2 In 3 Support Legal Status For DREAMers; Majority Oppose Building A Wall
[Be sure and take the quiz!]

Sixty-five percent of Americans said they favor giving legal status to DREAMers, as a deadline set by President Trump quickly approaches for when temporary status will run out for hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients. That includes 81 percent of Democrats, 51 percent of Republicans and 66 percent of independents. (DACA, or Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals, is the executive order signed by former President Obama and rescinded by President Trump.)

Ex-Cuba prisoner Gross criticizes U.S. plan to foster internet on island

Gross noted Cuba had vastly expanded internet access of its own volition during his time in jail.
The U.S. government should discuss the issue of internet directly with Cuba, providing details for example of how it could boost economic growth, he said.
“There are so many things that could be happening in a positive and constructive way,” he said.

You Keep Using that Verse, But…

Everywhere I go, I hear Christians and Bible-minded people quoting passages of scripture or I see certain passages on signs, bumper stickers, or on personalized car plates (tags). At first glance these passages seem to be encouraging or seem to be full of promise. Yet, often, after a deeper look at the context of the passage, they do not say what the sign, sticker, or tag implies. I have selected three of the more popular of these scriptures from the Old Covenant to share and explore.

Discover the Pages of Your Better Life Story

The “abundant life” Jesus talks about is the kind of life that makes a great story. Jesus’ life is a great story and we can learn from it how to write a better story for our lives. Donald Miller writes about life stories in his book “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.” (Read the book. It will inspire you to work on your own story.) His premise is that there are certain tools storytellers use to write great stories. We can utilize those tools to write good stories for our lives too. If you believe you can write a better story than the one you are living now, here are the components you need for a great story.

Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles’s Post-Game Interview Is a Powerful Lesson in Leadership

But as Foles so beautifully demonstrated over the past several weeks, true leadership isn’t about position, or trying to get others to follow you.
Rather, true leadership is about action: It’s putting your head down, going to work, and trying to lift up those around you. That’s what inspires others to follow because they want to, not because they have to.

The Best Business Book You’ll Read All Year Will Be A Novel

There’s nothing wrong with reading novels to escape–after all, we can all use it from time to time in our digitally distracted world. But to get the full learning experience, you need to treat them with the same respect and patience you’d give to a “serious” nonfiction book.
Don’t just plow through fiction because it’s fiction. Think about it. Talk about the characters with a friend. Take some notes. You might just find some unexpected lessons that you’d never hear from a CEO.

Newly Deciphered Dead Sea Scroll Reveals 364-Day Calendar

For more than a year, the scholars diligently pieced together 62 Dead Sea Scroll fragments, on which there was writing in code. Ratson and Ben-Dov deciphered the code on the reconstructed scroll, called Scroll 4Q324d, and revealed that the scroll describes a 364-day calendar used by the Qumran community that lived in the Judean Desert. This Qumran calendar gives us insight into how the community organized the seasons and religious festivals, and it sheds light on scribal customs.

If every past version of you is an idiot, there’s an inescapable conclusion about the current you

You may not realise your idiocy today, but you will see it as clear as day in a few years time. Some of you may be kicking against this fact. Let me ask you this: if you see later on that you were – in point of fact – an idiot today, which version of yourself is correct? The one assessing it at this precise moment or the one assessing things from the vantage point of hindsight along with everything you know now and the addition of a few more years of experience? In fact, the biggest idiot of them all is the one that refuses to acknowledge their past idiocy and, even less, join the dots to their current standing as one. From one idiot to another, take it from me: we’re all idiots.

“I Don’t Like the Sinner Part”

“I don’t like the sinner part.” Well who does? I sure don’t. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Speaking for myself, to borrow from the Psalms, my sin is always before me.
Listen, I’m not saying we need to load up on shame and don hair shirts. But if your Christianity isn’t involved in owning and confronting your sin then, well, I don’t have much use (for) it.

Faithland

Laser Scans Reveal Maya “Megalopolis” Below Guatemalan Jungle

The results suggest that Central America supported an advanced civilization that was, at its peak some 1,200 years ago, more comparable to sophisticated cultures such as ancient Greece or China than to the scattered and sparsely populated city states that ground-based research had long suggested.

Nobody could answer a single football question on ‘Jeopardy!’

The final category of Thursday’s first Jeopardy! round was “Football,” and with time left on the clock Ryan—who had control of the buzzer—ran down each of the plays. Ryan didn’t appear to know much about football, so the other two contestants could’ve easily stepped in for an interception during any part of the round. But they were just as stumped, even as Alex Trebek set them up for an easy touchdown.

What a Cross Gets Wrong About Christ and the Church

But often we make the events and the marketing and all of those things the ultimate goal, when they should ultimately be viewed as small contributions toward the real ultimate goal of making disciples of Jesus. Because of that misplaced goal, we define success by our visibility and busyness and numbers rather than hearts won for Him. Just like the cross builders truly believe they’re accomplishing something great while doing very little actual investing time, love, and energy in people, so we too have to guard against aiming to be noticed rather than aiming to make a difference.

How To Get Your Point Across To These Five Personality Types

While psychological research has progressed quite a bit since Edward de Bono released his influential book Six Thinking Hats in 1985, I find (this) framework still offers a handy set of metaphors for adjusting your speaking style to fit listeners’ thinking styles and personalities (though I typically prefer sticking to just five). Here are five ways to frame your message, riffing on de Bono’s 33-year-old idea, according to the people or person you’re communicating with.

There’s a large gender gap in congressional Facebook posts about sexual misconduct

There were wide gaps across the two major parties: 55% of Democratic members and 34% of Republican members made posts about the topic. In both parties, the shares of women who discussed sexual misconduct on Facebook were 30 percentage points larger than the shares of men who did so.

3 Reasons Why Younger Christians Should Attend the Funeral Services of Older Christians

1. Children Need to Hear Godly Eulogies
2. Children Need to See Faithful Church Members Finish Well
3. Children Need to Learn to Honor the Seniors

Michael Mosley: ‘Forget walking 10,000 steps a day’
You might be surprised to hear it was the result of a 1960s marketing campaign in Japan.

In the run-up to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, a company came up with a device which they started marketing to the health-conscious.
It was called a Manpo-Kei. In Japanese, “man” means 10,000, “po” means steps and “kei” means meter. So it was, literally, a 10,000 steps meter.

How Gregg Popovich Uses ‘Magical Feedback’ to Inspire the San Antonio Spurs

For the Spurs, every dinner, every elbow touch, every impromptu seminar on politics and history adds up to build and reinforce a narrative: You are part of this group. This group is special. I believe you can meet our high standards.
In other words, the Spurs don’t succeed because they are good at basketball. They succeed because they are skilled at a far more important sport: building strong relationships.

Airplane! The Funniest Movie Ever

Filmed in 34 days, Airplane! was released on July 2, 1980. A box office smash, it earned back its meager budget in its first two days of release. Garnering unanimous rave reviews, Airplane! was eventually to earn $84 million dollars at the U.S. box office and $130 million worldwide. It was to be the fourth highest-grossing film of 1980 in America.

Unapologetically Pro-Life—From the Moment of Conception Until the Last Breath on Earth

And, as the tide changes, maybe we need to be reminded that the unborn need our voice. It seems that it’s become trendy to talk about broadening the pro-life agenda, and you can see my article on refugees here. But, it seems that, for some people, broadening the agenda means discarding the unborn. For some avant-garde evangelicals, maybe they are a little embarrassed about the religious right pro-life cause when there are refugees, children, immigrants, and the environment before us.
But I’m not embarrassed. We can be pro-life and whole life.
As the tide is turning, maybe we need another reminder—broadening the pro-life agenda does not mean discarding the unborn.

Good Friends, Good Food, and Good Conversation Over a Bottle of Wine: On How Not to Be Transgressive

First of all, the “good friends, good food, and good conversation over a bottle of wine” model of church and Eucharist smacks of so much economic and educational privilege that I feel embarrassed for people who say things like this. The “good friends, good food, and good conversation over a bottle of wine” model of church is so self-absorbed and self-indulgent that it makes me cringe.
Where are the poor and homeless at your Pottery Barn-worthy table? Show me that, and your dinner might start looking more like the table Jesus envisioned.
Where are the awkward dinner guests, the zealots breaking bread with tax collectors? Is there a Trump supporter or a Black Lives Matter activist at your table? Show me that, and your dinner might start looking more like the table Jesus envisioned.

Millions of Americans Believe God Made Trump President

At a certain point in “God and Donald Trump,” the recent theological gymnastics on display from Tony Perkins and Jerry Falwell, Jr., among others, to explain ongoing conservative Christian support for a president who (allegedly) paid off a porn star weeks before Election Day so she would keep quiet about their (alleged) affair become clear. There will be no point at which Trump’s most loyal evangelical and charismatic supporters declare they have had enough. Because to do so would be to admit that they were wrong, that God wasn’t behind Trump’s election, and that their Holy Spirit radar might be on the fritz. That it was, after all, about something as temporal and banal as hating his Democratic rival.

Don’t be scared of lame evangelism

So embrace the lameness. Not as a badge of honour, or as a means of purposefully doing a worse job than we ought, but knowing that salvation is a work of the Spirit bringing the gospel to bear in the lives of those that hear it. The same Spirit who can work through the most amazing, sell-out conference or mission is the same Spirit who can apply the gospel to a passer-by who picks up a leaflet from a table outside your church. The same Spirit who used Peter’s amazing sermon on Pentecost was the same Spirit who used Paul’s feeble speech. Accept your lame evangelism for what it is – simply another means of seeking to reach the lost with the gospel – and thank God that the work depends entirely upon him and his sovereign good purposes.

What Dying Churches Have in Common

The seven things dying churches have in common are:

1. Anger at change
2. Nostalgia on steroids
3. Confusion of methods and facilities with the gospel
4. Little to no interaction with non-Christians
5. Deflected blame
6. Refusal to see reality
7. Very little time left for survival

Personality Tests—A Waste or a Resource?

Now, our personality is not our destiny.
We can, should, and must change and grow.
God loves us and made us as we are, but he doesn’t intend to let us stay the same. As God promised Ezekiel so long ago, we know that he intends to give us new hearts and place new spirits within us. Better yet, he says he will “remove the heart of stone” in our bodies and leave in its place a “heart of flesh.”

How to Live The Bible — Going Deeper in an Age of Information Overload

In his book, Shaped by the Word, Robert Mulholland describes formational reading in these ways:

• Formational reading is not concerned with quantity.
• Informational reading is linear; formational reading is in depth.
• Informational reading’s task is to master the text; formational reading’s purpose is for the text to master you.
• With formational reading “instead of the text being an object we control… the text becomes the subject of the reading relationship; we are the object that is shaped by the text.”
• “Instead of the analytical, critical, judgmental approach of informational reading, formational reading requires a humble, detached, willing, loving approach.”
• Informational reading is problem solving; formational reading is openness to mystery.

What Do We Do with the King James Version?

Mark Ward advocates something between these two extremes, and does so in an excellent new book titled Authorized: The Use and Misuse of the King James Bible. He insists this book is not for pastors or scholars but “for the regular, English-speaking, Bible-reading public. It contains no Greek or Hebrew words. It focuses entirely on English. This beyond-influential translation, this ‘Authorized Version,’ has been and is both used and misused. We need to discover its proper place. So what do we do with the KJV? Teach people to read it? Revise it? Chuck it? No, no, and no.”

10 Misconceptions About U.S. Immigration

Misconceptions:

1. Most Immigration is Illegal Immigration
2. Most Undocumented Immigrants Snuck Across the Border
3. Most Immigrants Come for the Benefits
4. Terrorists Will Enter the U.S. Through Its Refugee Program
5. Immigrants Commit More Crimes than U.S. Citizens
6. Until Now, the U.S. Has Always Been Very Welcoming to Immigrants
7. It’s Easy to Legally Immigrate to the U.S.
8. Widespread Green Card Marriage Fraud is Occurring
9. Immigrants Refuse to Learn English
10. Immigrants Take American Jobs

Disagreeing With Others

The goal isn’t to win arguments. The goal is to point others to Christ. We can win the argument but still lose. If our passion has moved from serving and obeying God to an obsession with being right and winning, we lose—plain and simple.

Hitting the Reset Button on Church

Make plans to start making disciples this year. Pray that God would bring you to the person or people who He wants in your life, both to disciple you and for you to disciple. I truly believe that if even a fraction of us commit to the work of making disciples, the church will be transformed, and our lives along with it.

Martin Luther King Jr. spent the last year of his life detested by the liberal establishment

King’s slide in popularity coincided with his activism taking a turn from what Americans largely know him for — his campaign for civil rights in the American South — to a much more radical one aimed at the war in Vietnam and poverty.

Trash Collectors in Turkey Use Abandoned Books to Build a Free Library

The collection grew gradually as sanitation workers began saving books they found on their routes, rather then hauling them away with the rest of the city’s trash. The books were set aside for employees and their families to borrow, but eventually news of their collection expanded beyond the sanitation department. Instead of leaving books on the curb, residents started donating their unwanted books directly to the cause. Soon the idea arose of opening a full library for the public to enjoy.

Noah’s Ark Replica Crashes Into Dutch Harbor, Wrecks Several Ships

There’s a replica of Noah’s Ark at this dock in the Netherlands. It’s nearly actual size. Last week, a storm ripped the ark of its moorings and sent it crashing around the harbor, colliding with several other vessels and causing significant damage to a nearby ferry and other boats.

The Starbucks Logo Has A Secret You’ve Never Noticed

Specifically, Lippincott realized that to look human, the Siren couldn’t be symmetrical, despite the fact that symmetry is the well-studied definition of human beauty. She had to be asymmetrical.

Seguin police write hilarious note to get Facebook user out of work

On Monday, the police department warned residents via Facebook to stay off the roads ahead of a freeze that affected travel across central Texas.
“Can y’all write me a note for work?” Justin Garcia commented on the police department’s post.
The cops came through for him.
“Dear Justin’s Boss, the roads are bad and are going to get worse. Much worse,” Deputy Police Chief Bruce Ure wrote. “Please let him stay home, warm and safe and enjoy some Hulu or some cool shows on Netflix. And, he needs a raise. He rocks.”