Great Expectations

My name is Mark Smith. I'm a guy who loves Jesus, His Word, and His Church. I am filled with Great Expectations for what the future will ultimately bring - Matthew 24:14.

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Location: Sudbury, Ontario, Canada

My favourite verse is Psalm 16:11, my other favourite verse is Acts 20:24, my other favourite verse is Habakkuk 3:17-19, and my other favourite verse is Matthew 24:14.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Posting Some Pics....

This post is partly because I'm enjoying having my own computer back online where I can get my pictures from. And partly to share some pictures with you. And partly to get a picture of myself online so I can make a picture go with my blog profile. So enjoy the pictures I guess!

Heritage Friends:
Heritage Friends:
That would be me:
Again:
That would be my table...and my dad:
Um...me:
The family without me:
The family real picture:
The family with me pushing them right before the picture:

Monday, August 28, 2006

Far Cry

I have another new blog that you all should check out. It is called Far Cry and the guy chose the address vantilman.blogspot.

It has a good post right now about death, referring to the death of our Great Great Uncle Harold.

Far Cry is my brother's blog. And vantilman (of course for those of you who have heard of him) refers to Cornelius Van Til.

It's an honour to welcome my brother to the blogging world. :)



P.S. Neither myself nor my father nor my brother really have goatees...we just did for Christmas last year because we are cool like that! hahaha :p

I love....

I love Galilean Bible Camp...


I love sunrises:

I love sunsets:

I love friends:

Sunday, August 13, 2006

At Galilean

I'm the chapel speaker at the Jr. Teens Camp at Galilean this week. It is going pretty well. I certainly don't feel qualified for this but that's okay - the God who calls is the same God who equips right?

I finished re-reading (for prolly the 3rd time...maybe the 4th) "Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire" by Jim Cymbala today. Look for some quotes to come from that when I get home at the end of the month cause it is on my top 5 list of all time...in fact it might be on my top 2 list of all time!!

I just wanted to get on here mainly to direct you over to Josh Harris' latest post: Doubled Joy. I love it because it jives so much with my belief in the philosophy of life called Christian Hedonism!

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Divinely Ordered Destiny

This is a paragraph from an Appendix to one of my papers from my Philosophy of Religion class. The paper was called, "A Calvinistic Answer to the Problem of Evil" - including the unscholarly appendix and the bibliography the paper weighed in at 28 pages even though it was supposed to be 10-12 pages long. :p The paper is available for free upon request hahaha...I don't know what my mark on it was...somewhere in the low 90's I think.

"..........The second example of God ordaining events for his perfect plan is found in the martyrdom of five Missionaries at the hands of the Waodani in 1956. This story is well known, so very little will be said here to explain it. The short version of the story is that five missionaries, Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, and Peter Fleming, were trying to reach the Waodani tribe with the Gospel. However, they ended up getting speared to death by the Waodani. The story does not end there though, because through the work of the wives of some of the missionaries, the Waodani were eventually reached with good news of Jesus Christ and were saved.

Steve Saint is the son of Nate Saint, and is now best friends with the man who speared his father, whose name is Mincayani. The story of the salvation of the tribe and the reconciliation between everyone is incredible and Steven Saint often speaks about it at conferences and conventions. At the Desiring God National Conference on Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, Steve Saint recently reiterated the stunning statements that he made in Christianity Today in 1996. He said in Christianity Today that as a result of his new research into how the murders came to take place, he was astonished at how unlikely it is that it happened at all. This absolutely stunning sentence came out of what he found in interview the members of the tribe: “As they described their recollections, it occurred to me how incredibly unlikely it was that the palm beech killing took place at all. It is an anomaly that I cannot explain outside of divine intervention.” In other words, he is saying that God arranged the brutal murder of his Dad. What he said in that article was not a one time statement that came out wrong or that he wishes he could take back. On the contrary, it is the same thing that he said at the Desiring God National Conference:

“I grew up believing what a lot of you probably believe: when bad things happen, God, at most, has allowed it…[But now, after my research] you know what my conclusion is? I don’t think God tolerated my Dad’s death. I don’t think he turned away when it was happening. I think he planned it. Otherwise, I don’t think it would have happened.”

Steve Saint is not a scholar. He is not a theologian. He said he hardly ever thinks about the word "sovereignty". However, he says that from what he knows about all the variables that had to “fall into place” in order for his Dad to be killed, the only way that it could have happened is if God planned it. He knows that God planned it, and that God’s plan was for good, to bring about that many Waodani would be saved, and to bring about one of the greatest stories in the history of modern day Missions.

A Bold Assurity


I listen to quite a bit of rap music. Especially The Cross Movement. But a few days ago I changed my music in my car over to good ole Petra – my all time favourite band. One of the songs that I’ve really enjoyed listening to over and over is Whole World from their Back to the Street album. I just love the fact that God is sovereign and that He has sovereignly allowed me to know that He is sovereign because I get such comfort from that fact. I love God. I'm so glad that this world is under divinely ordered destiny.

Whole World
Words and music by Bob Hartman
Based on Hebrews 1:3, Matthew 20:29, 6:34

Hearts are falling left and right
Children fear this planet's plight
Fatalistic fears abound
And take their toll without a sound
But through the vague uncertainty - comes a bold assurity
This world is under sovereignty - divinely ordered destiny
He holds this world together with the Word of His power
Safe within His hands - til its own appointed hour

(Chorus)
He's still got the whole world in His hands - tonight
And only He knows where the sparrow lands - tonight
And nothing in this world can stop His plans - tonight
'Cause He's still got the whole world in His hands
In His hands tonight

Humanistic lies lament
The holocaust is imminent
Doomsday prophets in the news
Predicting who will light the fuse
The fate of His creation isn't subject to a man
The final consummation is according to His plan

He's still got you - He's still got me in His hands tonight

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Introducing a new blogger....


Actually, he is not a new blogger - he has been blogging for a long time. But he is new to my list of bloggers to check out. His name is Josh Harris. Otherwise known as "Joshua Harris", otherwise known as "The I Kissed Dating Goodbye Guy", otherwise known as "The Courtship Guy".

I've been a fan of Josh Harris for a long time - ever since reading I Kissed Dating Goodbye back in grade 10. His book, Boy Meets Girl is also butter and those are the two books that I will recommend to everyone who asks me about books on dating and courtship and marriage. I think that if someone asks me for a book to read about lust I might recommend his book on that too...but first I would have to read it for myself. It seems good though from what he has blogged on it lately. (For now I would have to recommend The Purity Principle by Randy Alcorn for a book on lust - it is golden and really succinct!)

Josh isn't just the dating guy though, he is a also a pastor and I'm listening to him preach right this minute on "What It Costs To Follow Jesus." I like Josh lots and hope you will check his blog and check his website. I think your life will be better as a result of getting to know Joshua Harris.

Overjoyed

I feel tired but wind has been put in my sails by thinking about John Piper returning from his sabbatical. You can read (or skim) his lengthy letter here. I'm especially excited about his new book. It will bump some other books on my "Books to Read" list down because it will be better than most of them put together. :p Kidding...sort of. More seriously, I'm excited about it because I really really want to obey what Jesus commands and believe that this book will be one means that God uses to supply me with the needed grace to do so better than I do now. Who I am is certainly in between what I once was and I what I want to be. So I hope to get closer to what I want to be through that book.

Now that Piper is back I look forward to getting to hear more new stuff from him, but with equal excitement I am looking forward to the new Desiring God website that will be launched soon because then I will be able to access way more old stuff too. I don't want to be guilty of chronological snobbery (as C.S. Lewis called it) even when it comes to reading and listening to someone who is still alive and kicking.


On a different note, I thought that Driscoll's sermon on 1 Corinthians 11 was sweet.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Piper Trade?!

You gotta check out this blog for a good laugh!