J. Cope & Associates

Deer

I have trained the deer to mow the lawn.

Beginnings

At some point in our life, as we become aware of ourselves and the world around us, we begin to face questions like:

Who am I?
Why am I here?
What is my purpose in Life?
Where did all of creation originate?

The questions are built-in to our hearts by our creator. When we face the questions of origination, we encounter three of the possible conclusions:

The object was created by something else.
The object created itself, or
The object has always existed.

To follow the creation of one thing to another, we would eventually work our way to the other two conclusions. Self-creation presents us with the problem with the law of conservation of matter, not to mention the law of contradiction --something cannot exist and exist at thesame time. Therefore, try as we might to evade the final conclusion with huge explosions and vast epochs of time, we are forced to face that something eternal exists and has created everything. The Bible stands ready to present us with this fact.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." ¹ We are also held accountable to this fact:"For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse."²

¹Genesis 1:1 KJV

²Romans 1:20 KJV

What happened after the Beginning?

You may have noticed, that I have not addressed the "Who am I" questions. Those questions make no sense until you have established you have a Creator. Otherwise, you're just a random bunch of accidental DNA and you really have no purpose. So you if you are still have a problem with a God demonstrated by creation, go to www.icr.org. They can give you exhaustive evidence if you really want proof that you are no accident.

Now, the rest of the story: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." ³ What does it mean to be made in God''s image? It means this: That we have the potential to understand God. "But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him."⁴ You may have a very good companion in a dog or cat. But no matter how well trained or how smart they are, they can never replace a human companion because your pet is not in the image of God. In the beginning we were not only in the image of God, but we had intimate fellowship with God. When he came to the garden named "Delight" (Eden) we could run to him and seek his counsel on anything. Evil and selfishness were not a part of our thinking, because our nature was consumed with the blessings of God. However, God allowed a rebel in the garden who was consumed with idea of being God himself. Satan afflicted us with partaking of the "Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" What this meant was that we rejected the Sovereignty of God and followed Satan's lead and declared ourselves to be God. This single act recorded in Genesis 3 began as a consquence everything that is wrong with the world today. We lost control of the creation God gave us to maintain. We undertook to bear a burden we were not meant to bear.

³Genesis 1:26 KJV

⁴First Corinthians 2:9 KJV

We need a Savior

Here are the answers to who you are:

You are created in the image of God.
You are made to understand the will of God and all of his plans for you.
You need a Savior in order to fulfill this destiny.

Since the choice in the garden in Genesis 3, we have had a sin problem. Our fellowship with God is fractured. You may have noticed that we don''t have to teach children to be naughty, bad behavior comes unbidden. You may have noticed selfish thoughts, emotions and even actions that seem to come from nowhere to torment. This is from lifting a burden we were not meant to bear. Who can save us from this burden? Jesus Christ said, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls." ⁵

Jesus has made a way back to our fellowship by paying the penalty for our rebellion on the cross. The beginning of the way back is relinquish our claim to self, and to trust that Jesus paid our price, that God is Sovereign and is able to complete in us what he started.

⁵ Matthew 11:29 KJV

You too can use PHP Nuke

If you haven''t noticed. This website very much builds itself. If you want one like this go to PHP Nuke Author''s Website

How I did it--controlling a bamboo hedge

If you have an out-of-control bamboo growth, you may have resigned yourself to becoming it''s slave forever! I'm here to tell you there is a way out. I had a bamboo hedge comprised of several species of the dreaded weed. In the spring, it would grow 2 feet a day! Daily doses of RoundUP only slowed and mutated it's growth. But then I discovered the cure!

Here are the steps for control:

Burn the hedge down to the dirt.
Cover the hedge with black plastic for 2 months
Remove the cover of a portion of the hedge and apply RoundUP.
Repeat step 3 weekly until you''ve killed the hedge.