Let me give you a little background first though.  I’m going through a kind of tumultuous time of life.  I’m finishing up highschool, and many of the things I have been doing for years are coming to an end.  Now, I’m not the kind of person who likes change in any shape or form.   So with everything comfortable and familiar ending, I feel rather lost.  Also, recently I’ve come to realize that I lack purpose in my life.  Everyone around me is heading off to college, their heads full of dreams of what they will become.  Me, I know I’m staying home to help my parents, but beyond that I don’t really have a dream in life that I’m striving for.  Plus there are all the issues with our government weighing on my mind.  Added to this is a tournament this weekend that I feel rather unqualified to be competing in.  Thus life seems to be crashing down on me.

Then yesterday I was cleaning and listening to my mp3 player.  Now, because I have this problem for making decisions, I had it on random so I wouldn’t have to decide which album to listen to.   Despite having a task before me that should have taken more of my attention, my stomach was starting to churn thinking of all the pressures weighing on me.  Then I noticed what song started playing on my mp3 player. 

Surround Me by The Swift

“You always know what to do when I need You.
You come through. Make my old brand new.
That’s what You do.

You always know what to do.
When life seems to much to take.
And I can’t hang on to it.
You open Your arms and You tell
me to hang on to You

(Chorus)
At the top of my lungs
At the end of my rope
When there’s nothing to lose
And I’m fresh out of hope.
You surround me.
You surround me.
You surround me.

Everytime I try, everytime I fail.
You surround me, You surround me.”

I almost started to cry.  This was exactly what I needed to hear.  Then many simliar songs began to play and every single one had to do with trusting God through the hard times.  Songs about life going crazy, but knowing there is a safe place in God’s arms.  It was truly amazing!  God spoke to me through my mp3 player, reminding me that my focus shouldn’t be on my problems, but on Him.

It is amazing as you read through the Psalms just how many times it speaks about God’s steadfast love.  Many of these times, the psalmist starts off in the pit of despair.  But in the end he remembers his focus should be on the one sure thing in this world.  God.  Take Psalm 13 for instance.  It begins asking God if He will forget him forever and let his enemies trample him.  Then is ends with “But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.  I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.” (Psalm 13:5,6)

I’ll end with the words of Psalm 46

¹God is our refuge and strength,
   a very present help in trouble.
²Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
   though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
³though its waters roar and foam,
   though the mountains tremble at its swelling.
                         Selah
 ⁴There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
   the holy habitation of the Most High.
⁵ God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
   God will help her when morning dawns.
⁶ The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
   he  utters his voice, the earth melts.
⁷ The LORD of hosts is with us;
   the God of Jacob is our fortress.
                         Selah

  ⁸Come, behold the works of the LORD,
   how he has brought desolations on the earth.
⁹ He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
   he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
   he burns the chariots with fire.
¹⁰“Be still, and know that I am God.
   I will be exalted among the nations,
   I will be exalted in the earth!”
¹¹ The LORD of hosts is with us;
   the God of Jacob is our fortress.
                         Selah

 ² Worship the LORD with gladness;
       come before him with joyful songs.

 ³ Know that the LORD is God.
       It is he who made us, and we are his;
       we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

 ⁴ Enter his gates with thanksgiving
       and his courts with praise;
       give thanks to him and praise his name.

 ⁵ For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
       his faithfulness continues through all generations.

~Psalm 100

You’re strong, I’m weary
I’m holding on
But I feel like giving in
But still You’re with me

Chorus:
And even though I’m walking
Through the valley of the shadow
I will hold tight to the hand of Him
Whose love will comfort me
And when all hope is gone
And I’ve been wounded in the battle
He is all the strength that I will ever need
He will carry me

I know I’m broken
But You alone
Can mend this heart of mine
You’re always with me

(Chorus)
And even though I’m walking
Through the valley of the shadow
I will hold tight to the hand of Him
Whose love will comfort me
And when all hope is gone
And I’ve been wounded in the battle
He is all the strength that I will ever need
He will carry me

And even though I feel so lonely
Like I have never been before
You never said it would be easy
But You said You’d see me through the storm

(Chorus)
And even though I’m walking
Through the valley of the shadow
I will hold tight to the hand of Him
Whose love will comfort me
And when all hope is gone
And I’ve been wounded in the battle
He is all the strength that I will ever need
He will carry me”

~Mark Schultz

But during this time of fear, God caused me to see His omnipotence and feel His comfort.  In small ways every evening, as I had to go to Him to take away my fears of being alone in a large house.  However, there was one major occurrence that showed me His marvelous grace!

Part of my house sitting included taking care of the family’s dog.  His name was Chester, and he was a hoot.   Every time I saw him, he always had a reservoir of energy that needed to be used up.  I don’t think he ever got tired, no matter how much I chased him around the yard, or threw balls for him to chase.  Despite being a bundle of pure energy, he was a real sweetie.  Every night, before bringing him in, we would sit on the steps and I would pet him as we gazed at the stars.  (Well, I gazed at the stars.  He was more interested in taking in the yard’s landscape.   )  But, one day, he gave me a real scare.

One Tuesday morning I woke up late, and had to hustle home for school.  When I let Chester out, I considered forgoing my usual trip outside with him, but something made me go out despite being late.  As I walked around the yard, I spied some torn up cardboard.  The house backed up to a greenbelt, so I often saw trash back there that had blown in.  Most days, I didn’t pay attention to the trash, however something made me stop and read the cardboard fragments.  The words that met my curious eyes were, “Mouse Kill.”  A few seconds passed.  The reality began to sink in that Chester had torn up this box, and must have gotten to the poison.  Hurriedly, I searched the yard for the four packets of poison.  Two were right next to the remnants of the box.  They were torn open as well, and empty.  A thorough search turned up only one more packet that was unopened.  To this day, we don’t know what happened to the fourth packet.

Unsure of what to do, I called home and told my mom what I had found.  The hint of panic in her voice told me that things were worse than I had first thought.  I hadn’t had any contact with rat poison before, and didn’t know it’s effects.  But upon reaching home, I found out.  Most of the rat poisons on the market are blood thinners.  The way they work is they make the animal bleed internally to death.  After reading this I felt sick.  My only desire was to go to my room and sob until this terrible tragedy had passed.  This was just awful!  This poor dog was going to die a painful death, and it was on my watch!  Unfortunately, I didn’t get in my cry.  After our family Bible time, Dad and I went back to the house to watch the dog and look more closely at the packaging.

Shortly after arriving back at the house, Dad was on their computer with the cardboard fragments in front of him.  The results of his google search brought some relief.  It turns out that that particular poison was a neurotoxin.  So, instead of bleeding to death, Chester’s nervous system would be attacked.  (Now, there is an important piece of information I’ve neglected to share.  We had deduced that it had been at least twelve hours between the time Chester had possibly eaten the poison and when I found the remnants.  Thus, doing charcoal or a stomach pump would have been useless.  So, whatever had happened was irreversible.)  Dad called our friends, the owners, and it was decided to take Chester to the vet.

Boy, was that a nightmare!  Chester was terrified to death of the vet.  Yet, she insisted on trying to check his eyes, ears and legs.  For her persistence, Dad got a ripped shirt and all of us are now sporting nearly shattered ear drums.  What made it worse was that they told us all we could do was wait and watch.  They did give us some hope however.  The peak of neurotoxins is between 2 and 12 hours.  We knew it had been longer than that, so it appeared he would come out all right as symptoms should have shown up by then.  The next couple of days I checked on Chester more often than normal, and he never exhibited any reactions to the poison!

So how was God’s hand working in all this?  They way we see it, it happened is one of three ways.  Either some other animal tore up the box (which I personally think unlikely), or Chester didn’t eat any of the poison, but simply tore the packaging up.  Or, God caused the poison to not do their evil deeds in that dog’s body.  Whatever truly happened, I know that God worked a miracle.  It was a miracle if Chester ate the poison, or it was a miracle that he didn’t.

So, even though that was an emotionally trying time, I learned something invaluable.  God worked a miracle in that dog.  He is an all-powerful God, surpassing all knowledge, and is bigger than all things.  Yet, He chose to work in my life by showing He cared about such small, insignificant things as that dog and me.  Through this trial, I got a taste of the goodness of God.

Though we forget it, God cares and thinks of us every second of every day.  In the Bible, Paul wrote how Jesus upholds the universe by His mighty word.  God is actively holding every atom in the universe together.  If He ever failed to think about you for one second, you would cease to exist.  Sometimes we feel all alone in a situation that is out of control.  We need to understand that it is not just when we desperately need help that God remembers us.  We are always on His mind and His heart.  Stop and think about that for a second.  This realization should make you fall prostrate before your God in complete awe.  This is what I learned in during that trial.  And the dog is still a bundle of energy to this day!

Praise the Lord, for His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness continues to all generations!!

~Tee-Kaye

In two words the answer is, Cultural Marxism.  Today I will give you a brief history of Cultural Marxism, the teachings and dangers of this doctrine, and what we as Christians must do to combat this enemy.

The man who started it all, Karl Marx, lived from 1818-1883.  His self stated goal in life was, “to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.”  He cannot be described as either an atheist or an agnostic, for he knew that God existed, but hated Him.  Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto, which laid the foundations for Marxism and Communism.  He dreamt of a utopian society, where everything would be controlled by the government, and be devoid of God and the economics of capitalism.  In his book, he laid out the 10 planks of Communism.  Once these were reached, Communism would reign.  While his theories were never realized in his lifetime, they continue to grow in strength and popularity.

In 1923, Marx’s followers founded a base of operations in Frankfurt, Germany, called the Institute for Social Research, also known informally as the Frankfurt School.  It’s purpose was to train next-generation Marxists, and make plans for spreading Communism.  But, to their surprise, the people were resistant to a Communist revolution.  Therefore, Marxists Antonio Gramsci, and later Max Horkheimer, decided that they needed a new approach.  Charles A. Reich summarized their new strategy in his book, The Greening of America. “There is a revolution coming.  It will not be like revolutions in the past.  It will originate with the individual and the culture, and will change the political structure as it’s final act.  It will not require violence to succeed, and cannot be successfully resisted with violence.  This is the revolution of the New Generation.”  Thus, their focus was removed from Marx’s economics and transferred to culture.  They needed to change the people’s mind before their revolution would occur.  As Gramsci said, “Marxise the inner man… to alter the Christian mind and turn it into it’s opposite in all it’s details so that it would become not merely a non-christian mind but an anti-christian mind.”  How did they propose to do this?  Horheimer provided the answer.  He was also very interested in Freud, and he took many of Freud’s ideas and married them with Marx’s.  The result was Critical Theory and Psychological Conditioning.

The first, Critical Theory, is basically what it’s name implies.  It is simply merciless criticizing of your opponents views.  However, in so doing, you never mention what you stand for.  Only what you are against.  Critical Theory is used by most of America now, but it is not called Critical Theory.  It now goes by the name of Political Correctness.  The way that it is practiced is that people take offense at everything.  Usually things that aren’t offensive.  Let me ask you a question.  Are you afraid to share your beliefs, or speak the truth in love because someone might take offense?  If so, then Political Correctness has accomplished it’s goal.

The second, Psychological Conditioning, is much more subtle.  Lenin described it perfectly when he said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”  Marxists are careful not to throw the whole lie in our face at once.  They feed us little bits at a time, slowly desensitizing us to their lies.  But how are their godless deceptions disseminated throughout the U.S.?  The Marxists have gotten into our universities, schools, Hollywood and the media.  Through the schools they are able to indoctrinate the next generation.  Then they can desensitize everyone else through the entertainment and media.

The Marxists biggest enemy has always been the family.  So it is not surprising to see that many of their teachings were aimed at destroying the family.  Shulamith Firestone wrote in 1970, “Marx was onto something more profound than he realized when he observed that the family contained within itself in embryo all of the antagonisms which later develop on a wider scale within the society and the state… [U]nless revolution uproots the basic organization, the biological family… the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated.”  We see other evidences of this in Cleon Skousen’s book, the Naked Communist.  In this book, he listed the 45 goals that Communists had for America, many of which have been reached.  A few are; #17 – Get control of the schools.  Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current communist propaganda.  #22 – Gain control of key positions in radio, TV and motion pictures.  #25 – Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.  #26 – Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as ‘normal, natural, healthy.’  #41 – Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents.  Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.  And finally, #41 – Discredit the family as an institution.  Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.  As you can see, all of these, especially the last few, were aimed at destroying the family.  Unfortunately, they have won a great victory in this area.

Now the question we must ask and answer should be, “What are we to do about it?  What is our battle plan?”

First, we must diligently study the Bible.  It is impossible to grapple with an enemy if you don’t even know where you stand.  This difficulty is only heightened when you are against an enemy that is slowly desensitizing you to their evil.

We must also be diligent in teaching the next generation Biblical truths.  This is so vital.  None of us will live forever, and someone must take our place when we are gone.  It is essential that these replacements be armed and ready for the fight.  If they are not equipped, they will be in a dangerous position.  Deuteronomy 6:7 says, “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

Next we must recapture the mediums that the Marxists are exploiting so effectively.  However, unlike some hope, infiltrating Hollywood, newspapers, news stations and universities is not going to work.  Our enemies are very cunning, and have anticipated this move.  I can assure you, that if you were to try this tactic, they would be able to silence you very easily.  They are quite capable of eliminating those who do not agree with them.  Classic examples of this were seen in the new movie Expelled by Ben Stein.  Several times in the documentary, Mr. Stein spoke with professors who were quickly and effectively hushed after promoting a worldview contrary to their superiors.  Many lost their jobs.  So, you can see that infiltrating the enemy stronghold would be useless.

What must be done instead, is to create our own education and entertainment industries, built on strong Biblical foundations.  My parents have already taken the first step by homeschooling my siblings and I.  This way, we are being trained by them as Deuteronomy commanded, instead of sending us to the Marxist government schools for indoctrination.  Also, HSLDA started Patrick Henry College to cater to homeschoolers, and to be a university contrary to the Cultural Marxist norm.  As regards entertainment, a man by the name of Doug Phillips is already working on this by hosting the annual San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival.  This festival’s purpose is to train Christians how to make good quality films independent of Hollywood.  This past January, they gave away the largest cash grand prize ever in the history of independent film.  Because of this festival, many Biblically based films have been made and are in the works, providing us with good solid entertainment without any of the bad stuff thrown in.  All of these are giant steps in the right direction.  But it is important that we continue furthering this vision.  We must no longer go to the godless Marxists for our education and entertainment.

Finally, we must destroy Political Correctness.  It is imperative that we see it for what it truly is, which is the progeny of Critical Theory and godless Marxists.  Thus, it is not something to be laughed at, for it is deadly serious.  But, beating it is easier than you might think.  The way to beat the Political Correctness game is simply, not to play.  Don’t give into the pressure to suppress your beliefs.  If they are offended by the truth, that’s not your fault.  It’s theirs.

Time is of the essence.  We have already lost two generations to these false philosophy’s.  The time to act is now.  What are you going to do to take back our culture?

(This is a persuasive speech that I wrote for the 08/09 season.  Hope you enjoyed it, and that it caused you think! ~Tee-Kaye)

But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.  You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.   ~Malachi 4:2

~Tee-Kaye

But then just today, at another church picnic, my dad had an incident.  Most of us were playing Ultimate frisbee, and my dad was participating of course.  He was covering my brother when the frisbee was thrown to him.  Dad ran up to block the pass when all of a sudden he cried out and fell to the ground.  Everyone rushed over, and Dad asked them to straighten his leg.  He lay there for a while then limped over to the chairs in the shade where he lay down with ice on his calf.  I thought it had just been a case of a Charlie’s Horse, as Dad admitted that he was dehydrated.  But when Dad decided to go back home, he stopped by at our doctor’s house.  Turns out, Dad tore a muscle in his calf.  Thankfully it wasn’t the achilles, but it is still extremely painful and he’ll be on crutches for a while and won’t be able to do anything for about three weeks.  This will certainly throw a wrench in our family plans, and Dad isn’t feeling exactly comfortable with this incident.  So, if God lays in on your heart to pray for us, we would greatly appreciate it.

On a more joyful note, a dear friend of mine is coming tomorrow and will be staying for a week!  I’m so excited that I get to enjoy her sweet fellowship for a whole week!  I guess that is it for now.

~Tee-Kaye

~Tee-Kaye

I found a really good blog post on the subject by Lauren Reavely.  Here is the link to it, http://lauren-reavely.blogspot.com/2009/02/look-no-hands-re-defining-view-of.html .  Lauren does a very good job explaining the issue.  She expresses everything so eloquently, and points out many good scriptures pertaining to emotional purity.  It is definitely worth the read.

~Tee-Kaye

But something else has happened during the last month that you all might be interested in.  Some of you might remember me posting our adoption adventures.  To refresh your memory, in January of ’08 we visited Reformation Church and heard about a young girl who had expressed a desire to be adopted by a Christian homeschool family.  She had been living with her grandma, but the grandma had recently passed away, leaving the girl in foster care.  While with her grandmother, this young lady had gone to Reformation Church and been homeschooled.  Anyways, that Sunday, everyone in our family felt God tug on our hearts.  It was such a God-thing, as many of the members of my family had never seriously thought about adoption.  But God opened our hearts to this girl, all at the same time.  And, after praying about it, Mom and Dad began the process to be certified to adopt.  Over the next several months, we got to know the young girl, and we took all of the necessary classes to be certified.

However, last August, the young lady had a change of heart.  She decided that she no longer wanted to be homeschooled, and wasn’t sure she even wanted to be adopted.  It was a hard blow for us, but we trusted that God had brought us into this, so there had to be a purpose for it.  My parents decided to go ahead with getting certified to adopt.

It took forever for everything to be done, but a couple months ago, we finally had all the paper work and the house study done.  Now it was up to the county committee.  For some reason, they kept pushing back the date for deliberating over our application.  At one point they sent someone back to us to ask us more questions.  Finally, they got their meeting done.  But their answer shocked us.  They denied our application.  We were told that we had two options.  We could get sent a formal denial letter, and our name would be put in the database.  Or, we could withdraw our application.  Either way, there was no posibility of us every being able to adopt.

As I said, we were shocked, and more than a little angry.  The reasons we were denied all had to do with the fact that we have a home church and are homeschooled.  Undeniably, it was religious discrimination.  But we weren’t not sure what was the wisest course of action.  My dad got in contact with a lawyer at HSLDA and we and our entire church was praying earnestly for wisdom.

Then, something happened that we didn’t expect.  The county either got scared or impatient, and they sent us the denial letter, even though we hadn’t made a decision yet.  This complicated things a bit more.  The lawyer was rather wary of trying a lawsuit.  There were a couple points that he thought would be extremely hard to win. (It wasn’t like we weren’t in the right in those areas.  Just that it would be rather difficult to persuade others (namely the state) that we were right.)  A couple of weeks went by, then an elder of our church e-mailed some very smart Christian leaders about our predicament.  Mr. Scott Brown was one of them, and he replied very promptly.  His answer was a little surprising, but the more we thought about it, the more we saw the wisdom in it.

He told us that he wasn’t sure we should have even got involved with the State in this in the first place.  He said that some covenants with the State are necessary, and are not really evil.  But with being certified to adopt, we would have to play by the State’s rules during the foster care phase of every adoption.  We would have to mask our beliefs to please them.  Mr. Brown, we realized, was right.  This wasn’t something we could do.  Fortunately, the county was gracious enough to reverse the denial and let us remove our application.  So now we are right back where we were before all this happened.

This whole experience has left me sitting here, asking God, “What was that for?”  He hasn’t answered me with the specifics yet, but that is okay.  He has been there throughout the whole process, guiding us every step of the way.  There is no doubt in my mind that all of this was orchestrated by God.  Though we cannot see it right now, God had a purpose for this.  We may never know the reason, but I can rest in the knowledge that God was, is and will always be in complete control.  So, in the end, we can whole heartedly say, “Thanks be to God.”

Soli Deo Gloria!

~Tee-Kaye