#first-hand

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came.  So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”John 20:24-25 Today’s Hero of The Faith? A guy we like to call “Doubting Thomas”. As…

New Post has been published on https://www.crownofcompassion.org/2018/12/22/a-first-hand-participant-in-our-suffering/

A first-hand participant in our suffering

“It is frustrating to every sufferer to share their travail with people who don’t have a clue and can’t relate because they have no first-hand knowledge of what you’re talking about.  Jesus is not just a student of our suffering; he became a first-hand participant in it.”- Paul David Tripp

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.  Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need.”- Hebrews 4:15-16 (ESV)

As Paul David Tripp continues Chapter 7 of Suffering, he relates the biblical message of God’s grace.  He stresses that God’s grace is about more than your past forgiveness and future hope.  In addition, God’s grace is about everything you’re facing right now.

Consequently, based on Hebrews 4:14-16, Pastor Tripp details five powerful, antidenial implications of the wonderful string of encouragements this passage provides.  Today Pastor Tripp covers the first point.

 1.  In your suffering, you have an Advocate.  Because you have an Advocate, you never need to load your burdens on your own shoulders.  Thus, you neve need to somehow, someway, push your way through.  For in the face of your weakness, worry, doubt, and fear, Jesus pleads to the Father in your defense.  Even when your heart leans more toward anger than worship.

Furthermore, the author observes, it’s silly to deny what your Savior already knows.  That minimizes the power of what Jesus already experienced.  As a result, you find true peace and comfort through your cries for help and confessions of struggle.  Pastor Tripp concludes:

“Not only will he (Jesus) not turn his back on you when your suffering becomes a struggle of faith; in tender love he’ll take your case to the Father.  In light of the advocacy of the Savior, denial makes no sense at all.”

Today’s question: What does it mean to you that Jesus is a first-hand participant in your suffering?  Please share.

Hello, so a lot of people might know my country, Costa Rica, for its beautiful landscapes, biodiversity and overall publicity for its wide tourism industry. And, I’m not gonna lie, it does have a wide natural diversity, some gorgeous landscapes and a big tourism industry going from beaches all the way over to mountains. But it seems as if the dark face of Costa Rica, how life really is for the majority of us here, is completely ignored by the media, because we’re “only a vacation place”. Well... we’re not. 

So at the moment, our current government is practically about to implement a plan to TRY to solve the economical crisis in Costa Rica, which has been going on for years and only getting worse. Corruption and tax evasion by the highest classes aka a lot of the actual government functionaries, has played a big part in it, but there’s obviously more causes. Now, going back to the plan, it sounds like a good alternative, except for the fact that a lot of its clauses affect the low and middle classes in our countries and not the actual high classes that are the biggest contributers to the problem. And the plan never mentions the elimination of the “pensiones de lujo”, which are retirement pensions that exceed the amount of money that the person actually lists during their working life, so the government is obliged to pay the difference, so you can see how it contributes to the crisis in a developing country. 

Basically, what I am trying to do is not to leave Costa Rica as an actually awful country in everyone else’s eyes, because it truly isn’t, it’s a beautiful country. What I am trying to do is show people a bit of the reality that not everyone gets to see, that not even people who come here and visit the country get to experience, because, after all, that is not what they came here for. But I hope the little information I can provide from first-hand experience can actually help people to not just see Costa Rica as a “vacation place”, but more as in a country with a growing crisis and lots of social issues, and really pay attention to this as much as we do to the beautiful landscapes and biodiversity. 

And bear in mind that I’m not a professional journalist, or a government functionary or none of those, but I’m just a costa rican student wth some stuff to say and I just hope you take information you hear from Costa Rica with a grain of salt, even this post, and so it pushes you to investigate further.

Spasskaya Tower 360: Closest-ever look at legendary military festival – RT

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With each decade--since, say, the 1960s--algorithms have been archived, systematized, made into libraries, and, in turn, collections of such libraries have been further systematized and bundled and organized, in higher and higher levels. While this has led to an ease with which computers can be tailor-made to fit with purposes that enable people to do things with them without any much training, it has also led to a certain degree of confusion about what computers really are and what programming, indeed, really is. Surely, if programming merely is handling gigantic libraries of ready-made programs, then the distinction between using a computer and programming a computer is more or less vanishing. And while the general usefulness of computers may have gone up, the lack of contact with the essential algorithms that drive the computer has led many of those who before would have learned ‘raw’ programming to have to spend time on learning to communicate with ready-made programming instead. And programming languages themselves have been made that reflect this rather second-hand relationship to the essential computing.

  The programmer, or the person setting about to learn programming for the first time, or to learn a new programming language, perhaps one that is very different from earlier ones, must therefore think through priorities. Do you want to learn something of enduring value, that helps you to think, and to KNOW computers first-hand, and that leads you to real insights into how to make algorithms? Or is all you want to handle the computers of this year and maybe a couple of years into the future, at most, in terms of being able to steer through and configure the most-used and most-hyped and most-commercialised packages?

  The use of G15 PMN, whatever the status of G15 PMN in society, in terms of education, is to learn something about computers in a first-hand way, and to sharpen own brain, own mind, own instincts about how to structure thoughts. In a context where other people are using G15 PMN-enabled PCs, this can also be practical, even commercially practical. But even if others aren’t using such PCs, you yourself can continue to apply and extend and deepen your programming competence, and create something that works for you and your friends. This skill will be with you and G15 PMN is a finished product, defined in independence from the present status of computers, and will work in any context where there are computers above a certain minimum level of RAM size, speed, and so on. And, there are activities going on where this involves also the use of robotic extensions to G15 PMN-enabled PCs, so it can be practical in this sense, too {at some point}.