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!