Now Are We In Christ Jesus ?

When you accepted Jesus as your Lord, and actual creation took place. The old man - your unregenerated spirit man - was replaced by a new man, created in Christ Jesus. Old things passed away and all things became new. The new birth that occurred in you was done by the creative power of God. It took place inside you - in your spirit.

The "creation" that ocurs at the new birth is the same type of "creation" that took place in the first chapter of Genesis. The word translated created in Genesis 1:1 gives the impression that before God brought heaven and earth into existence, there was nothing like it anywhere else. The same is true with the "new creation in Christ Jesus." You are a "new species of being that never existed before."

As a born-again believer, sin has no dominion over you. It can't dominate you. It has to leave you. Satan is a defeated foe; he is not your god. James 4:7 says that if you resist him, he will flee from you.

You need to see yourself "in Christ" and know the reality of it. If you ask some people today, "Are you a son of God?" They'll say, "Who me? Certainly not!" When you ask, "Are you saved?", they'll say, "Oh yes, thank God, I'm just an old sinner, saved by grace." No , you are not! You were a sinner; you got saved by grace! You can't be both at once. You are a new creation in Christ Jesus. You have been born into the kingdom of His love. As far as God is concerned, you are holy, blameless, and beyond reproach. So quit thinking, speaking, and acting like the world. Let go of all those religious "sin tags." Begin confessing that you are the righteousness of God in Christ.

Everything Jesus received when He was raised from the dead, everything that has happened to Jesus since He was raised from the dead, is yours - not just part of it, all of it!

When Jesus was raised from the dead, He received a glorified body. You will get one, too.

Where did Jesus go when He was raised? To the right hand of the Father. That's where you are now! Ephesians 2:6 says, "And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Jesus was raised from the dead by the mighty power of God and was seated at His own right hand in the heavenly places. That same mighty power of God worked in you when you made Jesus the Lord of your life. It raised you up and set you in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

He is in you and you are in Him. His inheritance and your inheritance are one in the same. You are a joint-heir with Him.​………However, you will never receive any portion of your inheritance until you begin to acknowledge it. With your thoughts, your words, and your actions, you acknowledge the fact that you are in Christ Jesus, that you have received an inheritance, that you have the right to walk in all the blessings and promises of God's Word. Acknowledge the things of God and allow the assurance of them to enter into your heart. Then see them become a part of your life in every area.

How have you been approaching God...on the level of a king or on the level of a beggar? Are you backing your way into the presence of God, hoping to get a handout?

When you made Jesus your Lord, He made you able to stand in the presence of the Father God as a king and a priest, not as a beggar - as the righteousness of God in Christ, not as a sinner. You have been redeemed out of the kingdom of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son. You have been redeemed into kingship and priesthood. You are a king and a priest in Christ Jesus!

Read Kenneth Copeland's full article

Addicted to Wealth — A National Trait?

Lately, we've been discovering addiction to wealth. Or, I should say, rediscovering.

It began with Sam Polk's op-ed in the New York Times, "For the Love of Money."

In my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million — and I was angry because it wasn't big enough. I was 30 years old, had no children to raise, no debts to pay, no philanthropic goal in mind. I wanted more money for exactly the same reason an alcoholic needs another drink: I was addicted.

Polk, as they say, knew of what he spoke: he was "a daily drinker (hey!) and pot smoker and a regular user of cocaine, Ritalin and ecstasy," and had been suspended from Columbia for burglary and arrested twice.  The only thing important to him was his girlfriend. "But even though I was in love with her, when I got drunk I'd sometimes end up with other women."

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The Powerful Parenting Tool of Validation

The concept of validation comes from Marsha Linehan, Ph.D, a clinical psychologist and creator of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).

In her 1993 book Cognitive Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder, Linehan notes the essence of validation:

The therapist communicates to the client that her responses make sense and are understandable within her current life context or situation. The therapist actively accepts the client and communicates this acceptance to the client. The therapist takes the client's responses seriously and does not discount or trivialize them.

Validation is also a powerful parenting tool.

In fact, it's one of the most important things you can do for your child, according to authors Karyn D. Hall, Ph.D, and Melissa H. Cook, LPC, in their book The Power of Validation.

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A question of justice

Suppose a serial killer like Jeffrey Dahmer enjoys a lifestyle torturing, killing and cannibalizing people for fun. He eventually gets caught and goes to prison. In prison he becomes a born-again Christian and all this sins are absolved from him. He then gets killed and goes to heaven since the mere act of conversion into Christianity cleanses him of all previous wrong doings. Some of this victims however were not Christian when they were murdered and so they go to hell when they die. So not only are the murder victims tortured and murdered in this world, they get sent to hell to be tortured even worse, but now it is forever, while their murderer enjoys everlasting peace in heaven

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Justice Scalia Mercilessly Mocks A Lawyer (And He Was Totally Right To Do It)

Justice Scalia is kind of a troll sometimes. He routinely snarks out his fellow justices and is a total dick to legal luminaries like Judge Posner. His belligerence is drenched in sarcasm and usually arbitrary.

In a sense, Antonin Scalia is ATL's spirit guide.

But when he went after an attorney appearing before him, he got immediately chastised by a fellow justice and raised the ire of even conservative commentators.

In this instance, I'm going out on a limb and say Justice Scalia was absolutely, positively, 100 percent right….

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The Mystery of Your Own Psyche

Do you ever surprise yourself? Wonder why you got crazy-angry about something that now seems so small? Wonder why you made that dumb decision? Wonder why you shied away from a great opportunity? Wonder why you fell in love with a person you now consider a complete bozo?

I hope you do surprise yourself from time to time. Why? Because that's a sign that you're attuned to the complexity of your own psyche. You acknowledge (and forgive yourself) for not being a single, unitary, consolidated person. Instead, you are a person who is diverse, divided, growing and learning. Good for you – even though it may not always feel so good.

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4 Things to Avoid for a Good Night’s Sleep

Good sleep can mean the difference between crazy and sane the next day… Between crying between meetings at work or lashing out at your husband over laundry and a semi-functional person who can fake it enough to keep her marriage and her job intact.

It's one of the members of my holy trinity of good mental health (along with a good diet and regular exercise).

Over the ages, sleep and depression have proved to have a dysfunctional, angry relationship.

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Three Views: Why Confess Sins in Worship When It Seems So Rote?

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he value of corporate confession comes simply from the fact that we are doing it with people—those we've been glad to share ministry with, and those we find more difficult to appreciate. A person in the next pew may have slighted us; we may have just learned that a person across the aisle was insulted by something we said. Corporate confession is a time to air it all out and reflect on our regrettable tendency to harm one another. It is a great equalizer, reminding us that we are all guilty of sinful actions and omissions, and that we all need forgiveness.

In his classic rule for monastic living, Benedict recommends that the community recite the Lord's Prayer together several times a day to help uproot the thorns of contention that spring up in community life. I believe that corporate confession on Sunday mornings can work in much the same way.

Of course, anyone can sleep walk through confession. You may begin to pray with good intentions, and may even be painfully conscious of having done something regrettable, when suddenly you are preoccupied with whether or not you took out the dinner rolls to thaw.

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In Defense Of The Rich White Boy Who Killed Four People And Got Away With It

I'm sure that by now you've all heard the story about the wealthy white teenager who killed four people while drunk driving. As we mentioned in yesterday's Non-Sequiturs, 16-year-old Ethan Couch got off — sentenced to therapy — because the judge agreed that the kid was a victim of "affluenza": his parents gave him everything he wanted, and he believed that being rich meant that he wouldn't have to face consequences for his actions.

The kid's not wrong; the fact that he's not facing incarceration for killing four people kind of proves the point. A poor white kid would be in jail right now. A rich black kid would be in jail right now. A poor black kid would be picking out items for his last supper right now. Anybody who thinks that this kind of lenience would be given to anybody other than a wealthy white dauphin is wrong and stupid (and probably racist). The rich kid isn't in jail because rich people don't suffer the full force of consequences for their actions.

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Law School Exam Tips, with Professor Anne Coughlin (2011) (+playlist)

What lawyers put in online profiles versus what clients want in profiles

Nothing I have shared on Twitter has been retweeted and favorited as much as this diagram on lawyer profiles by Matt Homann (@matthomann).

If there's such a thing as a viral tweet in the legal arena, my tweet today of Homman's diagram qualified. People favorited the tweet all day long. Countless people retweeted it. Some said Homman's diagram was going straight to the marketing department at their firm.

Why? Because Homman is spot on. Clients could generally care less where we went to school and what law firm we worked at 17 years ago.

The public is not looking for a profile that reads like Martindale-Hubbell. People want to know how accessible you are, how they can connect to you on social media, and where they can read non-legalese items authored by you that demonstrate your passion and care.

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Q+A: Why Rowan Williams Loves C.S. Lewis

To many American readers, it probably doesn't seem strange that a British Christian leader would write a book about C.S. Lewis's Narnia. But as former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams himself notes, Lewis's children's stories have always been more popular in America than in Britain, especially among intellectual elites. Williams has published several significant volumes of theology and poetry, but earlier this year he released a relatively slim volume on how the Narnia books can reinvigorate readers' understanding of the Christian message. While working as CT's editorial resident, Melissa Steffan interviewed Williams as she reported a separate story on new interest in Lewis in the UK. (Meanwhile, the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College is today hosting a conference on why Lewis has had more influence in the U.S. than in his own country

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Specific brain regions can be trained by means of video games

Video gaming causes increases in the brain regions responsible for spatial orientation, memory formation and strategic planning as well as fine motor skills. This has been shown in a new study conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Charite University Medicine St. Hedwig-Krankenhaus. The positive effects of video gaming may also prove relevant in therapeutic interventions targeting psychiatric disorders.

In order to investigate how video games affect the brain, scientists in Berlin have asked adults to play the video game "Super Mario 64" over a period of two months for 30 minutes a day. A control group did not play video games. Brain volume was quantified using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In comparison to the control group the video gaming group showed increases of grey matter, in which the cell bodies of the nerve cells of the brain are situated.

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Waiting with Our Response

Choosing life instead of death demands an act of will that often contradicts our impulses. Our impulses want to take revenge, while our wills want to offer forgiveness. Our impulses push us to an immediate response: When someone hits us in the face, we impulsively want to hit back.

How then can we let our wills dominate our impulses? The key word is wait. Whatever happens, we must put some space between the hostile act directed toward us and our response. We must distance ourselves, take time to think, talk it over with friends, and wait until we are ready to respond in a life-giving way. Impulsive responses allow evil to master us, something we always will regret. But a well thought-through response will help us to "master evil with good" (Romans 12.21).-

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Chaos and Grace in the Slums of the Earth

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or the first time in history, one of every two people lives in a city. Some 860 million of these city-dwellers reside in slums—uncertain, cramped, and frequently cruel. Most are there by necessity.

A small number of Christian missionaries live in slums too. They are there by choice.

About 100 of them, mostly from the United States, New Zealand, and Australia, met near Bangkok this past April. They gathered under the banner of "New Friars."

The New Friars don't seem to merit high-profile attention. Their efforts to alleviate poverty are small next to the work of many missionary and nonprofit groups and the problems they address.

Yet we do well to listen to the New Friars, because of the way they themselves are listening to God and neighbor, to suffering and hope on the crowded margins of society. They address vital questions about missions today, and about how all Christians might practice our vocations with sacrifice, devotion, and hope.

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Are lawyers keeping up appearances on-line?

Lawyers routinely say that LinkedIn is for business while Facebook is for social and friends.

Euan Semple (@euan), author and social media consultant to organizations, including the The World Bank, wondered Sunday if folks holding this belief are missing out on the wider changes in attitude to work and business that the social web is enabling.

The web is all about people. It's about connections, relationships and energy. So is doing business. Energy and connections are what help you do your work. Facebook, for all its faults, is good at increasing both. Linkedin in, in contrast, is full of people in suits being "professional".

As a lawyer, you should no doubt use LinkedIn. Have a great profile, connect with those you meet on and off-line, share items you read, and possibly start a niche focused group. I have.

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The Mysteries of Sleep Explained

We know we need it. If we don't get it, we're cranky, have trouble concentrating, tend to overeat and are more likely to make mistakes.  Yet, with the crush of demanding schedules, bad habits, or sleep disturbances, we don't always get enough.

So what is happening during those precious hours when we're asleep?  Is it really a time of restoration for our brains?  And is it possible that it's more than that?

What happens in our brains while we're asleep is a question neuroscientist Penelope Lewis is trying to answer.

Lewis directs the Sleep and Memory Lab at the University of Manchester in England. In her new book, The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at Rest, she discusses how sleep makes memory stronger, provides what she terms "spring cleaning" for the brain, and plays a role in depression.

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What Parents Need to Know about Childhood Depression

One of the biggest myths about childhood depression (also known as pediatric depression) is that it doesn't exist.

However, depression is a real illness that affects both adults and kids. In fact, kids as young as 3 years old can have depression.

Depression can even affect babies, who tend to exhibit symptoms such as unresponsiveness, lethargy, inconsolable crying and feeding problems, writes Deborah Serani, PsyD, a clinical psychologist who specializes in mood disorders, in her new book Depression and Your Child: A Guide for Parents and Caregivers.

Below, she revealed what pediatric depression looks like, along with what you can do if you spot these signs.

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Is Family Decline Behind Religious Decline?

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very pastor knows that having kids has a way of bringing young parents inside the church doors. Or, at least, every pastor used to think so. Today, it's less clear. There was a time when you could almost count on young people whose attendance had dropped off after they left Mom and Dad's watchful eyes to return when they became parents themselves. But increasingly, young people who leave aren't coming back. What's going on? According to Mary Eberstadt, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, it has a lot to do with the fact that fewer young people are getting married and having kids.

And if they do finally settle down to start a family, it's much later than it used to be. For Eberstadt, there's an intrinsic link between faith and family, and the decline of the family in Western society has a lot to do with the shrinking size of our churches. In fact, that's How the West Really Lost God, as the title of her new book puts it. "As the family goes," Eberstadt argues, "so go the churches." In North Atlantic societies, the family has not done well in recent years, and to her mind that's been the single most important factor driving secularizing trends in the Western world

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Why your law firm managing partner or chair should go social

Alexander Ingram (@Alex_M_Ingram), an account coordinator at InkHouse Media + Marketing, shared some thoughts this morning on why your CEO should go social.

For years, CEOs protected themselves from the public and left most of the talking to their PR agencies. Regularly communicating in a public forum was simply not part of a CEO's job description. Today, the massive onslaught of businesses adopting social media has provided a unique opportunity for finally personalizing the voice – and influence – of these company leaders. However, with a few high-profile exceptions (Richard Branson), CEOs have largely remained out of the mix, often too busy to take the time to participate in the incessant roar of the social channels. Executives, particularly the CEO, can provide a perspective that no one else in your business can, and social media offers a great platform to disseminate that message.

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