Pics, pics and mo pics

Pics from the past several months....

Back Online......

We're finally back amongst the web population again. Hope you enjoy the above pics of some of our fun times over the past six months or so..... will probably kick into the writing gear relatively soon.

This is a great example of my friend Jason's writing

This is powerful stuff. Hope you get as much out of it as I did.

Prayer - The Forgotten Key

They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death," he said to them. "Stay here and keep watch."Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Simon," he said to Peter, "are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." Once more he went away and prayed the same thing. When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what to say to him. Returning the third time, he said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!" Just as he was speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, appeared. With him was a crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders. "Am I leading a rebellion," said Jesus, "that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts, and you did not arrest me. But the Scriptures must be fulfilled." Then everyone deserted him and fled. (Mark 14:32-50)The night of Christ’s greatest trial was also the moment of greatest temptation for His disciples. Knowing this, He urged them to pray. Nowhere in the gospels do we see Christ so emphasizing the need for prayer to His followers as in this moment. Knowing what was about to be unleashed upon them, he admonished them saying, “Watch and pray that you not fall into temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.Having spoken about prayer and given them a model to pray by in the Lord’s Prayer, why did Jesus choose this moment to so urge them toward it? Because He was leaving them. When asked why His followers did not fast as the Pharisees and disciples of John did, Jesus said, “There is no need for it while the bridegroom is with them. But the day will come when the bridegroom will be taken away and on that day they will fast.”A similar principle was at work in the arena of prayer. Until now, Christ had been with them – guarding and guiding them. In a sense, they were in a state of perpetual prayer because of Christ’s immediate bodily proximity to them. But that was about to change. His word to them now was, “Watch and pray, because though your spirit may be in the right place, your flesh is weak. I have been with you, but once I am taken away, you’ll find that you aren’t as strong as you think you are.”Until Christ returns, this urgent call to prayer remains.But, like those disciples in the garden, we are prone to resting and sleeping instead. And the result of such inaction has the same predictable results: “Then everyone deserted Him and fled.” In the time of trial and temptation, we do not stand because we do not pray. As a result, like those same disciples, “We do not know what to say to Him.”The great British revivalist Leonard Ravenhill once said, “No man is greater than his prayer life.” These words came from a man who prayed 8-10 hours a day. He knew what he was talking about. He also said, “Failing in the place of prayer, we fail everywhere.”Can we make any greater statement of self-sufficiency before God than that of prayerlessness? Does anything project crass self-confidence like prayerlessness?Why then do we find it so difficult to maintain consistency in prayer? For precisely this reason – it is an affront to the flesh. We simply would rather do any number of things than pray. Prayer can be a pleasure. It can also be a discipline and a battle. Moreover, it stands to reason that if Christ holds prayer up as the key to spiritual victory, our enemy will seek to hinder us from that action. Tragically, he is often successful. His most successful strategy has been getting the church to believe that prayer is an option.Of course, like anything else in the Christian life, prayer is something we mature in through engagement. As the Scripture says, “For who hath despised the day of small things?" Often, Christians labor under the deception that weakness and immaturity in the place of prayer means their prayers are ineffectual and worthless. Therefore, a Christian who may only have the fortitude to pray 10 minutes a day will often choose not to pray at all – not understanding that consistency, even with such a meager offering, will result in perseverance and the gradual building of a prayer life worthy of the Lord.Because of a general absence of prayer, the vast majority of Christians never cultivate their spiritual lives. The result is a spiritual lethargy and a tolerance of personal defeat that is disheartening to our Lord – precisely because He has given us a resource that taps into His own victory, making it ours as well.Let us make a commitment to “watch and pray” with the Lord daily. If we have the fortitude to simply pray, He will establish us in time as a people strong in prayer and faithful through every trial and temptation.

While I'm Away.....

If you are looking for a good blog to check out while we are living in the land of no internet, please check out my friend Jason's blog. He's got some really great things to say.

http://tozerscarpet.blogspot.com

Moving Silence

We're moving to Clanton Alabama at the end of this month, and at least for the time being, this is going to be the last post on my blog for quite a while. I've got one last bit of stuff to speak about before I go on my hiatus for the next several months(we won't have internet there).

This is about "hearing from God".

This is something I have recently been convicted about personally. I have been guilty in times past of treating "hearing from God" in a similar way I would treat a motivational speaker. You get a new nugget of wisdom at church or alone or whenever and hold it up and admire the truth or beauty or goodness in it BUT does it take root and get integrated into your life?

At the end of what is commonly referred to as the greatest sermon(the sermon on the mount by Jesus), Jesus recaps with an interesting story. After an incredible summary of the core of His teachings, He does not say be careful THAT you hear, or even WHAT you hear, but HOW you hear. This is tied to the story we all know about the man who built his house upon the sand and the man who built his house upon the rock. Notice that according to Jesus, they BOTH heard, but one was careful "how" he heard building his life on it and the other did not.

I'm not sure that I need another "word from the Lord" for a while. I think perhaps instead I need to focus on living out the immense amount of stuff that he has already revealed to me and integrating it into my life by the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit.

There is another parable Jesus uses to describe the kingdom of heaven. He says it is like a loaf of bread that has allowed the yeast to permeate its entire being. I didn't plan for my break from writing this blog to coincide with this post, but I can't help but wonder if it is not providential in some way.

Please pray for me that I will make dying to myself and living to Christ more of a reality and less of something that I write about the latest insights about.

Ella Scare

It is hard to believe that just one week ago today we were about to experience such a scare with Ella. She had been experiencing a low grade fever since Friday evening, but she was not fussy and continued to be her normal happy go lucky self. We were to meet my mom and dad for lunch Saturday afternoon, and since she was not acting as if she was feeling bad at all, we decided to go ahead and meet them. Even on the way to meet them, she was in a playful mood, but soon after arriving, she began to get fussy and irritable. We decided as soon as lunch was over to head home to call her pediatrician. It was on the way home that Myndall noticed that she was not very active in her car seat. She spoke to her and tried to engage her by being playful and making funny faces, but Ella simply stared straight ahead. Myndall commented on this and continued to try to get her to respond. Then Myndall noticed that she was staring vacantly and was completely non-responsive. Ella began foaming at the mouth, and her right hand began twitching at her wrist. Myndall touched her, and she continued to be completely non-responsive. At this point, Myndall unbuckled and jumped into the back with Ella. Myndall said, "she's not breathing!" At this point, I was going about 90 mph on the interstate headed for Children's hospital ER. I called my mom whom we had just left(she's a nurse for those of you who don't know her). She gave me as many pointers on what to do as she could and told us they would meet us at the ER. Meanwhile, Myndall pulled Ella out of her car seat, and she still was completely non-responsive, as limp as a rag doll, and not breathing. Myndall turned her over and began giving her back thrusts. After doing this for 30 to 45 seconds, Ella finally threw up and gradually began breathing, shallow at first and then more normally.

When we arrived at Children's Hospital and saw the doctor, the prognosis for what had occurred is a febrile seisure. It occurs in 3% of all infants up to age 5. It is brought on by a sudden rise or fall in a fever. We learned several new things about how to deal with a seisure if it were to occur again in the future. The primary things are to put the child in a safe place where they will not hurt themselves if they thrash or go unconcious in the midst of the seisure, lie them down, and turn their head sideways in case they vomit(so they won't choke on it), and call 911. Basically, you just have to wait out the seisure.

A couple of neat aspects to the terrifying experience were that the on call nurse who called us back as we were riding in our car to the ER was a good friend of mine's wife who just happened to be the on call nurse that night. Also, my mom, who works at children's, was praying for a specific doctor to be the one who saw Ella and that was exactly who we got. Thank you to all of you who prayed for us and with us in the midst of this previous week. Your love and friendship is just one of the many things that remind us of the goodness of serving our God.

IDENTITY

Who are you? Who, who, who, who? This is the famous line in a song by the band with the same name, The Who.

According to Eastern religions, “you” are an illusion because the self is simply one of the last great illusions to overcome before you become enlightened enough to realize that you are really a part of some huge interconnected, divine blob that includes everyone else also. (I don’t think they use the term blob in their official version of this teaching.)

However, we are given a very different understanding of identity in the Bible. We are not one with God or nature or with each other. God was the one who gave Adam his name. He also renamed Abram to Abraham, and He changed Jacob’s name to Israel. God does not only assign us individual names, but he knows us from our mother’s womb. He knows every detail about our environment we are born into, our genetic make up down to the last strand of DNA, our thoughts, emotions, desires, beliefs, attitudes, our favorite flavor of ice cream, and our favorite song. In short, God knows us better than we could ever know ourselves and certainly better than anyone else could know us.

Why then do we seem so willing to surrender our identity to those around us throughout our lives? We are willing to believe we are who they say we are. Depending on who “they” are, this common practice can be truly devastating to a person’s life. Even if “they” are loving and clear headed believers who love God and you, we are not to surrender this power to truly define who we are to “them.”

Here is another tricky one that you may have never thought of before. You are also unqualified to be the ultimate determiner of who you truly are. I know you are more familiar with your environment, genetics, thoughts, emotions, desires, beliefs, attitudes, ice cream picks, and songs than anyone else(except God, of course). However, as profound as these things all are, even they do not ultimately define you. No, even your genetic make up DOES NOT define you. What does then? You ask. Ahhh….. I suspect you see where I’m going with this. Yep, God is the only true source of your identity. He gave you an identity, and He alone can fundamentally transform you into a different identity in mid stream like when he turned Jacob into Israel. Ultimately, we are guilty of doing the same thing that “they” do when trying to define our identity, we limit what it could be instead of pursuing God and discovering what He says it WILL BE. This is not to remove our role and responsibility in forming our identity, but we will never truly know the full purpose that God has for our identity until we release control of defining ourselves and allow Him to shape us.

General Petraeus

PLEASE! Watch at least the first part of General Petraeus's opening remarks to Congress on September 10th. I have made this video available to the right. He is the top military commander in Iraq and SHOULD be, in my opinion, the most authoritative voice in America right now on the situation in Iraq. Here is the bottom line. Either the information he is presenting is accurate or not. There should be no room for personal attacks against him. Argue the data. If anyone can give me some good reasons to believe his information is corrupted(hating or not trusting Bush does not constitute "good reasons"), I will listen to what that person has to say, but I have NOT heard any so far!

Quote of the week...

"Prayer pops the bubble of pride that comes from a well oiled thinking mind. It allows God to counteract our gift of discernment with the humility of acknowledging we still ultimately depend on Him for our understanding."
-Jesse M. Guy

PRAYER

I haven't done a true thoughtful post in awhile. Hopefully, this will qualify as one. Prayer is a mysterious thing to say the least. It is clear we are told to pray to the Father, and I suppose I just have a few thoughts about that from things I've considered over the past couple of years.

WHY?
I guess the short answer could legitimately be, "I don't know." However, there are some reasons that come to mind. First, it teaches us to live a life that is aware of our dependence on God. If we don't pray, it seems easier to fall into that silly illusion that I am responsible for the blessings I see around me. This reminds me of a quote from C.S. Lewis in his book Problem of Pain, "A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." This is the kind of insanity and fundamental disconnectedness that we can fall into if we do not take the time to pray. Another reason I have seen in my own life is that praying for people helps me to remember their needs and care about them as three dimensional individuals more instead of the cardboard cutout relationship of saying hi/bye to our more casual relationships with people. Our prayer brings their reality as hurting people to the forefront of our minds, and this can help us to learn to deal with people more mercifully and lovingly. Finally, it could be that we simply cause the hand of Almighty God to move when He otherwise would not have.

A FEW THINGS THAT HAVE HELPED ME

1. A prayer list
-I was resistant to this for the longest time, but I cannot tell you how many little ways this has helped me to grow.....well, I could but then you would not have the joy of discovering that for yourself :) Just start making a list of people and stuff that you would like to pray for on a consistent basis and allow God to bring new things to your mind that you can add to the list. Then develop a faithful practice of praying for all on the list. It feels a little forced at first, but I promise that over time AS YOU GROW FAITHFUL IN DOING IT, God will open your eyes to positive fruits from it that you never would have thought of.

2. Start/End the day with praise and prayer
As early as you can begin thinking of it, develop a habit of "bookending" your day with saying a word of thanks, praise, and request to God. You will be surprised how this can set the tone for your entire day.

3. Develop a time of day for meditating/listening.
Begin by picking a time that you should be able to have a certain amount of uninterrupted and mentally alert time and then pray that God will open your eyes to the Scriptures. This can obviously go hand in hand with some time spent reading your Bible, but doesn't have to be back to back. I know God can show us things through people, nature, situations, etc. also, but I specifically point to the Scriptures here because I think we all need to gain a new passion for meditating on them and Lord knows He can open our eyes to Himself through them. One word about this practice that I have noticed over the years. Disciplining yourself to be a meditator/listener(a disciplined desirer to hear from God) has rewards that can be missed if you limit it to "hearing from God" only in the time frame that you have devoted to meditate. Many times I have spent time thinking about some specific scripture and haven't gotten anything out of it, but then later that day or week, I will see something remarkably clearly out of nowhere when I'm not focused in on Him or the Bible. I have noticed that when I am disciplined to meditate, I have these moments far more often than when I lapse into not disciplining myself to meditate on Him and His word.

Finally, a verse that I have incorporated into a prayer. Job 36:10, "You open their ears to discipline." I ask my Father to bring reminders to my mind to do these practices....not feelings to do them or give me the desire to do them, but simply reminders and then, by His grace, I develop the disciplines that will lead me deeper into abandoning myself to Him fully.

New Blog Feature

I hope you will enjoy my new video feature to the top right of the page. All you have to do is click on one of the clips and it will play on my blog. I will be changing the video clip selection up from time to time to try to provide fresh and interesting materials for you to enjoy.

Check out a recent discussion I found very interesting

This is a series of video clips, but you won't need any software to watch them because they are built into the web site.

http://leestrobel.com/

Scroll down to Our Great Speakers on the right side of the page, and then click on Deepak Chopra. Those of you who are not familiar with Dr. Chopra should know he is a New Age speaker and writer who has a fundamentally Eastern view of things like God, Faith, and especially Truth. You will find five clips, and you can click on any of them in any order to watch some interesting discussions between Chopra and a man named Greg Koukl. I hope you get as much out of these clips as I did!

More pics and Better pics of Honduras trip are coming soon...

Back from Honduras

This small building is their old church.

Well I've been back actually since the tenth, but I was a bit sick and then Myndall and I journeyed to Brandon, MS to see our new nephew, Daniel Allan.

Honduras was incredible. Our long day of travel to get there was surpassed only by the many subsequent days of long, hard work. However, it was so awesome to meet the people and see their culture up close. They are warm, hard working people, and I made friends with some of them in spite of our language barrier. I grew especially close to the bus driver who was my partner in nastiness when we ran the mixer each day mixing the mortar for the brick layers. I was reading Ephesians a chapter per day while we were there, and it seemed to dovetail really well with our experience. It talks a lot about being a unified group and growing together in love as we are built up together (kind of like a building for God). Our group was united throughout which was also a great aspect of the trip. Oh yeah, and I got to swim in the Pacific for the first time. :) Enjoy the pics and please pray for the people of Divisadero, Honduras.