Post for the weekend

Well, my laptop battery will die soon, so let me make this brief. This will probably be my last post for the weekend. We are going to Warner Robins to watch Habersham Co. (where we live) play Northside Warner Robins (Tori's old high school) in the third round of the state playoffs. W.R. is not only the #1 ranked team in AAAA, but in all classes, even above all the AAAAA teams. So Habersham Co. is runnin' on a hope and a prayer, but I'm going to root for them and hope for the upset. It'll be like watching Rocky.

I'm more stoked about Saturday. Ray Comfort, Kirk Cameron and crew will be at First Baptist Woodstock. They have a half-day seminar there and it should be good. I'll be in W.R. of course, so I'll drive up to ATL for it and then back down south. David and Jared are supposed to meet me there.

I took Micah to the local airport today. He walked around and called all the airplanes cars. He actually preferred to point at the actual cars in the parking lot than to look at the airplanes. He is obsessed with cars.

The End. Have a good weekend.

11.28.06

I know I need to post, since I haven't posted since before Thanksgiving. So here it is.

To be honest, I haven't been reading my Bible like I should. I used to be in the discipline of reading it every day. I can't say that right now.

I just got done sitting down and spending some time in it.

I feel fearful.

Not in a scared in a bad way way. But in a good, God-intended way. I went back to Genesis and read about Abraham's servant going back to Mesopotamia to get Isaac a wife, then I read in Job, God's response to Job's questioning Him, and then in Matthew, what Jesus said about it being better to loose body parts than to sin with them and take them to hell...and then what he said about accepting the kingdom of God like a child, and about divorce, and what he said to the rich young ruler.

I feel like I deserve to get slapped.

May I remember amidst all the talk of a loving, kind, God...not to forget; the God of the New Testament is the God of the Old. The God who gives me authority, holds me accountable. Would I leave everything I have for Him? Do I hate my mother and father - in comparison to Him? Jesus was not Mr. Feel-good. He was and is Mr. Truth.

Have you ever thought...if after Jesus spoke to that rich young ruler, he turned...and you were standing there...and then he looked at you...looked at you as you are in your life right now. I tremble at the thought of what He would ask me...already knowing the answer.

I think only after shameful consideration of that thought, can I then rightly turn and beg for His forgiveness; and knowing what He expects of me (everything); and knowing my horrible, weak, self...hold fast to his words of hope for me, "With man this is impossible. But not with God. With God all things are possible."

It humbles me. And sometimes I need that. Times like tonight.

Interesting: Shift from Northern Hemisphere to South

I found this quote by John Piper interesting:

One of the values of being aware of the sorts of things Philip Jenkins, of Penn State University, writes about in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity is that it helps explode fatalistic thinking. Just when you thought you knew how the Christian mission and the world would end, and were yawning toward Armageddon, along comes Jenkins with a story of the last one hundred years that makes you realize you must have already fallen asleep.

The book is mainly about the shift of visible Christianity (Christendom) from the Northern hemisphere to the Southern—from Europe and America to Africa, Asia, and South America.

Over the past century . . . the center of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably southward, to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Already today, the largest Christian communities on the planet are to be found in Africa and Latin America. If we want to visualize a “typical” contemporary Christian, we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria or in a Brazilian favela. As Kenyan scholar John Mbiti has observed, “the centers of the church’s universality [are] no longer in Geneva, Rome, Athens, Paris, London, New York, but Kinshasa, Buenos Aires, Addis Ababa and Manila.” (p. 2)

Who would have thought that the most powerful influences for sane doctrinal faithfulness in the global Anglican Communion would come not from the evangelical resurgence of British evangelicals (as wonderful as that is), but from African bishops who regard so-called gay marriage (for example) as the oxymoron that it is?

Who would have thought that thirty or so conservative Episcopalian congregations physically located in North America would now technically be part of the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Rwanda?

Who would have though that there would be twice as many Presbyterians today in South Korea as there are in the United States?

Who would have thought that China would be one of the largest “Christian” nations. In 1949, China had only four million Christians. Today the number stands at about eighty-two million. That's over a twenty-fold increase. Former Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine David Aikman projects that within a few decades one-in-three Chinese could be Christian (Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power).

Who would have thought that, as Mark Noll says in Books and Culture (March/April 2002), “While European Christianity has become archaeology and North American Christianity hangs on as sociology, Christianity in ever-expanding sections of Africa, Latin America, and Asia is dynamic, life-transforming, and revolutionary—if often also wild, ill-informed, and undisciplined”?

Hot and Sour Soup ^*^

I love it.

My pastor had an excellent sermon this past Sunday. It brought tears to people's eyes, even his own. The message was Thanksgiving related, and he told yet another story from the mission field of people who had families massacred and tortured and made their way to Costa Rica, where he was at the time. He related them to the people spoken of in Hebrews who faced trials:

Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37 They were stoned[f]; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

He told about how the people he saw in Costa Rica were able to sing praises to God with such joy, despite what they had gone through.

The passage in Hebrews ends:
39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. 40 God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

He spoke of how grateful and thankful these people were; but the other main point was that God does not necessarily take away our suffering. Many are to suffer horrible things in this life. It's not about being kept from suffering, but remaining true despite it.

He warned that America too would one day have a persecuted church. As an example he mentioned the legislation of the homosexual agenda that is attempting to make it a hate crime for preachers to declare that homosexuality is a sin. It is already the law in Canada and some other countries. He pointedly asked those there, when those times do come, will they leave and try to find a church with a watered down gospel, or maybe a better music entertainment, or any of those other things; or would they still be faithful…when those times come.

Though it may seem far away, the persecution of the true church that is prevalent throughout the world today, will inevitably come to America one day. What kind of faith do you have? Do you have the kind that will gladly endure those persecutions? Or will you scatter to the safe havens of a watered down non-truth?

What about now? Have you failed even without persecution? If so, how much more when persecution comes?

Non-persevering faith – is no faith at all.

See pictures below, but see Tori's blog for more ^*^

Was Micah excited to see the Wiggles? You tell me.

For many more pictures from the Wiggles concert, see the Little Sugar Mama blog.

The Wiggles Concert

Well, today is the big day. We are taking Micah to the Wiggles concert. It starts at about 3 pm at The Arena in Gwinnett. We will leave at about 1 to go down there. I can't wait to see the look on his face when he sees them. He is absolutely obsessed with them.

I'll let you know how it went when I come back.

PS. There are tornado warnings in N. Ga. today....we are hoping that will keep some people away and we can get better seats.

Today, out on the field, some students were doing cartwheels. They wanted me to do one.

I did one;

I hurt my ankle.

In order

Something funny that we're noticing that Micah does, is he likes for certain things to be in order. He'll take his cars and trucks (which he is absolutely obsessed with and wants to carry ALL of them EVERYWHERE) and he'll line them up in a perfect row and then start applauding. And he is very meticulous about them. Once he lines them up, if you go and turn one to face the other way, so that it is still lined up, but just facing the other way, he will immediately turn it back to face the correct way.

I think he got that from me. I have a thing with that, where there are some (although few) things that I try to get exactly perfect. Whether its printing off tons of labels to put all over my bookshelf to super organize it, or taking a bowl of party m&ms and separating them into separate containers based on color. But I usual grow frustrated with trying to perfect them, and then forget about it. I think he has this also. It is really funny though to watch him try to line things up perfectly all facing the right way. Tori messes with him by turning something around, just so he'll turn it back.

Lasik

I really wish I could get lasik surgery. I've had to wear glasses or contacts since...hmm...maybe fourth grade or so. I wore contacts for a long time, but in general they are uncomfortable for me. (Especially in one eye more than the other.) So I wear glasses all the time now, but they are often crooked, I'm not sure why. Maybe I have a crooked head or something. I can't think of much I would rather have, than lasik surgery. I'm still young enough I could get decades of use out of it before I had to start wearing reading glasses. It basically costs $1000 an eye. Thats $2000 since I have TWO eyes.

It's not an implausible amount of money. But its an amount that makes saving for it hard. It's out of reach enough to discourage trying to save for it at all. I just don't get enough spending money every month to save for that amount. Just out of my reach. I can't really get a separate summer job to save for it, because that would take me away from my family and that wouldn't be fair to them (especially Tori). I can't just pay for it outright, because that would be selfish. So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, can't save for it, can't work for it, can't just buy it.

Guess I'll be sticking with my crooked glasses.