Daily Archives: April 25, 2026

News and Info

How the SPLC Profited by Smearing Groups Like Mine

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Our long national nightmare of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) smearing innocent Americans for profit may finally be coming to an end.

On April 21, a federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, handed down an 11-count indictment charging the organization with wire fraud, false statements to federally insured banks, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The government charges that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled more than $3 million in donor money to paid informants tied to the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, and the National Socialist Party of America—the very extremists it claimed to be heroically battling. It allegedly hid the payments behind shell entities with names like “Fox Photography” and “Rare Books Warehouse.” While raking in hundreds of millions from triggered donors, the SPLC was purportedly subsidizing the hate it sold as an existential threat.

This indictment is not a partisan hit job. It is the long-overdue exposure of a racket that weaponized its “hate map” to brand mainstream conservative organizations as social lepers. The consequences to its targets were devastating: lost banking relationships, severed corporate partnerships, canceled events, and reputational destruction. Families, churches, and policy groups were financially isolated and socially exiled, all so the SPLC could keep the donations flowing.

My own organization, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), knows this playbook intimately. For years, the SPLC has listed FAIR on its “hate map” for the supposed crime of defending the rights of the American people from the harmful effects of reckless immigration policies. While politicians in both parties have spent decades eroding those rights—through porous borders, sanctuary policies, and the intentional demographic transformation of the country—FAIR has simply insisted that immigration policy should serve Americans first. That stance earned us the SPLC’s scarlet letter: “hate group.” No violence. No extremism. Just advocacy for American workers, taxpayers, and sovereignty.

The SPLC’s internal rot makes the hypocrisy even more scandalous. In 2019, founder Morris Dees was fired amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment. Former employees described a workplace rife with racial and gender discrimination, retaliation against women and people of color, and a toxic culture that stretched back decades. One group of staffers wrote that leadership had been “complicit in decades of racial discrimination, gender discrimination, and sexual harassment.” A former insider, writing in The New Yorker, described the SPLC’s fundraising operation as a “highly profitable scam”—a marketing machine that preyed on liberal donors by inflating threats and manufacturing moral panic.

Yet none of this stopped the media or the Biden administration from treating the SPLC’s word as gospel. Legacy outlets like CNN faithfully reproduced the SPLC’s “hate map,” using it to smear conservative Christians, parental-rights groups, and immigration reformers as the moral equivalent of Klansmen. The Biden Justice Department went further, partnering with the SPLC by scheduling regular meetings, granting early access to law-enforcement data, and even allowing SPLC staff to train federal prosecutors. Internal memos cited the group when targeting “radical traditional Catholics” and other disfavored Americans. While the SPLC was allegedly cutting checks in secret to actual extremists, the highest levels of the federal government and the press corps elevated it as the gold standard of credibility.

The cost went far beyond damaged reputations. The Family Research Council faced a 2012 shooting at its offices by a gunman who cited the SPLC map. Parental-rights organizations like Moms for Liberty were lumped in with neo-Nazis, leading to debanking threats and vendor boycotts. PragerU and countless others lost access to financial services and public platforms. All because the SPLC’s “hate” industrial complex needed villains to justify its $700-million-plus endowment and lavish salaries.

The indictment gives credence to what critics have said for years: the SPLC did not fight hate—it monetized it. It conjured an epidemic, profited from the fear, and destroyed lives and livelihoods in the process. Its “hate map” was never a public service. It was a blacklist designed to generate profits and enforce ideological conformity.

Whatever the outcome of the current charges, the remedy is clear. Every corporation, bank, media outlet, and government agency that once deferred to the SPLC must now treat it as radioactive. Defund it. Delist it. Refuse its data, its “experts,” and its seal of approval. The SPLC should become a pariah in polite society—never again trusted as a source on extremism, civil rights, or anything else. Its donors should demand refunds. Its enablers should apologize to the organizations they helped smear.

The Southern Poverty Law Center spent decades telling America who the haters were. A federal grand jury believes the SPLC manufactured much of that hate for its own benefit. It is time to retire the map, repudiate the myth, and hold the profiteers accountable. American democracy—and simple decency—demand nothing less.

 

 

Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel at the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington, D.C.

 

Source: How the SPLC Profited by Smearing Groups Like Mine

Uncategorized

What Made Us American Before The Country Turned Left

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Exceptions kept aside, as with any frank discussion, the following observations are intended to depict typical American life before the middle of the 20th century.

 

 

My father worked on the docks of New York City when America’s economy was booming before 1929. As with many Europeans of economically depressed countries at the end of World War I, he left his native country to seek a new life in America, which was calling for the extra muscle needed to build a brand new, modern infrastructure . . . from subways and skyscrapers in New York to infinitely more from coast to coast.

Then came the Great Crash of ’29, stopping the great momentum, dramatically illustrated in 1931 when New York’s fantastic new Empire State Building opened its doors in the middle of the Great Depression.

Pop stopped working at the docks and started shining shoes on the streets, while mom was tested to the top of her capacity raising three kids in their dingy Brooklyn tenement. (I was the latest to arrive in the family.) It was a rough ride that made life all the more valuable for overcoming each obstacle, day-to-day and hand-to-hand.

America was in a storm of productivity, early in the 20th Century, with creative advances in every field. Breathless innovations in technology, industry, transportation, communications, and the arts were remaking the landscape and changing American homes almost overnight from primitive to modern.

The daring, the drive, the originality that delivered a vigorous and vibrant America to the world were still in force following the devastation of World War II. Excellence was still taken for granted in industry, education, sports, in the performing arts. In my Brooklyn high school, over 90% of students graduated regularly, having dealt successfully with far tougher standards than today.

Up until about 1960, children that were not orphans had fathers and mothers living together, secure in bonds of love, and rules inspired by the Word of God. That life is sacred was taken as a fact, not an opinion. Women were respected and cherished by men. No high IQ was needed to understand that a man could not be identical to a woman, and no woman could be identical to a man. Respect was common for each other’s actual differences. Men and women would laugh at the notion that male and female are interchangeable, whether in function or psyche. Such an absurd idea, as held by post-Friedan feminists and today’s gender-confused, reveals a mind tangled in abstractions and lost in wish lists — frequent with liberals.

Reality, not science, informed the actions of the typical pre-1960s American, whether living in Manhattan or the boondocks. He and she knew in the bones that scientific knowledge is not wisdom, that opinion and fact are not equal. The alert of every generation knew — and still know — that emotions do not substitute for thinking. Solutions to real problems, not artificial ones from pressure groups, need clear heads anchored in reality.

It was generally understood that freedom comes with a responsibility to use it wisely and accept the results, good or bad, from their source: me. Any needed guidance in difficult matters came from pastors and rabbis, not (as today) from celebrities, think tanks, and professionals that serve sponsors instead of truth and justice.

The foregoing take on life generated a beneficial social atmosphere — friendlier, warmer, more open than today. Schools were free of drugs and violence, and none of them required armed security guards. In spite of the presence of every form of corruption and deceit known to man, life in America was nevertheless upbeat. People generally succeeded in living their lives as they saw fit, not as agenda peddlers thought they should.

In short, before 1960, America was — it’s been said often — “another planet.” Having lived in that freer, far more open and natural environment, I can report from personal experience as a resident of New York City that after 1960 the level of social wellbeing in that great urban center dropped fast.

The atmosphere all over America soured, as a slew of prescriptions for speech, behavior, even thought — so-called “political correctness” — began to stifle initiative and creativity, while a culture of “victim class” versus “oppressor class” was descending on Americans that did not reflect the American character. That it followed Marxist dogma was not “news fit to print,” and the mainstream media remained dutifully silent.

So, as with the “invasion of the body-snatchers,” Americans found themselves living in a different, rather fretful and contentious country.

The closing of an open mind and the collapse of morals accelerating after mid-twentieth century were not “evolutionary” or inevitable, as imagined or reported. The truth is that America’s decline was in fact anticipated by well-funded change agents infiltrating publication and entertainment media, schools, colleges, churches and seminaries, spreading Marxist tenets through American  culture — an amalgam of anti-American beliefs stemming from the Left, which is an appropriate title considering its relation to Marxism, communism, and socialism, none of them democratic. To put it bluntly, leftists are not American.

What possible improvement can a leftist change to America be? Were we no longer American? Did the Constitution cease to be America’s Law of the Land? Were issues of social and political justice to be henceforth decided by vote, judicial decree, or executive signature — as in dictatorships?

Was anything-goes to replace judgment based on moral principle? Was life no longer sacred? Was the family obsolete? When did right become wrong? When did up become down?

When I came home from the war in Korea (1950–53) I found that the cultural atmosphere in America was deteriorating. Americans would soon find themselves facing the deadly rioting of 1960s young rebels obsessed with Marxist doctrine, on a mission to destroy the country we had fought for to protect from communism.

Had Americans forgotten not only about the war in Korea but about the threat to their homeland from domestic enemies as well as foreign enemies?

In mid-century a majority of Americans — especially among the young — had no clue about what happened to their country and to their minds, thanks to the “progressive” dumbing in the public schools after World War II and to well-funded operatives infiltrating media, college administrations, political and public service venues in focused efforts to advance a new world order modeled on collectivism. A “conspiracy theory” smear against those who noticed was effective until the fact was no longer secret but even a feature of President Gorge H. W. Bush’s New World Order Speech of September 11, 1990.

Those who minimize or dismiss the adverse side effects of America’s “transformation” reveal a failure to regard social and political progress with the seriousness it demands. For starters, when it becomes “legal” to kill a baby on the day of its birth, or mutilate one’s body to “change it to the opposite sex,” or it becomes valid to harm a human being for whatever reason — when it becomes “justice” to lose one’s job, reputation, liberty, even one’s life for speaking the truth — then the line of sanity has been crossed.

Stepping away from that dangerous line affirms the inherent smarts of real Americans. It is always appropriate for real Americans to exercise their smarts by loudly denouncing and vigorously opposing activity that threatens human life or attacks motherhood, fatherhood and family, or mocks God and the Creation.

 

Anthony J. DeBlasi is a veteran and lifelong defender of Western culture.

 

Source: What Made Us American Before The Country Turned Left – American Thinker

News and Info

As The Bible Is Read In The Nation’s Capitol, Vast Anti-Christian Corruption Rises To The Surface

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A Stark Contrast: As The Bible Is Read In The Nation’s Capitol, Vast Anti-Christian Corruption Rises To The Surface

 

Last Sunday, I joined House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and others to kick off the week-long “America Reads the Bible” initiative, where President Donald Trump read an appeal to God from 2 Chronicles 7:14. Meanwhile, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) spent the weekend saying we don’t need any help from on high.

Speaking at a Democratic Women’s Caucus luncheon, Booker warned, “Ladies and gentlemen, there is a storm in our nation!” Then, pointing upward, he declared, “What we need is not from on high. We need foot soldiers of our democracy willing to stand up.”

I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, so we contacted his office to see if he was referring to Chuck Schumer or God. We didn’t get an answer.

Regardless, many of us were looking upward to the One who can provide what our nation needs. And as the Word was read, the words of the prophet Amos came into focus: “Let justice run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

And as the Word was being read, the Department of Justice announced a multi-page indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center.

An Alabama grand jury charged the organization with 11 criminal counts, including wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and money laundering.

According to the indictment, SPLC raised millions claiming to dismantle white supremacy, while allegedly funding leaders and organizers of the very groups they said they opposed.

Prosecutors allege SPLC used shell organizations to funnel money, not to informants, but to individuals organizing extremist and violent activity. The indictment references funding tied to a member of the online leadership behind the 2017 “Unite the Right” event in Charlottesville, Virginia. The unnamed individual, who was paid $270,000 by SPLC, also helped organize transportation to the event — at the direction of SPLC.

That raises an obvious question: why?

Fundraising appears to be part of the answer. In the week following Charlottesville, SPLC reportedly saw a surge in donations, with millions coming from George Clooney, Apple Inc., and JPMorgan Chase.

But money alone may not fully explain it.

The existence and amplification of these groups also provide a basis for labeling and marginalizing others. The same organization that allegedly funded extremist groups compiled “hate” lists that placed mainstream Christian and conservative groups alongside these alleged hate groups.

Those lists have been used by media and corporations to determine who falls outside the acceptable standards of discourse, in other words, who should be silenced, canceled, or worse.

That’s not theoretical.

In August 2012, a gunman entered the Family Research Council headquarters in Washington, D.C. with the goal of killing “as many people as possible.” He later admitted he targeted the organization after seeing it listed on the SPLC’s hate map because of its biblical views on marriage and sexuality.

And that biblical view was read over the nation this week as Jesus stated in Matthew 19: “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning made them male and female?”

So while some insist what we need is not from on high, the exposure of SPLC reminds us we need the standard of truth and justice that comes from above.

Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand. He also served two terms as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and served as Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

 

Source: A Stark Contrast: As The Bible Is Read In The Nation’s Capitol, Vast Anti-Christian Corruption Rises To The Surface – Harbinger’s Daily

Turning Point

Turning Point; David Jeremiah – April Showers of Blessings: Unlimited

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
Ephesians 1:3

Recommended Reading: Ephesians 1:3-14

Thunderstorms can be majestic, but they can frighten us. At any given moment, about two thousand thunderstorms are raining down on earth! That means two thousand active storm cells exist simultaneously on the globe every minute.1

That’s hard to grasp! But here’s something else to “pour” over. God is continually sending down His showers of spiritual blessings on us, and we have more to come in the future. Harold Hoehner said, “[These blessings are] defined as ‘spiritual.’ In the Old Testament the benefits were primarily material … [and] have their source in the Spirit of God…. So God has blessed the believer with every spiritual benefit necessary for his or her spiritual well-being.”2

Some of these are for us now—peace, joy, forgiveness, grace, fellowship with God, insight into Scripture. Others we’ll experience in eternity. None of us like being caught in a rainstorm, but when it comes to God’s showers, we don’t mind being drenched each day!

Spiritual benefits that come from heaven are for the believers united with Christ, who ascended into heaven.
Dr. Harold Hoehner

  1. “Severe Weather 101: Thunderstorm Basics,” NSSL: NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory.
  2. Harold Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Baker Academic, 2002), 167-168.

 

 

https://www.davidjeremiah.org

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread – Serving Like Christ

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In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus. Philippians 2:5

Today’s Scripture

Philippians 2:3-8

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Today’s Devotion

As I visited a patient in the hospital, I was struck by the actions of a young doctor standing with a team of other inexperienced physicians. The group listened as a more seasoned doctor explained about the patient’s health. Suddenly, the patient anxiously announced that she needed to use the bathroom and couldn’t get up. In fact, she couldn’t wait for a nurse’s aide to be summoned to the room.

Amid the frantic scene, the young doctor got a bed pan off the shelf and assisted the patient. When the nurse’s aide arrived, she was shocked to find someone had already assisted the patient. The lead physician proudly acknowledged the assistance of the young doctor.

Jesus didn’t cling to His divinity and refuse to assist humanity. Though He was “in very nature God, [He] did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage” (Philippians 2:6). As a human, Christ was able to become our sin offering and sacrifice Himself for us. He saw our need for help and salvation, and He humbly laid down His life (v. 8). Paul wrote, “He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant” (v. 7).

We’re called to imitate Jesus’ attitude and sacrificial ways in our relationships with others. As He helps us, let’s humbly serve them no matter how lowly the job may seem.

Reflect & Pray

How can you reflect the attitude and ways of Jesus? What will it look like for you to humbly serve someone today?

Thank You, Jesus, for humbly giving Yourself for my sin. Please show me how to sacrificially serve others.

The Forgiveness of God.

Today’s Insights

There’s been some debate about the meaning of Philippians 2:7: “[Jesus] emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (esv). The word translated “emptied” comes from the Greek word kenoō, resulting in what is known as the kenosis theory. If Christ “emptied himself” (or “made himself nothing” niv), of what did He empty Himself? Some suggest He emptied Himself of His deity or His divine attributes, but then His sacrifice on the cross would’ve been insufficient. Colossians 2:9 says, “In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” Rather, He emptied Himself of the right to choose how to live and how to make use of His divine attributes—making Himself utterly subject to the Father’s will and “taking the very nature of a servant” (Philippians 2:7) Today, we can imitate Jesus’ attitude of humility and sacrifice as we serve others.

 

http://www.odb.org

Denison Forum

Denison Forum – AI engine decides which religion is the most rational

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A government affairs attorney and Christian apologist named Jay Atkins recently asked a popular AI engine to evaluate the world’s major belief systems and determine which one makes the most sense. He used a two-step framework: which worldview best explains reality, and which one does so while requiring the fewest unsupported assumptions.

In other words, which has the highest explanatory power with the lowest evidentiary burden?

The worldviews in question were atheism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity. In seconds, the AI engine concluded that Christianity offers the most reasonable view of the world. Atkins explained the AI’s reasoning:

[Christianity] offers a comprehensive explanation of reality, why the universe exists, why it is ordered, why we are rational and moral beings, and why we long for meaning. At the same time, it concentrates its evidentiary burden into a relatively small number of claims, most notably the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That matters because a worldview that explains everything but requires you to believe a thousand fragile claims is not rational. The most reasonable worldview is the one that explains the most while assuming the least.

On that metric, Christianity wins.

As the “America Reads the Bible” emphasis has continued across the week in Washington, DC, we’ve been thinking about relating God’s word to our secularized culture. We’ve discussed the power of Scripture to change hearts and lives when we submit to its truth in accountable community. Yesterday we focused on that truth in the context of our gravest moral challenge.

Let’s close by exploring the urgency of biblical truth for eternal souls, including the next one you meet today.

“There is salvation in no one else”

The New Testament consistently states that salvation comes only by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. The apostles declared to the religious leaders of their day, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Our salvation “is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:9).

This is only logical. Our sins separate us from our holy God, the only source of eternal life (cf. Psalm 36:9; Acts 17:28; John 14:6), and thus lead to eternal death (Romans 6:23). Only a sinless person who has no sin debt to pay can pay ours vicariously by dying in our place. And there has been only one sinless person in all of human history. Muslims do not claim this for Muhammad, or Buddhists for Buddha, or Jews for their rabbis.

Jesus alone is our sinless Savior (Hebrews 4:15), the “good shepherd” who “lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).

In addition, Jesus is the only person in history to die and rise from the grave, never to die again. This is also a claim Muslims do not make for Muhammad, or Buddhists for Buddha, or Jews for their rabbis. Of all the great religious leaders of history, only Jesus is alive and active in our world today.

If only Jesus has died to pay for our sins and risen from the grave, only Jesus can forgive our sins and grant us salvation (Ephesians 2:4–5). No matter how fervent Iranians might be in their Shiite Islam, or Buddhists in their Buddhism, or Hindus in their Hinduism, their faith and works cannot save their souls (cf. Romans 8:9).

Scripture also teaches that only those saved by Christ are included in the “book of life of the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 13:8), and that “if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15).

All this to say, we must be “born again” (John 3:7). The most urgent need in all humanity is the need for humans to turn to Christ as Savior. Stated bluntly, every non-Christian you and I know is in danger of eternal separation from God in hell.

“Every way of a man is right in his own eyes”

Here’s the problem: most lost people don’t know they are lost. Unlike those who are lost with regard to directions, they are convinced that they are on the right path, or they would change.

A woman died mid-flight recently when she suffered a medical episode and lost consciousness. Members of the panicked cabin crew connected an oxygen mask to her face but failed to connect the mask to the oxygen tank. They sincerely thought they were saving her life, but they were sincerely wrong.

Through many conversations with lost people over the years, I have found that convincing them that they are lost is often the hardest part of the process. They have attached their “mask” and are certain it is working for them.

This is not only because our postmodern culture convinces secularists that their “truth” is just as valid as any other. It is also because “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

Solomon observed, “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes” (Proverbs 21:2). As a result, the sinner “makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made” (Psalm 7:15) and now cannot get out.

As Oswald Chambers warned, “The penalty of sin is confirmation in sin. It is not only God who punishes for sin; sin confirms itself in the sinner and gives back full pay. . . . the penalty of sin is that you get used to it and do not know that it is sin.”

What we owe “every lost person”

The good news is that the Holy Spirit can do what you and I cannot by convicting the lost of their sin and drawing them to salvation. Our part is to share the gospel with them and pray for them (Acts 1:8; cf. Leviticus 5:1).

In her latest blog, my wife writes: “Pray for the opportunities to be an evangelist this week. God wants to answer that prayer and use your life for his kingdom purpose.” As has been said, “Salvation is the work of the Holy Spirit. Sharing God’s word is the work of every Christian.”

I’ll conclude our weeklong discussion of Scripture and secular culture with a statement by David Platt I often quote:

“Every saved person on this side of heaven owes the gospel to every lost person on this side of hell.”

Do you agree?

Quote for the day:

“If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one go there unwarned and unprayed for.” —Charles Spurgeon

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Greg Laurie

Harvest Ministries; Greg Laurie – Choose to Forgive

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 But Joseph replied, ‘Don’t be afraid of me. Am I God, that I can punish you? You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people. No, don’t be afraid. I will continue to take care of you and your children.’ So he reassured them by speaking kindly to them. 

—Genesis 50:19–21

Scripture:

Genesis 50:19–21 

Joseph’s words to his brothers in Genesis 50:19–21 underscore a hard truth for God’s people. We are called to forgive everyone who wrongs us. Keep in mind that Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery. He spent the better part of his life separated from his beloved father. He became a servant. He spent years in an Egyptian prison for a crime he didn’t commit. All because his brothers couldn’t control their jealousy.

Yet, years later, when he was finally reunited with them—when he was perfectly positioned to exact revenge on the siblings who had taken so much from him—this is what he said: “Don’t be afraid of me. Am I God, that I can punish you? You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people. No, don’t be afraid. I will continue to take care of you and your children” (Genesis 50:19–21 NLT).

Some people get to the end of this story and say, “I could never forgive someone who did that to me.” But the spiritual reality is that they can—and must.

Jesus said, “But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your sins, too” (Mark 11:25 NLT). There is no asterisk or fine print listing the offenses that are excluded from His command. Jesus expects us to forgive those who have wronged us. Those who have taken advantage of us. Those who have slandered us. Those who have made fun of us. Those who have betrayed us.

And if we try to argue that someone doesn’t deserve our forgiveness, we’re left with an inescapable truth: That’s what makes us the perfect people to forgive, because we know how it is to receive forgiveness we don’t deserve. As the apostle Paul wrote, “Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32 NLT).

We may not always feel like forgiving. We may see people who have wronged us and feel our blood begin to boil. That’s when we need to say, “As an act of faith, as a step of obedience to Jesus Christ, I forgive this person.”

It’s been said, “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” We should forgive not only for the sake of others, but also for the sake of our own mental and spiritual health. We must place our anger, pain, and desire to get even in God’s hands so that we’re no longer tormented by them.

Is there someone you need to forgive today? Are you harboring a grudge toward someone? Forgive. Forgive whoever has hurt you. As Jesus said in Luke 6:37, “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven” (NLT).

Reflection Question: What would forgiveness look like in your life? Discuss this with believers like you on Harvest Discipleship!

 

 

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

Days of Praise

Days of Praise – God Is Omnipotent

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by Henry M. Morris III, D.Min.

“Ah Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee.” (Jeremiah 32:17)

The Genesis record of creation generates more hostility among men than any other message. Even secular atheists claim to respect the humanitarian teachings of Jesus, but they bristle irrationally when the Lord Jesus is identified as the Creator. Perhaps this is because the evidence for God’s omnipotence is displayed so openly and vividly by the “greatness of his might” (Isaiah 40:26).

The God who can speak the billions of galaxies into existence with the “breath of his mouth” (Psalm 33:6) is a God who can cast ungodly men into eternal hell for their defiance and rebellion against “the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 1:4). Conversely, the God who “stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing” (Job 26:7) is able to “save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him” (Hebrews 7:25).

No wonder the psalmist expresses the praise that all men should declare: “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts. I will speak of the glorious honour of thy majesty, and of thy wondrous works. And men shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts: and I will declare thy greatness” (Psalm 145:3–6).

When the Lord Jesus was formally invested at the great assembly around the throne, the entire throng burst into the song “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created” (Revelation 4:11). Each of us would do well to carry that song in our hearts every day. HMM III

 

 

https://www.icr.org/articles/type/6

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Praise and the Presence of God

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God has ascended amid shouts of joy, the Lord amid the sounding of trumpets. Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises.

Psalm 47:5-6 (NIV)

We know that Psalms is filled with praise for God, but it also includes many instructions for us, as His people, to praise Him. God inhabits the praises of His people (Psalm 22:3), and when we praise Him, He comes and dwells in our praise.

Praise can be anything from simply saying “Thank You” to God for something He has done for us to telling others about His goodness. Praise can be musical or words without music, but it all glorifies God for the good things He has done, is doing, and will do in the future.

There is fullness of joy in God’s presence (Psalm 16:11), so the more we praise Him, the greater our joy will be. Under the Old Covenant, people had to bring sacrifices of animals, grain, or other things as a means of covering their sin. But now under the New Covenant, Jesus has paid for all our sins, and God says the sacrifice we are to bring is one of praise (Hebrews 9:12, 13:15). This sacrifice of praise is the fruit of our lips (our words) glorifying God. We can see that praise is another great way to use our words and fill them with life.

Prayer of the Day: Lord, I praise You for who You are and all that You have done. You are amazing, awesome, and to be praised greatly at all times and in every situation. Help me to be mindful to praise You every day. I love You, Lord.

 

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Today in the Word

Today in the Word – Moody Bible Institute – We Are Witnesses

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Read Ruth 4:9–12

Witnesses played an active role in ancient Israel’s judicial system. They were necessary to ensure fairness and accountability. As the nearer guardian exited the courtroom, Boaz turned to the elders and the crowd and reminded them of their place in these legal proceedings: “Today you are witnesses” (v. 9).

Then he pronounced the two rights that the nearer redeemer had ceded to him, making sure the details were clear. In his formal statement, he specified: “I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelek, Kilion and Mahlon” (v. 9), ensuring that the legal account was accurate.

Next, Boaz proclaimed his right to take “Ruth the Moabite, Mahlon’s widow,” as his wife, and he underscored his motive (v. 10). In contrast to the other guardian’s selfish posture, Boaz’s purpose was to honor Elimelek and preserve his name—his act of hesed. Everyone at the gate responded, “We are witnesses” (v. 11). Then they bestowed a three-part blessing on Boaz.

First, the witnesses asked the Lord to bless Ruth with fertility, comparable to that of Rachel and Leah, matriarchs of Israel. Extraordinarily, they invited Ruth, a foreigner, into this honored position. Second, they prayed that Boaz would prosper and “be famous” (v. 11)—in other words, that his name and reputation would live on with his ancestors. Third, they prayed, “May your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah” (v. 12). In a similar situation, Tamar became pregnant with twins by her father-in-law Judah after her husband died (Genesis 38). Her son Perez was first in the line that led to Boaz.

Perhaps most importantly, the witnesses recognize that the Lord alone is the source of all blessing. Any benefit Boaz would enjoy would be by His hand alone.

Go Deeper

What was extraordinary about Boaz’s loving kindness to Ruth? What acts of hesed have you witnessed?

Pray with Us

Loving Father, echoing today’s reading, we acknowledge that You are the giver of good gifts, that all our blessings come from You, and everything we have is Yours. Your love endures forever!

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.Isaiah 43:1

 

 

https://www.moodybible.org/