{"id":1528,"date":"2012-10-27T02:42:12","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T07:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/?p=1528"},"modified":"2012-10-25T16:01:42","modified_gmt":"2012-10-25T21:01:42","slug":"heres-your-pre-election-challenge-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/?p=1528","title":{"rendered":"Here&#8217;s your pre-election challenge #2."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I heard <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Frank_Luntz\">Frank Luntz<\/a> being interviewed on the radio today. He said something that I thought was profound: &#8220;We don&#8217;t watch the news any more for information but for affirmation.&#8221; (That&#8217;s as close as I can get on the quote, sorry if I missed a word.)<\/p>\n<p>Are you looking for affirmation in the news?  Have you tuned in to any of the &#8220;opposition&#8221; channels in the last 6 months?  Do you ever read editorials that really torque you off when you read the headline?  If not, why not?  If you&#8217;re right you shouldn&#8217;t mind checking out what the &#8220;other side&#8221; has to say, should you?  What if you&#8217;re wrong?  You might never know if you don&#8217;t listen to the opposition. Try it, you might learn something.<\/p>\n<p>In our spiritual lives we don&#8217;t want to listen to the opposition. Satan is right outside our door 24&#215;7. His voice is already very loud in our popular culture and lives. He&#8217;s even in church with us from time to time. Do we need to listen to him?  I don&#8217;t think so. But part of the arrogance of Satan is our arrogance in being sure we&#8217;re absolutely right about everything on this Earth. If you don&#8217;t recognize his voice from time to time, you&#8217;re probably not listening closely enough.<\/p>\n<p>How do we avoid that arrogance in our lives?  Dive deep into The Word. Listen to your pastor on Sunday and think about that message. If the pastor&#8217;s not preaching from the Bible with citations, is it their message or God&#8217;s?  Read your Bible. Pray. Think about what Jesus would do based on the Bible, not on current social conventions.<\/p>\n<p>And with less than two weeks to go before the elections, I urge you to again look at your candidates and ballots from a Biblical perspective. You might win the argument about something with your mother, brother, or best friend if you vote a certain way and your side wins. But is it the vote that God would expect of someone who wishes to enter His Kingdom of Heaven?<\/p>\n<p>Weigh the issues. Examine the candidates. Examine the Gospels. Once you&#8217;ve balanced the first two with the third one, then you will be ready to vote. Are you ready?<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I heard Frank Luntz being interviewed on the radio today. He said something that I thought was profound: &#8220;We don&#8217;t watch the news any more for information but for affirmation.&#8221; (That&#8217;s as close as I can get on the quote, <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/?p=1528\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[941,5],"tags":[972,10,167,970,137,971,162,975,974,730,973],"class_list":["post-1528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","category-sincere-stuff","tag-candidates","tag-church","tag-commotion-in-the-pews","tag-frank-luntz","tag-god","tag-gospels","tag-joseph-courtemanche","tag-media","tag-opposition","tag-satan","tag-vote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1528"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1533,"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528\/revisions\/1533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commotioninthepews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}