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Rising to TimBob’s challenge for me to undertake his questions although not specifically tagged, here’s my offering of answers. Enjoy!
( 1 ) “Turn the World Upside Down” If you were called to become a missionary, however, given liberty to choose any place on earth, where would you go and why?
Think it would have to be Israel, partly because I’d really love to live there, but also because
I can think of no better place to undertake sharing the Gospel message – to the people God has chosen for Himself, and whose Messiah I love and serve. I appreciate that proslytising isn’t acceptable, or perhaps even legal within Israel, but it wouldn’t be me doing the “converting” at the end of the day – God chooses whom He Will to hear and respond to His message of redemption and salvation – I’d just be a messenger and thus under no pressure to do anything other than show Jesus’ love to His people.
( 2 ) “Just Tagging Along” What old testament person (or persons) do you think it would have been the most fascinating to have travelled alongside on the journey through life?
Given I desire wisdom in my life above all else, it would have to Solomon – to be like the Queen of Sheba and just sit in his company for days on end listening to his views on everything from being born to dying would be truly awesome.
( 3 ) “Catch phrase” What passage of scripture do you seem to hear others make mention of to the point that it really stands out in frequency?
Hmm – for me it’s
( 4 ) “Extended Forcast” As you ponder the next year; looking into the days ahead, what do you see transpiring? Is this conclusion:
Prophecy is going to be fulfilled in abundance as things continue to hot up in the Middle East. There will be a further war against Israel, which may just fulfil a major prophecy – that of Damascus being flattened. Satan will continue to push people towards bigger and bigger excesses and sins in all areas, and provide more people of power with the arrogance to think they don’t need God and thus the laws of the land will degenerate yet further. Islam will be utterly capitulated to by the West in an effort to try and appease the radicals but in its ignorance the West will end up being taken over piece by piece – Europe is rapidly falling to it already. The rise in the proliferation of all things occultic will continue under the guise of anything goes within Christianity aided by practices and ‘ideologies’ such as The Secret, Labyrinth meditation, New Age teachings, etc, alongside the continued deceptions of so-called harmless films/books etc such as Harry Potter. Oh and the most important thing?? The RAPTURE which could happen at any moment now more than ever. 
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And this is an estimate based upon current trends and circumstances but with the magnifying lens of scripture to aid it!
( 5 ) “A Song of Degrees” What particular hymn or spiritual song do you, upon hearing or singing, find yourself “launched beyond the stratosphere” as you ponder the sheer awesomeness of God and the price that he paid at Calvary to redeem us from everlasting death.
The one that has me totally captivated just now is “How Great Thou Art“ but “Be Thou my vision” is a very close second. Mandate (Robin Mark) sung the latter a few years ago, and jazzed it up ever so slightly, but enough to really make it stand out even more than ever! Ok – know you only asked for one, but I’m giving 3 – the final one being “I stand amazed in the Presence” – again, a slightly faster version of it than usual sung by FocusFest here in N. Ireland in 2004 – totally mind blowing!
“Bonus Question” What person (or persons) were very influential in your decision to accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord?
Only one that I think did, although not obviously at the time in some ways – my Sunday School teacher. I used to totally hate being made to go to SS every week, but despite that fact much of what she said and did must have made some dent in my life, as I became a Christian at 14 – 3 years after she died. It’s only now that I look back and recognise that, at that time, she was probably the only person praying for my salvation – she sadly never saw it here, but will know it in heaven when I meet her again!
Ok – first off, I’m a Methodist but not completely by choice in some respects – it just so happens that this is the denomination the Lord seems to have kept me in through my years – every time I’ve left it for one reason or another, He’s just pulled me back into it again. However, despite this, and until quite recently, I’d never heard the term Arminian used (we don’t go much for labels here in N. Ireland! LOL), and if I did hear it mentioned, I never realised that it was the core basis of Methodism. So once I did discover that, and then went on to understand that Calvinism was its opposite, I started to investigate further. Having since listened to a lot of talks from both sides of the debate, and read plenty too, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that neither is right in its entirety, nor in the absolutes that their stance proclaims. As always, what intruiged me was how both sides could reel off multiple verses to support their stance – takes me right back to the old Rapture debates – pretrib, posttrib, amillenial etc, and again I was reminded that everyone can take verses and use them for their purpose because they refuse to consider any possibility that a slightly lesser stance may actually be more appropriate.
What I think really stood out for me with the hyperCalvinism attitude is that, to me at least, it removed all hope of true free will, since it stated that God alone enabled people to make their choice for Him, and thus they didn’t have a choice in whether they wanted to or not. If that was the case, then why would scripture 
state that Jesus died for everyone – if God already intended that only x% of those alive at any one point would be provided with the means to become Christians by His Will and intent, then Jesus only really died for that x percent and not the rest. If man was not created with total free choice and freedom to make whichever choice s/he desires then we’ve all been lied to by God, and mankind is just an entity out of which God has predetermined He would create a percentage He could then call His own, but who would have no choice in that decision. Reeling off the scriptures about the couple of prophets to whom God stated that he had foreordained for His Work doesn’t cut it with me – they lived pre Jesus and thus salvation wasn’t offered to them in the same manner. So none of those arguments cut much dice with me to be honest. I equally don’t consider that the Arminiast view is 100% correct either, in that it does indeed put ALL of the emphasis onto man, thus leaving out God’s Grace and Holy Spirit’s work in the way in which the arguments are sometimes presented at least.
First off I suppose I should say that I have absolutely no experience of adultery in any shape or form, apart from my father committing it when I was all of 14 or so. But thankfully no personal experience in my own marriage. However, I doubt this is something any of us truly needs to have such enormous personal experience of, to appreciate the horrendous damage it causes to a personal relationship and thus it’s something in our spiritual lives we equally need to take more heed of.
Listening to a sermon today on the many times in scripture that God uses marriage as a foundation for teaching multiple lessons and the ultimate importance of it in respect of the Rapture and the coming Messianic Age.
From the outset God determines that man would cleave to woman in a personal one on one relationship, which He would ordain and maintain, and which would provide each with the fuller completion of their own selves (woman was ‘created’ from man after all, and man lost a part of himself to the woman). However, right from the start Satan used the woman to provoke man’s fall through Adam – whether Adam could have committed this particular sin on his own we don’t know, but he put his wife before God, and thus enabled Satan to achieve his aim in his attempt to change God’s foreordained plan to destroy him. Since that point, relationships have become one of the biggest areas Satan operates in, in his battle to take as many people away from God as possible. Probably the most notable case of open and yet equally deceitful adultery in scripture is the situation of David with Bathsheba. 
He not only lusts after her, but happily gets her husband who trusted him as a friend, killed in battle so that he could have her to himself. But while God judges Him and he repents and is forgiven, he still has to pay a high price for his infidelity – the death of his son to Bathsheba. Sadly I suspect too many nowadays can identify with his story on all fronts – the papers are rife with similar modern day stories with equally similar outcomes. Only difference is the huge lack of true repentance ever shown by the guilty party – in fact, it would appear that once they’ve managed to escape obvious judgement in some cases, they’re more than happy to repeat the offence in the next relationship, heaping yet further coals on their heads. But like David – their day will come, when they will be unable to run from God any longer.
Following on my previous post about weak religions trying to be strong, in Judaism we have the opposite. This is THE faith that all the other monotheistic faiths are built upon, THE faith that hails from the beginning of creation, THE faith that should stand on all the promises of G-D above all others, yet what do we find? Yet another faith that can’t allow its people freedom of choice. Or more importantly – not having faith in the One True G-D of Abraham, Issac and Jacob to exercise HIS power to maintain their belief system.
Here’s the story that’s provoked my discussion on this:
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“Shas Proposes Expanded Bill to Outlaw Missionary Activity”
by Hana Levi Julian (“Israel National News,” March 14, 2007)
Jerusalem, Israel – A record number of Jews converting to Islam last year prompted the Shas Knesset faction Tuesday to propose a bill that would jail missionaries who proselytize to individuals in Israel.
Hareidi-religious Sephardic party spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef urged Shas faction leader MK Yaakov Margi to propose the expansion of the current law against missionary activity after learning that a record number of Jews converted to Islam last year. The existing law mandates six months’ imprisonment for those who attempt to persuade Israeli minors to leave their faith or who perform a conversion ceremony on the children and teens.
