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Modern mega-churches are exactly like the fig tree Jesus cursed in Mark 11 🛑

I recently left a church that had millions of dollars, a massive light show, and a coffee shop in the lobby. But when our family went through a severe medical crisis, not a single pastor checked on us. They had all the leaves, but absolutely zero fruit. I was reading Mark 11 today. Jesus walks up to a fig tree. It has beautiful green leaves, advertising that it has fruit. But when Jesus gets close, it’s completely empty. It was a hypocrite. Jesus didn't water it. He cursed it. The next morning, the disciples found the tree completely withered and dead from the roots up. Christ has absolute zero tolerance for religious institutions that look beautiful on the outside but offer no spiritual nourishment to starving people. #ChurchHypocrisy #Mark11 #AuthenticFaith #FruitOfTheSpirit

Local Authority After a Medicaid recipient dies, the state can place a claim on the family home to recover what it paid for their care. By David Keller,  A paid-off home is the asset most older Americans intend to leave behind, the one piece of wealth that passes to the next generation. Yet for families who relied on Medicaid to cover the enormous cost of nursing-home or long-term care, that house can become the very thing the government comes after. Federal law requires states to try to recoup what Medicaid spent on a person’s care after that person dies, and the family home is often the largest asset in the estate. What Medicaid estate recovery is The program is called Medicaid Estate Recovery, and it is not optional for states. Under federal rules, every state must seek repayment from the estates of deceased Medicaid enrollees who were 55 or older when they received certain benefits, and from those who were permanently institutionalized. The costs subject to recovery center on long-term care: nursing facility services, home- and community-based services, and related hospital and prescription drug expenses. The reason this surprises families is a disconnect at the front end. To qualify for Medicaid long-term care, a person’s countable assets have to be very low, but the home is often exempt while they are alive. That exemption does not erase the debt. Once the recipient dies, the home loses its protected status and can be reached through the estate to satisfy the state’s claim. How a claim reaches the house After death, the state Medicaid agency files a claim against the estate for the amount it paid in long-term-care costs. When the home is sold, the state can collect all or part of the proceeds up to what it spent. In some situations a state may also place a lien on the home

The Grocery Store Ground Beef Red Flag That Should Send You Running Every Time By Joe Hoeffner, 16 hrs ago The The Takeout Follow https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=13vC4e_1Et815gS00 A Styrofoam package of ground beef. Hispanolistic/Getty Images Some things are just better kept at room temperature. When it comes to food specifically, plenty of dishes are best served at room temperature. (Ever eat a hot potato chip?) For cheese, certain flavors can be brought out when served at room temperature, which is why serving cheese fresh out of the fridge is a classic cheese board mistake. But one thing that should never be at room temperature, at least in the supermarket, is raw ground beef. When you're at the supermarket looking for a package of ground beef to pick for your meatloaf (taking care to avoid this major meatloaf prep mistake), it's worth feeling the beef through the cellophane wrapping and making sure it's cool or cold to the touch. Bacteria thrive at room temperature, and if beef is left out at room temperature for too long, bacteria may end up multiplying. That's why raw meat should never be left out of the fridge for more than two hours, or one hour if it's hotter than 90 degrees Fahrenheit. If your grocery store meat feels room temperature or warm, something may be wrong with their refrigeration, and if that's the case, it's probably worth finding a different grocery store. You don't have to let your ground beef come to room temperature before cooking Ground beef being cooked with rice in skillet with metal spoon in it Lauripatterson/Getty Images "But wait!" you cry. "We heard that you're supposed to let meat come to room temperature before cooking it! What's the big idea here, huh?" Well, settle down. There's actually a bit of debate as to whether or not letting meat come to room temperature has any effect on the cook

If you feel like your life is completely ordinary and unimpressive, please look at Enoch. 🥺

I listen to these famous pastors talk about building massive ministries, writing books, and "changing the world." It makes me feel like my quiet, ordinary life is totally useless to God. Then I read Genesis 5. It lists all these ancient guys who lived hundreds of years and had massive families. But then there’s Enoch. The Bible doesn't say Enoch built an ark, or parted a sea, or led an army. It just says one thing: "Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away." He never died. His quiet, daily, ordinary intimacy with God was so profoundly beautiful to the Creator that God just bypassed death entirely and took him home. God isn't looking for our massive achievements. He just wants us to walk with Him. #Genesis5 #Enoch #OrdinaryFaith #QuietLife #WalkingWithGod

Suicide doesn’t just take one life it changes many. 💜🩵 When you lose someone to suicide, you don’t just grieve their absence. You are often left carrying the unanswered questions, the “what ifs,” guilt, anger, trauma, and a pain that can be difficult to explain. You replay conversations. You search for signs you may have missed. You wonder what you could have done differently. For some families, the loss can even lead to symptoms of traumatic grief, anxiety, depression, or PTSD. That is what I mean when I say suicide can feel like a transferable death. The person’s suffering may have ended, but the pain creates a ripple through the people who loved them. This September, during Suicide Awareness Month, check on your people. Listen without judgment. Love out loud. 💜🩵 One life lost to suicide can impact many lives left behind. Call or text 988 if you or someone you love needs support. #militarsuicide #suicicideawarness #suicide #suicideprevention #olliefe22 #BeInformed #PTSDAwareness #DonaldTrump #MikeJohnson #awareness #education

We treat "gossip" like a minor sin, but Numbers 12 absolutely terrified me today 🤐

I'll admit it, I can be pretty critical. It’s so easy to sit around after church and complain about the pastor’s decisions or gossip about other families. We treat it like a "harmless" sin. But I was reading Numbers 12. Miriam and Aaron (Moses’ own sister and brother) started whispering and complaining about Moses behind his back because they didn't like his wife. God didn't just ignore it. God literally called a meeting, descended in a pillar of cloud, and defended Moses. When the cloud lifted, Miriam was covered in a horrifying, rotting skin disease. She was snow-white with leprosy. God takes gossip against His people incredibly seriously. He views our toxic whispering as spiritual treason. I am seriously re-evaluating every conversation I have moving forward. #Gossip #Numbers12 #FearOfTheLord #ChurchCulture

🕵️‍♀️ September 2, 2010. An 89-year-old woman dies alone in a small flat in Torquay, England. To everyone around her, she was just a quiet old lady nobody really knew. Then they went through her belongings. They found medals. They found wartime documents. And a story nobody saw coming began to unfold. Nearly seven decades earlier, this quiet old woman had been a British secret agent operating alone, behind enemy lines, in Nazi-occupied France. She was only 23 years old when Britain's Special Operations Executive sent her into France in 1944. Her job? One of the most dangerous in the entire war. Eileen Nearne was a clandestine wireless operator. She transmitted secret messages between the French Resistance and London. Every single time she switched on that radio, she was gambling with her life. German direction-finding teams were constantly hunting for illegal transmitters. Stay on air too long, and they'd find you. Eventually, they found her. July 1944. German security forces raided the house she was transmitting from. She was arrested on the spot. They interrogated her. They wanted names. They wanted to know exactly who she was working for. Eileen refused to break. She stuck to her cover story just an innocent Frenchwoman sending messages for a businessman, nothing more. Nothing they said or did changed her story. So they tortured her. She still gave them nothing. Eileen was sent to Ravensbrück the most notorious concentration camp built for women then transferred again for forced labor. Most people's stories would end there. Hers didn't. As Nazi Germany began collapsing in 1945, Eileen saw her chance during a prisoner transfer and she took it.#HistoryMattersNow She escaped. Alone, hunted, with nothing, she made her way across enemy territory, hiding from German forces, until she finally reached safety. Then she went home. And she disappeared.