Double J Construction Inc

05/07/2026

Please join in. Our Country needs prayer!

🙏🇺🇸 National Day of Prayer 2026 🇺🇸🙏

Today, we come together in faith, hope, and unity as we observe the 75th Annual National Day of Prayer on Thursday, May 7, 2026.

May this special day inspire hearts across the nation to seek peace, strength, wisdom, and blessings through prayer. Let us lift one another up with love, kindness, and gratitude. ✨

🕊️ Pray for peace
💙 Pray for families
🙏 Pray for unity
🌟 Pray for hope

04/09/2026

🔗: https://bit.ly/4civJa1
Astronaut Christina Koch traveled past the far side of the Moon on the Artemis II mission and was one of four people to journey farther from Earth than any human beings ever have.

“It is so great to hear from Earth again,” Koch said as the spaceship reconnected with humanity after 40 minutes cut off from all communications during the historic lunar flyby. She had just become the first woman to travel around the moon.

Koch, 47, has already blazed a trail for women in space.

04/09/2026

Citizens who consult the latest Audited Financial Report of the United States for Fiscal Year 2025 will find the official estimate of the nation’s total debt is $39 trillion, but what federal officials don’t tell Americans is that the actual total debt is $170.3 trillion or more than 4.5 times the approved Treasury figure.

How to account for the $131 trillion in national debt federal officials aren’t disclosing is explained in a new analysis by Truth in Accounting, the Chicago-based nonprofit government watchdog that advocates for honesty and transparency in government spending and debt policies.

“Truth in Accounting’s (TIA) analysis of the most recent audited Financial Report of the U.S. Government found its overall financial condition worsened by $11.6 trillion in 2025. The mounting debt burden of $170.3 trillion represents the total benefits promised to citizens, yet the federal government has no clear idea where the money will come from to pay for them. This staggering debt translates to a $1.1 million liability for every federal taxpayer, resulting in the federal government receiving a failing grade for its fiscal health,” the TIA analysis explains.

Two of the oldest federal entitlement programs are the source of the bulk of the uncounted trillions — Medicare and Social Security. The former has promised beneficiaries $74.5 trillion in payments that the federal government currently has no way of paying, while the total for the latter is $54 trillion.

Throw in another $51.5 trillion for promised military and civil service pensions, plus other obligations and revenues received for the latest complete fiscal year, and the total equals $170.3 trillion. Officials pegged the official annual spending deficit for 2025 at $1.8 billion, but in fact the total national debt increased $11.6 trillion in one fiscal year.

“The Treasury Department only included a fraction — $269 billion — of Social Security and Medicare liabilities on the federal balance sheet because, according to government documents, recipients do not have the right to any benefits beyond those to be paid in the near term, and laws to reduce or stop future benefits can be passed at any time,” according to TIA.

In other words, federal officials can commit to pay any specified individual or group of individuals any amount, whether or not such promises are actually payable out of current or projected assets without worrying about being prosecuted for making false promises.

The 2025 OASDI Trustees Report projects that Social Security will completely delete the funding source of current benefits in 2032. Just two decades ago, the same trustees projected the funding source would not hit bottom until 2041. This funding problem is not new, as seen in the 2005 report warning that the program is "seriously under-funded and financially unsustainable in the long run … taxes would have to be raised immediately by 3.5 percentage points, or benefits reduced immediately by 22 percent” when the funding sources were empty.

The same dire situation obtains with Medicare, even though it is 30 years younger than Social Security. According to the 2025 Medicare Trustees Report, available funding for the Hospital and Supplemental Medical Insurance Trust Funds will be exhausted in 2033. Twenty years prior, the same Medicare trustee report projected exhaustion by 2020. Only the introduction of the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) in 2007 delayed the empty date, with major Medicare levies in the years following, including surcharges added in 2011 and annual premium adjustments as allowed under the MMA.

The most recent attempt to implement significant reforms designed to reform and strengthen Social Security came in 2004 when then-President George W. Bush proposed the addition of voluntary personal investment accounts that would allow working Americans to devote a portion of their contributions (i.e. taxes) to privately management funds.

“Younger workers should have the opportunity to build a nest egg by saving part of their Social Security taxes in a personal retirement account. We should make the Social Security system a source of ownership for the American people,” Bush told Congress in his 2004 State of the Union Address. He was re-elected in November of that year to a second term in the Oval Office.

“He mentioned the issue repeatedly during the 2004 campaign and was able to argue that his reelection represented a mandate to move forward on what he called personal accounts (and his adversaries called partial privatization),” according to the liberal Brookings Institution in a 2007 analysis. Bush restated his proposal in his 2005 State of the Union speech.

“Having invested so much political capital in this issue, President Bush embarked on the first of what proved to be a long series of tours crammed with events at which he pitched his plan to the people. It soon became apparent that it would be a tough sell. Within weeks, observers noticed that the more the President talked about Social Security, the more support for his plan declined.”

Virtually all Democrats in Congress vigorously opposed the Bush proposal, and Republicans were seriously divided on the issue. Consequently, by October of 2005, Bush had officially given up the effort.

𝑊𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛 𝑏𝑦 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘 𝑇𝑎𝑝𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑡𝑡. 𝑃𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑊𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑡𝑜𝑛 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑.

04/09/2026

04/06/2026

🔗: https://bit.ly/4rxTDnw
Warren Buffett is acclaimed for his financial savvy—and his success as a self-made billionaire. ⁠
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Those wishing to emulate the 93-year-old businessman, investor, and philanthropist should pay close attention to the person they marry. ⁠
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In 2017, Buffett said he credits his choice of spouse with making him successful.

04/06/2026

"There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them." John 19:18

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

Good Friday | Jesus | Holy Week

04/03/2026

Pastor Josh Howerton recently made headlines for delivering such powerful, counter-cultural messages at Lakepointe Church that they’ve had life-changing, societal impact.

On February 22, Howerton started his message by playing a video of a young couple, Colton and Kaylee, who testified about being “Christians in name but not in how [they] lived.” They were living together and, during pre-marital counseling, their counselor told them, “We can get you married right now, or you guys can live in separate houses.” That is when the couple became convicted and decided they wanted to get baptized and married. So an hour after they were baptized, they got married.

After hearing Colton and Kaylee’s story and listening to Pastor Howerton teach from God’s word about the sacred design and purpose of marriage, 52 couples who had been living together immediately decided to get married.

What had these 52 couples learned? Howerton explained that when the Pharisees questioned Jesus about marriage, he answered, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” God created marriage to be a lifelong covenant that is not to be taken lightly.

As Christians, God has called us to glorify Him in our relationship with our spouse. In his letter to the Corinthian church, the Apostle Paul wrote, “[D]o you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

In addition, Paul explained to the church in Ephesus that the covenant relationship between husband and wife reflects the covenant relationship between Christ and the church, as we are members of his body:

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”

If Gen Z Christians begin to take marriage as seriously as God designed it to be, they can start to rebuild the foundation of a strong society: the fundamental building blocks of marriage and family. As sociologists have found time and time again, intact, two-parent families decrease rates of mental illness, poverty, and crime.

In addition, by revitalizing a marriage culture and establishing stable, close-knit families, Gen Z can set an example for the rest of the world, reflecting the beauty of God’s grace and truth and draw others to Him.

Dr. David Closson, FRC’s director of the Center for Biblical Worldview and author of “Biblical Principles for Human Sexuality,” is also heartened by the 52 couples who decided to get married after listening to Howerton’s biblical message. He told The Washington Stand, “This is an encouraging example of what can happen when the church clearly and compassionately calls people to align their lives with God’s design for marriage. In a culture that often normalizes cohabitation, it is powerful to see couples take meaningful steps toward covenant commitment. Marriage is not merely a social arrangement, but a sacred institution established by God, and pastors play an important role in helping people understand its significance.”

In addition, Closson urged pastors to walk alongside couples throughout their marriage, saying, “Moments like this highlight the need for ongoing discipleship so that couples are equipped not just to marry, but to build Christ-centered marriages that endure. This kind of pastoral leadership is a needed reminder that truth and grace must go hand-in-hand.”

𝑊𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛 𝑏𝑦 𝐾𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑦 𝐴𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛. 𝑃𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑊𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑡𝑜𝑛 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑.

04/03/2026

https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/maximalist-interior-design-c6385310?mod=hp_lead_pos11

A growing number of people are favoring bold and colorful over bland and beige interiors.

04/03/2026

Good Friday is not a distant echo of tragedy. It’s the beating heart of one of history’s most astonishing days.

On this day, we stand in awe at the foot of the cross — where the sinless Son of God, the radiant Morning Star, was betrayed with a kiss, falsely condemned by the guardians of religion, abandoned by the very ones He came to save, and lifted up between heaven and earth under the cold gaze of empire. The powers of this age watched in indifferent silence. Religious leaders schemed in shadowed chambers. Pilate washed his hands in water that could never cleanse his guilt. And there, in the gathering darkness, the Light of the World cried out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It sounds like the deepest sorrow ever uttered. And yet we dare to call this day Good. Why? Because Christ’s suffering was not pointless. Rather, it was the deliberate, costly price of our redemption. Before the foundation of the world, when no eye had yet seen, the Triune God already knew His creation would shatter the perfect harmony. Sin would invade, corruption would spread, and all that was good, true, and beautiful would groan under its weight.

Yet before the foundation of the world, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit had already woven a plan of redemption so glorious it would turn the greatest evil ever committed — the murder of the perfect, innocent Lamb — into the greatest victory heaven and earth have ever known: forgiveness for the guilty, reconciliation for the estranged, and the crushing defeat of sin, death, and the grave.

And yet, Christ’s death was agonizing. In fact, the agony was unconscionable. Jesus endured the most brutal death devised by human cruelty — nails driven through flesh and bone, slow suffocation beneath the weight of His own body, burning thirst, mocking laughter, and the scornful crown of thorns. The crowd that could have chosen mercy screamed instead for His blood, their voices rising like a storm until reason itself drowned in the roar. He did not merely die. The Lamb of God was slain.

Even now, the shadow of innocent suffering stretches across our broken world. In Nigeria, for example, our brothers and sisters in Christ walk daily in the valley of the shadow of death, where radical Islamist jihadist violence burns villages, slaughters pastors and their families, kidnaps the faithful, and reduces sanctuaries to ash — all while the watching world too often turns its gaze away. And that’s just in one country.

The truth is, Christians all around the world suffer for the sake of Christ each day. In North Korea, believers risk everything to hide a single page of Scripture beneath their floorboards. In the Middle East, many are beheaded for refusing to deny the Name above every name. And even in lands of relative comfort, such as America, the principalities and powers of darkness still rage, seeking to steal, kill, and destroy all that reflects the beauty of Christ.

Scripture doesn’t sugarcoat this reality. We are called to suffer with Him. The world will hate us because it first hated Him. Yet James invites us to a strange and holy posture: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” (James 1:2-3). Many of our persecuted family will be the first to tell you — through tears and with radiant faces — that the fellowship of His sufferings is worth it all for the sake of knowing Christ and being one with Him.

This is part of why Good Friday matters so deeply. Because the cross declares that God is no stranger to pain — to our pain. Jesus Himself was the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief, rejected, mocked, and executed. Yet even as nails held Him fast and darkness swallowed the sun, He did not curse His tormentors. Instead, He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” In that moment of infinite suffering, He purchased infinite grace — forgiveness, hope, and everlasting life for every soul who turns to Him in faith, including our suffering brothers and sisters around the globe.

When I think of the global church enduring flame and blade, I am struck by their faith. Their endurance is a strong, living testimony to the power of the cross. The pain of earthly torment is real — just as the nails that pierced our Savior’s hands and feet were real. But so is the hope — blessed, eternal hope. We hope in the breathtaking reality that the same God who raised Jesus from the tomb sees every tear shed in secret, every act of violence, and every quiet “Yes, Lord” whispered in the face of terror. And one day soon, He’ll wipe away every one of our tears. He will make all things new.

Good Friday challenges every one of us: Will we look away from the suffering of our family in Christ, or will we fix our eyes on the cross and respond with compassion, courage, and faith? Let us choose the latter. Let us remember the persecuted church in our prayers, our advocacy, and our generosity. Let us face our own trials with hope and joy, knowing that Good Friday was never meant to be the end of the story. In three days’ time, the stone was rolled away, resurrection light shattered the darkness, and eternity was forever sealed with this unbreakable promise: darkness does not — and never will — have the final word. Hallelujah!

𝑊𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛 𝑏𝑦 𝑆𝑎𝑟𝑎ℎ 𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑑𝑎𝑦. 𝑃𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑊𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑡𝑜𝑛 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑.