Disclaimer:  I’m not a stock broker, nor am I a professional or Certified Financial Planner.  This post is based on my personal opinion and not intended to be considered by anyone sane or not, as financial advice; or characterization of anyone in the financial industry.  If you think this is about you, it’s all in your head.)

My wife is interested in her retirement account because of the stock market “correction” of the past week.  Not wanting to be the Mr. Know-It-All guy that I usually think I am, I called the Retirement Planning guy at the bank and left a message with the bank teller asking for him to contact my wife to tell her how he is going to keep her from losing a lot of money in her account.  He calls her but didn’t get her.  He left a voicemail stating that “he’s” not worried about the current downturn and that she shouldn’t worry because her account is not exposed to the Asian stocks…and, besides, she’s only lost about 4%.

Her account is not exposed to Asian stocks but according to my calculator with today’s end-of-day losses, she has lost 8% in the past several days.  Has nothing to do with Asian stocks — it is a panic sell off disguised as a correction.

When the time is right, we will re-evaluate her IRA, and I think, the Retirement Planning guy, too.

Folks, let us not panic during these sell offs, it happens.  In the same consideration, don’t fall for a broker who says, “don’t worry, it will come back.”  Yeah?  You think maybe before we retire?

Be concerned…it’s not his money, yet.

I’m just sayin’

Jay 😮

1 Peter 5:7  Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.

 

Where Are They?

How many times have you found a post or blog that you like, click follow, and then never hear from them again?

Occasionally, like this morning, I go to the Blogs I Follow list and click on different blogs just to see what they’re up to.  Often, I see that they have not posted in the past 2 to 6 months–I wonder why?  Did something happen to them?  Did life get in the way?  Should I secretly mourn they’re passing?  I know I took about a month off between posts to take care of things in my life but I didn’t go away, I still read other posts.

Now, just as everyone doesn’t like all of my posts, sometimes I don’t like all of someone else’s.  We’re that way.  We like what we like, when we like it.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in a blog overall.  I am, otherwise, why would I expect to see someone?  Why else would I look for their perspective?

At one point, they captured my attention but now they’re gone.

Shane, or whoever you are, come back.  Oh!  What’s that shiny thing over there?  Is that another blog I might be interested in?

Jay 🙂

 

It’s Time To Move On…

No, this is not a solemn occasion, this is reality.

It was another great busy day.  The furry kids didn’t climb all over me yesterday morning; my wife breezed through on her way out the door and kissed me goodbye and wished me a happy birthday; bible study, a nice fresh cup of joe, and off to work I went.  That’s when things got busy.

Of course it was the last day of the work month and everyone calling to make their payments, rentals, inquiries, some additional things with my boss in town because of the snow we had the day before which postponed events; and end of month reports.  The drive home was nice, I got to talk to my dad but missed a call from my daughter–it was really nice that she texted (I hope that is a word) me a really cool special birthday e-card.

Furry kids, my honey, mom-in-law, pizza, cards in the mail and then, for desert mind you 😉 my wife made this way cool chocolate cake, dark chocolate icing with chocolate chips inside the icing and, if that’s enough, raspberry filling — oh yeah.  And my wife was concerned it didn’t come out right and I wouldn’t like it — ha ha!  I win again.  She’s so good to me.

Later, I got calls from one of my cousins and one of my brothers to catch up — we do that for our birthdays; and many birthday wishes on various social media, thank you all.

My dad sent me a package.  In it were some items that had belonged to his mother, some important papers that had belonged to him that are now belong to me; and, much to my surprise, papers concerning me that he had kept for all these years–high school report cards, middle school report cards, letters, poems and stories I had written and forgotten existed, childhood immunizations, letters the Navy wrote to my dad to let him know that ownership had changed from him to me, papers that went back to the beginning, a copy of my birth certificate.  In essence, my paper childhood.  It was an interesting trip back in time — some things came back to me.  And while on that trip down memory lane, I realized, if I had not before, birthdays are reminders that it’s time to move on.  Not in the sense that you forget your childhood, youth and younger years but move on in the sense that we don’t stay back there.  Live today and look forward to tomorrow because yesterday is done…it had its time and that’s why we have memories.  Dad always knows…

And, to add to the goodbye of my younger years, I had a moment to say goodbye to Leonard Nimoy, a man who entertained me most of my life.  A man I knew from childhood as Mr. Spock.  A man who took me on impossible missions and in search of interesting things.  I pray that his search is over and he rests forever in peace in the glory of the Lord.

My time is short today, my honey is out with her mom and the guys are here to build the closet but the furry kids are relaxed,

Before I go, I think I’ll have another piece of cake and a cup of coffee.  Let me eat cake…I’ll move on with my life just a little later.

I am truly thankful for my life…Thank you, God.

Jay 🙂

 

Yes, Brian Has A New Knee…

For the many of you who responded to Brian’s plight and battle with bone cancer, thank you for all your prayers and well wishes.

The surgery was yesterday and lasted several hours.  The doctor told Ashleigh that they believe they were able to remove all of the cancer cells (yea!).  They removed bone and replaced the entire knee.  I’m not sure of everything involved but Brian is up walking right now as I type this update.  He is in quite a bit of pain but I would hope that is small compared to the alternative.

I give thanks to the Lord for this outcome and pray for a complete and quick recovery period.  He’s still a knucklehead but he’s our knucklehead.

Again, thank you all for your concern, compassion, prayers and well wishes.

Jay 🙂

 

Do we know our audience?

If possible, we must slake our paucity of compassion for the illiteracy and ignorance of the common man; we must lend ourselves to encouragement and assistance to his need, lest he be bound to that blight for perpetuity.   Me

com·mu·ni·ca·tion

noun \kə-ˌmyü-nə-ˈkā-shən\

: the act or process of using words, sounds, signs, or behaviors to express or exchange information or to express your ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc., to someone else                    m-w.com

(US Sniper team Radio): tank convoy is currently stationary at the intersection, looks like it’s preparing to move with BTRs. Break. Command, requesting air support, recommend AGM loaded UAVs to neutralize convoy. Over

“Breaking it down Barney-style”

Refers to the kid show “Barney and Friends.” When something is broken down “Barney-style,” it’s being explained as if to a child.  Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/military-phrases-2013-12#ixzz3FTSMxHLY

Do we know our audience?  Do we communicate with our audience or expect our audience to already understand what we are attempting to communicate?

How many times have we provided instructions to someone at work, or even a client only to find out later that the message was not clearly received?  Knowing your audience makes considerable difference.  If you are an electrician, a carpenter or a plumber, you will most likely explain the job to the average client as though you were speaking to a child to enhance their understanding ensuring less questioning during, and less hassle at the end of the job.  Now, if your client, in their younger days, was a general contractor, you will be able to speak more in terms of the job and the message will be received with little or no problem.  (Chances are, they’ll instruct you some, too.)

When writing, we don’t have the pleasure of immediate interaction so anticipating our diverse audience comprehension is important to the success of our communication.  If we write to teach, our audience is not expected to already know our subject.  If writing to others in our field of expertise but communicating changes in procedure or a new idea, we can expect that our words and ideas will be mostly understood.  If we are in an advanced field of expertise and our audience is close to or on our same level, we also want to be careful not to bore them out of their skulls by dumbing down our subject matter to reach an audience that doesn’t exist.

When telling a story, writing for entertainment purposes, the genre will often determine our audience.  Science fiction of all types, romance, horror, etc., will attract it’s respective following.  However, we reduce our audience when we decide that the language level must be highly complex based on our education level alone.  The word, ebullient may be a great word to describe champagne but may also distract the reader from an otherwise smooth running story if they have to stop reading to look up the word.  Too many of those words and the reader will discard the story for one easier to follow.

It is not going to hurt our audience one bit to increase their vocabulary–it certainly didn’t hurt me to discover the word ebullient but I’m willing to look it up without being completely distracted.  After reviewing the dictionary, I re-read the paragraph with enlightened understanding of what the writer was saying about the situation.

Know Your Readers

‘Literacy and the reading habits are of major importance in communicating with your audience. A document may be “plain” for one set of readers and not for others. Writers often wrongly assume that their audience is of the same class of readers.They are often surprised to learn that very large numbers of readers cannot read what they have written.’  Plain Language At Work Newsletter

 [According to: The Brain Lady Blog Psychology and Brain Science, Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D.

100 Things You Should Know About People: #54 — The Average Reading Level In the USA Is Grade 8   

This web page has a reading level of Grade 12 and a reading ease score of 40. Americans average a reading level of Grade 8, so 12 is harder than the average American can read. For the reading ease score, higher is better. Comic books are at 90, and legal documents are often 10 and under.]

Know Yourself

Who are you and what are you trying to say?  In order for the audience to know you and your subject, just say it as you would normally say it.  Be yourself, unless you’re an ass–then be less of yourself.  😉  Not everyone is an intercoursing idiot but nor does most everyone lack understanding of language (see what I mean–more than one way to say the same thing).  Know what you want or need to say and say it in a way that can be understood by as many as you can reach.

So, does our personal lack of compassion for people who don’t have the same understanding or education get in the way of us reaching others?  Only each individual can answer that question for themselves.

Just thinking out loud…

Jay 🙂