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Vitamin Supplements?

November 16, 2016 By admin

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There is an adage that says that if a little is good, more must be better. This saying does not hold true for vitamins, since too much could be unsafe. Many people today are unsure as to whether or not their daily food can supply them with adequate nutrition, and so they take a vitamin pill to provide nutritional insurance.

There are some people that may need additional nutrients to ensure normal body functions and prevent nutrient deficiencies. These include pregnant women; women with excessive menstrual losses; people on severely restricted weight-loss diets; total vegetarians who don’t consume any foods containing Vitamin B12; and those with certain metabolic disorders or who are taking those medications which increase nutrient requirements. There is, however, no evidence that vitamin supplementation has any benefit for the general population that consumes a balanced diet.

Today, there is a lot of interest in natural antioxidants and the protection they afford against cancer, heart disease, and aging. Because of this, some are promoting the regular use of supplements of vitamins A, C, and E. These antioxidants can, however, be amply supplied by foods. Fruits are rich in vitamin C, whole grains and seeds contain high levels of vitamin E, and carrots and broccoli are loaded with vitamin A.

Buyer Beware

Using vitamin supplements can be unsafe. The fat-soluble vitamins A and D are especially toxic. Large doses of B6 for the treatment of PMS or carpal tunnel syndrome have produced permanent nerve damage in some persons. Kidney damage, muscle weakness, diarrhea, irritability, fatigue, undesirable changes in blood lipid levels, headache, nerve damage, and other medical problems may result from the regular use of high-strength vitamin supplements.

In spite of their widespread use, vitamin C supplements do not reduce the incidence of colds. They may, however, slightly reduce the duration of the cold and the severity of the symptoms Such benefits can be seen with as little as 250 mg/day. Higher doses do not provide any extra benefit.

Read more at the source: Vitamin Supplements?

Article excerpt posted on en.intercer.net from Healthy Living.

What About Tomorrow?

November 9, 2016 By admin

Photo by Pixabay

It’s kind of strange how Jesus didn’t have much to say about tomorrow. What He did say is that we shouldn’t worry about it.

“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes” (Matthew 6:34, The Message).

Someone eloquently said, “Today is the tomorrow you used to worry about!”

When dwelt upon, tomorrow’s unknown fears can impact the way you live in the present. Like a scorching fire, fear burns up your energy and vitality. It devastates your hopes and eager expectations, cripples faith and can ultimately destroy your health.

God’s Word is a good antidote for fear. That’s not to say that when it’s read it holds some kind of hocus pocus magic that instantly dispells all our fears. Such an expectation would be naive and unrealistic. Rather, God’s promises are like the anti-venom that neutralizes the poison of a deadly bite. Suddenly healing is within reach. Try reading these passages and note how you are affected: Psalm 23; Psalm 91; John 14:1-3

“I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us” (Romans 8:38, 39, The Message).

Questions About Your Future

One of the best ways to plan for tomorrow is to proactively seize today’s opportunities for learning and personal growth. Here are some questions to consider. Your answers will help provide a glimpse into what your future may or may not hold:

1. What are you doing today to limit tomorrow’s potential medical expenses?

2. Are you putting any money in savings for future needs?

3. What skills are you honing today to make yourself more marketable in tomorrow’s workplace?

4. What do you want to be doing five years from now?

5. What are you planning to do five years from now?

6. What is today’s most pressing personal challenge?

7. What do you think tomorrow’s most pressing challenge will be?

8. What are you doing to master this anticipated challenge?

9. How much time do you invest in other people (family, friends and others)?

10. There are many things we cannot change. What can you do today to influence your sphere of influence in a positive way?

Read more at the source: What About Tomorrow?

Article excerpt posted on en.intercer.net from Spiritual applications.

Window Shopping

November 2, 2016 By admin

Photo by Pixabay

I remember the first time I saw her. It was 49 years ago, and we were in the college cafeteria just after semester break. She was a new face on campus and being not “socially attached” to anyone at the time, I immediately began to plot how best to impress her and get a date.

I determined this venture was worth spending some of my hard-earned cash on; so, throwing caution to the wind, I purchased two tickets to a Victor Borge concert at Constitution Hall. Since the concert was sold out, I was offered provisional seats on the stage itself just inches from the maestro. The cost was exorbitant, but this only served to convince me that this would surely make the hoped-for-impression.

It must have done the trick. That young lady and I are still dating each other. We’ve also been married for 47 years.

Dating is exhilarating. Everyday is new and exciting; feet walk on clouds, hearts skip beats, life looks beautiful through those rose-tinted glasses. Is that normal? Absolutely! Is it wrong? I hope not. Dating is, in fact, part of our Great Physician’s plan. He fully intended that His children grow up, mature, and seek companionship. “It is not good that the man should be alone,” He told Adam in Genesis 2:18, KJV.

We’re attracted to other people by many things. It could be as whimsical as a smile, or as basic as a feeling of security. But the final selection process—the process that ends with a nervous “I do” uttered before witnesses—must be carried out using issues far deeper than looks and feelings.

Dating is a time for discovering which is the right person for you. It’s a time to get to know what makes us tick; what we like and don’t like; how we spend money; what we believe in; what our habits are.

Dating is a grand experiment, and that may be as far as some couples want to go. But the man and woman who desire to deepen their relationship must make a commitment. They become more and more exclusive until, finally, they pledge to love, honor, and cherish “until death do us part.”

There is Someone who loves you very much. This person has had His eye on you ever since you were born, and He wants to be first in your life. I wonder if we are as fair with Him as we are with one another. In short, are you committed to God, or are you just “dating” Him?

Are you window shopping—looking here and there for someone who will bring you the most benefits? If God promised to make you rich, beautiful, or famous, would you attend church more often?

Is God your blind date—the stranger you hardly know yet who you expect to meet all your specifications? Is He on your heart’s short list only when you can’t find anyone else?

Are you trying to double-date with God? Instead of making Him first in your life, do you expect Him to share time with your career or many social engagements?

Maybe you think you can “go Dutch” with your Creator—He takes care of His obligations, you take care of yours. That way, you won’t be “beholding” to Him for anything.

Perhaps you consider yourself “going steady” with God, but not willing to move up to the next level—being totally committed to Him “until death do us part.”

The ultimate cad in the dating scene is the two-timer—one who pretends to be committed to you while maintaining developing friendships on the side. Have you ever said Yes to God, then returned to your old way of life?

The Bible says that our Great Physician is a “jealous” God (Exodus 34:14). That means He has chosen you, and He doesn’t want anything or anybody to take you away. Like any serious suitor, He longs to spend time with you because He has invested everything He owns in your relationship. He has paid every bill, including your ticket to heaven. No, He’s not trying to impress you or make Himself look good. He’s simply saying, “I have loved you with an everlasting love;I have drawn you with loving-kindness (Jeremiah 31:3).

How could anyone resist a love like that?

Read more at the source: Window Shopping

Article excerpt posted on en.intercer.net from Spiritual applications.

Soul Sifting

October 31, 2016 By admin

Photo by Pixabay

I have a rather unromantic confession to make: The best day of my life was not my wedding day. In fact, it has nothing directly to do with my wife or marriage. It’s not a magic moment, a party, or any celebratory moment either. The best thing that ever happened to me was losing it all on a normal day five years ago.

You see, the best day of my life was the day that I lost a job. It was a well-paying, high-profile job. It meant that I was somebody. It was the center of my identity, the source of my pride and the pedestal upon which I proudly stood. And on that wonderful day, I lost it all. Over the course of the next year, working random jobs of mowing grass and at a youth detention center, I continued the losing process: financial standing, pride, and even the will to live at one point.

One year to the day of losing that job, I was going nowhere but in debt, was completely depressed and felt there was no hope for me. The proverbial “rock bottom” was my forwarding address and I was there for about a month of absolute hell on earth. Relationships had gone sour. I was alone and lonely. I felt no love, no hope and no destiny for someone who had made a living telling people about the meaning of life and their eternal purpose in God. Now that same God was a distant entity unconcerned with my present disaster of a life.

But I was not alone in feeling alone. Apparently, it’s a common place for those God has chosen to live, at least for awhile. At the famous last supper with Jesus and his disciples, Peter speaks up wanting to be the greatest in the kingdom and so willing to declare his devotion to his Rabbi. And Jesus responds with a stunning line: “Satan has asked to sift you like wheat” and that Peter would end up denying Jesus that very night.

And it happened, just as Jesus said. Peter denied he even knew his leader and friend and he ended up feeling shame. Such shame that he wept, lamenting over what had happened. One minute, things were great and he was willing to do anything and the next, he was broken over his own spiritual condition.

But I wonder if Peter would say the same. I wonder if that was the greatest moment of his life. There’s something in the broken moments that remove all of the “self” and allow me to see life for what it really is. It was only after Peter realized he couldn’t follow Jesus in his own strength that he became a great leader testifying of the life that Christ lives through us.

The same can be said for Paul, the apostle formerly known as Saul. His blindness made him see. Struck down on the Damascus Road, Saul was on his way to persecute more Christians and God had another thing in mind. It was in his state of brokenness that God was able to show him the true way of life. It is the path through brokenness, the sifting of the soul, that enables us to truly live. It is death that leads to life. Our attempts at being something for God are for nothing if we have not travelled the road of the broken. It is the path that Jesus walked and He continually calls us to do the same.

Hell What?

October 26, 2016 By admin

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I don’t think there’s anything within Christianity that has bugged me more than this incredible belief that people will burn forever. How on earth did we become comfortable with God acting in ways we ourselves would never? If Hitler had been spared the self-inflicted gun wound to the head, and been captured, would any court of law have sentenced him to thirty years of torture and deprivation? Are you kidding me?

And yet more than nine out of ten of us Christians tote this idea about God spanking us all forever without batting an eyeball. How on earth did we get to this point? No parent would retain custody of their kids if they spanked them for thirty minutes… but God is going to punish us physically for millennia? God who cares deeply for us? It’s enough to make me want to heave. What a crazy way to view the Being who calls Himself LOVE personified.

Not only does eternal burning hell not make any sense to the common human instinct, no matter how warped by evil. Us getting roasted forever does not jive with the basic teachings of the Bible. First and foremost, Jesus said he took the wages of our sin, which of course the Bible refers to as being eternal death by being crucified. Well then if Jesus took what I have coming and fully took my place, then why didn’t or I should probably say isn’t Jesus still burning in Hell right now?

If the cost of my sins is eternal hellfire, and Jesus took my place, well then you do the math… it’s not that complicated. Jesus has got to get what I had coming—all of it. Otherwise it’s like the guy who’s getting shot for betraying his country and his dad steps in to take his place and instead of shooting the dad, they just put him in prison for a few years. Make sense? No. Fair and just? No. Inconsistent? Yes.

If Jesus is going to take my place by dying one long afternoon, fine, but then don’t tell me that if I reject Jesus taking my place I get more than a slow painful death that takes a few hours. Anything more and Jesus hasn’t done what He says He did. He didn’t take all my sin and it’s consequences… not at all… and He can’t take credit for being my stand-in at all.

Then there’s that text I just quoted part of a few paragraphs back, you know, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. Death is the wages of sin; life is the gift of God. This text parallels a hundred more in the Bible, and is very clear on two things on where death and life come from. God gives life as a gift. To burn forever, God is going to have to keep giving me the gift of life so He can hurt me over and over again. That is the human equivalent of you taking me to the ER so that I can be patched up before you return me to your basement to beat me up, again and again and again… forever.

I could go on all afternoon. We could talk about what death is… since that is what sin is said to cause—not eternal burning. Or how Jesus in Revelation says that those who reject life will be thrown into the same lake of fire that the Devil and his angels and then death itself are thrown into—so does God keep the Devil, his angels… and death itself alive forever? What?

Yes, and we could talk about how He calls himself love, and that He values our freedom so much He’s let this planet spin on, despite the misery and confusion we lavish on ourselves, and how this kind of “you’re free to choose your destiny and I’ll love you no matter what you choose” could possibly make anybody feel free if there’s that mammoth BUT I’LL PUNISH YOU FOREVER clause at the end. I’m sorry, it just doesn’t make any sense at all. Not even to me, a fallen, sinful, selfish person who rarely succeeds at pure love and has a load of personal issues. If I loved you and you decide to hate and reject me, what is the loving thing for me to do? Make you pay for your choice as long as you live? Hold a grudge and play out revenge for 80 years? Even I know the answer to that.

God didn’t create suffering, doesn’t like it and died in my place to release me from it. And this same Guy is going to keep people alive to punish them forever… and for no apparent reason—we all know that punishment as children was to get our behavior in line. So God is going to punish when it’s too late for us to choose any different or better?

If the billions of people on planet earth who want nothing to do with God are ever going to change their minds, and want to love Him, you can bet all the money in your bank account that it’s not going to be because they’re terrified of Him. Perfect love casts out fear is what the Bible teaches, and that it’s kindness that leads us all to turn to God.

I know that an eternal burning hell is not part of who God is, first it’s not kind, and second it’s not perfect love because is sure doesn’t cast out fear. Sounds a lot more to me like the Devil’s dream for all of us.

Vitamin Supplements?

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What About Tomorrow?

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Window Shopping

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Soul Sifting

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Hell What?

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