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When God asks a question, it is always rhetorical.Ron Brackin
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We can read a good spiritual book in search of information or in search of God. We will find only what we're looking for.Ron Brackin
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If it is true, as God says, that we are as we think, we risk becoming what we most fear if our fear is stronger than our love.Ron Brackin
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The nature of a true seeker after beauty is to overlook flaws.Ron Brackin
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Who but the Christian, among the religions of the world and throughout time, worships a God who loves him so much that he died an agonizing and wretched death to pay for his sins?Ron Brackin
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It is not sufficient for artistic expressions to serve as "signposts declaring what it is to be fully human." They should impart a vision of what it can be to become divine.Ron Brackin
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Judging art is like caging a bird. Instead of seeing it soar, you can only watch it flutter.Ron Brackin
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Art--music, painting, sculpture, dance, drama--opens doors to our soul, exposing our lives to whom or what we allow to enter.Ron Brackin
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Lust is insatiable, whether it feeds on power, wealth, or flesh. It eventually consumes our morality and ultimately consumes our humanity.Ron Brackin
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If sex is a skill, with its attendant expectations, frustrations, and failures, you are graded on performance; if it is an expression of love and commitment, you are not graded at all.Ron Brackin
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Man's strongest instinct is not sex or self-preservation. it's to level the playing field.Ron Brackin
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No one can take credit for inspiration or creativity.Ron Brackin
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Writers block occurs when a writer has nothing to say. Unfortunately not all writers experience it.Ron Brackin
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An individual who delights at all in the beauty of language does well to avoid becoming an attorney or a legislator.Ron Brackin
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The more we thank God, the less we ask of him.Ron Brackin
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Faith is such a wonderful thing. Without it, we would be panicky when we feel like we're standing alone and when the things we need and yearn for seem to be beyond our reach.Ron Brackin
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Forgiveness is the virtue of the courageous, the response of the forgiven, the mercy of the just.Ron Brackin
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If we were able to distill all human experience to its essence, it would be a question on the lips of a man named Jesus. As he asked Peter, he asks all mankind, "Who do you say that I am?" "Our idea of God, " observed Thomas Merton, "tells us more about ourselves than about Him.Ron Brackin
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Gray areas are just the inability to distinguish between darkness and light.Ron Brackin
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One problem with today's culture is that we defend too many rights and ignore too many wrongs.Ron Brackin
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Mankind's first sin gave us the ability to know both good and evil. Our subsequent sins make us increasingly unable to tell the difference.Ron Brackin
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That America is an exceptional nation is unclear only to one who has not been taught its true history. It ceases to be exceptional only when its representative leaders cease to be exceptional. America, it has been said, is a nation of laws, not of men. The more it becomes a nation of men, the less it remains America.Ron Brackin
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Complete honesty is not the same thing as full disclosure.Ron Brackin
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One difference between the Bible and the Constitution is that we can still talk to the author of the Bible to discover original intent.Ron Brackin
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We praise God, not because he needs our praise (for all glory resides in and on him), but in order to see him more clearly, enlarge our soul, and relieve our spirit.Ron Brackin
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Lest we lay too heavy a criticism against any government administration--local, state, or federal--we are reminded that American government is representational. Political leaders reflect the people who elect them (as well as those who fail in this civic responsibility) as a mirror reflects those who gaze into it.Ron Brackin
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Do what you will, but never out of fear.Ron Brackin
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Not much has changed in the past 6, 000 years. We still hide from God because we know we're naked.Ron Brackin
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Greed and Lust never say, "Enough!Ron Brackin
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The right to choose does not mean the choice is right.Ron Brackin
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While many people are proud of being self-made, it only explains all the flaws.Ron Brackin
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Is there anything God cannot do? Yes. God cannot learn, because he already knows everything and never learned what he knows. He cannot lie, because he is truth. God cannot reject anyone who has accepted his Son.Whether you accept or reject God, he cannot love you more, he cannot love you less, and he cannot stop loving you with all his heart. What a wonderful, limited God!Ron Brackin
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America is a post- Christian nation only in the sense that we have built a tenement on the foundation of a palace.Ron Brackin
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Patience is not developed by being forced to wait in long lines or for long periods of time. Patience is a decision: to sit back rather than lean forward, to shift your weight from the balls of your feet to your heels. To settle your thoughts on now, to enjoy the journey, to give something or someone time to grow.Ron Brackin
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Nothing conquers the chaos around me like the calm assurance that I am at peace with God.Ron Brackin
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Progressive. n. One who is unable to distinguish between novelty and enlightenment.Ron Brackin
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People are fond of saying this or that "changed my life." What they mean is something influenced their life. Only Jesus Christ--or WITSEC--can really change a life.Ron Brackin
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Many who have found Jesus Christ wanting in time of need have God confused with a genii.Ron Brackin
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Subjective truth is an oxymoron; objective truth is redundant. Subjective truth is feathers in a wind tunnel, blowing anywhere and everywhere. Objective truth is an anvil, bolted to the floor of the wind tunnel. Subjective truth is your truth and my truth; objective truth is Jesus Christ–immovable, immutable.Ron Brackin
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Followers of Jesus do well to spend more time engaging him than explaining him.Ron Brackin
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To hear a truth, we must first suspect that our present truth might not be. Like Alice’s White Queen, who often believed six impossible things before breakfast, I believed many things in my life, considering them to be true at any given time but suspecting that they might not be, until I met Jesus Christ. When we encounter The Truth, we know it and can only accept or reject it. Denial is not an option. .Ron Brackin
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The artist is the only one qualified to criticize his art, because only the artist knows what he was trying to express and how satisfied he is with the attempt.Ron Brackin
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Capitalism–trade and industry controlled by people instead of a state–is a fine notion. Sadly, it has devolved into a culture in which tradesmen and industrialists lie, cheat, and sacrifice themselves and others for money to buy stuff that doesn’t work, doesn’t last, and doesn’t matter. And after they’re dead, their lives haven’t mattered. Even if they built a city, others will tear it down one day to build a park. Successful capitalists invest themselves in the lives of others.Ron Brackin
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Save the trees! Return to the gold standard!Ron Brackin
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Confusion and doubt are an important part of faith.Ron Brackin
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Writing is like gardening. Planting, watering, and weeding are not enough. You have to prune if you want growth.Ron Brackin
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One of the difficult things about growing older is that you start losing so many friends. On the other hand, the older you get, the less time you have to wait until you see them again.Ron Brackin
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Writing is a solitary occupation, except for Presidential speeches and sitcoms.Ron Brackin
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If one man challenges a statement and another cannot prove it, it does not necessarily follow that the statement is false.Ron Brackin
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God clues us in to the fact that, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." In short, God is not logical. This is not to say that he is illogical, only that he is not limited by logic. Simplified, "logic" is connecting the dots. We identify the dots we consider relevant, then connect them into lines and patterns. God, on the other hand, may see that, beneath one of the dots is a stack of a trillion more dots, each of which may be combined with the others. Little wonder that our ways and meanings frequently fail to match God's ways and meanings. Great wonder that, when they don't, we tend to fault him. .Ron Brackin
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God cautions us in Isaiah 55:9 that his ways are not ours and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts (undoubtedly one of the grander understatements). God is warning us that he is not logical and that believing him to be logical will lead to all kinds of disappointment. Logic has been defined as 'the science or history of the human mind, as it traces the progress of our knowledge from our first conceptions through their different combinations, and the numerous deductions that result from comparing them with one another.' Doesn't sound much like God. Yet, we so often strain our relatively minuscule brains to conceive, combine, compare, and deduce. Then we fault God when his conclusions disagree. The repetition of this useless exercise leads to a form of insanity which ultimately manifests in denial of the existence of such an illogical God.Ron Brackin
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OMG, I think I’ve become a feminist. I mean, I’ve always been in favor of women voting and being paid the same as men for doing the same job. But then, the other day on the train, I didn’t get up and give a woman my seat. I thought about it. But then I thought it might insult her, might imply that I considered her weaker than a senior citizen, maybe even inferior in some way. But that’s not what prompted me to fire up my laptop. I was brushing my teeth this morning and thinking about romance. People do that when they get older, I suppose. Romance is one area where men and women are still different–unisex lavatories and fashions notwithstanding. And here’s the difference: a romantic woman envisions a knight on a white horse; a romantic man envisions a dragon in a dark cave. Think about it next time you brush your teeth.Ron Brackin
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I am old enough to enjoy a bit of nostalgia, but wise enough to know that there haven't been any "good ol' days" since Eden (the garden, not the prime minister).Ron Brackin
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When a lady accessorizes in here in Texas, she's selecting caliber, not color.Ron Brackin
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If wool shrinks when you wash it, why don't sheep get smaller when it rains?Ron Brackin
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The Holy Spirit never uses guilt or shame to persuade us to give. For that matter, he never persuades us to give in the first place. That's called manipulation, a device employed by a different spirit.Ron Brackin
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Harpies, n. A disease transmitted to humans by birds with human faces.Ron Brackin
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The words 'good' and 'love' have become so trivialized in our culture--not that our definitions were so accurate to begin with--that, in times of distress or disappointment, we struggle to believe that God is either.Ron Brackin
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One of the biggest obstacles on the path of peace, or even peaceful coexistence, between Israelis and Palestinians was placed by the international community and media when it redefined Hamas as an "organization." One result is that outsiders try to reach a solution based on the assumption that Hamas has structure and leaders. It does not. It has no "political wing" or "militant wing." Hamas is a loosely-knit band of terrorists. Its leaders are whoever has weapons, plans, and influence. Hamas is thuggish and cowardly. Those who fly the green flag are not military combatants. Nor do they represent, or care a whit, for the Palestinian people, as evidenced by their strategy of hiding in and fighting from schools, clinics, hospitals, and people's homes. After what passed for an election some Hamas terrorists were further redefined as politicians and diplomats, though they were neither politic nor diplomatic, evidenced by the fact that many "govern" from Israeli prisons. Prior to the Second Intifada, which began in 2000, Hamas had been emasculated and nearly eradicated by Yassir Arafat, who rounded up, disarmed, and imprisoned the terrorist "leaders, " leaving its remaining members to return to their homes. Arafat ensured that members of Hamas had no place to hide among the Palestinian people. And that is the only way the terrorist cancer in Gaza will be excised today. In the absence of Arafat, the task falls by default to Israel, which would do better to enable the citizens of Gaza to purge themselves of Hamas and reward them for doing so than try to get rid of the bad apples by blowing up the barrel, if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor.Ron Brackin
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SUPPORT LITERACY! A child who cannot read cannot text.Ron Brackin
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When a friend of mine boasted about living in a gated community, I thought he meant Folsom, and I wondered whether he knew Charles Manson.Ron Brackin
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In the world, success is measured in terms of legacy, what we leave behind. In God's kingdom, success is measured by what we send on ahead.Ron Brackin
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Homeowners' Association: the means whereby people who own homes are able to transfer their rights to the neighborhood control freaks.Ron Brackin