The Prince of Preachers

I came across this quote by Charles Spurgeon in Boice's commentary on Amos today. No wonder Spurgeon is called, "The Prince of Preachers."

"He that trusts in his own works leans upon a broken reed. As well attempt to cross the storm-tossed ocean upon a child's paper boat, or mount to the heaven of God in the philosopher's balloon, -- as well attempt to put out the fire of a blazing prairie by carrying in your hand a little water scooped from the neighboring stream, as hope by any means to get ride of thine own iniquities by doing better, or of thy past sins by future holiness. I tell thee, man, thy prayers, thine alms-giving, thy fastings, thy repentings, thy church-goings, thy chapel-goings, are all as nothing in the eye of him who demands perfect obedience, and will never accept anything short of perfect righeousness from man. Away, away, away with these gaudy rags! They will be unraveled ere long; thou mayest toil at the loom night and day, but thy work shall be rent in pieces and not a shred shall be left, for thou art spinning nothing but a spider's web which Justice shall tear in pieces, and like Adam, whose fig-leaves could never cover him, thou shalt cry before God, 'I knew that I was naked , and I hid myself.' Woe, then, to those that are at ease in Zion."

Birthday Festivities

[The students, Sarah, and myself.]

Wednesday night the middle school students surprised me with a big birthday bash at youth group. I went walking back to the room when it was time to start and found that all the lights were off and then they flipped on the lights and sang "Happy Birthday." A bunch of the students had made cards for me and there were even some balloons, a couple gifts, and two jumbo birthday cards that all the students signed. Oh ya, and we had cupcakes. With sprinkles on top. Here are a bunch of pictures.

[The two jumbo birthday cards.]

[Thank you, Patrick, for picking out such masculine balloons for my party.]

[Some of my awesome cards included brown elephants, ducks,

Hoops and YoYo, homemade cards, encouraging letters,

and just plain funny cards that I'm not sure I'll ever understand

i.e. "Happy 292nd birthday!"]

[This drawing of a lollipop wielding Easter bunny

would fall under the category of "cards I'll never understand."

Thanks, Maclane.]

[This birthday poster was made by Sarah using pictures

her sister, Rachel, had taken over the past 8 months.]

[Still more awesome cards from the students.

Hopefully I didn't miss any in my pictures.]

[These are more cards I have gotten from friends and family.]

[This was a gift from Hannah and Kayla. They blitzed me

hard time with duck paraphernalia. As you can see, they

provided What (my pet duck) with a few friends.

[Lastly, this is a pic of Paige, me, and Sarah (not the Sarah who made me the awesome orange poster). Whist I was carrying the bouquet of balloons back to my office, one of the middle school students smashed a cupcake in my face. Since both of my hands were full, I wasn't able to defend myself and was left holding the cupcake in my mouth. Sarah took advantage of my precarious plight and snapped a photo. I stole the photo off her Facebook.]

Much of Thursday and Friday was spent with a committee planning the upcoming Basic summer mission trip that I'll be able to be a part of, and last night I hung out with a couple who helps lead the middle school.

This morning I helped with Clothing Closet (a big clothing giveaway put on by Cornerstone to help needy families in the community) and afterwards went out with some friends for a belated birthday celebration since we couldn't go out during the week. I'll post more about this in the next couple days. There will be plenty of pics, I assure you.

Tomorrow afternoon a bunch of students and I are getting together at Kayla's house to watch "Twilight." Pray for me, I don't do well with chick flicks. Also, we are having a SNAC at the McGoldrick's house after small groups.

Failure to Blog

Currently 5:54 a.m. Also, currently cold and rainy outside.

For sake of having a picture to post, this is me pouring the milk for my Froot Loops. Yes, I'm typing this while at the breakfast table because there isn't much else to do while I eat. Feel free to pour yourself a bowl of cereal while you read this.

It was brought to my attention in the recent past that I have been failing to update my blog as often. I could list my excuses as to the reasons for this, but I will withhold them at this time and simply do my best to make up for lost blogs.

Last Friday night was a gym night with all the Middle School students. We had fun playing basketball, soccer, and dodgeball.

Saturday night I went with a group of students to see Jordan and Jessa in concert at another church in town. The students and I ended up sitting at "the leper table" that was clear up in the front and center. It was slightly uncomfortable knowing that no one could look at the stage without first seeing us at the table, but we had a great time regardless. It amazes me the way the students were able to entertain themselves at the table with just 4 plastic spoons and a highlighter.

Sunday, Jordan and Jessa did a concert here at Cornerstone. Here are a couple pictures I took:

Monday was a full day at the office and then I, along with the pastoral intern, Bill, went over to the Brough's house for dinner. Brien Brough is the Children's Ministries Director at Cornerstone. Brien and his wife, Dawn, have three kids and one in oven due May 20th (approximately). He also provides me with coffee from his office on those mornings when my brain just won't kick into gear.

Yesterday was my birthday, and it was pretty awesome. I got a number of cool cards, upwards of a hundred Happy Birthday wishes on Facebook, some cool emails from students, and I even got to go to Red Robin for the first time for lunch. Thanks Eric. I had the Red Robin Whiskey River BBQ Burger.

Yesterday afternoon I went to Mo-Mo's volleyball game. She did a great job even though her team lost. She even got a few of her jump serves in - which I must say is rather impressive for a Junior Higher.

Well, breakfast time is over and I must go start my day. Thanks for having breakfast with me this morning.

Junk Drawer of a Post

Location: Starbucks at Partridge Creek

Clothing: Blue jeans, gray t-shirt, brown sport coat

Tunes: Churchill

Here I sit drinking my Venti Decaf Iced Caramel Macchiato while listening to sweet tunes and trying not to habitually glance up at each person who walks by me. Anyone else have that problem? I also suffer from this problem when I'm sitting at a red light and a car pulls up next to me. I just have to look! I can't help it.

I'm drinking...Jordan just showed up. I'll finish this later.

It's later, as in instead of Thursday afternoon at 1:30 it's Friday night at 10:48.

We had a Middle School gym night tonight. Students played basketball, volleyball, soccer, and dodgeball. Most importantly I am proud to announce that there were no significant injuries.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to wake up at a decent hour (7:00-8:00), go to the gym, go to the bank, watch some March Madness, work on some sermon prep for the Good Friday service (I need to plan ahead as I know these next few weeks will be busy as a Frogger highway -- notice the now relevant image above), and then I'm gonna pick up a few students and head out to Jordan and Jessa's coffee house gig.

Oh ya, and I want to watch last week's episode of "Kings." From what I heard, it's a modern day retelling of the story of King David. It involves Goliath Tanks and such. Supposedly the show was pretty cool.

Sunday morning I'll be teaching on the imago Dei and I'm super pumped about it. It will no doubt spill over into Wednesday night because it is such a large topic, but I'm not in a hurry so it's ok. I'd rather have the students understand the topic than simply finish for the sake of finishing. Wednesday night we walked verse by verse through Genesis 1 doing our best to discover the authorial intent of the passage. I was trying to show the students how Genesis 1 was not originally meant to be an anti-Darwin manual. I really enjoyed teaching the material so hopefully the students enjoyed hearing and hopefully learning it.

Amos Had it Rough

I started reading through and studying the book of Amos today using a commentary given to me for Christmas by a friend from Cornerstone. Day One of the study was fascinating. Here are some thoughts.

The Old Testament prophet Amos was a simple, lowly shepherd when God called him into full time prophetic ministry. He was called, in part, to preach to Judah, a very wealthy nation who was enjoying financial and territorial abundance. In the midst of this surplus, the poor were being trampled on by the rich and religion (in a good sense) was turning into ritual as the people of Judah decided to ignore the command of God to only offer sacrifices in Jerusalem and chose instead to worship in places that were more travel friendly and politically conducive.

I wish I could go into more historical detail but I don't have the time, so I will get to the point. Amos is called to preach repentance and judgment to these people and in 7:10-13 he meets the following warm reception from a church guy named Amaziah: his message is misrepresented before the king, he is advised that to return home and preach there will be a better decision for him socially and financially, and he is told that he's in the king's territory and he should remember who's boss.

Ouch.

Amos then has the joy of speaking these words (7:15-17) of warmth and comfort to the man who has opposed him: I was minding my own business being a farmer and shepherd and then God called me to preach this message to you and since you have rejected it, your wife is going to leave you and become a city prostitute, your kids are going to be murdered, you're going to lose all your land, you yourself will die in a foreign nation, and Israel is going to be taken captive.

Somehow the glorious, cool, trendy calling to full time ministry took on a whole new feel.

* Is there a seminary class on, "How to tell a guy, 'Your wife is going to leave you and become a prostitute?'"

Powerful Story of Grace and Forgiveness

Watch CBS Videos Online

The whole video is worth watching, but around the 10 min. 45 sec. mark it gets really good.

**The video is not graphic, but it does deal with the crime of rape so if you are a student and are viewing this, I recommend that you at least give your parents a heads up.

Here is Part 2. It is really interesting from a sociological standpoint and then the end gives a continuation of the super cool ending to the story from Part 1.


Watch CBS Videos Online

The Last Two Weeks...Give or Take a Couple Days

Time for an update.

Since I was last spotted watching strangers at Starbucks, there have been a few happenings.

A week and a half ago, on a Friday night, we had a middle school gym night. Here is just a sampling of the pictures that were taken with my camera by a couple students before the battery died:

[Susanna's feet]

[I think I'm gonna hang this one on my wall.]

[It can hang right next to this one.]

Then the next day I hung out with Devin and we went to Teddy's basketball game and then played video games before heading out to go to Parker and Paige's soccer games. Rats, I just remembered Paige was gonna email me a picture I took with her camera but she never did. Oh well, here is a pic or two from my camera:

[That's Paige in the red. The green part is the field.]

[Hopefully Parker and I are good enough friends that
he won't hate me for posting this. This was taken at McDonalds.]

Then on Wednesday night of last week, E.J. Swanson from Lake Ann Camp was here and spoke to the middle school students. We also absorbed the 6th graders and a few Sr. Highers for the evening. I have a picture to prove it:

[Proof.]

Sunday's Message

On Sunday, Pastor Bob preached a message entitled "The Image of God in the Call to Parent," from Deuteronomy 6:1-9. I wanted to pass on a few quotes (as accurately as I was able to write them down) from and comments concerning the message.

Here was the basic outline of the message with my favorite quotes included:

Intro

"For the first time in 70 years, this next generation but have to live in smaller houses than their parents did, not have as nice of stuff, and be worse off financially than their parents."

Cultural Assumption #1 - Kids are born innocent

"This is why parenting today means to let your kid direct himself. "

(following a list of things usually considered to be bad influences on kids that parents try to keep away from their kid at all costs) "Your kid is a bad influence on himself!"

"Many parents say, 'We can't impose our beliefs on our kids,' that is unless we're speaking about global warming or politics."

Cultural Assumption #2 - Kids are smarter than their parents.

- "as seen on pretty much every TV show today"

Cultural Assumptions #3 - Boys and Girls are the same

"Boys and girls are not the same! Males were created in the image of God and females were created in the image of God and each reflect that image uniquely!"

- at risk of misquoting Pastor Bob, I will summarize what I remember him saying on this point and hope that I represent his thoughts accurately. Pastor Bob talked about one way that culture is feminizing boys is by not keeping score in competition, "because we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings and because 'everybody is a winner.'" Boys are wired to conquer and build and compete! "Give a boy a hammer and the whole world becomes a nail." You compete to win! Why else would you play?

Conclusion

"God's dream for your kid is for him/her to look just like Jesus."

--
Lastly, a quote that wasn't a part of the parenting message but that Pastor Bob mentioned several times on Sunday regarding someone who has repented of sin:

"Our job, as the church, is to put the winds of grace in his sails of repentance."