It's tougher than it appears...

While hammering through I John in the 100 Day Challenge I am arrested by the high demands of following Christ. For instance...

*Don't love the world. The world is my frame of reference. My one time to be married, raise kids and have a job is in this life in this world. Yet, I must not unduly love the world. Easier said than done!

*Lay down your life for your friend. I have a hard time being inconvenienced w/o getting a bad attitude. Lay down my life?!

The idea that Christianity is fire insurance that would allow you to skate through the rest of life is both unbiblical and unrealistic.

Sometimes I wish Darwin was right

I am confident in the Biblical story of creation. I certainly have no confidence in Darwinian theories of biological evolution. But...sometimes, you wished Darwin's view of how gene pools got thinned out were true. Case in point the father and son pic.

Yes. Those are real tattoos.
Yes. Those are mug shots.

In the world of gene pools these guys clearly came out of the shallow end.

Sunday Re-Think

Good day.

We had a solid crowd.

As always Josh did a fantastic job with the music, even though he is limping around w/ a boot on that makes him look like Robo-leader.

We had a missionary scheduled that neither arrived nor contacted me. It appeared to be
providential. There were many visitors and it was for the best they were able to see what regular church and the preaching was like.

Because my missionary didn't show up I preached my PM sermon in the AM. That meant an emergency knocking out of a PM sermon. It was flat. Little time to prepare or pray.

The Holy Spirit seems to be moving in the Children's Dept. Very hyped about this. It is good to see God granting our Children's Pastor Mike some fruit for his faithfulness.

The Youth will be kicking off their new Voice of the Martyrs curriculum. It looks like some quality powerful stuff.

Our new youth curriculum

Insane!

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

Sunday Re-Think

Preached on Childhood Conversion in the PM.

Admittedly, this can be a complicated issue. There are times some children can't quite process the Gospel, but yet others can get it. You've got to be able to tell them apart. There is the work of being able to see the difference of a child wanting to be a part of what is important to you (i.e.Christ) and what God is actually doing in their heart.

Nevertheless, we cannot ignore taking the Gospel to our own children. We can't let the complexity become an excuse to be passive.

New Year...2009

It is 10:04 Jan 1, 2009.

I am empty of any NY resolutions.

That doesn't mean that there aren't things that I want to start/improve on.

For example:
*I want to lead by example in the church's 100 days to read the NT through.
*I want to keep running.
*I want to execute more evangelism as opposed to thinking and reading about it.
*I want to learn some new things in 2009.

I don't think I'll call those things resolutions. For me resolutions have almost become a synonym for trivial, throw away ideas/wishes.

For some well thought out resolutions check out Jonathan Edwards here. Or for a more moralistic set of resolutions by a non-Christian you can peruse Benjamin Franklin's 13 virtues here.