Matt Chandler

Matt Chandler is such a good preacher/teacher. Averil and I have been enjoying listening to him for a while now. The sermons we've listened to most recently called Games People Play (which has 3 parts) are so good and such good teaching. Today as he talked about the widow that gave all she had and how the point is not really about giving at all but is much more profound I really felt enlightened! Check out his sermons here.

What an amazing gift it is to be able to listen to the best teachers in the world over the internet.

Josh Harris Louie Giglio Twitter

Good teaching hear from Josh Harris. And while I watched it I noticed him mentioning that Louie Giglio joined Twitter - check out his funny press conference here.

Make Love, Make War (Brian Doerksen)

"When we worship, we do what Satan abandoned long ago - and the Enemy does everything he can to stop us from worshipping, because when we worship, he remembers. He spends more than a little energy convincing us that there really is no war going on, and that the sum total of our life's calling is to be nice."

- Worship Leader / Songwriter Brian Doerksen from his new book, Make Love, Make War.

Story

In classic Randy Alcorn style, here is a little story to get you thinking about how silly we are to store up treasures on earth:

When you're on a long airplane flight, you naturally talk to people, socialize, eat, read, pray, sleep, or mayble talk about where you're going. But what would you think if a passenger by the window seat started hanging curtains over the window, taped photographs to the seat in front of him, painted murals, and put up wall hangings? You'd think, Hey it's not that long of a trip. Once we get to the destination, none of this will matter. Even a long plane flight is short compared to the span of your entire life. (pg 102)

(Thanks to David Heska for the quotes from his book!)

Supertones ROCK(ed)!

I've been watching some old Supertones songs on youtube today at lunch. So good!! I love their music and lyrics passion and references to Jonathan Edwards and everything else!

See wisdom and knowledge is one thing that we lack
You’ve been a christian how long and you’re still on similac
So I call on martin luther and all the reformation back
Then the common people couldn’t read god’s revelation
You had to be a monk or a priest or read latin
That was all before the revolution happened
But the fire cooled down ever since that generation
We put down the Bible and pick up the play station
And we can’t defend our faith ’cause we don’t even know it
We say we love his word but pick a funny way to show it.



So what about you
Will you join us
Will you admit that the waters around us have grown
You better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone
Do you stand with us or do we stand alone
It’s time that we stand up, enlist for the war
I’ve tasted battle and now I want more
I’ve known the truth and been cut to the core
But I’m back in the game to even the score
And I mean to go out with both my guns blazing
Amazed at a God who’s so truly amazing
To triumph in battle as the spirit enables
Can’t turn back the clock but we can turn the tables

Michael Scott Paper Company

This is Michael Scott's best idea yet!

HT: JT

C.S. Lewis and Pride

I read this on the Desiring God Blog:

As a new Christian in 1930, C. S. Lewis was learning terrible things about his heart—the unfathomable layers of pride. It is astonishing how similar his description of his own heart was to the description Jonathan Edwards gave of our inscrutable strata of self-admiration.

Here is Lewis writing to his friend Arthur, amazingly within a year after his conversion:

During my afternoon “meditations,”—which I at least attempt quite regularly now—I have found out ludicrous and terrible things about my own character. Sitting by, watching the rising thoughts to break their necks as they pop up, one learns to know the sort of thoughts that do come.

And, will you believe it, one out of every three is the thought of self-admiration: when everything else fails, having had its neck broken, up comes the thought “what an admirable fellow I am to have broken their necks!” I catch myself posturing before the mirror, so to speak, all day long. I pretend I am carefully thinking out what to say to the next pupil (for his good, of course) and then suddenly realize I am really thinking how frightfully clever I'm going to be and how he will admire me...

And then when you force yourself to stop it, you admire yourself for doing that. It is like fighting the hydra... There seems to be no end to it. Depth under depths of self-love and self-admiration. (quoted in The Narnian by Alan Jacobs, 133)

Not-Small Tactical Error

Then I make a not-small tactical error by asking Colson where he goes to church.

"I've always resented the phrase, 'Where do you go to church?' I don't go to a church; I'm a member of a church. You don't ask where somebody 'goes' to a country club. I'm not talking about where you're going, I'm talking about where you plant your flag and say, 'The is where I'm a Christian.'"

- from Why We Love The Church, page 146

And another

This is so easy - you just take 30 seconds to change the song and then a little while later they send you a new video!

Another Remix (new song)

First Remix

I think I like this remix more:

Animoto

It turned out great:

Holidays

It was good to be on holidays, and it's also good to be home. Averil and I had a great time with family at my Grandparents Camp. Lots of board games, relaxing, swimming, campfires, reading, etc. I finished a good novel I'd recently started called A Voice in the Wind and I also read my newest book called Why We Love The Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion. I guess that's not really holiday reading but what can I say...I love the Church! And the book was excellent. Now I'm excited to see how my animoto video of the Church Campout turns out when it is done being rendered.