Week 1 Devotional Assignment

Valerie Augsburger

09/09/2013 1:00 pm

Today I was reading 2 Corinthians, chapter twelve. Verses nine and ten really stuck out to me: 

 "But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

The Apostle Paul wrote 2 Corinthians to the church in Corinth. Earlier in chapter twelve, Paul was telling them about the amazing things that had happened to him. He was "caught up to Paradise [Heaven]", he saw amazing things, heard words that were "inexpressible" and for him only to know about. Then, in verse 7, Paul says that because of the wonderfully amazing things he had seen and heard, he was given a "thorn in the flesh, a messenger from Satan" to keep him from exulting himself or becoming too haughty and proud. It would be so easy for me to become proud if I had just gone to heaven and back! So, Satan was the cause of this "thorn", but because of God's love for Paul, God sent the hardship. 

Obviously this "thorn in the flesh" was extremely hard for Paul to go through because in verse eight it says that Paul asked the Lord three times to take it away from him. But we can see God's response to Paul's plea in my favorite part of the chapter. (It is written above.) 

Verses nine and ten tell us that because of God's grace, we can endure hardships and difficulties, for we know that Christ's power is being made perfect in us through of our struggles. And even though what we may be going through is more than we can take on our own, we can be confident that God will give us the strength to endure and carry on with joy. We can have joy because of what Christ has done and what he is still doing in our lives today. The more we lower ourselves, the higher Jesus becomes. The weaker we become, we can see how strong God is. Because of Christ Jesus, “…when I am weak, then I am strong”.

I really enjoyed working on my own to try and figure out what a passage meant. It made me think harder, and I got a whole lot more out of what I had just read because I had to look to see who wrote it, who it what written to, and what the purpose was. If I use this method on everything I read anything in the Bible, I can learn so much!

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Argument! p. 12 About the Author

Before taking an authors work on anything they write, find to stuff about them...

Question to Ask

1. Does the author have a reputation for honesty, thoroughness, and fairness?
2. Is the author writing within in his or her own experiences? (Opinion, or fact?)
3. Is the author identified with a particular group or set of beliefs?

Here is a link I found: EBSCO Book Digest

Argument! p. 11 Thoughts on Los Angeles Times Paper

• The title Music Piracy: A New Tune is engaging..because it has a "catchy" title, it makes you want to find out what the article is about.
• Litigation = the process of taking legal action.
• Start-Ups = the action or process of setting something in motion.
• What kind of things (lawsuits) did the RIAA do? What are they doing now?
• Why was it such a struggle for the major labels to keep piracy under control? Why were there always new things to have to figure out? 
• Individual File-Sharers =  Sharing files in a network, even if in a small local area network. File sharing allows a number of people to use the same file or file by some combination of being able to read or view it, write to or modify it, copy it, or print it. 
• The investigation was hard because they were having a lot of problems finding the people who were doing it because their accounts dint match up with the actual people who were causing the problems.
• The lawsuits were not helping much, and were just putting the blame on the wring people.
• When they sued the account-holders, they were demanding compensation from anyone...family members, children, whoever! They just wanted their money back. 
• Compensation = something, typically money, awarded to someone as a recompense for loss, injury, or suffering.
• IPS =  information science: the sciences concerned with gathering, manipulating, storing, retrieving, and classifying recorded information
• Infringe = Actively break the terms of (a law, agreement, etc.)
• Everything was eventually settled and the IRAA is working on a "detector" to find piracy without the threats of "financial ruin".

Who the RIAA Were Suing: 

1. Start-Ups distributing file-sharing software 
2. Individual File-Sharers 
3. Account Holders