A couple people have asked me how I got a Wordpress template on a Blogger account. Answer: Google. You will have to be a little familiar with HTML to tweak the page how you like it. For example, I changed the link and title of the tabs at the top of the page. I also changed how the RSS feed functioned. There are plenty of instructions online from people just like you and me. That's good. You definitely don't want to be weeding through geeky directions that nobody understands. And, if you have any more questions, feel free to ask me.
Search "wordpress themes on blogger blogs". That should do it.
So I am starting Boot Camp (no, not the real military) at the Charleston Wellness Center. It is a 12-week (3x/week) program with instructors from the Marine Corps. Pray for me.
I started pre-workouts this morning. On one level, it's good to be out there running and sweating again. On another, I am reminded of how overdue all of this is. Oh well.
As part of this, I am also dieting. If I'm gonna lost wait, I'm gonna have to change what I eat as well. So farewell all my favorites: It's light beer (if even that) and broccoli from here on out.
P.S. The person who comes closest to the amount of weight they think I will lose in twelve weeks gets a Barnes and Noble gift card. The loser is no longer my friend :)
So I just learned more than I wanted to know about RSS feeds. And now I am passing the knowledge (in part) along to you. I have setup the blue button on the right top part of the page so that people can subscribe to my blog. It came with the design. I was confused for a while. Now I got it. And now you benefit from my previous confusion.
One of my favorite preachers, Mark Driscoll, wrote a great article for his church, Mars Hill Church, explaining why they were making the shift from NIV to ESV. I can't find the article. That's a bummer. My own church, Saint Andrew's Church, has recently made the same move.
I am trying to get back to blogging. And since I like to keep things random, I am updating the look of the blog. Lots of changes coming, so if you like to read this thing, you may be frustrated (like me) for next couple of weeks. Otherwise, you can check back in a week or so and be pleasantly surprised. Props to the guys who designed this thing (bottom of the page). They are really on top of it. I love the look. A couple of tweaks and we'll be off and running.
Found this guy on YouTube yesterday. Not gonna lie...kind of have a man crush now. Anyway, thought people would be equally as impressed as I was. Check it out:
I have finished The Two Towers and am almost done with The Return of the King. Lesson learned: I like to read. I don't know why I don't do it more often.
Frodo is about to lay the smack down in the next chapter...
For the first time in a while, we have a major thunderstorm. Short lived, but it was still great. Hillary and I really love lightning. Just another reminder of how small we are. Pretty cool.
“When we believe in God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and believe in ourselves, that’s when our faith comes alive. When we believe we have what it takes, we focus on our possibilities” (emphasis added).
If we are merely wayward, we only need direction; merely sick, we need medicine; merely weak, we need strength. Radical grace, on the other hand, answers to radical sinfulness – not simply to moral mistakes, lack of zeal, or spiritual lethargy, but to the condition that the Bible defines as nothing less than condemned, “children of wrath,” “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2.1, 3).
I have been challenged lately by one of my theologically "less conservative" friends. Friend, if you watch this video and still disagree with me, then we will call it quits on this. But, hear this: I told you so. :)
I grew up in the church-centric world. The result was that I viewed the kingdom through church eyes. The kingdom was primarily something that was going to be ushered in someday. “Thy kingdom come” was a prayer for the return of Jesus, who would finally set up a world where church people would feel at home. The closest thing to kingdom activity was when churches cooperated to do more church stuff – citywide revivals and joint worship services and such.
Just to let you know that I am just about done with The Fellowship of the Ring. I know you were all wondering about that. Well, now you can sleep again.
Next stop, The Two Towers. How delightfully dorky.
So YearTeam is over. What a year! The retreat went well and, to be honest, I am amazed at how far both Hillary and I have come this year (and Nathan, too, for that matter).
YearTeam is designed to be an equipping and empowering year as you discover your identity in Christ. It did just that for us. And in many ways we both feel that has helped us discern where we are headed. We felt affirmed that full-time ministry is the path to which God is calling us. That part is done. Now, how do we get to seminary? Anyone with $1 million laying around?
At any rate, thanks for prayers for this year. We felt them and we are grateful. Bless you guys.
The YearTeam retreat is this weekend. This is the wrap-up event for the year. It’s been a great time of getting to know who I am in light of who God is. Also a good focused time of discernment for Hillary and me. Please pray for a relaxing weekend. We have a lot of time for silence and solitude. Pretty much all of Saturday.
So I have changed some of the margins on the blog, a little more eye-friendly. I still need to fix some of the post margins and comment margins, but I am on my way.
Who the heck invented all this crap? That's what I want to know.
To add to my geekness, I have been doing a lot of reading and studying up on html codes. As you can tell, the blog looks different. There are still plenty of things I want to change/fix/do with it, but this is a pretty good start, if I do say so myself.
Let me know if you have any suggestions. I love input.
Great night of partying. We invited all of our neighbors, people who we hardly knew, over for burgers and lots of other food. All together, about 30-ish people came over.
It was so great to get to know people that we had, if I’m honest, overlooked in our busyness and day-to-days. A good reminder that Jesus had this very thing in mind…it’s all about relationship.
I think we earned a good deal of trust from people that we would not normally associate with. Hopefully, we will find favor in continuing relationships with them. And who knows, some of them may encounter the Lord for the first time, or at least in a way that they have not before.
It’s been, as you can probably guess by now, pretty sweet reading some of my old favorites. What is it about these books that grab my attention and get me so fired up?
I think it’s the adventure of it all. I love adventures. So, I have been challenged lately to actually have some of my own instead of living others’. Any suggestions?
The Hobbit is officially done. As I opened the cover to The Fellowship of the Ring, I was reminded of how long and more detailed it was. The margins are even bigger. This will be a good one, but I totally underestimated the time it is going to take. Still not regretting it, but sheesh, that Tolkien knows how to write.
So, out with Bilbo and in with Frodo. Man, this was such a great decision!
I am also reading the Heidelberg Catechism. Very cool, it answers a lot of fundamental questions that are so valuable to articulate. If you can't put words to the very bedrock beliefs of your faith, then what good is it?
Particulary, this has major implications for how you witness to people. At any rate, many of the questions remind me of things that I may have altogether forgotten and it [the Catechism] serves as a great devotional. By the way, I am totally copy-cat-ing my boss, Steve Wood, but I just couldn't hold out any longer. Very good stuff.
Every now and again he surfaces...begging to be released. He reminds me of my desire to play video games, to watch epic sagas (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Narnia) and to then go to websites and talk about me watching epic sagas, and to argue about epic sagas with other geeks who watch epic sagas. It's all complicated, but suffice it to say that I can't deny it any longer.
That's right, I am re-reading The Lord of the Rings. Walking into our library at the house, it saddened me to find that those beloved three books (four if you count The Hobbit, which, yes, I will be reading as well) have collected far too much dust. It's time to re-live my own life through Bilbo and Frodo. It's time to take out my pipe and walk around the house like Gandalf. It's time to start analyzing my own life, realizing that "it would just be so much easier if I were an elf." You are welcome to join me. Geeks need community, too. Just know that if you aren't participating and you want to track me down, I will be in Middle Earth, fighting for the free world, "Sting" in hand, wearing my Citadel ring around my neck like it's the ring of power. Game on.
Below is a video I stumbled across just now. Normally, I find Christian comedians sort of boring and completely cheesy. This guy is actually using his comedy as a means of evangelism, which is, as the title of this blog suggests, refreshing. So, with further delay...
The new ESV Study Bible, published by Crossway, is awesome. It's a fact. Some would say expensive, I would say an investment. Holy Scripture, great features, great concordance, great articles (of which there are many), an all-around wonderful Bible. I am a happy man.
I have added this to the sidebar as well, for easy access. John Piper is the pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Very bright. Very good preacher. Very quality. He actually preaches the Gospel. Wow, what a novelty. His sermon in the 2009 section about "letting the Word abide in you" is earth-shaking. Do yourself a favor and listen to this man. And despite being baptist (sorry guys, there's nothing magical in the water)...well, there's nothing more to say. I'm speechless.
One of my old high school buddies is directing a project with the Presbytherian Church USA entitled, "The Church is Alive." The idea and belief that shapes this project is that the church is alive and that this notion is evidenced in all of the good works that you see people doing in the Name of God. Sounds good...wrong answer.
Simple answer is this: The Church is alive because Jesus Christ is alive. Good works are not enough. They are, in fact, the overflow of something we believe internally...that Jesus Christ is the reason for all good things. Unfortunately, the Western Church is dead. Yes, the Holy Spirit moves all over the place and could completely make me eat crow in one second. But, right now, with a rising number of professing atheists, who call themselves "free thinkers" (not even knowing that they are actually slaves to their own intellect), the church is overall dead. And, unfortunately, PCUSA is clueless in this case.
Keeping along that cheery thought, then, what is church? Why even do it? Is it worth it? Take a look at this video. Tell me what you think.
Dustin Lance Black, screenwriter for the Oscar-winning movie Milk. What do you think about this? And yes, I'm intentionally being edgy!
Oh my God. This was, um. This was not an easy film to make. First off, I have to thank Cleve Jones and Anne Kronenberg and all the real-life people who shared their stories with me. And, um, Gus Van Sant, Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, James Franco, and our entire cast, my producers, Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, everyone at Groundswell and Focus, for taking on the challenge of telling this life-saving story.
When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas to California and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life, it gave me the hope to one day live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married.
(He chokes up, audience begins to applaud.)
I want to thank my mom who has always loved me for who I am, even when there was pressure not to. But most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he’d want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches or by the government or by their families that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights, federally, across this great nation of ours. (Wild applause from the audience.) Thank you, thank you, and thank you God for giving us Harvey Milk.
Every now and again, I have to stop and appreciate how lucky I am. Beautiful wife, awesome kiddo, shelter, food, Nintendo Wii.
Has God blessed you? If not, are you sure? Take a close look at what you have and what you don't. The good news is this: even when Israel was rebellious and complaining on the way to the promised land, God provided them with manna. Before that, even when God gave them the Law, a glorious glimpse of God's character, and Israel made idols, he spared them and kept his Covenant with Abraham. Even when we sinned against God, he sent us his son, Jesus Christ.
