Welcome:

We thank you for visiting with us today. We are a church that is Baptist in doctrine, in other words we take what we believe from the Bible, and we try to teach and preach only what the Bible declares. If you would like to learn more about us please ask or look up our church web-site: http://idahobaptist.com

Prayer Requests:

Bro. Seth Stewart - Diabetes.

Bro. Steve Kjeldgaard - Leukemia.

Bro. Bill Asmundson - Leukemia.

Camp - travelers, weather, devotions, safety.

Schedule:

Today's Nursery Worker - Tami Stewart.

Music Next Week - James and Pastor.

Next Fellowship Sunday - August 17^th.

Men's Prayer Meeting - July 5^th.

The human spirit lives ... in the body, rather like the chicken in its shell. If one told the chicken of the great outside world which it would see when it was set free of its shell, the chicken would not understand or believe it. If one told it that its feathers and eyes would enable it to see and fly, it would not believe it. And there would be no way of proving it to the unborn chick until it came out of its shell.

So in the same way many are uncertain about life after death and the existence of God, because they cannot see beyond the shell-like body of flesh. Their thoughts, like feeble wings hampered by the shell, cannot take flight beyond the narrow confines of the brain. Their weak eyes cannot discover those eternal unfading treasures which God has prepared for those who love him. - S. Singh

Services:

Sunday School - 10:00 a.m. - Genesis 33-34

Morning Service - 11:00 a.m. - "Assuming that . . ."

Afternoon Service - 2:00 p.m. - "Spiritual-Mindedness"

Wednesday Prayer Meeting - 7:00 p.m.

Memory Verse:

This week: "I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast shewed unto thy servant" (Genesis 32:10a).

Next week: "A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle" (Proverbs 18:19).

Capitalism gets to stride ... around our society as objective truth. Everybody from Girl Scouts to collectors for the IRS agents agree that money works. Why doesn't God's love enjoy so high a reputation? It makes more sense than money. God's love can be freely exchanged; there are no security problems at ATMs; and God's love brings more possibilities to every day than any other assets we have. - W. Sappenfield

"I am the light of the ... world," the founder of the Christian religion said, what a stupendous phrase! And how particularly marvelous today, when one is conscious of so much darkness in the world! "Let your light shine before men," he exhorted us. You know, sometimes... someone asks me what I most want, what I should most like to do in the little that remains of my life, and I always nowadays truthfully answer and it is truthful - "I should like my light to shine, even if only very fitfully, like a match struck in a dark, cavernous night and then flickering out." - copied

In self-discipline one ... makes a "disciple" of oneself. One is one's own teacher, trainer, coach, and "disciplinarian." It is an odd sort of relationship, paradoxical in its own way, and many of us don't handle it very well. There is much unhappiness and personal distress in the world because of failures to control tempers, appetites, passions, and impulses. "Oh, if only I had stopped myself is an all too familiar refrain.

The father of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes, once remarked of "good sense" that "everybody thinks he is so well supplied with it, that even the most difficult to please in all other matters never desire more of it than they already possess." With self-discipline it is just the opposite. Rare indeed is the person who doesn't desire more self-discipline and, with it, the control that it gives one over the course of one's life and development. That desire is itself, as Descartes might say, a further mark of good sense. We do want to take charge of ourselves. But what does that mean?

The question has been at or near the center of Western philosophy since its very beginnings. Plato divided the soul into three parts or operations--reason, passion, and appetite--and said that right behavior results from harmony or control of these elements. Saint Augustine sought to understand the soul by ranking its various forms of love in his famous ordo amoris: love of God, neighbor, self, and material goods. Sigmund Freud divided the psyche into the id, ego, and superego. And we find William Shakespeare examining the conflicts of the soul, the struggle between good and evil called the psychomachia, in immortal works such as King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet. Again and again, the problem is one of the soul's proper balance and order. "This was the noblest Roman of them all," Antony says of Brutus in Julius Caesar. "His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world, 'This was a man!' "

But the question of correct order of the soul is not simply the domain of sublime philosophy and drama. It lies at the heart of the task of successful everyday behavior, whether it is controlling our tempers, or our appetites, or our inclinations to sit all day in front of the television. As Aristotle pointed out, here our habits make all the difference. We learn to order our souls the same way we learn to do math problems or play baseball well - through practice.

Practice, of course, is the medicine so many people find hard to swallow. If it were easy, we wouldn't have such modern-day phenomena as multimillon-dollar diet and exercise industries. We can enlist the aid of trainers, therapists, support groups, step programs, and other strategies, but in the end, it's practice that brings self-control.

The case of Aristotle's contemporary Demosthenes illustrates the point. Demosthenes had great ambition to become an orator, but suffered natural limitations as a speaker. Strong desire is essential, but by itself is insufficient. According to Plutarch, "His inarticulate and stammering pronunciation he overcame and rendered more distinct by speaking with pebbles in his mouth." Give yourself an even greater challenge than the one you are trying to master and you will develop the powers necessary to overcome the original difficulty. He used a similar strategy in training his voice, which "he disciplined by declaiming and reciting speeches or verses when he was out of breath, while running or going up steep places." And to keep himself studying without interruption "two or three months together," Demosthenes shaved "one half of his head, that so for shame he might not go abroad, though he desired it ever so much." Thus did Demosthenes make a kind of negative support group out of a general public that never saw him! - W. Bennet

Does discovering who ... you are awaken a kind of inner unrest? If you started accusing yourself of all that is in you, would your nights and days be long enough? - Roger of Taize