Heart Touchers - He Took It Like a Man by Anna Jewell

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Good afternoon Heart4Teens.com subscribers!

It is my pleasure to introduce another new writer to Heart4Teens! Anna Jewell is a teenage young lady who has a wisdom beyond her years. She shares with us today about what a real man should be all about. Be sure to take the time to write to her at her e-mail address at the end of her story!

From my family to yours,

Author Michael T. Powers

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He Took It Like A Man

by Anna Jewell

"Take it like a man."

It's a phrase I hear people say a lot. Usually said by a guy to a guy who isn't responding to a situation in the way society says a guy should. Fight back when insulted, don't react to physical or emotional pain, show your strength by your physical abilities, prove yourself by not admitting you're wrong. That's how a man should act, right?

But what if the things society touts as "manly" have nothing to do with what it really takes to be a man?

What if a true man is just the opposite?

I know it's a little strange for me to be writing about this, 'cause I'm not exactly male... But stay with me, I'm headed somewhere with this.

The devo I did today had me read Matthew 27, focusing on verses 27-31.

²⁷Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around Him. ²⁸They stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him, ²⁹and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on His head. They put a staff in His right hand. Then they knelt in front of Him and mocked Him. “Hail, king of the Jews!” they said. ³⁰They spit on Him, and took the staff and struck Him on the head again and again. ³¹After they had mocked Him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on Him. Then they led Him away to crucify Him. (NIV)

As I was reading those words, that account of the terrible things mere mortals did to the God of the Universe, something stood out to me that hadn't before. He took it all like a man.

At this point, Jesus has been betrayed by one of His closest friends, arrested on false charges, and accused of things He never did. Then, He was sentenced to a terrible death by a mob of His own people. If that wasn't enough, we see the humiliation He encounters in those verses, and then finally the agony He experiences on the cross.

All this time, we would expect Him to do something... Anything. I mean, He has every right to try and stand up for Himself when the false accusations are hurled at Him. He could've fought back when they started to beat on Him. And let's not forget the host of powerful angels at His command. He could've shouted, could've retaliated, could've thrown some punches, could've hated them all... He had every opportunity to be a "man". But He didn't take those.

He never lost it, never let pride take over, never wavered from God's will. And though His heart was filled with anguish and extreme sorrow, He still had deep love for these people that He made. These people orchestrating His death. The death He willingly chose... For them.

And obviously, that's not the only place in the Bible that Jesus shows how to be a man. He laughed with His friends, cared about the lowly, wept with the grieving, never wavered from the truth, and was in constant communication with God.

I'm not writing this to be directed at any specific person or group of people, or even society as a whole, but rather a truth that I wanted to share. I guess the whole point of this is really just to give encouragement and a challenge to any guys that might be reading this. Encourage them by reminding them that though it's hard to do the right thing, it's possible. Jesus was faced with the temptations this world is throwing you, and He will help you overcome them.

And my challenge? Don't back down. Satan is going to try every trick in the book to twist your views on faith, friendships, emotions, marriage, and life in general. He's going to try and trip you, then kick you when you're down. Don't let him.

Don't fall to the lie that to be a man you have to conform. Instead, look to Jesus as your example, and then set an example. Be a protector, a leader, a man after God's heart. Remember that there's nothing wimpy about admitting you're wrong. That there's nothing weak about showing others that you genuinely care. That it's not manly to impress a bunch of women, but it is manly to be faithful to your wife, before and after you're married to her.

And to the girls out there, not only is there an enormous amount of things we can learn from Jesus' life, but we can also help the guys in our lives. Help them by allowing them to be leaders. Help them by letting them know you appreciate the real manly things they do, and respecting them. Help them to be gentlemen by being ladies, and not conforming to our societal expectations of what a "woman" is (that's a whole other topic I'm sure one day I'll write about :P ).

So yeah. All that to say, don't listen to me. Listen to Him.

P.S. Thank you to my Dad, and all the other Real Men in my life. I'm glad God has put you all in my life to show me how a guy should treat a girl, and a glimpse of how God views me.

Anna Jewell
kawaiiscribbles @ gmail.com
(Close up the spaces before and after the @ sign if you want to email Anna)

Copyright © 2013 by Anna Jewell

Write Anna and let her know your thoughts on her story!

Anna Jewell is a young adult who lives up in the chilly part of the midwest. She loves her family, her friends, her hyper dog, and her grumpy old cat. She enjoys music, and is usually singing, but also dabbles in guitar and piano, which she uses to help lead worship at her church and youth group. She's interested in art of many kinds; drawing, painting, crafting.

Anna's main passion is to help young teens navigate through the lies and expectations that the world whispers to them, and is currently helping out with a Middle School youth group. She doesn't know where God is taking her in the future, but she's learning to trust Him every step of the way, and trust that His plan is better than hers.

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Creation Q & A

Very Little Salt in the Sea

(Evidence of a Young Earth)

by Andrew Snelling

If the world’s oceans have been around for three billion years as evolutionists believe, they should be filled with vastly more salt than the oceans contain today.

After 3 billion years, we would expect to see 70x more salt in the ocean than we see today.

Every year rivers, glaciers, underground seepage, and atmospheric and volcanic dust dump large amounts of salts into the oceans (Figure 1). Consider the influx of the predominant salt, sodium chloride (common table salt). Some 458 million tons of sodium mixes into ocean water each year,¹ but only 122 million tons (27%) is removed by other natural processes² (Figure 1).

If seawater originally contained no sodium (salt) and the sodium accumulated at today’s rates, then today’s ocean saltiness would be reached in only 42 million years³—only about 1/70 the three billion years evolutionists propose. But those assumptions fail to take into account the likelihood that God created a saltwater ocean for all the sea creatures He made on Day Five. Also, the year-long global Flood cataclysm must have dumped an unprecedented amount of salt into the ocean through erosion, sedimentation, and volcanism. So today’s ocean saltiness makes much better sense within the biblical timescale of about six thousand years.⁴

Salt in the Sea

The Numbers Just Don’t Add Up

Figure 1: Every year, the continents, atmosphere, and seafloor add 458 million tons of salt into the ocean, but only 122 million tons (27%) is removed. At this rate, today’s saltiness would be reached in 42 million years. But God originally created a salty ocean for sea creatures, and the Flood quickly added more salt.

Rescuing Devices

Those who believe in a three-billion-year-old ocean say that past sodium inputs had to be less and outputs greater. However, even the most generous estimates can only stretch the accumulation timeframe to 62 million years.⁵ Long-agers also argue that huge amounts of sodium are removed during the formation of basalts at mid-ocean ridges,⁶ but this ignores the fact that the sodium returns to the ocean as seafloor basalts move away from the ridges.⁷

Dr. Andrew Snelling holds a PhD in geology from the University of Sydney and has worked as a consultant research geologist in both Australia and America. Author of numerous scientific articles, Dr. Snelling is now director of research at Answers in Genesis.

Footnotes

M. Meybeck, “Concentrations des eaux fluvials en majeurs et apports en solution aux oceans,” Revue de Géologie Dynamique et de Géographie Physique 21, no. 3 (1979): 215. Back
F. L. Sayles and P. C. Mangelsdorf, “Cation-Exchange Characteristics of Amazon with Suspended Sediment and Its Reaction with Seawater,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 43 (1979): 767–779. Back
Steven A. Austin and D. Russell Humphreys, “The Sea’s Missing Salt: A Dilemma for Evolutionists,” in Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism, R. E. Walsh and C. L. Brooks, eds., volume 2 (Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship, 1990), pp. 17–33. Back
For a fuller treatment and further information see:
John D. Morris, The Young Earth (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2000), pp. 85–87.
Andrew A. Snelling, Earth’s Catastrophic Past: Geology, Creation and the Flood (Dallas, TX: Institute for Creation Research, 2009), pp. 879–881. Back
Austin and Humphreys, 1990. Back
Glenn R. Morton, pers. comm., Salt in the sea, http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199606/0051.html. Back
Calculations based on many other seawater elements give much younger ages for the ocean, too. See Stuart A. Nevins (Steven A. Austin), “Evolution: The Oceans Say No!” Impact no. 8. (Santee, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1973). Back

Source: AnswersinGenesis.org

Creation News

Click on the Bible above or visit the web site listed below!

http://www.HeartTouchers.com/Creation_News

This new addition to our web site will give you an article on the leading news in the
Creation/Evolution controversy each day. This section also includes a rotating
Question and Answer feature and a weekly Creation Comic strip from the people
at AnswersInGenesis.org. Be sure to come back and visit each day for an informative
article that will help you keep up to date on the latest news in this controversial area!

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Thought For The Day:

"The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining."

Verse for the Day:

"Go to the ant...consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander...yet stores
its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest."-- Proverbs 6:6,8

Toddler's Thought For The Day:

"If it is stroller, it must, under no circumstances, be ridden in without protest. It
must also be pushed by me instead."

Parent's Thought For The Day:

"We childproofed our home three years ago...and they're still getting in!"

Creation/Evolution Thought For The Day:

Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist, British Museum of Natural History, gave a keynote address at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, in 1981. In it, he explains his sudden “anti-evolutionary” view: “One morning I woke up and . . . it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That’s quite a shock to learn that one can be misled so long . . . I’ve tried putting a simple question to various people: ‘Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true?’ I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, ‘I do know one thing—it ought not to be taught in high school.’”

Coach's Thought For The Day:

"Athletics hold the same potential for teaching bad values, bad attitudes, bad
behavior as they do good qualities. The equalizer is the coach." --Tom Marshall

Deep Thought For The Day:

"People who fly look down on people who don't fly."

Punny Thought For The Day:

"A rubber-band pistol was confiscated from an algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption."

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Over 375,000 people have listened to popular Chicken Soup Author Michael T. Powers' free inspirational message entitled: "Breathing Life into Others". If you aren't one of them just visit: http://www.HeartTouchers.com and click on the link to listen to the free streaming audio message.

ALL-STAR Youth Ministry

--The Youth Church of Faith Community Church in Janesville, WI

Check out our youth group! If you are in 7-12th grade and live in the southern Wisconsin/northern Illinois area come check us out! Jr. High meets on Sunday mornings from 9:30 am - 10:30 am. High School age meets on Sunday night from 6:30-8:00 pm at Faith Community Church which is located at 2931 Lucerne Dr. in Janesville, WI. (About 3 blocks south-east of the Pontiac Convention Center.)

Currently we have students from Edgerton, Fort Atkinson, Milton, Janesville Craig, Janesville Parker, Marshall, Franklin, Edison, Clinton, Parkview, Beloit Memorial, and Beloit Turner, Tagos, Oakhill Christian and Rock County Christian. E-mail me back if you have any questions about our weekly meetings or would like to come to any of our events that are listed below... We have way too much fun and then, most importantly, talk about issues that are relevant to you as a teenager.

This Week: Sunday November 3

When Your Past is a Road Block

Visit our youth web site to see our topics through 2014!

http://www.faithcommunitychurch.net/upcoming_topics

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Teen Community Groups

6:30 - 8:00 PM Wednesday nights -- This night is for those teens who want to dig deeper than what we do on Sundays. These cell groups will also be doing special activities with each other as the year goes on to build community.

For more info on our small groups, visit: http://www.faithcommunitychurch.net/small_groups

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Do you feel as if life has no meaning for you?
http://www.HeartTouchers.com/Life_Purpose