Father,

As we gather on this day specifically to give thanks to you let it not be said that we are thankful one day per year, but every day...as Paul wrote in Ephesians: "...giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" and in Thessalonians: "give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you."

You have given us thankfulness as a weapon, a weapon against fear, a weapon against complaining, a weapon against bitterness, and a weapon against pride. You have commanded us to be thankful in a multitude of scriptures.

Lord, we ask that you would not help us to be thankful, for we need more than help, as Paul said in Romans: "...For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out." Father, make us a thankful people. Make us thankful no matter what comes our way.

And now let us put into practice what you have commanded:
Thank you for not giving your children what they deserve
Thank you for giving your children grace instead
Thank you for this family
Thank you for each of these people
Thank you for this house
Thank you for the means to make it all come together
Thank you for this food

And, with greatfulness and gratitude, thank you for the atoning propitiation of Christ which makes this all possible.

In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and God,
Amen

- crucifyd -

more stuff from cleaning out email...

some defs

Woke: A pseudo-intellectual pastiche of postmodern and neo-Marxist tropes, dedicated to the idea that categories themselves do nothing but privilege and oppress;

Critical Race Theory: The proposition that all differences in outcome by race, ethnicity or virtually any other identifiable group difference are a consequence of systemic, conscious and unconscious prejudice on the part of the privileged (see Woke);

Cancel culture: The widespread utilization, primarily on the left, of female-typical patterns of antisocial behaviour such as reputation savaging, gossip, innuendo, mobbing and exclusion to isolate, demoralize and destroy political or personal enemies;

Socialism: a political/economic system which when applied anywhere, ideally or badly, immediately destroys wealth, while failing utterly to remediate inequality; alternatively, the political expression of envy disguised as compassion.

- Jordan Peterson -
source: https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1701013533901881589

good advice

Trust God in the fog. Though he slay me.

- Cross Politic -
source: https://x.com/CrossPolitic/status/1866308409605370112

uh...er?

As my orthopedic surgeon explained, our spines were designed as bridges, to hang suspended like the Golden Gate between our hips and our shoulders. But the day we first rose up erect and faced our future as Homo sapiens, the spine became a tower with too much weight on it and not enough support around it

- Unkown -
source: Unkown

If no funding measure passes as the clock strikes midnight from Tuesday, Sept. 30, to Wednesday, Oct. 1, nonessential federal operations will begin shutting down on Wednesday.

- The Flyover -
source: https://jointheflyover.com/monday-september-29-2025/

every time they fear-monger about the government shutting down, I wish for it to happen. they have so much of our money and most of it is wasted (see Tom Coburn's Wasetbooks). Dori Monson used to say, and I fully agree that you could reduce government by 50% and nobody would notice. I would go up to 75%...don't get me wrong, government was instituted by God himself and has it's place, but ours is inconceivably bloated.

another thing, as our government is supposed to be mininimalistic and stay out of our business, why are there "nonessential" operations anyway? if it's nonessential, abolish it.

I was watching a documentary called Sage Against The Machine about the life of George Gilder. At 49:18 into the documentary, Gilder is speaking about Google specifically and centralized models generally. I put a longer quote below for more context, but this part jumped out of the TV at me:

Information is surprise, it's what we don't know yet, and we live in a dynamic world of constant change. The idea that we can choose some moment in history and perfect it is a great totalitarian delusion. It's just... a rebellion against time. Time means that guarantees are meaningless. Time hides the future and unveils the past. It's something that can only be depicted in a dynamic and ever-changing and developing world. You know, there's this disbelief that the rule of our lives is change and challenge.

- George Gilder in "Sage Against The Machine" -
source: https://gildermovie.com

this part of the quote was profound to me, and, as I said, the context was Google, etc., but you can apply it anywhere. two factors that make this so eye-opening to me are 1. time has always been a strange thing to me (I won't go into detail about this part here) and 2. I am (we are) always pursuing panacea. I've done it my entire life, even if subconsciously.

this quote, something so obvious, clicked in my mind, and for whatever reason, God used Gilder to show it to me: the pursuit of panacea is utterly elusive in a fallen world.

here is the longer quote, timestamp 49:00:

I think the fatal flaw of Google is really the fatal flaw of all centralized models: they believe in a stationary state, that they already know all they have to know to make all the optimal decisions...

Information is surprise, it's what we don't know yet and we live in a dynamic world of constant change. The idea that we can choose some moment in history and perfect it is a great totalitarian delusion. It's just... a rebellion against time. Time means that guarantees are meaningless. Time hides the future and unveils the past. It's something that can only be depicted in a dynamic and ever-changing and developing world. You know, there's this disbelief that the rule of our lives is change and challenge.

Karl Marx believed the Industrial Revolution was the final attainment of human creation. He saw the Industrial Revolution, he said, "That's great; now we gotta redistribute all this wealth..." and from then on we wouldn't have to work anymore, and we could be pullets in the morning and sheep herders in the afternoon and fishermen...musicians, you know, he had this view of an upper-class British squire as the ultimate mode of living; this is Karl Marx's dream.

Google, in a sense, believes that their consummation of computer science was the final attainment of the human race, that it'll create a mind that usurps the human mind and, uh, leaves us to, uh, enjoy a guaranteed annual income on the beaches of California or wherever while Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg can get on a spaceship with Elon Musk and go off into this new universe. It repeats the Marxist mistake.

- George Gilder in "Sage Against The Machine" -
source: https://gildermovie.com

As the fear of the Lord grows, it outgrows, eclipses, consumes, and destroys all rival fears.

- Michael Reeves -
source: https://www.unionpublishing.org/resource/our-culture...

Think of the many times when you have read His providences in the dark, misinterpreted His dealings, and groaned, 'All these things are against me' when they are in fact working together for your good!

- Charles Spurgeon -

"We Must Have Better Christians"excerpt from "Of God And Men"

To talk of "better" Christians is to use language foreign to many persons. To them all Christians are alike; all have been justified and forgiven and are the children of God, so to make comparisons between them is to suggest division and bigotry and any number of horrible things.

What is forgotten is that a Christian is a born-one, an embodiment of growing life, and as such may be retarded, stunted, undernourished or injured very much as any other organism. Favorable conditions will produce a stronger and healthier organism than will adverse conditions. Lack of proper instructions, for instance, will stunt Christian growth. A clear example of this is found in Acts 19, where an imperfect body of truth had produced a corresponding imperfect type of Christian. It took Paul, with a fuller degree of truth, to bring these stunted disciples into a better and healthier spiritual state.

Unfortunately it is possible for a whole generation of Christians to be victims of poor teaching, low moral standards and unscriptural or extrascriptural doctrines, resulting in stunted growth and retarded development. It is little less than stark tragedy that an individual Christian may pass from youth to old age in a state of suspended growth and all his life be unaware of it. Those who would question the truth of this have only to read the First Epistle to the Corinthians and the Book of Hebrews. And even a slight acquaintance with church history will add all the further proof that is needed. Today there exist in the world certain Christian bodies whose histories date far back. These have perpetuated themselves after their kind for hundreds of years, but they have managed to produce nothing but weak, stunted Christians, if Christians they can be called. Common charity forbids that we identify these by name, but any enlightened believer will understand.

Evangelicalism as we know it today in its various manifestations does produce some real Christians. We have no wish to question this; we desire rather to assert it unequivocally. But the spiritual climate into which many modern Christians are born does not make for vigorous spiritual growth. Indeed, the whole evangelical world is to a large extent unfavorable to healthy Christianity. And I am not thinking of Modernism either. I mean rather the Bible-believing crowd that bears the name of orthodoxy.

We may as well face it: the whole level of spirituality among us is low. We have measured ourselves by ourselves until the incentive to seek higher plateaus in the things of the Spirit is all but gone. Large and influential sections of the world of fundamental Christianity have gone overboard for practices wholly unscriptural, altogether unjustifiable in the light of historic Christian truth and deeply damaging to the inner life of the individual Christian. They have imitated the world, sought popular favor, manufactured delights to substitute for the joy of the Lord and produced a cheap and synthetic power to substitute for the power of the Holy Ghost. The glowworm has taken the place of the bush that burned and scintillating personalities now answer to the fire that fell at Pentecost.

The fact is that we are not today producing saints. We are making converts to an effete type of Christianity that bears little resemblance to that of the New Testament. The average so-called Bible Christian in our times is but a wretched parody on true sainthood. Yet we put millions of dollars behind movements to perpetuate this degenerate form of religion and attack the man who dares to challenge the wisdom of it.

Clearly we must begin to produce better Christians. We must insist on New Testament sainthood for our converts, nothing less; and we must lead them into a state of heart purity, fiery love, separation from the world and poured-out devotion to the Person of Christ. Only in this way can the low level of spirituality be raised again to where it should be in the light of the Scriptures and of eternal values.

- AW Tozer -
source: https://www.scienceofpeople.com/how-to-set-boundaries/

Did you know that it is possible for a Christian believer to live day after day, clutching the book of Ephesians, and still not realize that he is spiritually lean and hungry? If a pastor or evangelist suggests that this person could be in a more prosperous spiritual state, his reaction may be bristling: "Am I not accepted in the Beloved? Is not God my Father and am I not an heir with God?" Holding the text of the will is not enough. It is necessary to come into the possession of the riches. Suppose a rich man dies, leaving a will which passes on all of his millions to his only son. That boy borrows the text of the will from the attorney and carries it around with him. He is satisfied with the text of the will, but it has never been properly executed. Thus the son has never presented his legitimate claims to the inheritance. He may be going around ragged, hungry and weak. In actual experience he has received nothing. He simply holds the text of his father's will!

- AW Tozer -
source: https://www.facebook.com/AWTozeramanofGod/...

Elemental Wrath: Requiem Aeternam Part II
by Becoming The Archetype

starts @ 5:02 with piano interlude and @ 6:24 slowly brings in guitars, drums and crescendo @ 7:05 w/ Jason proclaiming:

"All the earth is silent,
The universe has shifted!
Creation holds is breath,
As the curse of death is lifted!"

everything about this is epic, the music. the vocal, Jason easily has the best dirty vocals going and he's at his best here. the crescendo. the intensity of the lyric delivery and the hopefulness of the lyrics themselves.

at the end of this clip it goes on to the next track and the epic continues...

the clip in question: Becoming The Archetype - clip

the complete song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gjDH8JNhG8

- crucifyd -