The holidays are upon us. It's now a special time of treats and seasonal goodies, so most of us find ourselves hanging around the kitchen more than usual at this time of year!

Natural thoughts, emotions and desires. The dictionary calls them "the movers of our soul" because what we think and feel is usually what we choose to follow.

For years, whenever I had a problem, other Christians would tell me, "Nancy, just give it to God." Well, that's really easy to say, but how on earth do you do it in action?

As we approach winter, depending upon which part of the country we live, we will encounter freezing temperatures. Most of the country will enjoy the poetry and beauty - and the needed respites - of the ice and snow of this special season.

There is a book of the Bible that some have attempted to ban from public libraries because it was deemed unsuitable for children:  the Book of Judges.  It contains some graphic material that is so explicit that it has shocked many that such passages are even in the Bible!

When things fall apart in our lives, it's so easy for someone looking in to simply say, "Oh, just give it to God." Well, the question is, how exactly does one do that? This has been the topic of our discussion over the past several months - how do we give things to God and leave them there?

When God put it on my heart to write a book about worship, I questioned my friends, my family and others how and when they worshiped. "Do you worship the Lord on a daily basis, or just on Sundays?"

In the last article, we examined the origins of the Scythians, the descendants of Magog who terrorized the southern steppes of Russia from the 10th to the 3rd century b.c.

Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" sound familiar to you?

In my opinion the "key" to the Christian walk is knowing how, moment by moment, to give things over to God-how to acknowledge and confess our sin and self; how to repent of it; and then, how to give it over to Him.

So begins this classic passage in which Gog and Magog, with their allies, are drawn into an invasion of Israel only to have the God of Israel use the occasion to show Himself strong by intervening on behalf of His people and destroying the invading forces.

An outstanding salesman is one who can tell another to go to hell and make him feel very happy that he is on his way. Such a feat requires intense creativity, deceptive semantics, and the ability to lie creatively and utter warm, loving words to the victim while concealing the intense hatred the perpetrator feels for him.

It may come as a surprise to discover that there are a number of Biblical experts who regard the Book of Leviticus as the most important book of the Bible! (Dr. Samuel H. Kellogg, Dr. Albert C. Dudley, J. Vernon McGee, et al.)

There's a huge difference between simply knowing that we possess God's Life in our hearts and actually experiencing it in our lives. The key to being able to do this, moment by moment, is understanding how to surrender ourselves to the Lord. This process is what we have been exploring over these last several months in Personal UPDATE.

How do we give things over to the Lord and leave them there? This has been our topic of discussion for the last two months. We briefly talked about the four essential steps to doing this:

[Ed Note: We have been following Barry Setterfield's research on the speed of light since 1993. It is interesting that both evolutionists and creation scientists can be blinded by their own presuppositions...]

World events seem to press forward in a confusing whirl of exhilarating noise and babble, leaving the average onlooker confused as to its significance. In reality, these reports only haunt those viewing world events through the filters of post-WWII and Cold War assumptions, rather than the new global paradigm in play, which is global governance.

As diligent Bible students, most of us are familiar with the emergence of the empires that were profiled, in advance, in Daniel 2 and Daniel 7: the Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman Empires.

Last month, we reviewed a couple of the "minor prophets" (so labeled simply because they are smaller - shorter, more terse and concise): Joel and Amos. This month we'll take a glimpse at a few more.

For a presumably enlightened culture, our lives - and schoolbooks - are littered with an astonishing array of beliefs that pose as being scientific, but are actually in contradiction to available evidence. We need to regard many of our cherished myths with cautious skepticism and not allow conjectures to masquerade as proven facts.