{"id":8638,"date":"2017-11-09T01:54:27","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T01:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/?p=8638"},"modified":"2017-12-14T02:55:52","modified_gmt":"2017-12-14T02:55:52","slug":"the-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/the-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"The Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Dan Jones<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">Evil exists.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">It is not merely a concept. It is not merely the absence of good or the absence of God.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">Evil is a decision &#8211;and <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">it appears to be an increasingly common decision.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">This past Sunday, 26 Christians were martyred while they were worshiping God in a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Another 20 were injured.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">It&#8217;s hard to fathom the hatred required to carry out such an act. It&#8217;s hard to fathom that our society has reached this point.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">It&#8217;s becoming more and more difficult to watch the wedge that divides us being driven deeper and deeper into our society while we fail to address the real problem.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">And that very real problem is hate. The problem is that we do not see ourselves as one.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">One nation. One people. One purpose. One goal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">One God.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">We have long disagreed with each other. Sometimes, we have disagreed civilly, with mutual respect for our differences and the willingness to concede if the debate did not go our way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">On one notable occasion, that was not the case and we engaged in\u00a0the wholesale slaughter of 620,000 people of our own nation. It was the most horrific and terrible period in our history.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">I suspect, I feel in my heart that we\u00a0never fully reconciled and healed from that war and I tremble with the fear that it looms again before us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">But it does not have to be so. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">As it always is, the answer is love.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">Only love can conquer hate. Only love can prevail over the evil at our doorstep. Only the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ can heal us. Any and all attempts to heal us and unite us by our own human wisdom or strength are destined to fail &#8211;as they always have.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">Steve Ware and Allen Jones illustrated this wonderfully Monday morning on Kinship Christian Radio. Allen spoke of the sadness and reluctance he felt\u00a0about coming on the air after an event such as this, and then he remembered that God had called him to speak life and hope and love over this.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">And, as Allen and Steve prayed over the air for all the families affected by this, they did not neglect to even pray for the family of the man who did this.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">That&#8217;s the difference. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">Love wins. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">Hatred and evil cannot and will not prevail as long as the Holy Spirit calls us to that kind of love.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\">In the end, there is no other viable option than to be decidedly Christian.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\"><strong>Today&#8217;s Praise<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva, sans-serif;\"><strong><em>Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death\u2014that is, the devil\u2014\u00a0and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. Hebrews 2:14-15 (NIV)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dan Jones &nbsp; Evil exists. It is not merely a concept. It is not merely the absence of good or the absence of God. 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