Lyle's Blog

Last October we lost communication with the child we sponsered through Compassion international. He had turned twenty-two years old; we had started with him when he was six years old. Our time with him was over.

Through the years we’d exchange letters and I mostly encouraged him in the Word of God. When he was twelve or so he expressed that he would like me to come to see him because he felt he could learn much from me. I had to tell him we lived too far apart (he was in Ethiopia) for that to happen.

I had looked into it. The trip would cost $3700 plus airfare and entail thirty hours of flight. A six-hour flight was a lot to endure; I couldn’t wrap my head around a trip that long. Even if I made the trip, most of my time would be touring Compassion facilities. Time with Aron would be two to eight hours. To me, that was too little, somewhere between $600 and $2500 an hour for time with him. Money better spent would be on other things.

Are we glad we did it? Yes, of course. Aron has been to vocational school, learned to be a motorcycle mechanic and has a much more secure future. He is now able to take care of his mother which was an important thing to him. My only regret is that I could have done more for him. A few extra dollars would have gone a long way.

I encourage everyone to help a child. Their future is our future. We can’t solve everyone’s situation, but if we concentrate on just one, their lives will benefit those around them. The thing I like about Compassion is that we are helping the country they live in become a better, safer place to call home.

Everyone wouldn’t be fleeing their home countries if the outside free world were lovingly involved in helping them have a better life and exposing them to the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, there’s my pitch for Compassion. It’s been a great experience and seeing a child become a successful adult is humbling and I’m grateful for the privilege. God bless.

The word love is used to describe our passion for everything from chocolate to people that are important to us. Love in many ways is based on our opinions. Does something taste good, make us feel good about life, benefit us or promote something we think is important? That is the criteria for whether we love or not. But is that really love?

The definition of love is given in 1st Corinthians chapter 13. The Message Bible puts it like this: Love never gives up, cares more for others than for self, doesn’t strut or have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, and isn’t always “me first,’. Love doesn’t fly off the handle, or keep score of the sins of others. It doesn’t revel when others grovel or take pleasure in the flowering of the truth. Love puts up with anything. Then it says love trusts God always and looks for the best, never looks back but keeps on going to the end. Love never fails.

My short definition of love is simply a decision we make to do the right thing. All of those things listed above are the right thing to do. Love starts with God and when I think of the love of God, those words describe who He is.

We Christians are getting married someday. We are the bride of Christ. I remember when I first met my wife. I did everything that I could to show her that she was important to me, that I wanted to be with her and do things that she wanted to do. I wanted her to be happy. The only reward I desired was the smile on her face.

Throughout our relationship, I learned to trust her with my heart. Trust is the offspring of love. Everything she does reflects her care and love for me. The same is true for God. His actions demonstrate His love for us.

We say we love God but we have to ask ourselves, are we loving Him in the way I just described with my wife? Do we read His Word so we know what pleases Him? Do we trust Him with our money, our health, our future? Like King David, is it important that we don’t sin? Are we proud of Him. Do we tell others of His goodness?

Christ allowed himself to be formed into the image of mortal flesh. He left the privileged heaven he created and forever became a man. He decided before creation to place himself in the perilous position of being a man. It’s been said that God cannot learn and the maker of the universe surely can’t be taught anything. But I think it was through the incarnation that God felt what it was like to be a man.

Life was hard, sin and its consequences were everywhere; man was suffering and in hardship ever since he was driven out of Eden. There was no hope that anything would ever change. Jesus had compassion on people, healed them, fed them, and even raised them from the dead. He felt as a human feels and wept because men lived under such bondage to sin.

We must do the same for God. We’re born into this world. We find ourselves wrestling with sin. We see a knight in shining armor, one who can deliver us from our plight. We choose to leave ourselves at the cross and follow Him, pursue Him till we are united with Him in Holy communion.

Jesus pleaded with God if there was another way besides the cross to rescue the souls of men, let’s do it that way. The reality of the suffering He would endure he had seen before. Men were brutal, savage in their treatment of each other. He knew what awaited Him. It had to be terrifying for Him. Jesus was to experience what God could not. On the cross, Jesus said, God why have you forsaken me? On the cross, He had become one of us.

We, like Christ, must leave the world we came from.

To love God we have to trust him. The bride believes what the groom has promised. He can be trusted. He will be faithful through sickness and health, rich times and poor times, better or worse. With Christ, there is no death do us part; he died for us. He is forever faithful and at the marriage celebration, we will be like Him, forever faithful.

Our military leaders have issued an executive order to prepare for a possible pandemic. Bases worldwide are screening our troops, families, and anyone they’ve come into contact with. There have only been 15 confirmed cases.

A secretive virus laboratory in Wuhan has reportedly been taken over by Chen Wei, a Major General of the People’s Liberation Army. Chen Wei was flown into Wuhan by the central government late last month before officially taking the helm of Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to a report. There is some speculation that the Institute may be the source of the outbreak.

I’ve been looking over video and pictures of street activity and it appears the police are being quite brutal to their people. One woman was slammed to the ground which made her drop her child on the sidewalk.

I’m hoping enough of our young Communist sympathizers see this and reflect on the true nature of Communism and question the merits of living under tyranny. Their mask is off and the face of China is frightening.

Foreign aid is given to countries because we insist they do certain things, in other words, a bribe. The law requires the president to investigate corruption in a government before aid is released. Joe Biden openly admitted he would withhold one billion dollars if Ukraine didn’t fire the prosecutor who was looking into corruption in Burisma.

Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries and the new leader of Ukraine won his office on promises to investigate and clean up corruption. Proudly turning a blind eye to corruption just because of party affiliation is beyond the pale; this is what Democrats do. They are corrupt.

The DNC and Hillary Clinton paid for the Russian collusion hoax. I thought it was wrong to involve foreign countries in the process of digging up dirt on your opponent. The Democrats are above the law. Democrats are like the Pharisees of Biblical times. They spend huge amounts of time pointing out the speck in your eye but have huge planks in their eyes.

In politics, hypocrisy has become a cottage industry in the Democratic Party. They’ve become so successful at it that to question them is out of the realm of possibility. They are holy; we are not.

It’s terrifying how many “Americans” believe this tripe but they do. This progressive assault on common sense and logic has been in the making for decades and the result is the rejection of everything moral.

The same old promotion of equality over merit is sweet to the ignorant poor who live off the generosity of a corrupt state. We can not make people smarter, less self-centered, or more ambitious. What we must do is, at all costs, is to stop rewarding irresponsible and criminal behavior with tax money.

Till the government tit runs dry nothing will change. What will actually happen? We will suffer the consequences of living off debt. If the resistance of the left doesn’t result in a dictatorship now then it most assuredly will when the unfunded liabilities can’t be supported and society collapses under the weight of that debt.

The election of Donald Trump set the system free from regulatory mayhem which has resulted in a robust economy. Democrats hate capitalism, Christianity, and the nuclear family. The power of the state and the dependency of the populace is the holy grail of democratic thought.

In the Bible, we see the stories of “good” kings and “bad” kings. The good ones reform for a while and then the people along with their leader get tired of all that righteous living and the bad king comes in a furnishes their thirst for lust.

I’m old enough now to understand what the Bible teaches. Work while there is light because darkness comes when no man can work. It’s appointed unto man once to die and then the judgment.