Pray for Tony…
July 10th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in » Prayer Requests
Short post, but urgent need. Over the weekend, an acquaintance of mine through work suddenly began experiencing serious health problems. He was hospitalized as a result, and doctors quickly found that his problems were attributable to cancer. He has been undergoing chemotherapy, as doctors try feverishly to halt the cancer quickly.
The bottom line is that, as of now, he is not doing well.
Please pray for Tony, his wife, and his two girls. These kind of things seem so senseless, but God is in control and can provide the strength and comfort needed to fight through.
UPDATE: Tony’s losing battle with cancer ended this morning, as God chose to take him home. Please pray for his wife and children, as they will definitely need comfort only God can provide.
Thoughts on Family Focused Faith, Part 2
July 9th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in » Christian Living, Church Stuff...
This is the second in a series of posts on family focused faith, where I’m taking quotes from Voddie Baucham Jr.’s book and sharing some thoughts and questions to foster needed discussion on the topic. In the process, I hope to further refine my own thoughts as I work toward developing a discipleship program centered around family.
We continue to lay groundwork today, drawing more from the first chapter of Voddie’s book, considering the idea that we live in an “anti-child culture”:
Several months ago I was teaching this [that finding the place of ministry God has crafted us for should be the passionate pursuit of our lives] at a retreat for a church tucked away securely in the Bible Belt. During the retreat I suggested that for some of those college students the application of this biblical principle might mean earning a linguistics degree and translating the Bible into the languages of unreached people groups. As I looked across the room at the approving wide eyes and nodding heads, I added, “Others of you, however, may be called to have large families and train five or six kids in righteousness so that they will in turn impact the world for Christ.” You could have cut the tension with a proverbial knife. This room of approving, eager young men and women turned into a convention of Martians hearing English spoken for the first time. The looked at me as if to say, “That was a good one. When are you going to say, ‘Just kidding’?”
I took that opportunity to make an important observation. I pointed out the obvious discomfort in the room and asked, “When did we begin to hate children?” Suddenly the attitude in the room changed. These young people were being forced to examine a cultural assumption that has been allowed to trump biblical truth for far too long in our culture.
I would imagine this quote from Voddie’s book will arouse some strong thoughts and opinions, but throughout the first chapter, he presents some difficult questions and evidences that lend support to the idea that we live in an anti-child culture… and that such culture has even began to permeate the church. Examples… how often have you heard the joke made to the prospective parent of a third or fourth child, “you have learned what causes that, haven’t you?” How often do you see children characterized as inconveniences that get in the way of life? How many of us choose the size of our families based on income or convenience?
So what do you think? Do we live in an anti-child culture? Is such a culture also prevalent in the church? What does this mean for the church? How do we begin to encourage families to reflect God’s design rather than cultural norms?
I know these are difficult questions, but I think they important ones that we need to consider.
Your thoughts?
Get Dirty…
July 8th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in » Christian Living, Quote of the Day
Interesting quote I ran across this morning…
You don’t get anything clean without getting something else dirty. (Cecil Baxter)
What a great reminder for we Christians that so like to “reach out” from our safe little sanctuaries… ministry is a messy business. If we’re going to love and serve as God intends, helping to “clean up” the lives of those who need it most… we can’t do so without getting a bit of the “dirt” so prevalent in the lives of the lost on ourselves.
It’s an equally good reminder of what Christ has done for us. Our righteousness… our cleanliness… purchased by the sacrifice of Christ… by His willingness to take all of our filthy sins upon Himself so that the just punishment for them might be given.
Anyway, you know it’s a good quote when you can get that much application from it, right?
Photos from the 4th…
July 7th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in » My Life, Pictures
As you can see below, we had a great time on the 4th!
This is a WPSimpleViewerGallery
Lean Not…
July 3rd, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in » Devotions / Bible Studies
Ever have a Scripture passage you needed to hear or read just kind of presented to you out of the blue? Cool how God works sometimes, isn’t it?
In case you hadn’t noticed, I have a random selection of Scriptures that are displayed by a plug-in in the upper right corner of my site. Every time you visit, you’ll get a new Scripture there. Anyway, it’s a cool feature, that turned out to be especially helpful to me today… I needed to be reminded of the verse that came up.
Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV)
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
You see, I’ve been in a bit of a spiritual rut recently, 
and I haven’t really been able to put my finger on the reason why. It’s frustrating… I’d like to think that if I knew exactly what was going on, I could fix it. Given that, I’m sure you can see why these particular verses were meaningful to me.
Lean not on my own understanding. Trust in the LORD with all my heart. Acknowledge him (in all my ways), and HE will make my paths straight.
The message of Proverbs 3:5-6 is an encouraging one for sure. When we struggle with our faith… when we’re confused by life’s circumstances… when our prayers seem to go unanswered… when the world crashes down around us… we don’t have to worry about the why. We don’t have to understand it all to fix it.
We just trust in the Lord with everything we’ve got and follow Him intently. And He’ll take care of the mess we’re dealing with and put us back on the path He intends us to follow.
Cool stuff.
Thoughts on Family Focused Faith, Part 1
July 1st, 2008 | 1 Comment | Posted in » Christian Living
Given that I’ve spent some time thinking about family focused faith recently, I thought I’d share a few quotes from Voddie Baucham Jr.’s book, “Family Driven Faith”, and some thoughts about it over the next several posts. I’m not sure how long the series will last, but I’d like to hear what you have to say in response.
In laying the groundwork for his book, Voddie writes some observations on the apparent parenting goals of many (if not most) modern-day Christian families:
Many families have been lulled into what I like to call a full-screen view of parenting. We look at the biblical mandate and compare it to societal norms, and there appears to be something missing. We believe that somehow we are depriving our children of experiences that will make them more liked, more respected, more normal. Hence we trade in the biblical standard for a cultural norm that hovers just below mediocrity. All of a sudden our desires for our children change. Now all we want for our kids is what “every other parent” wants for their children.
Voddie spends a bit of time elaborating on this “full-screen” vs. “wide-screen” view of parenting. If you’ve ever watched wide-screen movies on DVD (and have a standard TV set), you’ll know what he’s talking about. Wide-screen DVDs take up the entire width of your screen, but have black bars at the top and bottom… it looks like something is missing. Full-screen movies don’t have the black bars, but the entire screen is filled by cutting off the sides of the picture. Hence, full-screen movies appear complete, but are, in actuality, missing quite a bit of the big picture.
Voddie notes that many of us prefer the full-screen view of parenting, even though it cuts out part of the full “wide-screen” picture of Biblical parenting. We focus on ensuring that our kids grow up “normal”, and we lower the bar for our parenting efforts, sacrificing God’s standard for the lesser standards of the world. We make our goal for parenting our children any number of things: ensuring they get a top notch education, helping them to become great athletes, preparing them to find their future mate, etc. While these are certainly not bad things in and of themselves, we often place these ideals as the consuming goals of parenthood… far above that of ensuring that our children learn what it means to be devoted followers of Christ.
Think about the time you spend with your children talking with them. Think about the things you spend time teaching them about. How much of that time is spent talking about matters of faith?
What do these things say about the importance you place upon instilling faith in your kids?
When I go through this exercise, it’s eye-opening. While I profess that the number one goal for my parenting efforts is to foster the growth of my kids’ faith, the reality of how we spend our time says much more.
So what do you think? Are Christian parents generally missing the boat with our parenting efforts? Why or why not? Do you think we generally choose societal norms over Biblical standards, or have we just become complacent? What can we do to better maintain proper perspective on parenthood?
Any thoughts on what Voddie has to say, or in response to any of the questions above?
My Yoke is Easy…
June 30th, 2008 | 1 Comment | Posted in » Devotions / Bible Studies
Matthew 11:28-30
28Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
I don’t know about you, but these verses are music to my ears. I’m weary. I’m burdened. And I need rest.
Eternally, yeah… I’m good with that. Faith in Christ assures of forgiveness for our sins, escape from the just punishment for them we deserve, a right relationship with a holy and perfect God, and eternity in heaven. This life has nothing for us that compares to the glory of that which awaits us afterward.
But I wonder, despite this kind of assurance in eternal matters, why is peace and rest so difficult to find in the here and now? Our daily lives are jam-packed with frustrating moments and circumstances. The struggle with sin wears us out. And God? Well, oftentimes he seems quite distant and uninterested in what we’re dealing with (that’s hardly true, of course, but it sure seems that way sometimes, doesn’t it?).
Perhaps we’ve only ourselves to blame? Do we often struggle against Christ’s yoke, and end up carrying more of life’s burdens than God intends for us to? Or are we simply so weak that even a light burden seems unbearable?
I don’t know what you think, but here’s what I know… life isn’t easy. Satan is real, and he wants us to struggle. Even when you’ve been faithful, the arrows he fires at us still land from time to time, and they hurt. And when we’re out in front of Christ, rather than walking in step with Him as intended… well, we’re a pretty easy target, and we’ll take a lot of hits from enemy fire.
When you’re hurting… remember that yoke of His. It’s got two sides, and you can’t wear the portion designed for Him. Stop trying, and let Christ give you the rest you need.
Friday Photos — Our Little Swimmer
June 26th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in » Pictures
Time for Friday photos again!
One freshly filled kiddie-pool…
One cute little girl in a dress…
One moment where mom has her back turned…
And you get this:
Monday Laughs…
June 23rd, 2008 | 3 Comments | Posted in » Just For Fun...
It’s Monday, and we all could use a good laugh. Enjoy this bit of humor…
This morning, on my way to work, I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have been… and I rear-ended another vehicle. I groaned, dug around in the dash for my insurance, and stepped out of the car to examine the damage.
As I stood there standing along the road, watching steam roll from my punctured radiator, the other driver got out of his car.
You know how the most stressful of real-life situations sometimes simply become funny? Like when you can’t help but laugh at a funeral or the like?
Of course you do.
Well, the other driver got out of his car, and I couldn’t believe it… he was a DWARF, only about 3 feet tall! The laughs started coming (it was the last thing in the world I expected), but I did my best to suppress them in spite of my mind’s imaginative wanderings (how did he reach the pedals, how could he see over the dash, etc.).
I tried… I really did. Dwarfism simply isn’t something to laugh about.
But after he stormed over to me, looked up at me, pointed a finger in my face, and loudly proclaimed, “I am NOT happy!”… I totally lost it.
The other driver exploded. “What. What’s so funny, you moron?”
Fighting back the tears, and struggling to get my laughter under control, I looked down at him and said, “If you’re not Happy, then which one are you?”
And THAT’S when the fight started.
UPDATE: This would have made a GREAT April Fool’s joke!
This story has been taken by several people to be real (including one of my closest friends), so I guess I need to add a disclaimer. It’s NOT REAL… just a humorous first-person fictional writing based on a joke I saw yesterday. Any similarity to events, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
Word Clouds…
June 20th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in » Just For Fun...
Check this site out: wordle.net. It allows you to create word clouds quickly and easily… a pretty neat exercise with Scripture passages. Check out the following, generated from one of my favorites, Philippians 3:12-14…
HT: Jason Allen.
