By Tom Quiner

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkLjBJWYR68]
I meet with a great group of people every Wednesday morning.
We talk about serious faith issues. We’re all Catholic, and love learning more about our Church. The bond amongst this group is tremendous. Some of us are converts to the faith, coming from diverse faith backgrounds such as Christian Science, and even atheism.
We each have problems in our lives. When things are particularly tough, we pray together about these problems. We talk them out, encourage each other, sometimes injecting a little humor to put things in perspective.
Each of us, probably you too, have to fight discouragement at some point in our lives. We don’t always get our way in life. Sometimes it seems like we never get our way. Sometimes bad stuff happens that seems so unjust and inexplicable.
For modern man, sometimes we feel that we are the master of our destiny. When life interrupts our expectations, discouragement  can set in.
The subject of discouragement got me thinking about a man famous for teaching us how to overcome discouragement. I’m talking about the great Protestant minister, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who was also the author of the watershed book, “The Power of Positive Thinking.”
Above, you can hear a short sermon from him that deals with discouragement. He talks about a man who discovered the secret for overcoming discouragement, put the secret into action, and avoided discouragement for a quarter of a century until his death at a ripe old age.
Dr. Peale  died in 1993 at the age of 95. His delivery and his message are timeless.
 

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  1. WIN FROM THE SKY on November 6, 2013 at 12:24 pm

    Reblogged this on WIN FROM THE SKY.

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  2. JoeC on November 6, 2013 at 3:37 pm

    I have been watching excerpts from Dr. Phil’s interview with Michelle Knight. I don’t think I could sit and watch the whole thing at once. Very disturbing testimony.
    Then I equate that to the millennium of slavery that existed throughout history. The helplessness and despair that must have existed.
    The Bible not only failed to condemn slavery, it gave rules on how to care for your slaves, which included beating them as long as they were able to work within three days.
    Of course, the quick response is that Jesus came and somehow transformed God from a very vindictive deity into a loving God. But if that is the case, why didn’t Jesus declare slavery as an abomination? Or why didn’t He have Paul? Or he could have passed it on through a long line of Popes?
    On one hand I am told we cannot truly understand God’s ways yet time and again I am told by people they know exactly what God wants. Can you begin to understand why I would be skeptical?

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    • quinersdiner on November 6, 2013 at 4:22 pm

      Great to hear from you, Joe. You pose an interesting and legitimate question which as been addressed in a previous Quiner’s Diner post by Monsignor Frank Bognanno:

      “In the Bible, God’s will regarding marriage seems to follow a progressive trajectory when we look at the Old and New Testaments together. The definition of marriage crystallizes in the teaching of Jesus. In fact, three “stages” of human transformation can be seen in the Bible, which can be described as: “prefall,” “post-fall,” and “redemption.” Each stage affects the nature and shape of marriage.
      First, we turn to a “pre-fallen” view of humanity in Genesis 1:27-28, which tells us that God created man and woman in the divine image, that they were paired together to “increase and multiply” and that Eve was Adam’s ezer, a Hebrew word which has since been described by modern scholars as descriptive of Adam and Eve being as “complementary strengths,” each one living for the other.
      The Bible then depicts a fallen humanity. Because of our inherited weakness resulting from the original sin of our first parents, the original discipline of marriage begins to devolve into various male-female social combinations.
      Polygamy, for example, was accepted at various times. However, the recording of polygamy in the sacred texts does not mean that this social custom reflects God’s plan for marriage. Likewise, the institutionalization of slavery, though depicted in the Bible, does not mean that slavery must be God’s ultimate plan for society.”

      You can read his complete essay here: https://quinersdiner.com/2013/06/18/marriage-view-must-take-bible-as-whole/
      Thanks for writing. Come again.

      Reply

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