Here is a letter from satanto you.

you might want to think about what the devil said on this letter.

From Satan
Hell-O, I saw you yesterday as you began your daily chores. You awoke without kneeling to pray. As a matter of fact, you didn't even bless your meals, or pray before going to bed last night. You are so unthankful, I like that about you.
I cannot tell you how glad I am that you have not changed your way of living, Fool, you are mine! Remember, you and I have been going steady for years, and I still don't love you yet. As a matter of fact I hate you, because I hate God. I am only using you to get even with God.
He kicked me out of heaven, and I'm going to use you as long as possible to pay him back.
You see, Fool, God Loves You and He has great plans in store for you. But you have yielded your life to me and I'm going to make your life a living HELL. That way we'll be together twice.
This will really hurt God. Thanks to you. I'm really showing him who's the boss in your life. With all of the good times we've had... We have been watching dirty movies, cursing people out, partying, stealing, lying, being hypocrites, fornicating, back stabbing, disrespecting adults and those in leadership position. NO respect for the church, having a bad attitude: SURELY you don't want to give all this up.
Come on FOOL, lets BURN together forever, I've got some HOT plans for us.
This is just a letter of appreciation from me to you. I'd like to say THANKS for letting me use you most of your foolish life. You are so gullible, I laugh at you! When you are tempted to sin, you give in HA HA HA, YOU MAKE ME SICK!
Sin is really beginning to take its toll on your life. You look twice your age. I need new blood, so go ahead and teach some children how to sin. I love it when you do that it makes my job that much easier.
All you have to do is smoke, drink alcohol, cheat, lie, gamble, gossip, fornicate, and do it all in the presence of a child and they will surely do it also. Kids are like that, all they need is you to show them how.
Well Fool, I have to let you go for now, but I'll be back in a couple of seconds to tempt you again. If you were smart, you would run somewhere, confess your sins, and live for God with the little bit of life you have left.
It's not my nature to warn people like you, but to me your a Joke knowing what you know and still sinning. you're pathetic. Don't get me wrong I still HATE YOU.
Have a nice DEATH
Your Enemy
SATAN

Come on Home (4th Week of Lent 2008)

To conclude a long sermon on repentance, a fire-and-brimstone preacher said forcefully, "I want everyone in this congregation to know that there is one among us who especially needs to repent this day -- a man who has been unfaithful to his wife. I want him to know that I know who he is and that if he knows what is good for him, he had better put a twenty dollar bill in today's offering." When the service was over it was discovered that the collection plates contained 14 twenty dollar bills together with a note attached to an offering of $17 dollars which read as follows: "This is all I had with me. I'll put in the other $3 next week."

The Season of Lent calls us to repentance. Like the loving father in the New Testament story of the "Prodigal Son," God our Father is eager for us to turn around and come home to Him. And all it takes is the turning.

For some of us today, this worship experience will be a homecoming. For some of us there will be the joy of healing, the joy of new life, the joy of reconciliation. Some of us may leave still groping in the empty darkness, still separated from God. It all depends on our willingness to change, to turn our lives around: to REPENT.

The Almighty Lord God who made us is eager for us to come home. He rejoices when we do. But He honors our freedom. He will not force us to come home. We must do the turning in order to move out of the darkness and into the light.

In his famous novel, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," Leo Tolstoy has given us a classic example of
repentance. Ivan is dying a horrible death. The pain is unceasing throughout the day and night. Not only is it the agony of physical pain but also the torment of black despair that presses in on him. He feels as though he is inside a pitch dark sack of some kind and as the top of the sack is being closed on him he struggles to get out, but he cannot. Occasionally during this experience it occurs to him that his life has not been what it ought to have been. But he dismisses these thoughts immediately and the pain goes on and the darkness grows deeper -- until he reaches the turning point. He begins to appreciate his wife's continuing patience with him over the years. He begins to appreciate her willingness to love him in spite of his insensitivity, and his cursing and screaming. He is deeply moved when his little boy comes into his room, kneels at his bedside, and kisses his hand, without a word. Other things -- simple things - - begin to get through to him and bring him to his turning point.

And he realizes that even on his deathbed there are some things he can still do to make amends. The pain continues but the darkness begins to fall away, bit-by-bit, and he comes out of the sack. A short time later he dies -- in peace, a whole person.

When Ivan realized that what was missing from his life was the act of genuine repentance, it was like a blind man regaining his sight. In the story, when Ivan feels himself reaching the turning-point of repentance, he cries out, "That's what it is! That's it!"

Wouldn't it be exciting this day if we could come out of our dark sacks! Wouldn't it be exciting this day if we could feel the darkness falling away! Wouldn't it be exciting this day if we could begin to see clearly and say, "That's what it is. That's it!". Wouldn't it be exciting this day if we could realize that the Father's love has been here all this time, that the Father is eager for us to come home. And all it takes is the turning.

It's not enough to hate sin. We all hate sin in the abstract. We need to name the sin, the thing that is separating us from God. We need to identify specifically the thing that is making it impossible for God's Grace to move us into the light. Then we must be willing to work this thing that is blocking out God's Grace to a point of resolution. It is not enough to say, "Oh yes, that's it. I will repent of it," and let it end there. It may be that some act of restitution is necessary. It may be that we need to go to another person and say, "Listen, this thing between us is not good for either of us. We must do something about it, now.". It may be some unfinished business with our parents or our children or our spouse. Whatever it may be, we must resolve it if we genuinely want to come home to God.

In today's Gospel story, the religious leaders become extremely upset when Jesus restores sight to a blind man. It triggers for them all sorts of questions. How could this possibly have happened to a lowly beggar like this blind man? How could this Jesus perform such a miracle? This man, Jesus, "cannot be from God" because he does not observe all of the Sabbath Day Laws! How could such "a sinner perform signs like these?" They even cross-examine the parents of the man born blind to see if they can uncover some trick and expose Jesus as a fraud.

On-and-on they continue with their questions, acting as though any genuinely miraculous manifestation of God's Grace necessarily has to conform to their own preconceived notions. But the man born blind will not be intimidated. "I only know that I was blind and now I can see" (John 9:25). In his simplicity, this uneducated man proved infinitely wiser than they who presumed to be his teachers. The teachers spoke with the authority of textbooks; the man born blind spoke with the authority of religious experience. He sensed the futility of trying to box the event into some category. It was enough for him to know that, by the Grace of God, an amazing thing had happened to him that changed his whole life: "I only know that I was blind, and now I can see."

We must allow God's Grace to come in on God's terms. God's Grace is not subject to man's rules of reason and precedent and convention. We must allow God's Grace to flow freely through the very depths of our being if we are to break out of the dark sack of how things are and into the light of how things ought to be.

Genuine repentance requires us to trust that God has better things in mind for us than we have in mind for ourselves. Think about it! Do we really have any reason to believe that God wanted us for His children when He created us? Was there any logical necessity for God to "so love the world that He gave His only Son" so that we might have eternal life? Does this season of Lent make any "sense" according to our normal ways of thinking? Is it to be expected that God should become man and walk the tortuous trail to Calvary's hill, there to hang battered and bloodied while taking on the full burden of human wickedness? Think about it, yes! But do not wait to respond until you can make sense of it, rationalize it. Think about it, yes, but also be ready and willing to bow to the Mystery of it -- for the Truth is both simple and beyond understanding.

"I was lost, and now I am found ... I was blind, and now I can see ... I was imprisoned in a dark sack and now I am free ... My life was going in the wrong direction, and now I have turned ... I have sinned, and now I have repented."

There is a story from the Middle Ages about a young woman who was expelled from heaven and told that if she would bring back the gift that is most valued by God, she would be welcomed back. She brought back drops of blood from a dying patriot. She brought back some coins that a destitute widow had given to the poor. She brought back a remnant of a Bible that had been used for years by an eminent preacher. She brought back some dust from the shoes of a missionary laboring in a remote wasteland. She brought back many similar things but was turned back repeatedly. One day she saw a small boy playing by a fountain. A man rode up on horseback and dismounted to take a drink. The man saw the child and suddenly remembered his boyhood innocence. Then, looking in the fountain and seeing the reflection of his hardened face, he realized what he had done with his life. And tears of repentance welled up in his eyes and began to trickle down his cheeks. The young woman took one of these tears back to heaven and was received with joy and love.

The Season of Lent calls us to repentance. Come on home!

3rd sunday of lent A

There are people all over this land who, earlier today, were faced with what they considered to be a
hard choice: "Should I go or should I not go to Church today?" There are husbands all over this land
who are in Church today just to please their wives. There are parents all over this land who are in
Church just to keep the "respectable" image alive for their kids. There are young people all over this
land who are in Church today just to keep from offending their parents, or just because they are forced
to go. And they are all going about it in the wrong way. The Lord Jesus Christ is not interested in
fostering and preserving that kind of religious experience.
As it is with many Institutions, these are times of crisis for the Church. If we're not worrying about the
clergy crisis, then it's the financial crisis or the crisis of belief. Books have been written on "The
Trouble With the Church" and "What's Wrong With the Church" and "The Enemy In the Pew" and
"God's Frozen People" and so on. But the more you think about it, the more apparent it becomes that
many of us who love the Church deeply and who want it to flourish in society, aren't really listening to
Jesus' invitation to come to the Father in "spirit and truth." Many of us seem to be living under the old
religion of "Law" and "oughtness" and "Thou shalt not." Think about it! Think about your own
religious experience! What's really at the heart of it? Is it still the business of "oughts" and "shalt nots"?
Where is the spontaneity? Where is the freedom? Where is the joy?
There is a story about a golfer who set up his ball on the tee, swung mightily and missed. His club hit
an ant hill and he killed hundreds of ants. He became more and more frustrated as he repeatedly swung
and missed. And each time he missed, he slaughtered more ants. Finally, there were just two little ants
left. One of them raised his head and hollered over to the other, "It looks like if you want to save your
life around here, you've got to get on the ball." I fear that is what religion has become for some of us: if
you want to be on the safe side of life, you've got to get on the ball and do what any decent, respectable
person ought to do. If you want to be on the safe side of life, you ought to go to Church. And that is not
what Jesus means when he talks about worshipping the Father in "spirit and truth." Jesus is talking
about breaking loose from the burden of "oughtness." "Come to Me all you who labor under heavy
burdens and I will give you rest," Jesus said. Come out from under the heavy burden of guilt over not
being able to dot every "I" and cross every "T" every time.
That is what Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman in today's Gospel was all about.
Jesus said to her, "An hour is coming, and is already here, when authentic worshippers will worship the
Father in spirit and truth" (Jn. 4:23). Jesus invited her and He invites us to come out from under
religion of law and to enter into a whole new life: a religion of the spirit; a free, life-giving,
spontaneous relationship with God. That's what authentic worship is all about. That is why so many
people say that the one great moment of their lives was when they heard Jesus' invitation for what it
really is. When that flash of light came to them, they understood. They made the move out of the old
life with its heavy burden of enslavement to laws and rules, and into Jesus' new life of freedom and
spontaneity and joy -- a relationship with God in a new way.
Praising God and giving thanks to God and being right with God never should feel like a burden.
Moreover, it seems to follow that when we make our worship experience a burden, we do the same in
our relationships with other people. We talk here in Church about loving our neighbor, loving our
brother, loving one another, being the Good Samaritan. But the problem is that most of us go out
carrying this mandate as a heavy burden. We try to minister to others because we know we ought to,
and they know immediately that is why we're there. Jesus asks us to minister to others, not in an
attitude of "oughtness" but in an atmosphere of spontaneity. Jesus wants us to be free for others, to be
there when we're needed because of who God is and who we are. In other words, to be there when
we're needed because God is Love and we are destined to be fulfilled in Love.
The most serious, the most profound choice to be made in the life of each one of us is the decision to
say "Yes" or "No" to God on this level of spontaneity and freedom and joy. At a certain level we do
say "Yes," most of us. But then the question is, what difference does it make? You've got to get up
tomorrow morning and it may be another rainy day. How will you face the day? How will you relate to
people? What kind of life are you going to live in the midst of tomorrow?
Many of us are living very busy lives. We hear young parents complain that the responsibilities of
parenthood and the pressures of children's activities are so burdensome these days that there is no time
for anything else. Serious quiet-time or prayer life or Bible study are far down on the list of priorities.
It was summed up beautifully by an eight-year-old in a TV interview. The child came from a large
family in which mother always got up first. She got the children off to school, got the father off to
work, and then got down to the business of daily household chores. At one point in the interview, the
youngster was asked, "What do you think your mother wants most?" Unhesitatingly, he replied, "To go
back to bed." There are times when the pressures and the demands get so heavy that most of us come
up with that same feeling: we want to go back to bed and pull the covers up over our heads ("Stop the
world, I want to get off!"). But the question remains: what kind of life style do we aim for in the midst
of all of this?
What good does it do to talk about a gracious God who loves us and wants us for His own if it doesn't
make a difference when we come to Church? What good does it do to talk about being created for
eternal life with God if it doesn't make a difference at breakfast tomorrow morning? What good does it
do to talk about being created in God's image on Sunday morning if it doesn't make a difference at
work on Monday morning? What good does it do to talk about Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior if it
doesn't make a difference in our daily lives? How do we develop the style of life which Jesus says will
make a difference? How do we position ourselves to live as Christians, to live for others, as Jesus did?
We take these questions seriously only when we open ourselves up to the limitless possibilities of
whatever it is that God is doing in our midst. And being open implies the need for serious reflection,
serious meditation, serious prayer. If you do this in imitation of Christ you will discover that it will
lead you to greater involvement in the Community of Faith, not less. You will discover that the Church
is the context through which you move toward God Himself. It is in this life of sharing and praying and
studying and listening and worshipping that your sense of mission and purpose grows and develops.
A young high school teacher, very popular with the students because he knows their language and
loves teaching, tells about a conversation he had with a senior girl. She told him she was in rebellion
against many things, including her parents. They had given her everything but love, she said. She was
in rebellion against the Church because she felt it was a meaningless Institution with nothing to say to
real life, nothing to reach her at "gut level," as she put it. She was in rebellion against Christians
because she felt that they were hypocrites. After about an hour of this, the conversation began to take a
more positive turn. The girl began to talk about where her life was going, about what she was looking
for. Finally, it came down to her saying the following: "Down deep inside I know that Jesus Christ has
the answer to my life." Then, half-defiantly, half-wistfully, she ended the conversation with these
words: "But I just don't want that answer."
In the end, that is really what it comes down to for all of us. We have the answer deep down inside us.
The question is, "Do we want it?" In spirit and in truth, do we really want to accept Christ's invitation:
"Come to me all you who labor under heavy burdens and I will give you rest." The choice is ours!