Divine Direction by Craig Groeschel ( YouVersion )

Stop

One of the best decisions you can make when you’re feeling an impulse or facing a high-stakes dilemma is the decision to stop. Take a time-out. Pray for guidance. Sleep on it.  Get some godly wisdom from people you trust and picture the possible outcomes. Then, ask yourself, “Is this something I should stop completely?”

Most of us have good intentions or at least some kind of justification for the things we do. And yet so many of us seem surprised when we find ourselves a long way from the direction we want to go. The big changes in our lives—both negative and positive—rarely happen without a series of decisions piling on top of each other like never-ending dominoes.

Do you see how stopping can be one of the most productive things we do? When you stop to take stock of where you are and where you want to go, then you can decide how to move toward your destination.

What can you stop in order to move you closer to God’s divine direction?

Are you doing anything that’s taking you in a direction you don’t want to go (or that God doesn’t want you to go)? What do you need to stop completely? An addiction to social media, alcohol, porn, approval, or work? An unhealthy relationship? A judgmental attitude? What can you stop in order to move you closer to God’s divine direction? Treat each choice like it’s the next stepping-stone toward your destination.

When a behavior or relationship takes us in a direction we know is moving farther away from the story we want to tell, we need to pause not only to consider the consequences but also to choose to stop traveling in the wrong direction. You’ve probably heard the word “repent.” One of its literal meanings is to turn around. When you repent, you stop heading in one direction and return to God and His path for you.

In this sense, stopping actually means stepping in a new direction. You might need to step toward accountability, forgiveness, the right friends, or a new place to live.

Ask yourself:

1. If I make the choice I’m considering, where could it take me?

2. What can I stop in order to move closer to God’s divine direction?

Atheist Professor’s Near-Death Experience in Hell Left him Changed

By Mark Ellis —

In some near-death experiences, people report they were drawn toward “the light.” But in this horrifying near-death experience for an atheist art professor, he was drawn into the darkness of hell, which dramatically altered the course of his life.

“I was a double atheist,” says Howard Storm, who became a tenured art professor at Northern Kentucky University by age 27.  “I was a know-it-all college professor, and universities are some of the most closed-minded places there are,” he notes.

On the last day of a three-week European art tour he led, his group had returned to their hotel in Paris after a visit to the artist Delacroix’s home and studio. As Howard stood in his room with his wife and another student, suddenly he screamed and dropped to the floor in agony.

“I had a perforation of the small stomach, known as the duodenum,” he recalls. At first, Howard thought he was shot, and he glanced around the room to see if he could spot a smoking gun. As he writhed in pain on the ground, kicking and screaming, his wife called for a doctor.

“They said I needed surgery immediately,” Howard says. “It’s like having a burst appendix. I was told that if they don’t get to it within five hours, you’re probably going to die.”

Howard had the misfortune of a falling ill on a Saturday in a country with socialized medicine, and no doctor could be found. “French doctors do seven surgeries a week, and after they do the seven surgeries, they take the weekend off,” he discovered.

Continued, here.

God Protected Future Pastor from Bullets Fired at Point Blank Range

By Sarah Montez —

Todd White joined the Marines to prove to his stepdad he was a man, but on break after boot camp he partied so much with drugs he forgot to report for duty.

“I went home and I stole a bunch of money in a drug deal, went out West and hid in the Rocky Mountains,” Todd says on a YouTube video. “A little while later I got busted and put in jail, extradited across the United States and put into the military prison.”

Today Todd White is a pastor helping myriads of people tripped up by Satan’s snares. But his past was beset with foundering and failure.

He was born out of a hookup when his father came back “messed up” following service in the Vietnam War. Two other siblings arrived from that union and his parents eventually married. It was perhaps inevitable that what started wrong wouldn’t end well, and his parents divorced when Todd was 11.

He was thrown into the foster care system and raised by Free Masons. Frustrated by the breakup of his family, Todd turned to drugs.

“I was rebellious, angry, bitter, so mad,” he says. “I was fully addicted to anything I could get my hands on. It started with weed and it just escalated more and more.”On a dare from his step dad, he joined the Marines to become a man — and to straighten up his life. Boot camp saw him drop 83 pounds and transform into a lean, mean, fighting machine.

Continued

Why Can't We See God - A Scientific Explanation By Frank Lee

Physicists have discovered the mechanism that prevents us from seeing the Kingdom of God by electromagnetic waves.

When I was a graduate student majoring in physics, I was an atheist. To me, God was a product of ignorance, due to lack of scientific knowledge. If people understood natural laws as well as physicists, they would not believe the existence of God. At that time, I did not know that most great physicists were God's believers, such as Newton, Kepler, Planck, Heisenberg and Einstein.

Ten years after I received a Ph.D in physics, I became a Christian - not because I found any hard scientific evidence about God. Like most believers, I felt that there must be a God who had been guiding me, otherwise some events that had happened to me would not be so coincidental.

The existence of God was so real that I had been wondering: where could God be? why couldn't we see Him? how come modern technology could not detect God? Since I was trained in physics, I believed that all natural phenomena should have a physical explanation. If God really exists, these questions can be answered in terms of physical laws. However, I did not know where or how to find the scientific answer. It might be impossible to know the answer at all.

Continued, here.