NC Renegades

Grace Denied and Supplied
By John Piper

Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. (Acts 14:22)

The need for inner strength arises not just from the depletions of everyday stress, but from the suffering and afflictions that come from time to time. And they do come.

Suffering is inevitably added to heart-weariness on the way to heaven. When it comes, the heart may waver and the narrow way that leads to life may look impossibly hard. It’s hard enough to have a narrow road and steep hills that test the old jalopy’s strength to the limit. But what shall we do when the car breaks down?

Paul cried out three times with this question because of some affliction in his life. He asked for relief from his thorn in the flesh. But God’s grace did not come in the form he asked. It came in another form. Christ answered, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Here we see grace given in the form of Christ’s sustaining power in unrelieved affliction — one grace given, we could say, within the circle of another grace denied. And Paul responded with faith in the sufficiency of this future grace: “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

God often blesses us with a “grace given” in the circle of “grace denied.” 

For example, on a beastly hot day in July, the water pump on our car stopped working, and twenty miles from any town we were stranded on the interstate in Tennessee.

I had prayed that morning that the car would work well and that we would come to our destination safely. Now the car had died. The grace of trouble-free travel had been denied. No one was stopping as we stood around our car. Then my son Abraham (about eleven at the time) said, “Daddy, we should pray.” So we bowed behind the car and asked God for some future grace — a help in time of need. When we looked up, a pickup truck had pulled over.

The driver was a mechanic who worked about twenty miles away. He said he would be willing to go get the parts and come back and fix the car. I rode with him to town and was able to share the gospel with him. We were on our way in about five hours.

Now the remarkable thing about that answer to our prayer is that it came inside the circle of a prayer denied. We asked for a trouble-free trip. God gave us trouble. But in the midst of a grace denied, we got a grace supplied. And I am learning to trust God’s wisdom in giving the grace that is best for me and for unbelieving mechanics and for the watching faith of eleven-year-old boys.

We should not be surprised that God gives us wonderful graces in the midst of suffering that we had asked him to spare us. He knows best how to apportion his grace for our good and for his glory.

Interesting Conversation if you have the time.

I spent the last few days in Virginia at my home away from home. Here’s my intel report from the rural mountain area of Virginia.

The local news has stopped reporting on the gun control agenda and the 2A sanctuary movement. Not a peep. The local newspapers had no mention of them either, other than a story on a Republican Councilman who was retiring after voting NO on making his area a 2A Sanctuary.

My neighbors said that the newspapers had been printing false information on town hall meetings. Said that votes were not going to be taking place when in fact they did. Seems the powers that be didn’t want the people coming to express their opinions. Neighbors also stated that buses have already been chartered for taking people to the capitol on the 20th. They are expecting thousands from their area to travel.

Ammo is being purchased as quickly as possible. The sound of Gunfire could be heard throughout the hills during the day. The people are pissed and they are ready and preparing. Who knows what will happen on the 20th. I have yet to decide on going. While I am not a full time resident there, I do have an interest there. If I get any other news from my neighbors there I will pass it along.

Wes

God’s Will Is That You Draw Near
By John Piper

Let us draw near with a true heart.(Hebrews 10:22)

The command we are given in this passage is to draw near to God. The great aim of the writer of the book of Hebrews is that we get near God, that we have fellowship with him, that we not settle for a Christian life at a distance from God.

This drawing near is not a physical act. It’s not building a tower of Babel by your achievements to get to heaven. It’s not necessarily going to a church building. Or walking to an altar at the front. It is an invisible act of the heart. You can do it while standing absolutely still, or while lying in a hospital bed, or on the train as you commute to work.

This is the center of the gospel — this is what the garden of Gethsemane and Good Friday are all about — that God has done astonishing and costly things to draw us near to himself. He has sent his Son to suffer and to die so that through him we might draw near. Everything that he has done in the great plan of redemption is so that we might draw near. And that nearness is for our joy and for his glory. 

He does not need us. If we stay away, he is not impoverished. He does not need us in order to be happy in the fellowship of the Trinity. But he magnifies his mercy by giving us free access through his Son, in spite of our sin, to the one Reality that can satisfy our souls completely and forever, namely, himself. “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

This is God’s will for you, even as you read this. This is why Christ died: that you would draw near to God.

Maxine Waters comes in at minute 3:00.

As John avers in his excellent review below, the Virginia kerfuffle will be much ado about nothing in January 2020. Non-compliance with existing law is legion in the inland West of the USSA and even the Sovietized states like CT and NY have seen very little compliance with pants-wetting weapons prohibition laws and ordnances.

The real fight will be mass registration if no grandfathering is offered, that will be an undiscovered country. All thinking humans know that weapons registration is the necessary step to confiscation so it will be fascinating to see how forced registration of cosmetically offensive long guns in concert with an absence of grandfathering will pan out. Comrade-Governor Ralph Wescottovich Northam appears to be taking one of the bolder steps in weapons prohibition that even Calizuela has not tried. I will stand corrected if a reader could name a state that has required registration of long guns with no grandfathering, That is the flashpoint.

The 2A is worth the paper it’s printed on. The 2A is a sham to protect weapons ownership. It has no teeth whatsoever. If it did, how could the 1934 NFA, 1938 FFA, the decision in US v. Miller in 1939, 1968 GCA, Nixon’s pogrom against handguns, the 1986 FOPA, Bushevik I’s ban on foreign cosmetically offensive weapons in 1989, the NICs, the AWB all the way to the conservative zombie Scalia’s Leninist bromide about “dangerous and unusual weapons” be protection of private weapons ownership? On and on and on.

And always keep in mind this is a communist war on private weapons ownership in America; the vision of the government supremacists is total monopoly on long gun violence. The Federal government and its state subsidiary apparatchiks will continue to keep the weapons industry humming in the USSA to support it legions of coproaches and equip the armed forces in their perennial pyrrhic defeats planet-wide. The American imperial project has never had an interest in victory; the constant war is a sophisticated money-laundering operation for the military industrial complex in concert with a national government penchant for strategic deficit disorder hence the trillions spent on weapons systems that don’t work, cost too much or are an operational anachronism once fielded.

Virginia. The cradle of classical republican virtue and breadbasket of American enlightened liberalism. It is the alleged start of the Party in 2020. This remains to be seen.

The main problem confronting ‘Murkan-Spartan warriors is the current acceptance of the existing gun control regulatory superstructures in place already by nearly all. I’m talking about the Federal Firearms Licenses, background checks, 4473’s, NFA registry and the myriad of laws and regulations surrounding it. Great, you hold onto your grandfathered rifle. You don’t register it. But you also can’t buy anymore to outfit your children, neighbors or new “group members.” The legal penalties of riding around with an unregistered weapon for their “truck gun” will probably outweigh the cost of not having it. Training with your unregistered weapon at public shooting ranges will become risky. 2a sanctuaries, just like Oathkeepers, effectively enshrine the current draconian restrictions and thousands of gun laws as being “constitutional” and in compliance with freedom. It’s a no win.

When the guns do get taken while you get pulled over on a traffic stop and they find your illegal, unregistered, truck gun, the confiscator won’t be speaking Russian or wearing a blue helmet. The blue helmet analogy profited by the Lumpen-Patriotariat in my view is nothing but a way to de-personalize the actual enforcers of the laws they claim they will break, and keep their fantasy alive.

Well worth the time to Read the whole Article Here…

During an emergency parliamentary session this morning, the Iraqi government just voted to have foreign troops removed from the country.

Interim Iraqi prime minister, Adil Abdul Mahdi, stressed during the session, that while the US government notified the Iraqi military of the planned strike on Soleimani, his government denied Washington permission to continue with the operation.

As RT reports, Mahdi said after the incident that it was clear it was in the interest of both the US and Iraq to end the presence of foreign forces on Iraqi soil.

“Despite the internal and external difficulties that we might face, it remains best for Iraq on principle and practically.”

Still there are plenty more US bases around…

More…

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Our founding principles are not reflected in our American “vision” as dictated by today’s federal government. What happens to the soldiers when they are no longer useful? What a waste of blood and treasure to line the rulers’ pockets. Imagine if we went back to the vision of our forefathers concerning defense, education, federal expenditures and public virtue. At least President Trump re-instituted a fairer trade and tariff policy.

David DeGerolamo

Our Toothless Enemy
By John Piper

You, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. (Colossians 2:13–15)

The reason that union with Christ makes a great difference for the believer is that Christ achieved a decisive triumph over the devil at Calvary. He did not remove Satan from the world, but he disarmed him to the extent that the weapon of damnation was stripped from his hand. 

He cannot accuse believers of unforgiven sin. Which is the only accusation that can destroy us. And therefore, he cannot bring us to utter ruin. He can hurt us physically and emotionally — even kill us. He can tempt us and incite others against us. But he cannot destroy us.

The decisive triumph of Colossians 2:13–15 is owing to the fact that “the record of debt that stood against us” was nailed to the cross. The devil made that record his chief accusation against us. Now he has no accusation that can hold in the court of heaven. He is helpless to do the one thing he wants to do most: damn us. He can’t. Christ bore our damnation. The devil is disarmed.

Another way to say it is in Hebrews 2:14–15: “[Christ became human] that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”

Death is still our enemy. But it is defanged. The viper’s poison has been drained away. The deadly sting is gone. The sting of death was sin. And the damning power of sin was in the demand of the law. But thanks be to Christ who satisfied the law’s demand. “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).

I saw a comment today stating that an earlier comment did not make the grade to be published. I went to the trash folder and there were several comments there that normally would not be flagged as trash. I restored and approved them. If a comment was meant to be deleted by its original author, please delete it. I will monitor the trash section to see if this continues.

David DeGerolamo