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| Baltinglass, Ireland-trekearth |
I noticed that my most recent Facebook posts and status updates on my main page do not appear to a non-friend. I changed my main Facebook page settings because I want to publish 'Public', it had been changed for some reason.
But I intend to place more posts on my Facebook Blog that I use to promote my two Blogger blogs.
From
One Line Fun
Isn't it great to live in the 21st century? Where deleting history has become more important than making it.
The political and social power of group think...
I have noticed that everyone who is for abortion, has already been born.
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
The difference between the Pope and your boss. The Pope only expects you to kiss his ring.
Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
From
Just One Liners
Ridiculous stereotypes often make people very ignorant towards other nationalities. For example, I’m in good shape, intelligent, and I don’t have sex with my cousins, and yet still people assume I’m American. Canadian, Stewart Francis
I’m an Atheist… thank God. Dave Allen (1936 – 2005) Irish comedian
My church accepts all denominations – fivers, tenners, twenties. Dave Allen (1936 – 2005) Irish comedian
My friend Phil was brought up Orthodox Jewish… he actually thought the New Testament was the paperback version of the Old Testament. Lizz Winstead (1961 – ) comedian, writer, radio & television personality & blogger
I definitely want Brooklyn [his daughter] to be Christened, but I don't know into what religion yet. David Beckham professional football player
Genius.
He was an excellent player though. I saw him play live for Manchester United when I lived in Manchester.
Man Walks Into A Joke
Televangelists – the Pro Wrestlers of religion.
Profound satire.
Two Mormons are going door to door. They knock on the door of one woman who tells them, in no uncertain terms, that she does not want to hear their message. She slams the door in their faces but to her surprise, it bounces back open. She tries slamming the door again, and again, and again but it won’t shut. ‘Get your dammed foot out of my door,’ shouts the woman. ‘My foot isn’t in the door,’ says one of the Mormons. ‘But you might want to move your cat.’
A father was reading Bible stories to his young son. They came to the story of Lot’s wife: ‘The man named Lot was warned to take his wife and flee out of the city but his wife looked back and was turned to salt.’ His son asked: ‘What happened to the flea?
Think God Now
The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time. - Abraham Lincoln
English Standard Version: Matthew 6:34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Criticism is easy: achievement is more difficult. - Winston Churchill.
God formed us, sin deformed us, Christ transforms us.
If truth stands in your way, you are headed in the wrong direction.
That is one to ponder on in situations.
A possible place to nap...
Satanic In Detroit
ReplyDeleteFake Christ
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Covet or Else
ReplyDeleteI love to preach—why is that? Isn’t it amazing to mine God’s word and then share his glory with my brothers and sisters? But as I look out at them, I can see how much they’re leaning forward. I can measure it. Doesn’t that mean I’m the best preacher they’ve ever heard? Isn’t that what I was hoping for? Not quite praying for, I’m not a full-fledged Pharisee, not quite. What I really want is to do two things at once, bring most of the glory to Jesus with just a little bit left over for me. å
When I try to find out who I am, it’s the “if only” thoughts that clue me in. What’s missing in my life? What really could bring me satisfaction and happiness? Usually it’s not, “if only I could bring glory to the Lord.” It’s more like, “if only more people listened to me” or even “if only they asked me to preach.”
ReplyDeleteFor my “if only”s to come true, wouldn’t it take a smaller Jesus? When all the glory should come to him, how can there be anything left over for me? If that’s how my heart works, doesn’t that explain why covetousness is just idolatry (Colossians 3:5)? Not really more sophisticated, still ridiculous. God is God and you aren’t, is that it? No, it’s much better than that; it’s God is God and He loves you! He gives you all you need for life and godliness, especially when you don’t even know what you need.
ReplyDeleteWhile we hang in the waiting-room for Heaven, we can think about our job descriptions there. We don’t know the nuances, but up ahead it’s going to be worship and giving God the glory. Not harp-practice but heart-practice. That’s our goal in life when we get out of school here. Let’s do some prep now.
ReplyDeleteThe Lord’s Prayer is our model. Our Father, may your name be hallowed and glorified. Father, we rejoice in your name and its identity, we come eagerly and quickly into your Presence, we know how welcome we are, your children. Now we’re beginning to love the praise you deserve, more each day. Along with the practiced angels and archangels, we welcome your call to the chorus, and yearn to sing better and better now and up ahead, for you and for the archangels.
ReplyDeleteIt’s partly about chopping down the foolish things we idolize, we know that. But it’s much more learning what to put in the place in our heart that you have made just for that. Help us Lord, read and absorb and repeat all the praise we hear in your word.
ReplyDeleteWho put Psalms in with the New Testament? Good move. We can take our time going through all those praises and internalize them. The end-game in Revelation works too, praise and glory and worship, world without end.
ReplyDeleteWe can help each other. We can tell each other about those sides of the Lord’s goodness that we just learned, and how they fit our lives so well, our lives as we desire them to be. Preachers, don’t cut to the “imperatives” so fast, show us how to linger with those blessed “indicatives,” as we expand together our lives of praise.
ReplyDelete“More about Jesus would I know, more, more about Jesus,” a good start. Let us go on to “more about Jesus would I praise, more and more and more, more about his Father who sent him, more, more about the Spirit, who brings him into my heart.”
ReplyDeleteDon’t I still covet that Porsche? That’s silly, my reflexes now go to 50 mph, 140 is long gone. As the Lord in his glory shines brighter and brighter in my heart, old Porsche gets fuzzier and fuzzier. Not totally though—come quickly Lord Jesus!
ReplyDeleteD. Clair Davis
'Don’t I still covet that Porsche? That’s silly, my reflexes now go to 50 mph, 140 is long gone.'
ReplyDeleteLol...
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm
ReplyDeleteAfter they've seen Paree?
That one is WW1 vintage but it's still a very lively question. Now it goes, how can we keep the kids in church after they've gone off to college? They might come back in their 30's when they finally get married, but why would they? Cultural change up against the very old gospel, that's where the action is. The world does change, no doubt about it. I can remember when my farmer father moved from mules to tractor. I can't talk and do all that stuff on the phone at the same time the way those kids can.
Harvie Conn was my colleague and friend; he taught us about contextualizing the message, and that we needed to look at our own cultural accretions and de-contextualize them away. To do missions you have to do that, but you also learn what you really deep-down think of Jesus, after you filter out your cultural stuff. Harvie showed Tim Keller the way to New York City, where everything is different and faster. My Old Testament colleagues were so skilled at that, showing us how those old cultures shaped the way the gospel was said, and how to find the core of it all; thank you again, Meredith Kline, Ray Dillard, Al Groves, Tremper Longman, Doug Green and Mike Kelly!
ReplyDeleteWe take that for granted by now. As we talk to that rising generation (are we the setting?) we finally learn how hard we have to listen to them before we talk (John Leonard's Get Real). But shouldn't those rising types be working hard too, to figure out us patriarchs and matriarchs? God’s commandment takes us there, to "honor your father and your mother." I looked over the Larger Catechism to see what it says about cross-generational honor, and it let me down. It jumps too quickly to sweeping generalizations, about "superiors" and "inferior s" and "equals,” but not about Mom and Dad. Let’s see what we can do ourselves.
ReplyDeleteDo you know who your father is? Brush up with John 20:17-18: Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. ’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.
In the Lord's Prayer we say "our Father" together, but this goes further; our Father is Jesus' Father! Jesus is at our side as we honor his and our Father! All that fatherly love and care that the Father gave his Beloved Son is what he gives us too, and with Jesus we praise him for it, with all our hearts.
ReplyDeleteThere are folks who say God is our Mother too, but I can't find that in the Bible. But it compares womanly care with the Lord's own love, as in Isaiah 49: 15,
"Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you."
and then there’s what Jesus says in Luke 13:34, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!"
Jesus is not my Mother, but isn't he my Hen? and aren't we all her/his chicks? Whatever the best answer is, the Lord chooses to show us himself and his love for us in the closest human way of parent to child. John 17 especially opens my eyes:
ReplyDelete"When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour as come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.
I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves."
ReplyDelete“Honor" is about the same as “glorify.” The Father gave the Son a task, and he did it, giving honor to the Father. It's even bigger than that: the Father gave the Son more than a job, but a people to enjoy the Father's blessing. The Son cared for that people, and now he gives them to the Father. The Son has had joy in doing his Father's work, and now his people will share that joy. All happens as the Son prays for his Father to do it.
ReplyDeleteThere it is: profound, godly reality, but the Lord gives us weaklings lives that mirror even all that. We are called to be the Lord's people and to show him to the world as children of the Father, by giving honor to our own "earthly" father and mother. How?
Mark Twain said, "When I was a boy of 14 my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man learned in 7 years." Does that help with the generation gap? As we grow up we learn what it's like to be grown up. As we keep on loving our own children who are not always easy to love, we finally learn what it was like for our own father and mother. As we grow up in faith, we come to marvel at the enduring love of our Father. When we see ourselves as "wretched man" then our hearts overflow with "thanks be to God!"
I am a doctor of theology and my father was an eighth-grade dropout—how can I honor him, even now? I wish I knew more, but there is much I do know. He was the church treasurer, and when the elders wanted their pastor to move on, they told him to stop paying him—and he refused. He wasn’t a leader and I have no idea how he could do that, but he did and I honor his integrity. He struggled for years with terrible asthma, but I never heard him complain, especially not against God. He ended his day on his knees at the side of his bed, always. When the church told me I was going to the wrong seminary, he worked to be my advocate, a job way over his head. I honor you, father Harvey. You showed me my heavenly Father.
My mother had three sisters and their mother lived with them, off in Wisconsin. She kept at it to love them and wrote them so many letters, though she had become an outsider. When my wedding was called off at the last minute, she showed me how the ex-bride had no sense of humor while I did. She knew me better than I knew myself, of course! I honor you, mother Kathryne. You too showed me our Lord.
ReplyDeleteI wish I’d told them that more clearly. “Early and often,” now I believe is God’s call to us all. We hear to “bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” in all those baptisms—wouldn’t that be a good place to put in, if that’s what’s your father and mother are doing in your life, just get with it with your honoring?
The generation gap is still there and our church is still aging. Could it be that the Catechism helps after all, and that we should be showing how God works in many other ways similar to children honoring parents? Shouldn’t we tell those kids how they show us Jesus? That we honor them for doing that? Wouldn’t that help them see the gospel of Jesus as joy, not as burden? Would that help bring them back?
Oh, this is the commandment “with promise,” that we will long dwell in the land (long means his love that endures forever). Now that’s not Palestine or Iowa but the whole world, the Garden of Eden transplanted everywhere, up to Heaven too. The Lord blesses us so much all of the time, so why does he single out this honoring father and mother thing, do you think? Is it because that there we see so clearly our Savior Jesus honoring his Father, and sharing his joy with us? Our Lord is the God of promise, and he commits himself that we will know and love him as well as he knows and loves us—now that’s as good as it gets, for time and for eternity.
D. Clair Davis