Caffeinated Thoughts

Mitt Romney Wins Illinois Primary
Religious Liberty: Obamacare’s First Casualty
The role of the family in evangelism & discipleship

Posted: 20 Mar 2012 06:15 PM PDT

As expected. Fox News and other news outlets were able to project Mitt Romney the winner of the Illinois Primary early.

Early returns show Romney leading with 56 percent in Illinois, followed by Santorum with 27 percent. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are battling for third place.

It is still unclear how the candidates will split up the delegates since all of the votes are not in. The next contest is the Louisiana Primary this Saturday. According to RealClearPolitics.com Santorum holds an advantage there with an average lead of 8.5% in the last two polls conducted there.

Looking at the Google Illinois Primary heat map with 35.7% of precincts reporting you can see that this is playing out as expected. Romney is doing well in the Chicago area. Santorum is strong downstate, but not strong enough.

Update: Newt Gingrich offers a statement.

To defeat Barack Obama, Republicans can't nominate a candidate who relies on outspending his opponents 7-1. Instead, we need a nominee who offers powerful solutions that hold the president accountable for his failures. Over the past few weeks, my $2.50 gas plan has shown how America could have cheaper gas, more jobs and greater national security while putting the White House on the defense over their anti-American energy policies. This is the type of leadership I can offer as the nominee, and this campaign will spend between now and when the delegates vote in Tampa relentlessly taking the fight to President Obama to make this case.

Religious Liberty: Obamacare’s First Casualty

Posted: 20 Mar 2012 05:30 PM PDT

An excellent video from our friends over at the Heritage Foundation.

The controversy over the Obama Administration’s anti-conscience mandate and the fight for religious liberty only serves to highlight the inherent flaws in Obamacare. This conflict is a natural result of the centralization laid out under Obamacare and will only continue until the law is repealed in full.

The role of the family in evangelism & discipleship

Posted: 20 Mar 2012 06:34 AM PDT

As I mentioned last week, the Great Commission & Commandment are directly connected to the Covenant set up with Adam, Abraham, Noah and so on…The overarching Story of God seems to set up a direct link to the home and family. Check these verses out:

Genesis 18:19 "For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him."

Psalm 78:5-7 "He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands."

Proverbs 1:8 "Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching."

Ephesians 6:4 ^"Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord."

These and many more point to a profound and possibly startling conclusion: God's primary plan for evangelism and discipleship of the entire world (in both the Old & New Testament) is through the committed, Gospel-centered family. Now, you may say "But didn't Jesus set up the Church to take over that role?" Well, Jesus did set up the Church, as did His Disciples and Paul; but that was still done with the basic building block of the family left intact and central to the formation of the early churches:

Churches were established IN homes
Fathers and other men were established as Elders / Overseers
Mothers and other women were called to be keepers of their homes and train the younger women
Age separated programming didn't come along until much later
When a father believed in Jesus as Messiah, his whole family came to believe and was baptized.
Jesus utilized children as a main object of how adults are supposed to live the Christian life.

So, why is this important? Well, if we realize and follow this link of the church and home – and if we see how central the family is to reaching the world with the gospel – this should drastically change how we do church in America! Our missions, evangelism and discipleship efforts seem to insist on separating the family, when in reality we should strive to do everything in our power to 1) keep the family together, 2) insist that fathers and mothers take up the mantel of discipling their children and 3) re-center our church efforts to line up with the Biblical model.

Well, it's your turn to weigh in. Spread the world about this article. What do you think? Are there examples that would discredit this line of thinking? Give us your thoughts?

Horoscop

miercuri, 21 martie 2012

Caffeinated Thoughts

Caffeinated Thoughts

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