The Greatest Gift

December 2014: A Word from Dr. Stanley

There’s nothing like the happy (and sometimes chaotic) disorder of Christmas morning. Children hurriedly tear wrapping paper off the packages to find they got exactly what they wanted. But the real joy comes from exploring and using the things they’ve been given. How unusual it would be if a child decided to keep a present without unwrapping it. Yet that’s how many Christians treat the priceless gift of salvation. They accept it but never bother to explore all the riches available to them as children of God.

Eternal life is the most precious possession anyone can receive. Because of His great love, the heavenly Father offers this gift to everyone who will accept it through faith in His Son. Unlike all the earthly presents we accumulate and eventually discard, this one lasts forever. So let’s unwrap it and see what’s inside.

First of all, God gave what was most precious to Him: His beloved Son. Jesus came to earth in human flesh while remaining fully divine. On that first Christmas, the angels announced that a Savior had been born (Luke 2:11). To rescue us from eternal separation from God, He came to live a perfect life and die on the cross in our place. Now all who place their trust in Jesus receive mercy instead of punishment.

But there’s more to this amazing gift. One of the benefits of salvation is a personal relationship with God. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, we are accepted and have instant access to the Father. We are now free to “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16). Even when we falter, our fellowship can be restored if we confess our sins (1 John 1:9).

Perhaps the most incredible aspect of our salvation is the Holy Spirit, who lives within each believer. He reminds us of Christ’s teachings and enables us to accomplish His will (John 14:16-17, 26). The Spirit guarantees the promise that we will one day be with the Lord forever.

I’d like to encourage you to explore your gift of salvation this Christmas season and throughout the coming year. As you discover the riches of this treasure, may your heart overflow with praise and gratitude for all that God has provided.

Copyright 2014 In Touch Ministries, Inc. All rights reserved. www.intouch.org. In Touch grants permission to print for personal use only.

PowerLite Home Cinema 2030 2D/3D 1080p 3LCD Projector

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Can the projector do rear projection?

A:

Yes. You can change the projection mode using the remote control or by changing a menu setting. Depending on how you positioned the projector, you may need to change the projection mode so your images project correctly. Front (default setting) lets you project from a table in front of the screen. Front/Ceiling flips the image over top-to-bottom to project upside-down from a ceiling or wall mount. Rear flips the image horizontally to project from behind a translucent screen. Rear/Ceiling flips the image over top-to-bottom and horizontally to project from the ceiling and behind a translucent screen. Changing the Projection Mode Using the Menus You can change the projection mode to flip the image over top-to-bottom and/or left-to-right using the projector menus. Turn on the projector and display an image. Press the Menu button. Select the Settings menu and press Enter. Select the Projection setting and press Enter. Select a projection mode and press Enter. Press Menu or Esc to exit the menus.

Published: September 6, 2013

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Natnak khal hi Pathian Sunlawinak Hrangah a Si

San No Thuan

Text: John 11:4

Cumi cu Jesuh in a theih tikah, “Hi natnak cu Lazaras ih thihnak ding natnak a si lo. Hi natnak cu Pathian sunlawinak langter dingah le Pathian Fapa in sunlawinak a ngahnak ding khalah a si,” tiah a ti.

Mi tampi in kan dam lo kan nat tikah, kan tha a nau ih midang pawl thawn khal pawlkom awknak kan paih nawn lo. Curuangah Pathian sunlawinak cu a si thei pei maw tiah an ti. Asinan, Mercy Nu (Thawnga ih nupi) in a timi cu, “Kan natnak hi Pathian sunlawinak a si theinak zawn te cu minung hi kan dam lo tikah, Pathian hnen kan pan sal ih, kan nunnak khal kan check aw sal, kan sual khal kan sir aw sal. Kan dam tuk caan ah Pathian le thian lo khal kan thei lo ih kan daithlang a si” a ti.

Asi rori, kan dam lo tikah Pathian kan naih sal ih Amaih thluasuah siar sal in a hnen ih kan kir ahcun kan pumpak nunnak in a hmin thianghlim kan thangthat zo a si. Curuangah, a thupimi cu na dam lo le na nat tikah, Pathian hnen kir in Amah na naih sinsin ding hi a thpi bikmi a si. Cuti ih na tuah ahcun, Pathian a lungawi ding ih na hnen ihsin sunlawinak a ngah thei ding a si.

Christmas: God Is For You

By Rick Warren


“But the angel reassured them. ‘Don’t be afraid!’ he said. ‘I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people.’” (Luke 2:10 NLT)

Knowing God is for you will change your whole perspective on life. You’ll stop thinking of God as someone looking down from Heaven, ready to yell “Gotcha!” any time you mess up.

God is for your success in life; he created you for a purpose and he wants you to succeed. It is God, your Creator, who will measure your success in life, and no one else.

This is extremely good news!

It means you don’t need to be afraid of God because God is for you. Yet, some people are so afraid of God they get nervous just talking about him. Do you know why? They feel guilty, and then they start thinking, “If I get close to God, he’s going to lecture me. He’s going to remind me of all the things I’ve done wrong, and then I’ll feel even worse!”

Nothing could be further from the truth of God. Jesus said, “I did not come into the world to condemn it, but to save it.” In effect, Jesus is saying, “I didn’t come to scold you, I came to save you.”

And if God is for us, who can be against us?

Jesus came to save us, not to scare us. That’s why when the angel was telling the shepherds about the birth of Jesus, the first thing he said is, “Don’t be afraid!”

In fact, when God sends a message to people in the Bible, it’s not unusual for the first words to be: “Don’t be afraid.” There are 365 messages from God in the Bible that begin with a phrase like, “Fear not!” In other words, every single day of the year you can read a message from God that says, in effect, “You don’t need to be afraid. I am for you; I am with you; I love you.”

We celebrate Christmas because of this good news from God!

How would your life change if you deeply believed God is for you? Ask God to help you in your unbelief.

Sermon Idea: Making the Most of Christmas

November 7, 2011

By Rick Warren


“… But the angel reassured them. ‘Don’t be afraid!’ he said. ‘I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! … Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.’” Luke 2:10-11, 14 (NLT, second edition)

From the angel, God’s messenger, we learn how to make the most of Christmas:

Make it a time for celebration!

“Good news … great joy!” Christmas is a time to celebrate all that God has given us and done for us. It’s a time to set aside your problems and pressures for a moment and focus on God. If God wanted to communicate to birds, he would have become a bird. But he wanted to communicate to human beings, so he became like one of us and came to Earth. Now we can know what God is like because Jesus tells us.

Of all the ways God could have come to Earth, he came the same way every one of us did — by a birth. Why? Because he didn’t want us to fear him, and no one is afraid of a baby! Christmas says God wantsyou to know him.

Make it a time for salvation!

“Your Savior was born …” If we needed information, God would have sent an Educator. If we needed more government, God would have sent a Politician. But what we need most is salvation, so God sent us a Savior. What is “salvation”? It’s forgiveness for my past, power to manage my present problems, and a guarantee for my future. But like any gift, you must accept it in order to benefit from it.

As a young man I worked as a lifeguard for three summers. I learned that you can’t save people until they stop trying to save themselves. We must stop trying to save ourselves and instead trust Jesus to be our Savior.

Make it a time for reconciliation!

“Let there be peace …” Christmas is a time to seek to restore those broken or strained relationships. It’s a time to say “I’m sorry” and “Will you forgive me?” It’s also a time to offer forgiveness to all those who have hurt you.

First you make peace with God, and then you receive the peace of God. Once you have that you’ll find it much easier to make peace with other people.

How to pick a health insurance plan

The three most important questions you need to ask

Last updated: September 2014 

Health care can be very expensive. Having a baby costs about $30,000, and so does the average three-day hospital stay. Health insurance is a way to reduce those costs to an amount that you can manage by sharing the risk with others. That works because most people are mostly healthy most of the time, so their premiums help pay for the expenses of the small number who are sick or injured.

Here are the three major questions you need to ask when picking a plan. 

1. What does the plan cover?

Insurance sold to people and small businesseses must cover 10 “essential health benefits." Any plan you buy, whether through your state's Health Insurance Marketplace or not, will pay for these services.

• Emergency services
• Hospitalization
• Laboratory tests
• Maternity and newborn care
• Mental health and substance-abuse treatment
• Outpatient care (doctors and other services you receive outside of a hospital)
• Pediatric services, including dental and vision care.
• Prescription drugs
• Preventive services (such as immunizations and mammograms) and management of chronic diseases such as diabetes
• Rehabilitation services

The rules for insurance provided by large employers are a little different but the vast majority them will cover the same set of benefits. To make sure, ask your employer for the Summary of Benefits and Coverage, a standard form that will state exactly what the plan covers and doesn't cover.

It's important to know, though that some older plans may not cover this whole list of services. These are plans sold to individuals or small business (with up to 100 employees) that started before the new health reform law took full effect in 2014. Under certain circumstances these plans can be renewed even though they don't have all the consumer protections available with newer plans. If you have such a plan your insurance company will send you a notice about it before the annual renewal date. Then you can consider whether to keep it or to switch to a new plan. 

Get health insurance rankings

Click on the image at right for rankings of health insurance plans nationwide. Use the tool to:

• Choose a plan category such as private HMO or PPO, or Medicare HMO or PPO.
• Choose a state.
• Customize your search to compare plans' scores and their performance in measures such as consumer satisfaction and providing preventive services.

2. How much does the plan cost?

You pay for health insurance in two ways:

• The monthly premium that you pay to purchase your plan.
• The out-of-pocket expenses you pay when you receive medical care. Those are some combination of deductibles, coinsurance, and copays.

In general, if you pay a higher premium upfront, you will pay less when you receive medical care, and vice versa.

If you purchase coverage through your state's Health Insurance Marketplace, you may be eligible for income-based subsidies that lower the cost of your premium and in some cases your out-of-pocket expenses.

Premiums

To make comparison easier, plans sold to individuals are grouped in standardized “metal tiers” with various combinations of premiums and cost sharing:

• Bronze plans cover 60 percent of the average member's total health care costs and thus have the lowest premiums but the highest out-of-pocket costs. Individual deductibles for Bronze plans in 2014 average $5,081, according to an analysis by HealthPocket, a private health insurance data-crunching firm.
• Silver plans cover 70 percent and have higher premiums and lower out-of-pocket costs than Bronze plans, with an average individual deductible of $2,907.
• Gold plans cover 80 percent and have higher premiums and lower out-of-pocket costs than Silver plans, with an average individual deductible of $1,277.
• Platinum plans will cover 90 percent and have the highest premiums and lowest out-of-pocket costs, with an average individual deductible of $347.

Which of those plans is right for you depends on your health and your financial situation:

• If you already know you have an expensive medical condition, consider a plan with a higher premium that covers more of your costs.
• If you are generally healthy you might come out ahead paying a lower premium and a bigger share of your health costs, because those costs are most likely not going to be that high. Of course, you need to be prepared to pay more if you do unexpectedly become sick or injured. 

Out-of-pocket expenses

The terms “cost sharing” or “out-of-pocket costs” refer to the proportion of your medical bills you will be responsible for paying when you actually receive health care. Cost sharing does not include your monthly premium.

Unfortunately cost sharing is not standardized from plan to plan and provisions can sometimes be complicated.

If you buy insurance through your state marketplace, you’ll be able to see and compare the cost-sharing structure of plans before you buy. If you get insurance through a job, the information will be on the Summary of Benefits and Coverage form.

These are the four cost-sharing terms you will see.

DEDUCTIBLE. The amount you pay every year before the insurance company starts paying its share of the costs. If the deductible is $2,000, then you would pay cash for the first $2,000 in health care you receive each year, after which the insurance company would start paying its share. In every plan you can buy, preventive services will be covered in full even if you haven’t used up your deductible for the year. Some plans will also pay a portion of your costs for a few other services, usually doctor visits and prescription drugs, even before your deductible has been met. This is more common with Gold and Platinum plans but some Silver and Bronze plans also cover some services before the deductible has been met. The only way to figure out whether a plan covers some services "not subject to the deductible" is to study its provisions very carefully.

COPAY. A fixed dollar amount you pay for certain types of care. You might pay $30 for a doctor visit and the insurance company will pick up the rest. Plans with higher premiums generally have lower copays, and vice versa. And some plans do not have copays at all. They use other methods of cost sharing.

COINSURANCE. The percentage of the cost of your medical care that you have to pay. For an MRI that costs $1,000, you might pay 20 percent ($200). Your insurance company will pay the other 80 percent ($800). Plans with higher premiums generally pick up a larger portion of the bill.

OUT-OF-POCKET LIMIT. The most cost-sharing you will ever have to pay in a year. It is the total of your deductible, copays, and coinsurance (but does not include your premiums). Once you hit this limit, the insurance company will pick up 100 percent of your costs for the remainder of the year. Most people never pay enough cost-sharing to hit the out-of-pocket limit but it can happen if you require a lot of costly treatment. Plans with higher premiums generally have lower out-of-pocket limits.

In 2014, the out-of-pocket limit for plans sold to a person and to small groups cannot be more than $6,350 per person or $12,700 for a family. But most Silver, Gold, and Platinum plans have lower out-of-pocket limits than that. In 2015, the maximum out-of-pocket limits allowed will increase slightly. They will be $6,450 for an individual and $12,900 for a family.

3. Which doctors and hospitals are in it?

Photo: Rob Lewine

Every health insurance plan has a network of providers—doctors, hospitals, laboratories, imaging centers, and pharmacies that have signed contracts with the insurance company agreeing to provide their services to plan members at a specific price.

If a doctor is not in your plan's network, the insurance company may not cover the bill, or may require you to pay a much higher share of the cost. So if you have doctors you want to continue to see, you will want them to be in the plan's network.

Some state Health Insurance Marketplaces, including those operated through the federal HealthCare.gov site, have links to provider directories that you can see before you buy. But the directories are not standardized and may be hard to use or out of date. Moreover, to keep costs down, many of the plans sold through the state Health Insurance Marketplaces have smaller networks than you may be used to. That is why you should check and double-check with the health plan and your doctor's billing office to make sure your desired providers are in the network of the plan you are considering.

If you are given a choice of insurance through a job, you can obtain provider lists from participating insurance companies, or from the company’s employee benefits department. You can use our hospital Ratings(subscription required) to research the quality of the hospitals in your network.

Hmailam Kekarnak Hrang Tihphannak Ziangtin Kan Neh Thei Ding?

Text: Mark 4:35-43; Job 1:21

Thuhmaihruai

Lei tlun ah zumtu tampi harsatnak, natnak, le thihnak tiang kan tuar ve. Hivek lai caan ah hmailam ah anih tel lo in ziangtin kan feh ding ti in kan thin a phang, kan lung a leeng theu. Cumi minung daan a si ko. Asinan, zum lo tuk bang tuk ih kan thinphang le lungleeng in kan um lonak ding Bible in ziangtin sunralnak thu thawn in sim timi lo ruah ka duh.

1.     Pathian ih faale pawl harsatnak tong lo ding in Pathian in thu in kam lo (Mark 4: 37)

Minung tampi in Pathian ih thu kan ngai lo tik ah, harsatnak kan tong tiah kan ti theu. Jonah tla Pathian thu a ngai lo tikah, Pathian in thlitu le tilik a hran ter ih netabik ah ngapi pum sungah a thleng ter tiah kan ti. Asinan, Mark 4:35t sung ih thuanthu vek a si ahcun, Jesuh in tipi ral khat lam ah kan feh pei tiah thu a pekmi an ngai ruangah an feh. Asinan, ti suar le tilet an tong thotho.

                                                                                        

Pathian tihzah zettu Josseph thawng a tla, Job khal a neihmi a hlo theh; Paul khal harnak le hremnak tangmpi a tong. Jesuh ih dungthluntu pawl khal thah an tong theh.

2.     Jesuh in a fa le pawl hnen ih thu in kammi cu

a.     Ka lo umpi ding (Matt. 28:20).

b.     Tuar theinak le luatnak lamzin ka lo pe ding (1 Kor 10:12)

c.     Kan hrangah ziangkim a thabik in rem in ruahsaktu a si (Rom 8:29).

                                               i.     Mark 4:38 – Jesuh in feh uh ti ih a fial tikah, anmah lawng a feh ter men lo ih, an lawng sungah a um pi ringring. Hnangam tein a it that men. Jesuh thu in kammi kan zum lo tikah, kanmaih thazaang kan rinsan awk tikah, hmailam feh ding hi tihnak thawn kan khat theu. Rinnak tel lo cun tihnak thawn kan thinlung a khat ding.

d.     Kan thlacam in ngai ringring (Jer. 33:3). Jesuh an kawh ih an thang tikah an kawhnak aw a theih sak ih a tho ti khal ka thei. Cuvek in, kan buai lai caan ah Jesuh kan kawh ahcun, kan au aw Pathian in in theihsak ringring a si.

e.     Kan kiangkap thleng theitu cu Amah a si (Matt. 28:18). Jesuh in thu a pek tikah, ti suar le thlitu khal in a thu an ngai. Jesuh Khrih kan biakmi cun kan kiangkap thil cangmi hi a thleng thei a si. Amaih thusung sawn ah kan nunnak kan ciah aw sawn ding ih, a dang cu Amah in a thleng sawn ding. Na kiangkap thleng tum hlah, cucu, Jesuh ih hnatuan a si. Nang le kei ih tuanvo cu Jesuh thawn nai zet ih um le a thu vek ih nun lawng khi kan tuanvo a si.

3.     Ziangkim hi Pathian ih hnen in an ra ih, a tu ah Pathian a laksal timi ruahnak kan nei pei uh.

a.     Job 1:21 - “Lawngfangkheh in ka suak ih lawngfangkheh in ka thi ding. Bawipa in i pek ih atu-ah a lak sal. A hmin thangṭhat si ko seh,” tiah a ti.

b.     Job khal Satan in a neihnak le telefa pawl um hlah sehla Pathian ih a duhdawt lo ding ti in a ruat. Asinan, zumtu pacang tha Job cun, a tlaksiat zet lai caan khal ah a timi cu, “Ka neihmi pawl hmuahhmuah cu Pathian hnen in an ra ih, a tu ah Pathian in a lak sal, Pathian cu ka thangthat” a ti thotho.

____________________

Rev. San No Thuan

Nov. 21, 2014

Pu Sui Luai teih inn, Frederick, Maryland ah Pho Kyaw Pa (Pu Ngun Thawng) a thih lai ih ka simmi thu a sim.