I love a good discussion. Add a good friend and a couple of cups of coffee, and I could probably talk all night. A good friend dropped by the office last week. We didn’t talk all night, but we did have a good discussion on the topic of our liberty in Christ. One of the rabbit trails we ended up going down dealt with the issue of alcohol – i.e., if it doesn’t violate their conscience or cause a weaker believer to stumble, is okay for a Christian to enjoy an occasional glass of wine with a good meal?

I recommended two books: God Gave Wine by Ken Gentry, and A Scandalous Freedom by Steve Brown. I’m actually reading the second one at present. I’m only about a third of the way through it, but it has been really good so far. In the very first chapter he devotes a couple of paragraphs to the question, “Will freedom hurt our witness?” Read More...

Deep appreciation and respect for all the wonderful men and women in uniform who are faithfully serving and defending our country – especially those who gave the ultimate gift – their life – to protect our freedom! So to all the members of our Armed Forces, THANK YOU for your noble service!

Wow!

Watch this clip of Louie Giglio from his message entitled, “How Great is our God.” He illustrates the atonement of Christ by talking about Laminin, an amazing molecule in our body.

This is an excerpt from Matt Chandler’s excellent message, A Shepherd and His Unregenerate Sheep at the Desiring God Conference for Pastors on February 3, 2009. Want to listen the entire message?

Have another few minutes? Listen to Matt contrast the Gospel and Religion in a panel discussion at the same conference.

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel — not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
I Corinthians 1:17

This was outstanding. . . and a good follow-up to why yesterday’s post was so important:

“The Devil Votes Christian Values”

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
Galatians 6:14

The Bible trumps creativity.

Since all of our kids are home, we decided to take advantage of the gorgeous weather and do some hiking this afternoon at Hanging Rock State Park. We had a great time. We could see Winston-Salem from the mountain top fairly clearly – visibility was amazing today! However, on the way back down the trail, I had an interesting encounter with another hiker who was on the way up. We had both stopped for a breather and so I spoke up and said, “Hi!” He paused for second or so and then said, “Heavy drinker, eh?,” (referring to my shirt). I pointed to the Scripture reference under the words and then turned around so that he could see the back. He patted me on the shoulder and said, “Good! I thought you were taking pride in your sin!”

That was the end of the conversation as he went on up and we headed back down. Now granted, I was wearing a t-shirt with the words HEAVY DRINKER emblazoned across the front, but still, something about his comment didn’t sit quite right with me. In fact, I began wondering how the conversation might have gone had there not been Scripture on the back, and had I not been a believer? It’s possible that he simply wanted to start a conversation out of genuine concern, and that he would have been gracious and wise. I hope so.

But the momentary exchange served as a reminder that there is a vast difference between winning arguments and winning converts. Jesus was a Shepherd not a sheriff. He was known as the friend of sinners. If we’re serious about following His example, then as we meet people whose lives may be radically out of touch with God, we’ve got to be patient and loving, realizing that without God, we shouldn’t expect anything different from them. But not to worry, because the gospel offers them not only what they need, but also supplies what is lacking.

No, I haven’t forgotten how to spell my last name. Wordle is a little Java Applet that generates “word clouds” from large amounts of text, visualizing them in creative ways. The more a word is used the larger it will appear in the cloud of words.

I copy and pasted our Christ’s Church statement of faith into the program and this is what came out:



Team TomintheBox has posted some funny Wordle’s of many different church styles including KJV-Only churches, Health-Wealth, Liberal, Mormon and several more. Check them out here.

If you subscribe to my blog’s RSS feed, you may need to update your bookmark. I just discovered that FeedBurner has “moved the whole neighborhood” over to Google. They are assuring us that our old feeds will automatically redirect traffic to its new address, but just to be sure, you may want to update your bookmark. Here’s the link to the new feed. Thanks for subscribing.

How well do you know your Bible? Check out this short quiz. How did you do?

At approximately 8:00 am yesterday morning, Buddy Eanes left behind all the limitations of a wearying illness, and stepped into the presence of Jesus. He was a good friend and I am going to miss him. Thank you for continuing to pray for his family.

Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him.  II Corinthians 5:8-9

In my closing prayer on Sunday, I prayed that God would send us out as cultural missionaries to our community. Jonathan Dodson has some really good suggestions on some simple things we can do to be more intentional at connecting with non-Christians in our life.