Very busy

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This is a very busy week!!!  I’ve driven a bus for our baseball team twice this week, did Wednesday night with church youth, and I’m taking a group of kids to Bible drill Friday night.  Yeah, they still have Bible drill where I live.  It’s like I died and went to the 50’s.  A group of our local kids qualified for like a regional thing.  We’re driving 2 hours for this.  ANYWAY, very busy, little time for blogging, let’s hit it.

Today was May 1st.  It was RSS Awardness Day, and I didn’t make up a new post for it last night.  Click here to read up on RSS, then tell a friend.  Most bloggers already know about it, but the vast majority of internet users do not. 

May 1st is also the National Day of Prayer each year.  I knew there would be events all over the country, but haven’t heard of any that made news so far. Often, the only news I get is what my students see in first period each day; and what I read in blogs, yeah, there’s that. 

The Words of Jesus

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I haven’t read The Words of Jesus, a Gospel of the Sayings of our Lord so this is not a book review; yet. I plan to as soon as possible. Why? I just found out that Phyllis Tickle graduated from Shorter College in 1955. What do you mean “So what?” I graduated from Shorter a few years later myself (1998). As a matter of fact, my 10 year class reunion will be this fall. I found out the hard way that many of the people I graduated from high school with, well, we no longer have a great deal in common. I’ve already been to a 5 year college reunion, and that was much better. Shorter College is a private liberal arts college, so my cohorts and I have a basis of Christian/Baptist background, and many education majors to boot. Phyllis Tickle is an alumnus of my own Alma Mater, so I plan to read the book and get back to you. I do know the book takes the words and teachings of Jesus and puts them together to form narrative. She’s very humble about not knowing if the idea will catch on or not. It sounds promising. (I said the same thing about “Expelled,” but this should be different.)

Pray Without Ceasing (part 4 of 4)

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Pray without ceasing means that we are continually in a spirit of communion with our Heavenly Father. It means to pray frequently, about everything, until it becomes our nature to be in prayer, not something we have to be reminded of.

Jesus not only taught his disciples to pray, but we see in the gospels how important pray was in Jesus’ own life. On one occasion, we read that Jesus gets up early in the morning, while it is still night, and goes off by himself to pray. Another time, we find that Jesus has stayed up the entire night in prayer. Even Jesus, who was God incarnate, spent time alone with God in prayer. There is no way we can be so close to God that prayer isn’t necessary. The night before his arrest, Jesus prayed in agony until his sweat became as great drops of blood. Jesus was passionate about a lot of things, but he never did anything else until it nearly killed him the way he spent this evening in prayer. Continue reading →

Teach Us to Pray (part 3 of 4)

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I found out that I couldn’t make just one post and say everything I wanted about prayer. I was afraid of that. On this occasion, let’s look at what we commonly call The Lord’s Prayer as Jesus’ example of how we are to pray. This is the prayer he taught his followers.

“Our Father which art in heaven,” addresses the Father to let him know we are speaking to him, and reminds us who it is we pray to. The relationship is constantly before us; he is our father, and we are his children. We are children of the adoption, having been bought with a price and redeemed. “Hallowed be thy name,” since his name is holy and above all names. If we daily pray this prayer, not using God’s name in vain is almost guaranteed. “Thy kingdom come,” is both a request that God come quickly into this world, and reminds us that the kingdom of God is presently being built. We are a part of that. Continue reading →

Word of God Speak (part 2 of 4)

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“Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.”

The Word of God, according to Psalm 119:105, lights our way through this dark world. It gives us direction, lights our way, and guides our steps. The Bible, God’s Word, provides us with instruction on how to live: how to treat the people we meet, how to find a godly spouse and raise a family, how to treat the people we work for and those that work for us, how to be honest in business, how to select church leaders, and a myriad of other tasks in life. More importantly, it is the story of how a holy God interacts with fallen people. That story is worth not only reading, but learning, studying and memorizing. The entire Bible is about we relate to God, and the intersecting point between fallen man and Holy Almighty God is Jesus. Coming to God through faith in Jesus Christ is the only hope we have, and the Bible is that story. Continue reading →

Read the Bible and pray (part 1 of 4)

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Weren’t we all told this as children? Perhaps as a new believer the pastor shook your hand and encouraged you to read the Bible every day. As basic as it sounds, as obvious as it seems to any believer, these two activities are the cornerstones of a close walk and fellowship with our Heavenly Father. But do we practice them?

This is an introduction to a series on reading the scriptures and praying. Continue reading →

God honoring, Christ centered

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What’s the first thing you notice when you look at da Vinci’s Last Supper? It should be Jesus. He is in the middle of the picture, with six apostles sitting on either side. The composition of the painting is designed to draw your attention to Christ, who – here comes a revelation – is at the center.

I’ve just messed with my banner design. I looked for wallpaper, banners, something other than the large blue rectangle I used to have. I’ve played around with the sub-heading several times, and have recently chosen “God honoring, Christ centered.” It’s a good match with the portrait. I changed the color of the text as well, but not sure it’s easy enough to read. Give me some feedback.

The Difference Jesus Makes in God

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This is a follow-up to The Difference Jesus Makes, posted April 13th. That post was really about the difference Jesus makes in us.

What is God like to you? At the mention of God, all of us conjure up some image in the mind’s eye. Some imagine God to be like Zeus on Mount Olympus, tossing thunderbolts at the earth. Others have a misty, ethereal, floaty idea of a disembodied God on a cloud somewhere. Perhaps God is an old man, sitting like a grandfather in a rocking chair, just watching over everything. Deism is the concept that God is like a clockmaker, who put the universe in motion eons ago and is not actually involved in its working. Jesus is the incarnation of God, and should shape our view of who/what God is. Continue reading →

Roman Catholic Christians

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I’m the only writer in the entire blogoshpere that hasn’t said anything about Pope Benedict XVI being in the United States. Half the internet is devoted to this topic. There’s more pics of him this week than Brittney Spears; well, maybe not.

I’m still not going to blog on the Pope, but will take this occasion to say some things about the Catholic Church while everybody’s talking about it right now in America. Continue reading →

May 1st is RSS Awareness Day

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Bloggers know about RSS, but the vast majority of Internet users do not.  May 1st will be RSS Awareness Day, created to get the word out about RSS.  RSSDay.org explains what RSS is, demonstrates how it works, and offers some examples of readers/aggregators.  Bloglines is the reader I personally use, recommended by Internet Monk.  Read up on RSS if you need to, and on May 1st, tell a friend.