Business Tips

I Had A Dream

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. … I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. … I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

In Acts chapter 11 we are told that Peter had a dream, and the thrust of these two dreams is remarkably similar!

In a bar in New York there are two guys sitting at opposite ends of the bar eyeing out each other as they sink a few beers. One guy is a Jewish American. The other guy is a Chinese American. After his third beer the Jewish guy takes what’s left of his glass, walks over to the Chinese guy, and pours it over his head saying “That’s for Pearl Harbour. My grandfather was killed at Pearl Harbour.” “Pearl Harbour!” the Chinese guy says. “I’m Chinese. It was the Japanese that bombed Pearl Harbour.” “Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese – all the same to me!” the Jewish guy says. The Chinese guy then takes his beer and pours it over the Jewish guy’s head, saying, “That’s for the Titanic. My great Uncle was killed when the Titanic went down.” “The Titanic” says the Jewish guy, “what have I got to do with the sinking of the Titanic?” “Goldberg, Steinberg, Iceberg – all the same to me!” the man replies.

“Prejudice is the child of Ignorance” said William Hazlitt a couple of centuries ago. For the most part he is surely right, but not in some situations. Having just emerged from two weeks in Israel, I’d have to say that the prejudices that vibrate across that country are deep and complex – not a matter of simple ignorance. When I look at the way battle lines were drawn between different ethnic groups in New Testament times, the situation there is also complex.

The Jews of 1st century Palestine did not mix with the Greeks and the Romans. Why not? Partly because they (the Romans) were an unfriendly foreign power that had invaded their land. Partly because they represented a style of life that the Jews saw as idolatrous and self-seeking and that threatened to corrupt their youth. Partly because Biblical piety demanded that the Jews remain a separate people – distinct in appearance and in lifestyle from their neighbours. And partly, I suppose, because they just looked different.

Visit Israel today and you will likewise find a situation that is complex, yet the reality of prejudicial hatred and violence is everywhere. It was a good learning experience for me – being on the wrong end of prejudice. Being male, middle-class and white, I’m normally well ensconced on the comfortable side of racial tensions. Not so when I went to Israel. It was a first for me to feel looked down upon, to be threatened, kicked and spat upon, though I was always conscious of the fact that I was just a tourist. Others had to live with this every day.

If we had met the Apostle Paul before his conversion – when he was still known as ‘Saul’ – we would have found him hard to get on with. Well … I suppose he would have had no dealings with us. Even so, if we caught a glance from him as he was passing by we would have felt him looking down his nose at us. He wouldn’t have deemed us worthy of his conversation, let along his presence at a meal.

I imagine Peter to be naturally warmer than that. My guess is that Peter would have managed a smile for just about anyone – from his fellow Jews to Samaritan women! Even so, the early Peter would never have consented to sit down to have a meal with us, as he would not stain himself by coming under the same roof as us.

And it’s not a case of simple prejudice based on ignorance. God Himself had given the people of Israel a variety of rituals with which they circumscribed their lives, and the whole point of those rituals was to make themselves different as a people.

To be ‘holy’ always meant to be ‘separate’ or ‘different’. The Jews were self-consciously different. And they wanted to remain different because God wanted them to be different!

It was written: ‘every male among you shall be circumcised’. That made them different.

It was written: you don’t eat pork (Leviticus 11). That made them different too.

Indeed there were lots of things written that were designed to remind you that you, as a child of God, were different from the rest of the world – holy, pious, focused on God.

Of course this sense of thinking that you were different from others easily lends itself to thinking that you were better than others, which is where the critique of Jesus upon the whole system begins. According to the dream in Acts 10 and 11 though it appears that the entire system is to be abandoned! The actions runs as follows:

1. Peter has a dream of a great picnic where God is telling him to have a bite of all the things that he isn’t supposed to eat. Peter has this dream three times!

2. As he finishes dreaming, representatives of Cornelius the Roman centurion come to his house and ask him to accompany them to meet Cornelius.

3. Peter goes with them, enters Cornelius’ house, starts talking, and everybody starts speaking in tongues, reminiscent of the day of Pentecost!

4. Peter says, “These people have received the Holy Spirit just as we have”, and so everybody gets baptised.

This is my summary of Acts 11, and Acts 11 is actually just a summary of Acts 10. This is a story that gets repeated over again in the book of Acts, presumably because it is important.

I think I’m right in saying that there is only one other story in the book of Acts that gets this sort of treatment. It’s the story of Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus – where he’s thrown of his horse and blinded and where he hears Jesus speaking to him.

Ironically, in both cases, the truth that God brings to the men is roughly the same – that God does have a place in His heart and in His Kingdom for non-Jews.

What we need to understand is that this was the big issue in the first century church. This was why the early Paul (or ‘Saul’) and so many of his pious contemporaries hated the Christians.

It wasn’t just because the Christians thought that Jesus was the Messiah. That might have been a sticking point for some, but within the Jewish faith there were then (as there are now) different beliefs about who was the Messiah.

It wasn’t just about who the Messiah was. It was most fundamentally about the fact that the Christians were dissolving the dividing wall between Jew and non-Jew, and this was seen as a threat to the entire fabric of their faith and their society!

There might well have been room within Jewish society to accept different beliefs about different Messiahs. Look at the literature of 1st century Israel and you will see that different groups had different Messianic expectations. Most people were waiting for a warrior leader. Some were waiting for a priest. If you look at the Dead Sea Scrolls, it seems that the Qumran community, who were a group of Jewish monks, were expecting both!

1st century Judaism might well have been able to absorb within its ranks any number of godly Jews who recognised Jesus as the Messiah, and had not God given Peter this dream, and had not God struck down Saul and turned him into Paul, and had not God very deliberately forced the church to burst the bounds of any narrow ethnic exclusivism, then we might still be a small sect within the larger body of Judaism.

But it was not the will of God that his people should remained defined by any one ethnic group, just as it is not the will of God that we remain defined by any one social group, just as it is not the will of God that we be defined by any homogeneous unit that separates us from our fellow men and women.

On the contrary, as we read about God building the church in the book of Acts what we see is that He was very deliberately building a multi-coloured community where in Christ there was ‘no Jew nor Greek nor Palestinian nor Arab, no rich or poor, no slave or free, no male or female, but where all are one, for all are in Christ as Christ is in all.’

Peter had a dream. Martin Luther King had a dream. Some of us find that this dream continues.

It took us some 2000 odd years, and it is taking the church longer than most, but we seem to be finally discovering that there is indeed no male nor female in Christ, but that women are in fact equally capable of ministry and service as are men. It turns out that “These people have received the Holy Spirit just as we did”. By the grace of the Spirit of God some of us have discovered that, and so the dream continues.

For me the biggest personal spiritual breakthrough in the last ten years has been a realisation concerning my brothers and sisters who share a different sexual orientation to mine. By the grace of the Spirit of God I came to see that “many of these people had received the Holy Spirit just as I had”. And so the dream continues.

For many of us here the Spirit of God is still at work expanding our vision and enlarging our hearts, helping us to realise that young people as well as old, uneducated as well as educated, working class as well as middle class, people of all types and colours and backgrounds are all one in Christ Jesus, indeed, that “these people have received the Holy Spirit just as we have”.

It is a dangerous thing to dream. And it is certainly unsettling for the church leadership. Things would be so much easier if God restricted Himself to communicating with us only through the direct study of the Scriptures. Such a God would be a lot easier to contain and to predict. But it seems to be built in to the package, that if we are going to worship a living God, then we are going to have to put up with ongoing surprises.

And the surprises, I believe, keep coming in this same area – that God is continuing to open us up as a community to become the truly multi-coloured family that He always intended us to be. They tend to keep being in the area of pushing us beyond our comfort zones and moving us from ‘me’ to ‘we’ and from ‘us and them’ to just ‘us’.

I must admit that spending a couple of weeks in Israel has deepened my perspective on these matters. I’ve now had the experience of being kicked and spat upon because I am different. This is not the way things are supposed to be. This is not the way that things one day will be. And God has very deliberately constructed the church so that it might be a sign to the world now of the fact that things don’t have to be this way.

We are not there yet, but we can keep building and we can keep praying and we can keep dreaming, of that great feast when all peoples will come together and share together in the good things that God has given us, of that day when former slaves and former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of fellowship, of that day when every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

‘Fighting Father’ Dave – Parish Priest, Community Worker, Professional boxer, Martial Arts master, Father of three. Dave’s goal is to offer an alternative culture for young people, based on values of courage, integrity, self-discipline and teamwork. He is available to help work your corner as you fight the good fight. Visit http://www.fatherdave.org for more information.

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Storm Ahead In Business With Investment In Mexico

Foreign investment is a big move for any company, however while your business wants to grow it could make sense to take your work into other countries, and get 1 foreign investment in the South American country of Mexico. Not only it is popular with investors from the US, but European businesses have even become eager to make investments in Latin America and between 30 and 40 percent of Mexico’s foreign investment capital comes from Europe. As the country continues to thrive as an economic heavyweight, so it is probably that more investment from foreign businesses will occur. In this climate, it is sensible to at least consider Mexico as one of your overseas investment choices.

There are a number of excellent reasons why businesses select to put their foreign investment money into this Latin American country. Firstly, Mexico has created a range of policies intended to encourage foreign trade. They are keen to implement modifications in trade laws, repealing earlier foreign investor restrictions and starting to privatize necessary industries. There have also been a number of measures taken to make sure that Mexico keeps its economic stability, among the main things that investors look at while putting money into a country.

As well as such legal changes, the Mexican government is also setting in motion a mental change taking steps to push investors into their country and paving the way through introductory programs. This is often designed to ensure that big foreign corporations are tempted towards Mexico’s shores, but could even prove useful to smaller businesses that are keen to take the first steps into foreign investment. By encouraging investment from foreign companies, Mexico is hoping to bring cash into the country and ensure that the economy continues to boom.

Mexico is eager to encourage foreign businesses to invest within the country because it is part of a wider economic plan which is designed to permit the country to grow financially whereas keeping the majority of its people in employment. Foreign investors are seen as one of the best sources for employment creation in modern Mexico and so the government is taking clear steps to encourage these visitors. This permits people who are keen to make investments in the country to receive a lot of benefits that might be lacking in other Latin American countries. It therefore is smart to at least think Mexico as one of your areas for investment.

To discover more on the extraordinary possibilities that prevail with enxtranjera investment (inversión enxtranjera) in Mexico, take the time to go to http://www.promexico.gob.mx. With this objective in mind, the institution supports the export activity of companies established in the country and co-ordinates actions to attract foreign direct investment to national territory. ProMexico was established on June 13, 2007, as a sectoral public trust under the Ministry of the Economy, and operates through a network of 25 offices throughout Mexico and more than 27 offices abroad.

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Effectively Market Your Website Today

There are a many business websites on the internet, and it is difficult for a new company to make a important impact with their site. Creating an efficient website marketing strategy is important to making sure that your site will not go down the search engine rankings pages, however several corporations put effort to accomplish this. If website marketing isn’t a normal thing for you, then taking guidance from a website branding company may really assist you to get the best from the corporate, making certain that you can brand your business in probably the most effective manner possible, and bring a lot of clients to your door than your rivals. Even when you don’t take help of an expert whole time, you may still get great website marketing tips, and even have somebody build your site and begin the branding strategy, without having to put too much cash into this part of your business tactics.

The primary steps in any marketing plan should be to create a familiar image for your company. Without something that is automatically linked to your home website, you will not get all of the clients that a brand has the potential to draw in. You may have to generate a good logo, slogan and company color scheme in order to have something that is automatically identifiable. This is at least part of your brand, and should have an main position in any strategy for marketing your website. Any expert company ought to be able to provide you with effective web marketing guidelines concerning your brand, and if you are trying to work such tips into your marketing strategy for your website, you should begin to see some results.

The experts will perhaps recognize that you want help in developing your strategy to ensure that you may manage to be your website promoted effectively. They could offer web marketing guidelines like providing banner exchanges with another website promoting similar items. These exchanges assist both websites by driving traffic from one to another and back again, and there are plenty of programs intended to assist potential banner exchange partners to meet. This kind of banner exchange is a vital means of promoting your website and building your brand.

There are ways that you may promote your website outside of connected banners, and this can be from links. Links are very important, not only because they provide a potential client an easy route to your website, but also because they are utilized by search engine programs as a means of assessing your website’s significance. For instance, you will be ready to get a range of other resources that could allow you to place links on their pages without having to provide a link back.

Using websites like these may increase the quantity of search engine optimization that you have got and this would increase the profile of your website, also pushing it into the desirable ‘top 10′ position. This means that you may be on the primary page of any relevant keyword search, ideal for promoting your business. Websites which allow you to put links on their pages often ask for something in return, like an article (these could be written on your area of expertise, increasing your standing as an expert. Writing several articles on alike subjects, every with your link at the bottom may increase traffic to your site.

You may also consider other website marketing tips such as promoting your site on a social media network similar to Facebook. Such sites are excellent for promoting your business, and also assist to boost your company’s standing in the eyes of the general public, through a social media page suggests that you have got a good rapport along with your clients, and are willing to talk to them as equals. Several of the major companies have Facebook pages, including both Starbucks and Pizza Hut. The more ambitious corporations provide their products a ‘personality’, which is then used to interact with fans on their page.

Having plenty of access to customers and potential clients through social networking, active pursuit of links like article network sites, and the utilization of blogging, note-taking and different connections could allow you to strike up a healthy relationship along with your clients and the wider public. If you happen to decide on a personality for your product that rings bells with the public, you might find that your website will increase its traffic. This is the prime purpose in making a brand and then marketing it, as the more people that visit your site, the more likely you’re to be able to make sales from such visits. Just by careful placement of links, and by promoting your website actively through a number of different sources, you may find people who are interested in your message, and take the chance to visit the site. If you want assistance in jump-starting your brand building, you can speak to a company like http://www.expertsbranding.com, and utilize their expertise to begin driving traffic to your site.

Are you an expert and doesn’t have a website? Get a super-high-quality website customized for the expert-industry, built from scratch by website marketing experts. Visit http://expertsbranding.com/ to get started today.

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Perfect Your Brand Advertising With Social Media Optimization

The business world has finally woken up to the significance of social media, and realized that these sites are ideal places for building branding for your business. By joining a social media network, you have access to a large and almost captive audience, many of whom check their social media networks many times a day. By making sure that every time they log on they see your company name, you may create a brand consciousness about your business and its products, increasing its reputation and most likely building up profits too.

The majority of company directors understand very little regarding a way to achieve what is called social media optimization. Rather like SEO (search engine optimization), this can be basically placing your profiles within the means of interested people, and ensuring that these pick up the clue. Therefore for example you may start building your brand by creating a range of social networks, every brand along with your company logo and a range of posts.

Large companies with their own IT departments can provide regular posts by dedicating one of their team to figure on these posts. Smaller corporations could find it tougher to run a large number of social networks. The significance of having relevant, meaningful texts on your social media site implies that it is often a lot of work making posts, notably if you are one sole trader, or just have a small team.

This is where employing a company to help you with search engine optimization may help your business greatly. Such firms have lots of expertise with social media trends and could make profiles on a lot of sites faster and simply. They also understand that in order to have the most from your social media optimization, your profiles would want to get sufficient pages to boost you up the search engine rankings. This would take a very long time with a person doing all the work, however a corporation that has lots of expertise making these profiles knows how to do this quickly and easily.

Perhaps one amongst the most helpful things that a brand building company may do for your business is direct your attempts at social media marketing by creating targeted campaigns. This involves looking at your company profile and the products that creates and then working out where your most likely clients, your target audience, are likely to spend their time. Through this they can then develop profiles on the most appropriate social media sites, instead of simply plastering your brand on common social networks, and hoping that the audience could come to you.

Go out and talk to your audience through the best social network platform by signing up an organization which will run your online networking today. Visit the website http://www.BrandGoLive.com. The company can assist you to claim your brand by placing you on a variety of social media pages. Brand Go Live helps you claim your brand on 300 popular social networks. The Social Media Marketing Experts at “Brand Go Live” will create online properties for you. These are HOT social media properties that have reached the top of the charts. Your social media properties will be inter-linked, you gain backlinks from hundreds of networks with upto 9 Google PageRank, we transfer everything we create for you and you own it. Learn more by visiting the website.

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Botox Treatments To Give You Better Appearance

When it comes to evaluating your daily expenditures, one amongst the greatest costs several people discover associates with identifying methods to improve their image. Resources such as anti aging cream have swiftly grown to the major popular product used by both men and women who are seeking to get rid of the signs of aging and maintain the opportunities which exist with a youthful image.

Once you seriously consider the amazing expense and poor results that are related with most anti aging creams, it helps to inspire a demand related to finding new options. One distinctive possibility that has proven successful for many individuals and celebrities may be found with the solutions of Botox treatments.

The primary goal related to using resources such as anti aging creams is to find a solution to fight the various signs that are connected to age. Such signs could often be simplified to elements like wrinkles, crow’s feet, saggy skin and skin elasticity. Creams utilize a variety of various resources like dehydration or oils in order to help either improve the health of the skin or slightly resist signs of aging. The resources of Botox treatments are usually way superior to the chances which exist with anti aging cream since they permit you to obtain instant results that last for an extended period.

If you are a person who really wishes a modify in appearance then solutions of Botox treatments provide you the best results and the best value for fighting the signs of aging. One of the best resources you can rely on so as to use such treatments could be found with the probabilities offered to you by a medi spa. With this kind of location not only will you be ready to achieve access to a big variety of different Botox connected treatments, you can also gain access to different unique solutions such as permanent makeup, laser hair removal and laser skin resurfacing. All of those opportunities assist to present distinctive ways in which an individual could change their appearance in a more effective manner.

Image plays a pretty critical role in modern society as a lot of individuals rely on this resource to make optimistic first impressions, represent their professional look, also assist within their individual lives. The opportunities offered by a resource like Botox treatments can help you save money as well as gain the results you need in order to fight the signs of aging.

In addition to these solutions, you may even profit from opportunities such as permanent makeup, laser hair removal and laser skin resurfacing, all provided to you by New York Medi Spa.

To discover more on pixel laser skin resurfacing visit http://www.prettyfacemedispa.com

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Know How Bioidentical Hormones Can Help With Hormonal Imbalance

Both men and women suffer from hormonal imbalance as they move into their forties. For men, such difficulties include loss of fertility, erectile dysfunction and also loss of muscle and bone mass as the quantity of testosterone in their body is reduced. They could also suffer the symptoms of exhaustion and pain, that also affects women who are experiencing hormonal imbalance. It may be really difficult for either gender to face the hormonal imbalance problems, but for several the hormone replacements provided by the doctor just do not cover all the symptoms experienced by the sufferer.

This can be partially because most of the modern hormone replacements are made from unsuitable items, such as mare’s urine or maybe created from chemical synthetics which have not been designed to mimic the form of the required hormone. If you have been attempting the standard chemical replacement and finding that it does not solve all your symptoms, then you can wish to consider bio-identical hormone replacement therapy.

These sorts of medication are created to resemble the replaced hormone as closely as possible. They’re also made out of natural products, for example soy or yam, that are then just manipulated within the lab to supply the best results. This helps to form natural bio-identical hormones which can be simply accepted by the body.

Some of the symptoms that hormone imbalance sufferers feel can be prolonged by the use of synthetic chemicals, simply because they do not fully replicate the actions of the hormone in the body. By utilizing bio-identical hormone replacement therapy rather, users may often start to overcome even the feelings of tiredness and ill-health which would otherwise have affected them for a few time.

Using bio-identical hormones may assist you to avoid different issues such as bloating, calcium depletion and damaged circulation which can all occur with synthetic hormone replacement. Selecting to use bio-identical hormone replacement therapy may be a tough decision, particularly if you are not familiar with a surgery offering bio-identical hormones instead of more traditional therapy. Rather than stick with the synthetic forms, you must look around for someone able to supply you with the required medication, such as a doctor and the local pharmacy. Once you have been prescribed such natural hormones, you may also require to be regularly monitored, so as to ensure that you are being treated successfully, and will perhaps have blood or saliva tests to ensure that the hormones are working as they should.

Be prepared and seek a doctor nearby who could help you prefer bio-identical hormones products as soon as possible. Visit http://www.thehealthychoice.net to find out more about what you may expect from a compounding pharmacist. The Healthy Choice specializes in compounding customized medications and Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy to fit each patient’s individual requirements. It believes in treating the whole person and the integrative approach to health care gives doctors and patients cutting edge alternatives to mainstream treatments.

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