What Does the Bible Say About Being Alone?
Deuteronomy 31:6 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you.”
Psalm 27 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
A Psalm of David.
The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the defense of my life;
Whom shall I dread?
When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh,
My adversaries and my enemies, they stumbled and fell.
Though a host encamp against me,
My heart will not fear;
Though war arise against me,
In spite of this I shall be confident.
One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord
And to meditate in His temple.
For in the day of trouble He will conceal me in His tabernacle;
In the secret place of His tent He will hide me;
He will lift me up on a rock.
And now my head will be lifted up above my enemies around me,
And I will offer in His tent sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord.
Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice,
And be gracious to me and answer me.
When You said, “Seek My face,” my heart said to You,
“Your face, O Lord, I shall seek.”
Do not hide Your face from me,
Do not turn Your servant away in anger;
You have been my help;
Do not abandon me nor forsake me,
O God of my salvation!
For my father and my mother have forsaken me,
But the Lord will take me up.
Teach me Your way, O Lord,
And lead me in a level path
Because of my foes.
Do not deliver me over to the desire of my adversaries,
For false witnesses have risen against me,
And such as breathe out violence.
I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord
In the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
Be strong and let your heart take courage;
Yes, wait for the Lord.
Posted in Christian
What Does the Bible Say About Being Afraid?
Psalm 56 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
For the choir director; according to Jonath elem rehokim. A Mikhtam of David, when the Philistines seized him in Gath.
Be gracious to me, O God, for man has trampled upon me;
Fighting all day long he oppresses me.
My foes have trampled upon me all day long,
For they are many who fight proudly against me.
When I am afraid,
I will put my trust in You.
In God, whose word I praise,
In God I have put my trust;
I shall not be afraid.
What can mere man do to me?
All day long they distort my words;
All their thoughts are against me for evil.
They attack, they lurk,
They watch my steps,
As they have waited to take my life.
Because of wickedness, cast them forth,
In anger put down the peoples, O God!
You have taken account of my wanderings;
Put my tears in Your bottle.
Are they not in Your book?
Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call;
This I know, that God is for me.
In God, whose word I praise,
In the Lord, whose word I praise,
In God I have put my trust, I shall not be afraid.
What can man do to me?
Your vows are binding upon me, O God;
I will render thank offerings to You.
For You have delivered my soul from death,
Indeed my feet from stumbling,
So that I may walk before God
In the light of the living.
Psalm 91 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,
My God, in whom I trust!”
For it is He who delivers you from the snare of the trapper
And from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with His pinions,
And under His wings you may seek refuge;
His faithfulness is a shield and bulwark.
You will not be afraid of the terror by night,
Or of the arrow that flies by day;
Of the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
Or of the destruction that lays waste at noon.
A thousand may fall at your side
And ten thousand at your right hand,
But it shall not approach you.
You will only look on with your eyes
And see the recompense of the wicked.
For you have made the Lord, my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place.
No evil will befall you,
Nor will any plague come near your tent.
For He will give His angels charge concerning you,
To guard you in all your ways.
They will bear you up in their hands,
That you do not strike your foot against a stone.
You will tread upon the lion and cobra,
The young lion and the serpent you will trample down.
“Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him;
I will set him securely on high, because he has known My name.
“He will call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will rescue him and honor him.
“With a long life I will satisfy him
And let him see My salvation.”
Posted in Christian
Web Hosting at Home – Pros and Cons
Have you ever thought of hosting your own website from home? This is a question many people on the Internet have asked before. While there are many answers to the question I wrote above, I will give my basic opinion on the matter.
Hosting from home is not always easy. You must manage:
- Your Internet connection (at least to a certain degree)
- Internet router
- Server hardware
- Software (including securing your server OS installation and keeping the software up-to-date)
- Dealing with hacking attempts
- Clean-up successful hacking attempts (this rarely happens on a properly setup server)
- Keep consistent backups of your data (I do three backups daily on my server)
- Putting in battery backups and power surge protectors
- Dealing with support requests
My context when saying “hosting from home” is not running a large web-hosting business. I mean hosting your own private/business website as well as a few friends’ websites (including email). Obviously, you cannot be a large “GoDaddy” web-host, while you are running out of your home. That is not a realistic expectation.
The advantages of hosting from home are the following:
1) Privacy of your data
If setup correctly, no one can easily snoop on your private, confidential data that is on your own server.
2) You can choose your own server hardware
You are not limited by a web host’s hardware options for your server.
3) You can easily deal with server hardware failures
You don’t have to wait for a technician to fix your server.
4) Possibly cheaper for you in the long run
A decent Virtual Private Server purchased online could easily run $20.00/month, and a decent dedicated server could be as much as $100.00/month minimum!
5) No commitments to a web hosting company
You do not have to worry about some web hosting company making unreasonable demands (e.g., 50,000 file limit — on some large websites, you could easily go over a limit like this).
The disadvantages of hosting from home are the following:
1) Possible higher Internet service cost
Your ISP may require you to purchase an Internet service business plan instead of a residential one; this can possibly be expensive but not guaranteed to be expensive.
2) You may not have enough upstream bandwidth
To host efficiently from home, you will need to have at least 30 Mbps of upload speed; any less and you will notice performance degradation with loading your websites from other locations.
Please keep in mind if you are wanting to host several large videos, I recommend either lowering the bit-rate of your videos – so they will stream faster for your users – or use a 3rd party hosting service just for the videos themselves. Most self-hosters will not have enough upload bandwidth to properly serve 1GB+ video files.
3) Unstable home power
Few people may not have stable power at their house or business and thus their server goes on and off; this can easily be fixed by putting in a battery backup for your server.
4) Reliability of your Internet Service Provider
Unless you have a signed agreement with your ISP, they are under no obligation to keep your Internet connection up 24/7.
5) More manual labor required
On a hosted solution online, someone else does the hard work with maintaining your server; when you host from home, you must do it all yourself.
I hope the above helps you decide on whether to self-host web services. I know there are a lot of people online who say it is “bad, silly, stupid, not smart, wouldn’t recommend it” when it comes self-hosing web services.
With all due respect to those people, most of them have never done web hosting by themselves before, and are trashing something they have never done (which is silly and bad in itself!).
Posted in Computers, Internet and Servers