Rocky Canyon
Jan 29, 2005 Uncategorized Hodge Podge
{ MOOD: Laughing | ITUNES: “Epic” – Faith No More }
I was upstairs practicing my wedding stuff for today. I asked the kids to stay downstairs so I could focus. A few minutes into practicing, the door crept open ever so slightly and a red rope flew into the room. Ethan then came into the room crawling across the floor. He was dressed like this:
He ignored me and crawled through the room as if on a mission. I said, “what are you doing?”
“I’m Rocky Canyon and I am climbing a mountain.”
So I let him crawl through the room and back out the door. I then shut the door behind him and finished my practice.
Who Am I?
Jan 28, 2005 Uncategorized Hodge Podge
{ MOOD: Full | NOISE: Jesse making sword battling noises }
I was reading some papers by Gerry Breshears from Western Seminary and I came across a cool little paper called “Who Am I?” Simple and biblical. I like it. Here it is:
WHO AM I?
What the Bible says is true of every child of God
Eph. 1:1 – I am a saint.
Eph. 1:3-4 – I am chosen in Christ to be holy and blameless.
1 Thess. 1:4 – I am a chosen son/daughter, and dearly loved by God.
1 John 5:18 – I am born of God.
John 1:12 – I am a child of God.
Rom. 8:14,15 – I am a son/daughter of God.
Eph. 3:12 – I may approach God with freedom and confidence.
Heb. 4:16 – I may approach the throne of grace with confidence to receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Gal. 4:6-7 – I am an heir of God.
Rom. 8:16-17 – I am a joint heir with Christ, sharing His righteousness with Him.
Rom. 5:1 – I have been justified, fully forgiven and made completely righteous in Christ.
Col. 2:13-14 – I have been made alive with Christ who has forgiven all my sins. The debt against me has been canceled.
Rom. 8:1 – I am forever free from condemnation.
1 Cor. 6:15-17 – I am joined to the Lord.
2 Cor. 5:18 – I am reconciled to God.
1 Cor. 6:20 – I am not my own. I have been bought with a price. I belong to God.
John 15:1,5 – I am a part of the true vine, sharing in its life.
Heb. 3:14 – I am a partaker of Christ, sharing His life.
1 Cor. 12:13 – I am a member of Christ’s body.
1 Pet. 2:9,10 – I am a member of God’s own people, a royal priesthood, a people for God’s own possession.
1 Cor. 3:16 – I am a temple of the Spirit. His life dwells in me.
1 Cor. 2:12 – I have received the Spirit of God into my life so I can understand what God has freely given me.
Col. 1:13-14 – I have been rescued from the dominion of darkness, transferred to the kingdom of His beloved Son.
Acts 26:18 – I have been taken from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God.
2 Pet. 1:4 – I have been given His exceedingly great and precious promises so I may participate in His holy nature and escape the corruption in the world.
Phil. 3:20 – I am a citizen of heaven.
Eph. 2:19 – I am a fellow citizen of God’s household with the rest of God’s family.
1 Thess. 5:5 – I am a son/daughter of light. I am of the day.
Eph. 5:8 – I am light in the Lord.
Eph. 2:10 – I am God’s workmanship, born anew to do His work.
2 Cor. 5:19 – I am a minister of reconciliation.
Matt. 5:13 – I am the salt of the earth.
Matt. 5:14 – I am the light of the world.
2 Cor. 2:14 – I spread the sweet aroma of the fragrance of Christ.
Rom. 8:29 – I am going to be fully conformed to the likeness of Christ. God has already decided that.
Rom. 8:39-4 – I am secure in Christ. Nothing will be able to separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus my Lord.
Weddings
Jan 28, 2005 Uncategorized Hodge Podge
{ MOOD: 8.6 | ITUNES: “If Nothing Else” – Over the Rhine }
I have a wedding to perform this weekend. Normally, no biggie. I do a lot of them. But this is different. A lot of people I am really close to are getting married. I usually grab an old wedding message, tweak it, and whala. But everyone who has been getting married lately is interconnected. So I find myself writing a whole lot of new messages. Which is cool, but time-consuming.
Anyhoo, I am reading through old notes and I came across something I had forgotten about. It’s from the the novel “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy. In this book, he uses a dual story line to look at the institution of marriage. He compares and contrasts two couples. I won’t spoil the story and tell you much more, but I do want to give you an excerpt.
Levin had thought there could never be any relations between himself and Kitty other than those based on tenderness, self-respect, and love: But the first month of their marriage showed otherwise.
Their first quarrel arose because Levin had ridden over to inspect a new farm. He returned half and hour late because he had attempted a short cut and got lost. He rode home thinking only of her, of her love, of his own happiness, and the nearer he came to the house the warmer grew his tenderness for her. He rushed into the room with a feeling that was even stronger than the one with which he had gone to propose to her, yet was all of a sudden met with a grim expression he had never seen on her face before. He tried to kiss her, but she pushed him away.
“What’s the matter?”
“You’re having a nice time . . .” she began, trying to appear calm and venomous.
But the moment she opened her mouth, she burst into a flood of reproaches, senseless jealousy, and everything else that had been tormenting her during the half hour she had spent sitting motionless at the window. It was then that he clearly understood for the first time what he had failed to understand when he led her out of the church after the wedding. He understood that she was not only close to him, but that he could not now tell where she ended and he began. He realized it from the agonizing feeling of division into two parts which he experienced at the moment. He felt hurt, but he immediately realized that he could not be offended with her because she was himself. For a moment he felt like a man who, receiving a sudden blow from behind, turns round angrily with the desire to return the blow only to find that he had accidentally struck himself and that there was no one to be angry with and he had to endure and do his best to assuage the pain. . . .
It took him a long time to recover his senses. His first impulse was quite naturally to justify himself and explain that she was in the wrong; but to show her that she was in the wrong meant to exasperate her still more and to widen the breach which was the cause of all this trouble. One impulse quite naturally drew him to shift the blame from himself and lay it upon her; another much more powerful feeling drew him to smooth over the breach and prevent it from widening. To remain under so unjust an accusation was painful, but to hurt her by justifying himself would be still worse. Like a man half awake and suffering from pain, he wanted to tear off the aching part and cast it away, but on coming to his senses he realized that the aching part was himself. All he had to do was to try to help the aching part to bear it, and this he did.
Adbusters
Jan 28, 2005 Uncategorized Hodge Podge
{ MOOD: Thoughtful | ITUNES: ‘Whole Lot Different” – Charlie Peacock }
I am surfing around, minding my own business, thinking about the fact that I need to get working when I run across this blog entry that contains this picture:
This really struck me. Especially in light of a conversation Steve and I had about all the gadgets and toys we have in our culture. Also, Steve and I just got back from a few days in Minneapolis, talking with some other pastors from around the country. One of the guys said, “If my church ever builds a 40 million dollar facility, shoot me. We can build a cheaper one for 10 million and give 30 million away to do missions around the world, impacting hundreds of thousands of people.”
I then surfed to Adbusters and while I don’t agree with all the anti-capitalist propaganda, I think there is something to be said about our consumer-driven culture and how it has warped our perspective.
Here are another few images that struck me from their site:
This settles it
Jan 28, 2005 Uncategorized Hodge Podge
{ MOOD: Non-Nerdy | ITUNES: “Radio Cure” – Wilco }
Thanks to Will for pointing me toward this Nerd Test. And for the record:
Top Ten
Jan 26, 2005 Uncategorized Hodge Podge
{ MOOD: Good | NOISE: Steve brushing his teeth }
Thanks to Jason for this link to Top Ten Signs You’re Not The Most Popular Guy In Your High School by Napoleon Dynamite
Transparency
Jan 26, 2005 Uncategorized Hodge Podge
{ MOOD: Hungry | NOISE: Steve Typing }
I posted a few days ago some thoughts on living in the fishbowl of ministry. Last night, I found a new illustration. I was watching CNN or something and this radio DJ was on and she was talking about how sometimes you can forget that thousands of people are hearing everything you say when you are on the air. You get talking about personal details and then you realize that everyone now knows something about you that maybe you shouldn’t have mentioned.
It’s a balance issue.
For instance, when I am using a personal illustration about my wife, I ask her permission first. I used to do this all the time, but have gotten bad about it. She recently reminded me (when I called her “creepy” at Ignite) that I need to do that again.
We also pulled our personal family pictures off the site and kept the ministry ones up last year. We just decided that there are some personal areas of our life where we want to keep a semblence of privacy. Not that we don’t want transparency, but it is a fine line.
XML
Jan 25, 2005 Uncategorized Hodge Podge
{ MOOD: Swell | TV: Fox News }
Dave has been whining about my XML feed not working well so I fixed it. If you use Bloglines or some other blogreader, you may need to reset my feed and it should work now. You can click on the XML or Bloglines links on the right.
Do you love me now, Dave?
Arthur Ganson
Jan 25, 2005 Uncategorized Hodge Podge
{ MOOD: Intrigued | TV: tpt2 }
I am watching this cool special on this artist Arthur Ganson who considers himself as both an artist and an engineer. His stuff is really cool. It’s all about movement.
