Just a few quotes I have heard recently:
“I want to be in the go-up before the blow-up.” (in reference to the rapture)
“I want to be close to the spout where the glory comes out.” (in reference to sitting up front…on the front row)
West Virginia, Boing Boing, and Photography
I came across this article on Boing Boing a day or so ago about a photo exhibit on the trains of West Virginia in Grafton. if you are close, you should go check it out.
boingboing
West Virginia railroad culture on Boing Boing
Online gallery of railroad pictures around West Virginia
Persecution and Living or Dying for Christ
I had almost forgotten I had written this post about Lay down or life or die until the other day. I had been thinking about the persecuted Church and what makes their faith so strong. I had several different things running through my mind (family, martyrs from previous generations, stories from the Bible about Paul and Peter, etc…). That brought to mind an old blog post I thought I had made.
I did some searching and found it here. it is from 2005 and has been burried in the archives. Follow this link to read more about Laying Down our Life or Dying?
Fear God?
Have you ever been reading the Bible and come across the phrase Fear God? If not and you want an example, why not look at Ecclesiastes 12:13-14.
In English, we sometimes have a hard time understanding exactly what is meant by the phrase. If we “fear” something, we are afraid of them, right? Well, that is one definition (and the most common use today); however, with about 500,000 words in English, we can’t remember every definition of every word, so we get used to the most common (look at the words in this post…none of them are the “big” or “fancy” words like plethora). If you look up fear in the dictionary you’ll find several definitions. One of them is “extreme reverence or awe.” That is what the Bible talks about when we read Fear God. But how can you remember that?
Every day, I receive a daily devotional from RayStedman.org. In today’s devotional, he gave a good acrostic to remember what Fear God means. Here it is:
First, F stands for faith in His existence. You cannot come to God unless you know He is there. Hebrews 11:6 says, “Anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” There is where fear begins: faith that God exists. The whole of the created universe is shouting that at us. All the inner responses of our heart are confirming it. The Word of God declares it. History confirms it. There is a world of evidence that God is there.
Then E: experience of His grace. You never can properly fear God until you have learned what kind of a God He is. He is a God of mercy, of grace, of forgiveness. Until you have stood before Him and felt your guilt, acknowledged it, known you were wrong and corrupt, and heard Him say in your inner heart, “Neither do I condemn you . . . Go now and leave your life of sin” (John 8:11), you will never be able to properly fear God. One element of fear is the experience of the wonder of forgiveness, that God forgives and sends you out with a whole new purpose and a new resource available.
That leads to the third element. A: awe at the majesty, the wisdom, and the wonder of God. What a Being He is! What a marvelous mind that can comprehend all the billions of pieces of information in this universe and hold them continually before Him, that can hear every voice and relate to every person who has ever lived! What a marvelous God! Awe at the sense of His majesty, His comprehensiveness, His unfailing wisdom and power, is part of fearing God.
The last letter, R, stands for resolve. Resolve to do what He says, to “keep His commandments,” as the Searcher puts it here. There are only two commandments; Jesus Himself said that. All the law and the writings can be reduced to two simple things: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). That is in response to His love already shown to you; love Him because He first loved you. And second, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s it. As Micah put it, “What does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
A New Way To Look at the Christmas Account
Go read Matthew chapter 2 then come back. You’re done? Great! What did you see? Did you see the Wise Men coming? How about them finding Jesus? How about the methods they used to find Jesus? What about the religious rulers of the day? And what about their vision? I would submit that we can look at this account of the first Christmas and see examples of the persecuted church.
First, in verses 1 and 2 the wise men come asking about Jesus. But notice how they ask…they ask far and wide for the King of the Jews. They ask so far and wide that Herod finds out in verse 3. But, like any good dictator, he doesn’t want people thinking about his replacement so he is troubled.
In verses 4-6 he calls the religious leaders of the day and asks them questions. They, wanting to impress Herod tell him everything about this coming king. Instead of looking him in the eye and doing the Nathan thing (Nathan told David he had sinned before God in 2 Sam. 12:1-15). Herod then calls the wise men in and feeds them a line about wanting to worship this new king (didn’t they think that rather odd…why would the current king want to go worship his replacement??)
The wise men bothched their research so bad that God had to “fix things” by sending them and Joseph a dream telling them what to do (don’t take this out of context. God knew what was going to happen beforehand…he didn’t have to “come up with something on the fly” to “fix this problem” that He didn’t know of. God knew from before time what would happen).
We see what happens when Herod finds out that he can’t “worship” this new king. He has been mocked, gets mad, and takes his revenge out on the innocents (the children < 2) of that area.
If we continue this, fast forward to the crucifixion. How many of the people in the crowd had their children killed because of this (Jesus coming, the wise men asking, Herod finding out, and then killing all of the kids of that apx. age)? Does this give you a different perspective on their anger towards Jesus?
How about looking at the wise men, religious rulers, and Herod’s reaction? Does it give you pause to think about things? How should we act when given a chance to confront a ruthless dictator like the religious leaders were? Should we do the “easy” christian thing (perhaps pray with him, perhaps give him a Bible, perhaps even witness to him) or should we be like Nathan and tell him straight up (he has sinned before God and unless he accepts Jesus as his personal savior and repents of his sins, he will spend eternity in a lake of everlasting fire)? How about the wise men? Do we need to be tactful when we ask questions?
Certainly we need to pray and do what God leads. We should also be willing to confront evil regardless of the consequence. We should also realize that we need to think a bit about people’s motives. Above all, we need to remember that we are ambassadors for Christ and He has instructed us to be “… wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”
Star Wars as a 3 year old
“Don’t talk back to Darth Vader…he’ll get’cha”
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Shot day
Today was the first of three shot days for us. There are TONS of stuff to get shots for! At first glance, it doesn’t make sense for us to get all of these shots; however, when you start looking deeper, some of them (like the rabies shots we have to get) can prevent some very expensive treatment later on.
Oh, yes, Lydia had to get them too. Below are some pictures we took of the event:
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| That Hurt! | Even Lydia Got Shots |
Pop Bottle Rocket To Outer Space
This is really cool. Ken Schellenberg wants to launch a rocket made out of a 2 liter pop bottle into outer space .
Our housing, child care, and “stuff” in general
Sorry for not having the time to blog over the past few weeks. With our sickness, it has felt like we haven’t had any extra time at all. But, we are back and wanted to share a bit with you.
As I mentioned before, we moved in about 2 weeks ago. Here is the sign (we wanted to take our picture in front of the sign for our first newsletter, but that didn’t happen). Lydia and I walked out and took this picutre sans Cyndi a few days ago:
First, people always ask about child care. We are blessed to have very nice people watch Lydia while we attend class every day. We didn’t quite know how this would work out, initially; however, I’m pleased to tell everyone that Cyndi is doing fine 🙂 Lydia is also enjoying class too. To the left is a picture of her first day…as youc an see, she looks happy. She can’t tell us, but her teacher says she does great!
Next, we are always asked about our housing. We stay in these buildings called quads. They have a common area (like a living room) then four seperate apartments in each unit. We have ourselves, 2 other families, and three singles in our quad. To the right, you can see a picture of our common area.Â
Below is Cyndi making the bed in our room:
And here is Lydia’s room (we took the beds apart and stored them to give Lydia a maximum amount of floor space):
As for some views around the compund camp training center, so far, I have a panorama of a lake on the property.
[Update 2012-04-06 14:47:40] Updated post to fix se broken pictures
I think this is a bad idea
I cringed when I read this. What a stupid dumb idea way to subvert the Constitution. If they want to change the electorial college then fine, but go through the proper channels and amend the Constitution to do it. Don’t backdoor the thing.