Sending and Going

Many people criticize the effectiveness versus the cost of sending missionaries from the West to other places in the world, particularly Short-Term Missionaries. These brief trips are painted as glorified vacations by their detractors. That's a whole other topic, though I'll say briefly that I am wholeheartedly in favor of appropriately planned short-term mission trips. The DG blog gives a brief rundown of why we should still be sending and going.

If you can't sufficiently counter each of their five points, why aren't you sending and going?

No, Mr. President

Wanted to share this video with you and hear your feedback.

Stem Cell Research

I haven't posted in a while because of my position change and just the general busyness of ministry, school, and fulltime work. I did want to share this article that I read this morning. It is a telling sign of our future under President Obama. Please pray for our President, that he will make wise decisions that honor God and promote respect for and appreciation of human life.

The telling article from the Wall Street Journal

I'm a horrible blogger

My recounting this entire lesson below has two purposes. First, it helps to further explain why I'm a horrible blogger and second, I hope it is a quick encouragement to you from a Jr. High SS lesson to spend daily time with God.

Yesterday in Sunday School, the Junior High class addressed the question of why we should spend time with God. I modified the curriculum a bit but here's a quick run-through of the lesson. We began the lesson by discussing the statement, "If something is important to us, we will make time for it." All the students agreed with this statement and we talked about examples of eating, spending time with friends, brushing our teeth, showering, etc. We discussed how God is the most important thing in life and thus, we should make time for Him.

To address the question of "Why spend time with God," we talked about how God wants to be our friend (John 15:13-16) and then moved into how a friendship with God is different than any other sort of friendship. He's always truthful, never lets us down, always does what is right, and unconditionally loves us. The main difference between our friendship with God and our friendship with anyone else is that He's the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, holy God and so, unlike any other friend we might have, He deserves our worship and our obedience. Verse 14 (I believe it was...I don't have a Bible in front of me right now) talks about how if we are His friend, we'll follow His commands. We looked at Psalm 23 and discussed how God is not only our friend but our shepherd and so He guides us, provides for us, and protects us.

We wrapped up by talking about how, if God is the most important thing in life, we must be intentional to spend time with Him. The students said it was hard to find time for God because they are so busy, at which point, we alluded back to the opening statement of "If something is important to us, we will make time for it." We discussed ways to help us purposefully spend time with Him, not just give Him the spare moments we might have throughout the day. Those ways included things like

• having a specified time to set aside and read God's Word and pray
• following some type of Bible reading plan
• having accountability from friends and maybe even following the same reading plan so the passages read can be discussed
• writing notes on the mirror as a reminder to spend time with Him
• making associations between things we do everyday (like brush our teeth or shower) and spending time with God so we are sure to be reminded of it

If we spend time with God, who is our friend and desires to guide us, we will grow to mirror more of His character and less of the world's. The entire month's series involves studying this topic in its various aspects. It's a great way to start off the new year with the right focus and perspective.

So, I summarized all of this to state the obvious at this point: blogging is not a priority in my life and so I haven't made time for it. I am sorry to those handful of readers we have out there. I'll try to post brief updates for those friends and family who do not live in the area.

The way we spend our time reflects, in large part, what is most important in our lives. What is your time reflecting?

Oh, and a quick update on a previous blog. I might have to go back to "hovering" because these girls are not exhibiting the maturity they so boldly claimed to have. Awww....the joys of youth work. :)

Funny post-election video

Maybe I'm just mean but I think this is pretty funny. Poor Obama supporters.




But this one by Mike Huckabee really speaks volumes.

Thanks Rebecca and Audrea for posting these videos.