NC Renegades

When Obedience Feels Impossible
By John Piper

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. (Hebrews 11:17)

For many of you right now — and for others of you the time is coming — obedience feels like the end of a dream. You feel that if you do what the word of God or the Spirit of God is calling you to do, it will make you miserable and that there is no way that God could turn it all for good.

Perhaps the command or call of God you hear just now is to stay married or stay single, to stay in that job or leave that job, to get baptized, to speak up at work about Christ, to refuse to compromise your standards of honesty, to confront a person in sin, to venture a new vocation, to be a missionary. And as you see it in your limited mind, the prospect of doing this is terrible — it’s like the loss of Isaac, the only son who can be an heir. 

You have considered every human angle, and it is impossible that it could turn out well.

Now you know what it was like for Abraham. This story is in the Bible for you. 

Do you desire God and his way and his promises more than anything, and do you believe that he can and will honor your faith and obedience by being unashamed to call himself your God, and to use all his wisdom and power and love to turn the path of obedience into the path of life and joy?

That is the crisis you face now: Do you desire him? Will you trust him? The word of God to you is: God is worthy and God is able.

Every Calvary Step Was Love
By John Piper

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us. (1 John 3:16)

The love of Christ for us in his dying was as conscious as his suffering was intentional. If he was intentional in laying down his life, it was for us. It was love. 

“When Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1). 

Every step on the Calvary road meant, “I love you.”

Therefore, to feel the love of Christ in the laying down of his life, it helps to see how utterly intentional it was.

Look at what Jesus said just after that violent moment when Peter tried to cleave the skull of the servant, but only cut off his ear.

Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Matthew 26:52–54) 

It is one thing to say that the details of Jesus’s death were predicted in the Old Testament. But it is much more to say that Jesus himself was making his choices precisely to see to it that the Scriptures would be fulfilled. 

That is what Jesus said he was doing in Matthew 26:54. “I could escape this misery, but how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” 

In other words, I am not choosing to take the way out that I could take, because I know the Scriptures. I know what must take place for my people to be saved. It is my choice to fulfill all that is predicted of me in the word of God. It is my choice — every step of the way — to love my people to the uttermost. And I want them to feel this. And be utterly secure and free and radically different from the world.

So Andy McCabe is going to walk free. How’s that make you feel? I’ll tell you, it royally pisses me off.

Here’s another question, Whose team is Trump actually on? If I hear one person say just wait until the Durham report comes out I think my head will explode.  This is Lawlessness being blatantly flaunted in our face. I guess if you want immunity from the law you just need to donate to the democrats and vote for them often. It’s a big club see, and we ain’t in it. Let me see if I have this right. If I was to lie to the feds I would get 7-10 years in prison, but if you’re a Democrat and lie to the feds you get a promotion to a TV show with a signing bonus and book tour.

I think if Trump really wanted to drain the swamp and set things right he’d fire Barr and Wray before the sun sets today. It seems everyone he has ever appointed to a position of importance has betrayed him, why? I’m beginning to think Trump is just part of the act. Nothing else is making any sense. Everything that we have been holding our breath waiting for has come to nothing. Yet we continue to look away and pretend everything is going to be fine. It makes me sick. It’s getting harder and harder to look in the mirror everyday while all this injustice in our country carries on.

I’m pretty sure Barr was hired to whitewash the crimes of the Deep State. Justice is for sale in America. The Deep State will continue to do as they please because they own our justice department.  Trump and Barr are either inept or complicit. Perhaps Trump is a Trojan horse to get conservatives to support all the things they fought under Obama?

I Pledged Allegiance to the Flag of the once great United States of America, to the Republic for which it claimed to stand. I swore an Oath to Uphold the Constitution against Enemies foreign and Domestic. That Oath never expires.

But we’ve become a Nation under God Forsaken Fools.

Highly Divisible.

The Moral High Ground our nation was built upon has long since eroded.

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Our Nation has become indifferent, Apathetic to the ideals of our forefathers.

The time is here when wolves will try and lay claim to this once great country. Will you be a sheep? Or will you fight the wolves?

 “When is someone going to jail over the crimes that have been committed?”

I’ll answer that for you: NEVER!

The betrayal we face from our government has set us free. For if there be lawlessness what reason do any of us have for obedience?