Big weekend

Well, I'm doing a lot this weekend, so I probably won't be posting anything until monday. Here's the rundown:
Saturday - study/clean/play with Willow
Sunday - Two sermons (I'll post summaries later), a viewing (for a funeral), and HOPEFULLY disc golf (I just finally got a putter and picked up a couple of new used discs I'd like to try!).
Monday - Preaching my first funeral, work, bible study with a lady who is VERY close to devoting herself to God (PRAY FOR THIS ONE, PLEASE!)

On top of all of that, I just got the new harry potter from the library, so I'll probably be reading that some, too. And, we're very close to finishing the season of "Lost" so we may watch a bit of that this weekend (most likely tonight if any).

I hope God is taking care of you all well.

What do you speak?

A friend had his results posted, so i thought I'd share mine.

Your Linguistic Profile:

75% General American English

15% Yankee

10% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Pictures of the New baby!

Ok, I'm posting a couple of shots we got from the ultrasound last week, and don't ask - we don't know whether we will have another girl or a boy this time.

pic1: "lips"



pic2: traditional profile shot



pic 3: bizarre new GE 4d shot. I think this looks a little odd, too, but some of the other 20 week shots out there are even creepier.

Movie Review - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

We had a work day at the meeting house saturday morning, so we already asked Stacey's parents to watch Willow. Having not been on a "date" since our 5 year anniversary (22 April 2005) Stacey asked if she could just spend the night. So, we were able to go on a date for our 63 month anniversary!

We both like Tim Burton films, and we like Johnny Depp in his films so we thought Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a sure winner!

I haven't actually read the original, but I have heard that this movie is much closer to the original text (Roald Dahl's daughter had producer credit, so I believe this to be true). That being said, this isn't a movie I would take a small child to. It is much darker than the 70's film (surprised? Then you haven't seen Tim Burton flicks before!). That being said, there were some things I liked better. Depp's Wonka wasn't so "paternal" and was very much not distraught when the children who didn't listen fell victim to their own selfish indulgence. There also wasn't the pretense of the "slugworth deal" to provide a true test of an "honest heart." Basically, there is one kid left, and he is the defacto winner. This is where the story takes a very good turn. I'll leave the results for you to discover if you desire to see this (it is at least worth a rental!).

The main thing I didn't like about this (as compared to the older film) is that while the music was much more enjoyable, a few of the "morality songs" were not readily understandable due to the harshness of the music.

Ultimately, this is a very entertaining, extremely well thought out and executed and visually appealing movie. The themes of selfishness & self-indulgence leading to personal destruction and the importance of strong , close family ties are lessons that aren't expressed enough in today's culture.


I would recommend this for your kids who are in the 10-12 range or older.

Challenges in Evangelism

I don't expect this to be a very deep post, but I'm going to solicit some suggestions and/or raise these items up for your consideration, at least.

At Higher Ground this year, I believe it was Mr. Ward who said that the church is intended to be a converting machine and - for many reasons - what should be a well oiled mechanism, it is very much in need of an overhaul. By that, I don't mean switching to "new" things to draw people, rather getting back to things that we (collectively) have let fall into history.

I regularly listen to a few different baptist "pastors" expound the ideals of christian living. Stacey mentioned a very good lesson she heard on parenting, and we purchased the mp3. He is way off on pushing the idea of "total depravity" but some of his other points were very sound (too much emphasis on the "loving God" and not the "God of purity," too much of the "God is my friend" and not enough of the "Wrathful God of judgement"). One obvious contradiction is that he presented that children are born with the "inherited sin of Adam" but until they're old enough to believe, they can't be saved (of course this contradicts some other calvinist points, but that's another discussion) so the very children that Jesus tells us to be like will burn in Hell because they can't choose to follow Christ (!) That doesn't make a ton of sense to me.

What I was thinking is that some of his principles for training our children should be applied in general evangelism. I am really convinced that the reason we aren't helping grow the body of Christ is because:

1. Our culture has watered down/misunderstood sin.
2. We haven't helped people understand the severity of sin and its consequences.

So, what do you think? I'm going to list a couple of "groups" of folks we might focus on teaching/studying with and look for suggestions on how to best approach any of the individual or collective groups.

1. Our Children
2. Irreligious (those who do not actively practice/espouse any particular belief)
3. "christian" folk
4. Non-"christian" religious folk (muslim,hindi,buddhist, etc...)
5. New converts (I think this is one of the biggest areas where we drop the ball!)

Tomorrow is the big day... (EDIT)

<>I was REALLY tired when I wrote this last night (tuesday) and somehow forgot that today is Wednesday, NOT Thursday (when the ultrasound is actually going to occur). That should resolve the unitentional misinformation I supplied! < /EDIT >

...where we don't find out what we're having!
We're going to get the standard 20 week ultrasound tomorrow. That is cool in and of itself, but what is EXTRA cool is that we get one of the newer GE 4d ultrasounds. I'm hoping to take some stills from the video we get and post them here... probably tomorrow night, but definitely in the next couple of days.

And, of course, every day that one gets to be with brethren, swim and play free pinball is a wonderful day. We're all wiped out, so we'll probably just be watching some of the Lost episodes that the wonderful Mr. Bram Cohen enables me to see.

What is hurting God's people? - My responses

Jason asked the following question:
What is hurting God’s people right now?
Well, here are a couple of things that I've been thinking about lately to answer his question:

1. We rob God in our offerings - Malachi 3:8-10 - time, money, service, love, devotion - consequently, we don't fully experience the depth of His blessings (or we don't recognize them) and we, therefore, neglect to serve Him more.
2. Apathy - "someone will get it done" and that thought is only by those that even care if something ever gets done. Not caring is one of the most detrimental attitudes in the church today. This is probably - aside from persistent, intentional wickedness - the most antithetical (to the very essence of living "like Christ")attitude that a christian could exhibit.
3. Lack of faith/grounding - so many christians are "hereditary" and, therefore, not well grounded because they've never questioned/studied biblical questions for themselves. If there is no true, personal faith then there is no conviction and no action. So, we have meeting halls full of spiritual babes who believe they're much more mature than they actually are.
4. Lack of repentance/understanding sin - i think we've preached (and heard from the denominational world) too much about God's love, and neglected his holiness/purity. Sin is disgusting. Sin separates me from God. I have to remove sin as far from myself as possible, not see how close I can get without falling in (and then of course jumping right over that edge!).
5. Lack of trust for brethren - we don't have the close relationships that we should have with each other. This leads to all sorts of problems. A major problem is that we can't/won't ask for help. If we can't ask someone to help mow our lawn when we're sick, or fix something that we don't know how, how can we confess our sins to each other and expect real support?

That's just my take on the question. What do you think? Feel free to comment on my thoughts or on the original question yourself.

Break the cycle!

Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do know history are doome d to watch it being repeated.

It seems like no matter how hard we try in the world we live that our influence has very little impact. I'm afraid that we let this happen in the church today, too. If more in the church would really understand the above thought, then there would be teaching of those who are younger and/or new in the faith. We didn't have enough teaching from some point about spreading the gospel, instead we have been taught how to debate, write articles, and rip our brethren (in other congregations!) who don't agree with us 100% to pieces! When did it become alright to totally ignore the commands of God and change our perspective from looking to the world "to seek and save the lost" to "make him[a new convert] twice as much a child of hell as yourselves."

My uncle (one of our elders) said this last night - "lead, follow, or get out of the way!" If we see something going on that shouldn't, or something that needs to get done that isn't and no one else is stepping up to the plate, then I MUST do something about it. We are ridiculously lacking in evangelism today. We need to look at history and do something about it so that we don't repeat it, nor sit idly by and watch it being repeated!

So, get out there and do something to spread God's message today!

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I'm going to be putting together some short articles (one page type things) that we're going to put on one side of a sheet, and a little bit about us (our congregation) on the other side and distribute those to the community. I think I'll try and post the articles here, otherwise, shoot me an email and I'd be happy to send the text your way.

I Love my wife (last post for today!)

God has blessed me with a wonderful woman.
She bought some clothes that I'd needed at a great sale price today. She cleaned the house. She made a good dinner of beef and potatoes. She made cookies for me. Then, to top it all off... well, I need to give some back story:

My lawnmower has been flaky and I haven't had time to deal with it for a couple of days. After some dis/assembly my dad suggested that i might have some water in the line. So, i start to unscrew the drain plug and try to bleed off the water. After a little bit, I gave it another try and still it wouldn't run. I saw an old stainless steel bowl (~3-4 cups size, a good double portion cereal bowl - i'm sure most of you guys know what I'm talking about), so I decided to drain the rest of the tank into this bowl. So, i have about 2+ cups of gasoline with some quantity of water sitting next to me and I further disassemble the carburetor and am checking things out and she says something along the lines of the following - "well, i've been married to you for too long because I want to see that gasoline burn up." I had the same thought, but didn't mention it because I didn't think she'd let me. Well, she went inside and got some matches!!
I LOVE MY WIFE!
So, we got it set on fire... it wasn't the *boom* we'd expected, but it was a nice strong flame for a few minutes (i should've taken a picture but just was too entralled by the flame).

On a side note, Willow is 100% my daughter - after the flame went out, she said "more papa, more. do it again."

What a great end to a day!

A bunch of wild animals

Galatians 5:13-16 reads:

13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

I found some very interesting thoughs in Robertson's word pictures about verse 15 that I thought I would share.

Paul is encouraging the brethren to leave behind the bondage of fleshly rituals and not focus on such things, but to sincerely love each other because that is the summation of God's will for us. In stark contrast is the common practice of biting and devouring each other. That phrase was commonly applied to wild animals or angry dogs in their approach to whatever "meal" they might have. The "consumed by" phrase is like the picture of two snakes swallowing each other's tails where they are both wholly consumed. So, when we're "introverted" and looking at each other to find fault rather than focusing outwardly to find those that need to hear God's message, we're like a bunch of wild animals tearing up a carcass. The end result is that - though we aren't literally consumed (and digested) - we are so caught up in the fighting that we are completely worthless for carrying out the work that God has for us to do.

So, don't devour each other, instead hunger for God's righteousness and seek to be filled by serving Him!

Sorrow, Love and Disc Golf

Yesterday was a good preaching day. I gave a textual sermon from 2 Corinthians 7:5-13 (ESV,TNIV) about Godly Sorrow and it's role in repentance (our scripture readings this month are all about repentance and I'll be summarizing with a lesson at the end of the month describing our dependence on repentance in order to enjoy fellowship). The topical sermon was around the idea of "Do I really love..." looking at my enemy, my neighbor and my brethren. Summarizing the points, they all show how we love God, and that if we don't want to love/spend time with our brethren here, why would we want to go to heaven?!?

Let me know if you'd like to see the text of any of these either in outline or presentation format.

On a recreational note, I went out for my 3rd round of disc golf. It's not quite the workout that running is, but it's more enjoyable in that I get to have some good discussions and grow closer to the brothers that I play with. And I improved significantly over my 2nd game (16 over par instead of more than 28 over - i really lost track on that game, so it might have been more than 28!).

Interesting book...

I'm reading a book called "How to read the bible for all its worth" right now. It's very clearly slanted to the calvinistic/pre-millenial view of the bible, but it has some very interesting principles. Primarily, it emphasizes looking at two areas in any bible study: exegesis & hermeneutics. This boils down to looking at the history, cultural context and message to the original audience and then looking at what messages/lessons/commands we can apply today. I've been moving in this direction in my personal study in the last year or so while not realizing how exactly to express the thought. One other benefit of the text is that they offer their outlines of some books or chapters that have let me look at things from a slightly different perspective.
The other interesting feature of this book is that it looks at how to study the different types of writing in the bible - epistles, narrative (though I think they omit the "historical" intentionally, and to their detriment), Acts (they regard as a special narrative), the gospels, etc... (the gospels chapter is where I am right now).
Overall, I think this might be worth purchasing (i currently have it from the library), if for no other reason than to read some of the scriptural arguments that a calvinist might use to defend their loose interpretation of scripture.

The Lamb and The Lion

I just finished reading this text by Graeme Goldsworthy.
I have not really studied the book of Revelation in any great detail before, but was recommended this book for its interesting take. The whole title is "The Lamb and the Lion: The Gospel in revelation."

This really shows that this book isn't just some out-of-place addendum to the scripture, but that it really fits into the overall message of the bible - God's plan for salvation of mankind!

The author doesn't dive deeply into the symbolic meaning of every description of every verse, but gives a good comparison with imagery that is repeated from the Old Testament to give a better view on how those in the early church would have understood the message of this book. One other plus is that he is what he refers to as "amillennial" - he doesn't hold to the premillennial view of most of the religious world today.

If you're curious about Revelation and would like to have a good introduction to the book, this is a good one to pick up.