If sex is a need, can one go without it? If yes, can higher needs be achieved without this need being met?

http://www.google.ca/search?q=Maslow%27s+hierarchy+of+needs&hl=en&prmd=ivnsb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi78uHprrHSAhVh04MKHfZHBj0Q_AUIBigB#mhpiv=3 Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

Sin Will Never Make You Happy | Desiring God

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/sin-will-never-make-you-happy Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

I have a hard enough time just praying the daily office!

119:164 Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments. Psalms http://bit.ly/bibleappkjv Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

Good vs Evil

I had a thought days ago that I wanted to blog about.  Not having written it down, I've lost the essence of what it was.  The basic idea was to do with the struggle between good and evil, and how from an atheistic perspective it is juvenile or Disneyish that good always wins out, and a rebuttal.  In an nut shell, Atheists reason that it is unlikely that in a struggle between God and Satan, good will always prevail.  Why is Satan not in control?  How did it just happen that the good being created everything or that the good being is in control or is more powerful?  Why isn't God evil?  Isn't it convenient that we can be protected from evil by a more powerful good by worshiping the good being and doing what He wants?  Yet, these same people will then say that they can't believe either in a kind and merciful God judging people to Hell.   Do you see the irony here?  They're saying, judging God my their standards, that God is evil and so therefore won't believe in Him.  Yet, they find it foolish that an all powerful and good being could be in charge.  I'm not articulating this thought very well and finding it hard to put to words.  I could try to restate it here, but I don't think that would help either.  It just seems very paradoxical to me to God is evil and therefore I won't believe and at the same time state that I won't believe because God is good and will always prevail and that that is a unlikely and unbelievable scenario.  Do you get where I've sailed my boat, because I don't know if I do.  Can you explain it any better?

Blues

Saturday I was pretty down in the dumps.  I planned to blog about it.  Had I done so then, this would have been a very dark(er) post.  It wasn't just post cruise blues.  And, don't get me wrong; I am very grateful for being so blessed as to be able to go on a cruise.  However, I also had lots of time to reflect on life and family.  My wasted youth is a great regret.  I did very little constructive or fruitful, and lament the fact that I did not serve, always a nagging voice in the back of my head.  Finding out that my daughter is again talking to her looser high school drug dealing pedophile boyfriend, a sure way to depress me and send me into a tail spin, which it did, may have started it all off.  The cruise seemed short and I couldn't get work out of my head.  The return to my McJob loomed over my head like a a dark cloud...of heavy lead, how I yearn to be able to make a difference.  Or, for my job to not define who I am, failing that, I'd settle for being able to contribute or help others.  Add to that the stress of production demands coupled with resolving conflict and administrative tasks and I'm in for another hard slog in 2017 with little up side.  The goal of making a difference for my subordinates is a distant dream that I don't feel I can accomplish (nor will I be rewarded for); maybe I've lost my perspective too, but it doesn't motivate me as it first did and doesn't give me the raison d'etre that I need, even if it was a shadow of making a difference in the beginning.  I need a change if not something fulfilling.  Also, I need to be more apart from the world.  I am becoming more and more dragged into the worries and cares of the world.  I'm becoming more polarized, more political, more cynical, more sarcastic; the well is being poisoned.

Lust

Today I read part of 1 Corinthians Ch 10, in error I believe (because I was on the wrong week in the calendar and probably have been for weeks).  Anyway, it may have been no accident that it spoke of not being tested beyond what we are able to resist, that God would provide a way out, and specifically about sexual immorality (as I've been reflecting on lust lately and on the specifics of what is immoral).  Maybe this is a gentle warning (for me) to not convince myself otherwise. 

P.S.  The calendar can be confusing in the weeks leading up to a movable feast.

True Christians vs. Ritual, Church, and Rote

When an evangelical looks at me and nods after reading that they would hold to the outward practices of religion but not give God the true worship that He wants, I am very sad inside.