{"id":192,"date":"2007-08-14T07:29:15","date_gmt":"2007-08-14T14:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sackrider.org\/category\/ministry\/distractions"},"modified":"2025-06-15T06:07:39","modified_gmt":"2025-06-15T06:07:39","slug":"distractions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sackrider.org\/wordpress\/distractions\/","title":{"rendered":"Distractions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I learned something interesting as I was watching a documentary about Border Patrol last night.\u00c2\u00a0 Drug smugglers from Mexico will use people who want to come to America as distractions for the border patrol agents to allow themselves a window to get their illegal imports across the border.\u00c2\u00a0 They send people across with a people smuggler and watch from the Mexican side how the patrol officers find them, where they come from, how they catch the illegal aliens, and then use that information to cross undetected.<\/p>\n

I thought of a\u00c2\u00a0friend of mine, who\u00c2\u00a0is a magician (http:\/\/tru-magic.com<\/a>).\u00c2\u00a0 He uses entertaining stories to distract his audience from whats really going on.\u00c2\u00a0 A simple waving of his hand, or making eye contact at just the right moment, delivering a punch line, these are the tools he uses to create the illusion of magic.\u00c2\u00a0 Distractions…<\/p>\n

Yesterday I got an email from an old high school friend informing me that she was no longer going to accept the new gold dollar because the words “In God We Trust” have been moved to the edge of the coin instead of on the face or the back as in previous versions.\u00c2\u00a0 This fact was brought to the attention of many people when the US Treasury mistakenly\u00c2\u00a0minted several coins without the inscription on even the edge.\u00c2\u00a0 This upset many Christians and has resulted in several angry emails and email chains like the one I got today.\u00c2\u00a0 My friend didn’t seem angry, just adamant in Her\u00c2\u00a0decision to expressly not use the new dollar.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not to pick on my friend, but think about that for a moment.\u00c2\u00a0 There are Christians who have decided to\u00c2\u00a0‘take-a-stand’ for God by refusing to use the new dollar coin.\u00c2\u00a0 I began to consider how they would make this stand.\u00c2\u00a0 Images of gas station clerks standing baffled as some stranger explains to them why they won’t except those ungodly coins as change come to mind.\u00c2\u00a0 Are we really so distracted from the great commission that this is what we allow to pass as taking a stand?\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The enemy has sent\u00c2\u00a0distractions across our borders and is watching us react, all while moving undetected in the process.\u00c2\u00a0 We are watching the left hand, while the right hand is doing that thing we needed to see.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t believe we should ignore the attack on our faith in matters such as the inscription on a coin, or “under God” being removed from our pledge, or the Ten Commandments being removed from our court house walls, anymore than I believe the border patrol should ignore illegal immigrants crossing the border.\u00c2\u00a0 But aren’t these things simply symptoms of the problem? Isn’t there a better way to spread this Gospel than refusing to accept a coin?\u00c2\u00a0 We are focused on the left hand when our attention should be on the right.\u00c2\u00a0 Wouldn’t it be great if we actually showed people how to live the montra “In God we trust” instead of demanding it be printed their coins?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I learned something interesting as I was watching a documentary about Border Patrol last night.\u00c2\u00a0 Drug smugglers from Mexico will use people who want to come to America as distractions for the border patrol agents to allow themselves a window to get their illegal imports across the border.\u00c2\u00a0 They send people across with a people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sackrider.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sackrider.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sackrider.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sackrider.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sackrider.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sackrider.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2820,"href":"https:\/\/www.sackrider.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/2820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sackrider.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sackrider.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sackrider.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}