Special Reflection: 2014 Educational Enrichment Program (EEP)

17 “He who has pity on the poor lends to the Lord, And He will pay back what he has given.” ~ Proverbs 19:17

I want to start out today’s reflection expressing in great detail of why I am so grateful to our Lord.  As you read all I ask is for you to think of all the way you are also grateful to the Lord.  Then put yourself in the shoes of my 5th grade students who are underprivileged living in the heart of Los Angeles and many of them do not see their parents very often because they are working to makes ends meet. In a few instances some of my student’s parents have been or are in jail for various reasons, not withstanding there are also a few parents who are present and make time for their children; but needless to say those parents are very few and far between.  So when I tell you these children need every advantage I am not lying to you nor am I making any of these things up, rather I am being forthright with you and need your help this Christmas Season.  Please visit our website and buy your T’Shirt Today!  https://www.booster.com/listeningfaithfully

God Is Our Constant Companion

God has been so gracious to me personally this year, because there has been so many trials and tribulations Satan has put me through.  The first trial has been living without seeing my daughters face or hearing my daughters voice for over a year as my ex-wife won a move-away and took my daughter 800 miles north to San Francisco.  There has been no communication because my daughter and I largely because my ex-wife prohibits my daughter from making contact, so all I get is one text every holiday from my daughters iPhone.  Technically, I get visitation but have no money to travel to see my daughter, even though that was precisely the thing my ex-wife promised the judge that she would make happen by buying a monthly flight for my daughter to Los Angles to see me: as she makes 4 times the income I make as a teacher.  In addition to these things my ex-wife after 16 1/2 years filed for child support after she and I agreed to wave it back in 2003, not to mention she also stole $645.00 dollars from my Chase Bank account in 2012 which forced me to be late on rent and later because of that was forced to move from my apartment after 7 years of being on time.  It is no lie I have had to file for Bank Bankruptcy as the bills I incurred fighting for my parental rights in court which ended with the judge refusing to obey the law and order  my ex-wife to pay legal fees; end result I had no other recourse no other options available to me.  I have also suffered massive car troubles after ten years of owning my truck it finally needed over $3500.00 worth of repairs.  But through all of these things God has been with me, He has helped me endure the long cold lonely nights, and He alone files my heart with such love that my heart over flows with it and I have to write and share it in every way I can using the gifts He has bestowed upon me.  It would be easy to sit here and write and complain about these trials I have faced, but I tell you they have made me stronger, wiser, more capable, more crafty, more in-love with God, because through it all this year has been about adapting and overcoming.  God has given me the strength to know the things I can change and the wisdom to know the things I can not change, He has granted me mercy with reuniting me with a friend lost in those horrible struggles with my ex-wife which stretched from 1996-2013.  I have regained a friendship that I thought was forever gone and which I so desperately needed.  God has put angels in my path that have helped me over come those struggles with my ex-wife, my daughter, my friendships, family, contributors, and now lastly my  truck. God has given me eagles wings to sore high above all these troubles and to be able to look past the darkness of these events and move past them.  God has given me angels who have provided ways to maintain some level of lively-hood despite 1/2 of  my income now goes to my ex-wife out of her shear hatred and spite for me, which is not in our daughters best interest.  God has given to me a mother who has almost died three times within the past four years, and He has given her the strength to keep going even though her lungs no-longer produce the oxygen she needs as she struggles with COPD.  God has given to me a father who is deaf, but who finds ways to bring a smile to my face by building me various wooden objects he has pored his love into with me in his thoughts.  God has given me a sister who every day of her life has used it to help young men who are incarcerated to find their way and become a success in our unforgiving society.  God has also given unto our family a new baby who is filled with all the love a child can hold and her smiles and voice remind me of better days I had with my own daughter, and better days I will yet have. So “Yes”, God has been my constant companion! It would be easy to sit and moan about my many losses that I have suffered through this past year, but for every loss I have suffered God has opened the door  and has given unto me a magnificent victory within His love, mercy, and kindness by allowing the many angels to intercede and lift me up when Satan has knocked me down. Please visit our website and buy your T’Shirt Today!  https://www.booster.com/listeningfaithfully

25 “A generous person will prosper;  whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.” ~ Proverbs 11:25

Just as I have been lifted up most of my time is spent with children who I fight for, who I love with all my heart, and who on my own I could never give them the resources they so desperately need.  My school does not have the money to purchase new Hardcover English textbooks or new work-books for the students to write in and learn from which supports the new curriculum’s the State and Federal Governments are now enforcing.  As a school we have now begun cutting back on printing out worksheets and the purchasing of ink for our various printers.  The economic times we are now facing has hit private schools extremely hard and all the families they serve, and it is our children who suffer the consequence for the few greedy people who seem to ignore this growing divide between rich and poor.  This economy is a man-made problem, and Pope Frances had it right when he, “attacked unfettered capitalism as ‘a new tyranny’, urging global leaders to fight poverty and growing inequality in the first major work he has authored alone as pontiff.” ~ Holland, Joshua, (Nov. 26, 2013), The Poverty Line: Pope Francis Calls Unfettered Capitalism ‘Tyranny’,  http://billmoyers.com. Pope Frances sees what is a sin against mankind, he has stated very clearly the problem, and the injustice of not fixing something we have created that forces millions into a different kind of slavery, that born of our own sinful economic greed!   So it is that I am reaching out with a heavy heart, but one also filled with love and hope to you today and  ask that you may find it with in your heart to become a supporter of Listening Faithfully by purchasing one T’Shirt that will show your pride in both this website, but also your support for education.  My students need their little angels this holiday season helping them just as I have been so blessed with in my own personal struggles.  Please visit our website and buy your T’Shirt Today! https://www.booster.com/listeningfaithfully

 2014 Educational Enrichment Program!:

42 “Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” ~ Matthew 5:42

You click the following link below and purchase one T’Shirt, or as many as you would like. The money raised then goes to purchase the Sadlier; Level Blue;  Vocabulary Workshop paper-covered work books for my students.  Within two weeks of the ending of this Christmas and News Years campaign you will receive the T’Shirt and can call yourselves an official supporter of Listening Faithfully and of Education. I will also have a private page here on this website just for you as I am kicking off the Sin Serious 2014 Revisited ~ An invaluable resource that highlights the Seven Deadly Sins as they apply to us in our modern day lives.  Below is scanned copies of Unit 2 From the Sadlier Workbook that  will be purchase for the students with your help.  Again I ask you to please visit our website and buy your T’Shirt Today!https://www.booster.com/listeningfaithfully

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Please Support Listening Faithfully Blog Language Arts Book Drive!

Sadlier Preview: Click Here!  http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/1fff8ae8#/1fff8ae8/10

Show your Listening Faithfully pride and help us reach our goal! Together we will raise over $10,000 to directly support inner city students with brand new Language Arts Books published by Sadleir if we sell 1000 shirts.  How awesome is that?!  What a great way to help spread the wealth of Christ while celebrating our 5th year online reflecting on the word of God!  Help show your support of Pope Frances’s which has so eloquently been outlined while also helping our students overcome this sinful poverty;  be that little angle of God today! Book Drive will end within the first week of January 2014 so please hurry and be the first to show your support. In addition your shirts will be delivered to you within 2-weeks of the campaign closing – guaranteed! Please visit our website and buy your T’Shirt Today!  https://www.booster.com/listeningfaithfully

This initiative is sponsored by the Listening Faithfully Blog 2014 (EEP) Language Arts Book Drive!

Thank you in advance to all of our supporters!

Extra Special Request: 

I have a friend, his name is Joseph. He lives in San Diego and his ex-wife seven weeks ago stole his daughter and fled the country. He asks a simple question that I would like our Justice System to answer: “What would you do if your one and only child was taken from you, without prior notice, and whisked away to a foreign country?” I would like our judges held accountable for giving one parent more rights than another based on sex or money! This false notion that children need their  mothers more than their fathers is archaic at best and  if you read the Bible at all you will find that God gave to Fathers and Mothers different but equal responsibilities to their children. I repeat…. FATHERS ARE NOT NATURES BANK! Our justice system is sick and in need of repair – reform; whatever you want to call it! But that won’t happen until every American…. every parent and non-parent stands up and forces our Federal and States Governments to stop Alienation of Affection of a Minor Child! In the mean time I ask you to help my friend Joseph by visiting his website and giving whatever you can afford. Let’s bring his daughter Dani back home!

Click Here to help our brother Joseph!

Amen and God Bless,

If you liked this Special Reflection on The 2014 Educational Enrichment Program! … please leave a comment. Also please “LIKE” and “SHARE” this post with others.

Brian Keith

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EMAIL: listeningfaithfullyblog@gmail.com

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Special Reflection – Prayer for Syria

21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”~ Matthew 5:21-22

This weeks post is not at all the one I wanted to write and it also was nowhere near the topic I had in mind. Originally I wanted to write a special posting on the American Holiday, “Labor Day”, which was more of a response and shrewd political deal that lead to it’s being enacted, largely due to the late 1800’s “Pullman Strike”, which had such wide-ranging implications that less than a week after it ended, then-President Grover Cleveland signed Labor Day into law. As Americans we sometimes forget the political events that created many of our holidays, Labor Day being just one of them. Many of our rights also came from years of struggle and political unrest and what better way to bring the most resent struggle facing our country and many other nations around the world than to preface the peaceful ways man has ended strife without the unlawful use of violence. I also have never and will never us this blog platform which is religious in nature and in all its materials to preach politics or push a given political agenda, so with the ground rules set  I ask that first as a faith community we all pray for all the families and the victims of the Siren Gassing which took place in Syria which took more than 1,400 men, women and children on August 21, 2013.

War in Syria as well in other places in the Middle East and the world has been going on for thousands of years none stop and is likely not to stop anytime soon. Many of the reasons for man’s strife date back to the dawn of time and is firmly rooted in the Bible.  What we see today is no different than the senseless killing of tens of thousands of innocent people who died in what can only be described as mind boggling events which lead to their suffering and dying as the select few make all the decisions, make all the wealth, and allow their people to be left with virtually nothing.  These cruel dictators operate more like the common (Mafia) within a autocratic system;  rather than a democracy  of real Presidents, Prime Ministers, or Heads of State and in the annals of history they will only be remembered by the horror they unleashed on mankind rather than the ideals they may have tried to bring into our collective reality.  This drama has not changed because those in power refuse to allow it to change, they grasp onto power as if it where a drug; they will and have done anything to keep it. Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad is after all just a man and is subject to all the same grotesque temptations as every other man and women and he is no different than other brutal dictators who disguise their brutality with a deceiving title of the people and demeanor which is anything but one of a mass murder.  The very same tactics have been used before, more recently by such men as Adolf Hitler – (Died April 30, 1945 in Berlin, Germany),  Benito Mussolini – (Died April 28, 1945 in Giulino, Mezzegra, Italy),   Joseph Stolen – (Died March 5, 1953 in Kuntsevo Dach, Soviet Union), Saddam Hussein – (Hanged to Death on December 30, 2006 in Kadhimiya, Iraq),  Kim Jong-il – (Died December 17, 2011 in Pyongyang, North Korea), Hugo Chavez (Died March 5, 2013 in Caracas, Venezuela), and the late Prime Minister of Libya, Moammar Gadhafi; (Died October 20, 2011 in Sirte, Libya after being beaten and stabbed in the anus, causing serious injuries; the events were filmed on a cell phone. Pulled onto the front of a pick-up truck, he fell off as it drove away. His semi-naked, lifeless body was then placed into an ambulance and taken to Misrata; upon arrival, he was found to be dead.)  All these men lived by the sword, all of these men have murdered, all of these men also had intense anger in their hearts in order for them to have been able to say and do some of the horrible things they did. Some of these men brought peace to their counties for a while, but most came to power out of brutality and force on the backs of many of their citizens.  Such a man was Adolf Hitler who authorized the systematic extermination of millions of Jews, he authorized the use of horrific experiments which lead to countless Jews, civilians – men, women, and children to die in the most inhuman of ways possible. It was this that moved the allies after World War II to create the United Nations to keep such acts of violence from ever happening again.  Yet, some 68 years later here we are, chimerical weapons being used on civilians as they slept unaware of the impending dangers which would end their lives in the most inhuman of ways.  Another leader on this list named Saddam Hussein also used brute force through his arsenal of chemical weapons killing thousands of his own people on March 16, 1988, whereby he authorized the use of chemical weapons on the Kurds.  From morning til night  the Iraqis rained down volley after volley of bombs filled with a deadly mixture of mustard gas and nerve agents on Halabja.  Approximately 5,000 women, men, and children died within days of the attacks. Long-term effects included permanent blindness, cancer, and birth defects. An estimated 10,000 lived, but live daily with the disfigurement and sicknesses from the chemical weapons. Like Hitler, Hussein thumbed his nose at the world as he rained down illegal weapons on all who apposed him, war crimes in the view of the world court and yet from all we have seen and experienced there are many more dictators who are able and willing to continue where these great dinosaurs of terror have left off;  that to me is mind boggling. However, the justice for such atrocities we as mortals will never see as the true punishment is as described in Matthew 5:21-22.

A Warning for a Dictator / President

7 “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. 8 When I say to the wicked, ‘You wicked person, you will surely die,’ and you do not speak out to dissuade them from their ways, that wicked person will die for their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. 9 But if you do warn the wicked person to turn from their ways and they do not do so, they will die for their sin, though you yourself will be saved.” ~ Ezekiel 33:7-9

It is not that I judge you and your mind and heart, but rather appeal to your humanity and the love you feel for those you hold in your personal lives. Hold fast to the love which God Himself has granted unto you and turn from the the wicked path which you now sew. Know that your sins have been made public and the eyes of the world now gaze in your direction, do not be tempted by this attention instead read fast the words of God’s servants who have come to warn you of impending sin just as God gave to King David a prophet of the Lord, Nathan.  I as a brother in Christ beg of you to do the moral and righteous things God would have you do, ignoring the evil impulses of Satan.  Do the right things God would have you do, ignoring the depravity of Satan. Make peace with your enemies and know your time as ruler may end, ignoring the temptations of power placed before you by Satan. Trust in God alone and your many sins shall be forgiven by our Father in heaven. There is nothing to be gained by war, by senseless killing, by destroying the children under your watch. Walk away and give them peace for you shall not be able to give them back which you have taken from them.  Know your heart and mind and know your soul longs for God, even though your mind is blind to this fact, give into the good within you and allow God to mold you into the person he has wanted you to become from birth, discarding the shell of Satan forever.  Heed the warning from God and seek peace or God alone shall exact His perfect judgement.

So I urge everyone to both remember and pray for all these people who have gone before those in Syria, pray for all the millions of our brothers and sisters who suffered and died from such senseless blood shed as their place is now in the Kingdom of God. I ask that you pray for the children who have suffered and who died this past August needlessly. I know the following set of pictures though may be graphic but we need to know why we pray and why we should never take such innocents from this world.  Every human-being needs to know why the death of these innocent children is such a sin in the eyes of God, and thus we also need to pray for those in power who both allowed it and who are now brave enough to stand up and take action to prevent it from ever happening again.

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Survivors of suspected gas attack in Syria describe horrors they say will haunt them forever!

By Associated Press, August 28, 2013

BEIRUT — The early-morning barrage against rebel-held areas around the Syrian capital immediately seemed different this time: The rockets made a strange, whistling noise.

Seconds after one hit near his home west of Damascus, Qusai Zakarya says, he couldn’t breathe, and he desperately punched himself in the chest to get air.

Meanwhile, in rebel-held areas east of Damascus, hundreds of suffocating, twitching victims were flooding into makeshift hospitals following a similar rocket barrage. Others were later found dead in their homes, towels still on their faces from their last moments trying to protect themselves. (Read More)

End the Syrian Civil War Now! End the Killing! The world has had enough!

Amen,

If you liked this Special Reflection on SYRIA please leave a comment. Also please “LIKE” and “SHARE” this post with others.

Brian Keith

Your invited to stay in contact with me!

EMAIL: listeningfaithfullyblog@gmail.com

Facebook 

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HELP SUPPORT LISTENING FAITHFULLY BLOG BY MAKING ALL YOUR ONLINE PURCHASES THROUGH OUR WEB STORE!  CLICK HERE.  As a special token of appreciation please accept a free downloadable gift from me to you: FREE BIBLE

God Bless,

Brian Keith

P.S. NEVER GIVE UP!

Special Prayer Request: October 2012

Prayer Request for Parents of Parental Alienation Syndrome: If you are a parent and have children which have been kept from you by the Primary Parent, then you know personally the pain and anguish that not just accompanied the divorced you suffered through, but also the pain and anguish of a no contact policy with your children because of an alienating parent. You know the tragic pain that the courts and unethical lawyers can inflict upon your family. The following prayer goes out to all parents who have suffered these inhuman and unjust policies and for all the children who loose one parent through this unholy process. Let God hear our prayers for our children’s sake :

PLEASE PRAY

“Dear Lord in heaven, you know the pain caused by isolation, derogation of a parents life, and of our values that you have handed down to all of use equally. Lord you know the evils in peoples hearts that seek to destroy the family unit and then pretend they have done so in your name. Lord, God in heaven I know you can feel how horrified alienated parents are when told they will no longer play a major role in their children’s lives. I pray you give them strength to endure such hardships, and wrongful accusations. Lord, God in Heaven I pray you give then wisdom to know what to say and for it to never be said in anger. Lord, God in heaven I ask that you bring peace to their hearts, minds, and souls so that they are no longer burdened with this miserable yoke that they have been forced to carry. Lord, please unshackle their lives and give them meaning once more. I also ask for our children’s hearts not be hardened by bitter fighting, and by being forced to choose one parent over another. Lord you know all our children need both parents equally and that any law which gives more time to one parent is simply violating your heavenly command. Please, Lord free our children of this unfair yoke which has been placed upon them by selfishness and cruelty and deliver them into your abiding love forever.  ” Amen…

May the Lord Be with all alienated parents and be also with you until your last days here on this Earth.  Amen

Please show your support for all the alienated parents and their children who they have been kept from against their will by placing this prayer on your Facebook Wall. Thank you.

Follow Listening Faithfully Facebook and Listening Faithfully Community Facebook Page by clicking the links provided!

Help Support Listening Faithfully by getting the word out to all you know and by sending this link to all your family and friends in the Spirit of God the Father. Then make a commitment to pray this prayer this Sunday, November 4, 2012 for all those parents and children who are facing the unjust courts this upcoming week and month.

PLEASE DON’T LET OUR CHILDREN BE SOLD A BILL OF GOODS WHICH FORCES THEM TO CHOOSE BETWEEN TWO PARENTS THEY LOVE. iT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY!