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Camping at a New Place

Today we head out for a much needed week off. I don't know what it was about this summer, but I have been very close to burn out a few times. Perhaps it is the emotions of the second miscarriage we have went through as a couple along with various concerns of the church, but I am completely done. I am really looking forward to getting away for a while, and I hope it will help recharge my emotional and spiritual energy. We will be camping at Glen Rouge Campground. It is a campground in Toronto. After doing some asking around, it seemed like it would be nice, and our hope is to do some day tripping in Toronto (CNE, visit friends, maybe the zoo and/or a museum) so its location is excellent as it is walking distance to the Toronto Bus system. Now hopefully, we did not make the wrong choice. I will tell you when we return.

Canadian Funded Media Twists Words of Prime Minister

I found this following video linked from Grey In Black and White, and it is yet another example of the problem with media today and how easily they can edit what is said to spin it to mean what they want, not what really happened. As a former film student, I have always been facinated by how editing of video and how the clips are put together can completely change the message being given. Watch and learn how important it is to think carefully about what it being presented in the news. http://www.youtube.com/v/bDw5a0_iFBk

Eucharistic Theology

No surprise here. Ok, I was surprised that it called me a Nestorian, but then the questions don't allow for the permanent union of Christ's two natures, while at the same time recognizing that his body is human and thus limited as to time and space while in his divinity he is ubiquitous. Edit: I removed the Nestorian part. (HT: Ars Theologica )

You scored as Calvin. You are John Calvin. You believe only those who have faith are united to Christ, who is present spiritually, yet you call this "Real." Calvin 100% Zwingli 94% Luther 13% Catholic 0% Unitarian 0% Eucharistic theology created with QuizFarm.com

Please Pray

Saturday we received a call from Annette's mom, that one of her second cousins died in a farm accident, he was only 12 years old. For more information look here and here. Prayers for that family as they go through this difficult time would be appreciated. The funeral is on Wednesday.

Browser Stats

"I was looking a the visitor stats on my blog, and one of them is what browsers people are using. I find it very interesting that 52% of the people who view my blog are using Firefox. I actually expected that the majority would be Internet Explorer, but I guess the word is getting out on how nice Firefox is. Having said that, these values are probably influenced by my advocating the use of Firefox to my friends and relatives who probably make up much of the readership on my blog.
Percent Browser Name Version
52 52.00% Firefox 1.5.0
36 36.00% MSIE 6.0
10 10.00% Safari 1.2
1 1.00% MSIE 7.0
1 1.00% Konqueror 3.4"

1 Corinthians 1:4-9

1 Corinthians 1:4-9 (ESV) Thanksgiving 4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, 5 that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— 6 even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— 7 so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8 who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. As is found in the beginning of virtually all Paul's letter, here following the opening greeting we find a section of thanksgiving. In light of the problems that will be found in the Corinthian church in the rest of this letter, it may see surprising how thankful Paul was. He writes that he gives, "thanks to God always" for them. In spite of the sin that is allowed to run rampant in that church, the divisions between its members over incorrect things, their questioning of Paul's apostolic authority, and several other things, Paul still thanks God for them, not just sometimes, but always. Notice however, that Paul's thanksgiving to God for them is based firmly in what God has done in the Corinthians. It is because of the gifts of grace given by God in Jesus Christ to them, that Paul is able to thank God for them. For, that grace of God in Christ given to them, is a confirmation of the testimony about Christ that they have received. It is evidence that God is working in them and through them to make them more and more his people. Paul first pointed to the fact that God in his gifts to them enriches them in all ways, however, there are specific gifts in mind here as well. The grace that God has given in Christ is that he had enriched the Corinthians in Christ, "in all speech and all knowledge." The first enrichment is in all speech or logos. Although most English translations translate this as "speech," as Gordon Fee points out in his commentary, this word is used throughout 1 Corinthians in the context of spiritual utterance. At the very least the speech here is not merely the controlled tongue that James speaks of in James 1:26, but also has something to do with words of edification that teach spiritual truths. This is something that Paul will return to in the letter The second specific gifts is that of knowledge or gnosis. Again this is probably speaking of knowledge given by the Spirit of God, and again Paul will return to it in this letter. In both cases, although Paul is thankful to God for the Corinthians for these gifts, they are also things that are part of the problem in Corinth. These gifts that Paul repeatedly points out here are given in Christ, had become points of pride and stumbling in the Corinthian church. In spite of that, Paul is still thankful to God for them. That catches me short, for I wonder how often am I thankful to God for the people of God I know or minister to when they take the gifts they have in Christ, and misuse them, making them points of pride or division? Yet, here we see Paul was thankful for them. Yes, he will go on and correct the abuses, but he does not let that abuse remove the great truth that these people are God's people in Christ. That in Christ they have been given everything they need, even though they don't always use it the way they should. They too are people who are looking and waiting for the return of Christ. Paul then ends pointing out that since the grace of God was given to them in Christ and that they had been enriched in every way in Christ, that it is he who did this who will also keep them strong to the end so they will be blameless on the day of our Lord. There were problems in the Corinthian church, but Paul knows that God will not abandon his people. Those things need to be cleaned up, but God who gave the gifts in Christ, will also work in them to make them blameless. "God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord." Paul has such confidence in the effective working of God in his people, the he reminds the Corinthians that God is faithful. If he has done what he has done among them in his Son Jesus Christ, he will not leave them. No he will strengthen them. Again, this is a reminder I need. Often it seems that in my own life and ministry I am weak and unable to do the task set before me. While some of that is incorrect expectations both from myself and my congregation, I believe most of it is my own weakness that requires God's strengthening to keep me blameless. The reminder of God's faithfulness to complete what he has started, encourages me in those times when I am wondering if I can go on, or if my ministry is of any use at all. It strengthens me to know that when I am weak and helpless, God will strengthen me.

1 Corinthians 1:1-3

1 Corinthians 1:1-3 (ESV) Greeting 1 Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, 2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I am hoping to try something a little different in my personal Bible study and blog. For the last several years I have been reading through my Bible in it entirety using various Bible reading plans. I have found that to be of great value to me, but often I would like to take some more time on a specific book in the Bible and spend time considering and meditating on it in depth. So after some consideration, I thought I might do that with 1 Corinthians. I considered doing Acts, but for some reason 1 Corinthians seems more appropriate. With that in mind, I hope to post my thoughts on various passages as I work my way through. Whether you find them helpful or not, or even insightful at all, I will try to post them. As I considered these opening verses in this letter, the first thing that struck me was in verse 2 the phrase, "to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints" What struck me was the repeated use of words that point to holiness. Those who are sanctified are those who are set aside as holy to God. The saints are the holy ones. As I considered what I know of the Corinthian situation--the well known wickedness of the city of Corinth itself, the sin in the congregation of the Corinthians seen in things like the sexually immorality of a man having his father's wife, the divisions among the congregation with some following Paul, some Apollos, some Cepheus, and things like that--this reminder of the calling of the people to be holy ones and their being sanctified in Christ seems very appropriate. The Corinthians needed that reminder that holiness is basic to the call and working of God in their life in Christ. In today's world, where wickedness is found on all sides, where sex is flaunted and used to sell, where coveting is encouraged by the advertising industry to sell more product, where people seek to design their own definitions of what is right and wrong, where millions of unborn babies are put to death, and the list goes on; this word is needed. I need it, because I can very easily start to forget the importance of holiness. Not forgetting in an intellectual manner, but in a practical one. I need to be encouraged by these words to realize that God's working in me in Christ is to sanctify me and call me to be a holy one, so that I seek to live that calling in my day to day life, fleeing from temptation and striving to live as God has called me in love for him. Since it is God who calls me and all those who are his to this, I think that implies that for us to live it out can only be done by his enabling. In ourselves we do not have what is needed, but in Christ we are sanctified. So, for us to live sanctified lives requires living in Christ every day, abiding in him as he called us to do. It is only in him and from him that the reality of this will ever work its way out in the day to day living of life as one called to be a saint.

A Rather Interesting Use of Treadmills.

Found this linked at Challais and thought it was a rather interesting use of treadmills http://www.youtube.com/v/pv5zWaTEVkI

Looks Like We Have Some Work To Do

I found this as I was browsing through some other blogs (HT: Ian Clary). As a parent who is hoping to home school our child, this approach intrigues me. It also makes me realize that I should have learned Latin long ago, and better start learning it now :) http://www.youtube.com/v/2ObBhU7XT-U

Israel and Lebanon

As I have watched thing progress in that horrible situation in the Middle East, I keep wondering how I should respond. My views on Israel as well stated in this open statement. I also believe Israel has some right and responsibility to protect its citizens from terrorists. On the other side we find Hezbollah and their armament and terrorist activity. I in no way want to seem to endorse what they do. Yet, at the same time it seems Israel is not merely attacking Hezbollah, but also Lebanon and the citizens who have nothing to do with the terrorism. As I considered it, and listened to the many people raking Israel over the coals for what they are doing, I wondered how would people here respond? I know this is not a likely scenario, but imagine if you will that a terrorist organization against Canada was located in the US. They were building up arms there, and at the same time were supporting various terrorist activities in Canada. They also, from those arms they have built up, shot rockets across the border at Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Hamilton, Windsor and various other cities. If that were going on, how long would most Canadians wait before they started to demand that our government do something? I highly doubt it would be very long, and I highly doubt that the response would be to demand a ceasefire. I guess the same goes for Hezbollah. If someone came in and made a new country in land that our fore bearers had lived on for generations, I am sure we would be less than impressed. Being dispossessed and moved off as has happened there would certainly be something that would also raise our anger. It is things like that which lie behind what they do. Now don't misunderstand me here. I don't think either side is in the right. Both have done things that are reprehensible. Yet, into that situation we have these political pundits who say we should call for a ceasefire. All well and good, but at the same time it is sort of pie in the sky. Hezbollah will not be satisfied until Israel is gone, and Israel will not be satisfied until they believe Hezbollah is sufficiently disarmed. Neither side is being "measured" in what they do, and trying to get into their minds a little makes me wonder if we in our comfortable, secure homes can understand what is going on there. I know I can't. At that same time I know that any ceasefire will only be putting off of hostilities until one side or the other decides that they don't feel secure or effective any longer. Finally, all this reminds me, that the only lasting peace is one in which the walls of division are removed with the two people becoming one people. That will only happen when people are truly united in Christ, so my prayer is that in this situation, people who truly follow Christ will show that he is the Prince of peace who breaks down the wall of division to build one new people to the praise and glory of God.

Chicken pox

It had to happen sooner or later, but Justin has chicken pox. Annette noticed the first spot yesterday, and today he has several more on his back. She took him in to see the doctor, and with one look he said, "Yup, its chick pox." So now we have a little boy who will start to get very itchy. I hope he doesn't get it as bad as I did. Of course I was 25 at the time, but I was very sick with a high fever. It was miserable, and frankly the itching was the least of my concerns when I had them. At least this is now out of the way for him.

It Must Be All The Robert Ludlum Novels I Have Been Reading

Hit Counter

Because I wonder how many people actually view my blog, I thought I would add a web-counter. After a little research I discovered how to do it, and there it is at the top of the page. It was easier than I thought it would be, and now I will know if people are reading, or at least how many :)

Not The Vacation We Wanted

Today we arrived home from our week off. The weather was good, all be it, hot. The camping was lots of fun for Justin with lots of things to discover and get really dirty doing it. However, for myself and Annette, it was not what we had hoped for. Although we had not told anyone (some had guessed) Annette was pregnant. This was her third pregnancy, the first ended in a miscarriage, and the second in our wonderful boy Justin. We hoped that this would be the time for a brother or sister for Justin as we are now both in our 40's (I just turned 40 on Sunday), but that was not what was in the providence of God. On Monday the 10th, Annette told me she was spotting, and by the middle of the week we had lost the baby. Although it was only 2-3 months into the pregnancy, the loss is no less. Annette picked the name Angelina for our unborn baby. Rather than being restful, this vacation turned into a very tiring emotional stretch that left both of us drained. It was good to be together through this, and not have to work. I worked the last time and paid for it in being completely drained emotionally and from that physically for months afterward. This time I had the time to work through things a little, but it was not the vacation either of us wanted.

At Least Some of my Hardware is Working Again

Although my video editing computer is still off-line (pretty much sure it is an overheated and cooked CPU) I have fixed the other piece of hardware that has been causing me problems, that is, my laser printer. It is a Samsung ML-1210 and has served printing sermons, agendas, letters, and a whole host of work related printing for the last 4-5 years. However, recently it has had problems feeding the printer. After some research I found that the paper feed wheel tends to dry up and get glazed over, so since the printer had stopped feeding paper at all, I decided to take it apart. It was actually quite easy to do. I opened it up, took out the paper feed wheel out and used some sandpaper to remove the glazing. Boy was it glazed and cracked. Then I cleaned the rubber wheel up with some cleaner, and put everything together. Other than one piece that I cannot figure out where it goes (a solid rubber cylinder that seemed to have no mounting point that fell off in my hand when I removed one of the parts) it is all back together, and everything works. It feeds paper again and prints just fine. Now I can print my sermons out on the printer I prefer. I am glad God has given me the ability to do things like this.

My Boy At One

It has been a year (a year and day to be exact) since Justin was born. I find that hard to believe. It certainly doesn't seem like a year, but it seems each day Justin gets bigger and bigger. He is starting to walk. I have seen him walk from one item of furniture to another in the living room, about five or six steps; and Annette has seen him walk across the kitchen. He will stand up on his own now without holding on to any furniture, and stand there waving whatever toy he happens to have in his hand. Come Saturday we will be celebrating his birthday, but to celebrate the day, here is a picture taken yesterday, his birthday, as he was eating lunch.

Video Computer Died

Well today we had to go out and run some errands. While we were out I thought I would download the video for our TV broadcast on to the computer we use for our editing. I started it up, and off we went. When we arrived back, the computer screen was blank and the computer was making a weird noise. I turned it off and back on again, and the same thing happened. So I opened it up and the problem became very apparent, the cpu cooling fan had stopped so the Athlon XP 2100 processor is now toast (sort of literally.) It is totally burned out. That means at the moment we don't have a video editing computer, which is a problem since we have a broadcast coming up this Sunday. After some thinking, I decided to take out the hard drive that has the raw video on it and put it on another much slower computer on our home network. That would allow me to copy the video file (if it was downloaded before the computer died) to my laptop (the only other fast computer we have which has a DVD writer) and do my editing on it. I did that, and after some trouble found that the video file was there. Now to copy a 16 Gigabyte file over a network connection. This is not a fast process. It will work for now, but I think I need to find a way to get my video computer back up and running. I figure since AMD has stopped making the Athlon XP processors a long time back, to do so will probably require purchasing a new motherboard, processor and ram (my current machine used SDRAM not the DDR ram that most current motherboards use.) Best case situation is probably about $200 before taxes. If editing works well on the laptop I could go a much less expensive route and purchase a firewire card for it. That would allow me to do all my editing on the laptop from taking the digital video off the tape to writing it back to DVD or videotape. Cost wise, the second option is much preferable. I guess I have some decisions to make.

RCA lack of stand on abortion

I once again read through the report of the commission on theology to the GS of 1984 entitled, "Moral and Spiritual Issued Raise by the Practice of Abortion." As I read it, I found I was simply made angry at its double speak. While it has a strong point, speaking the the need of strong covenant community, it does not actually address the moral issues of abortion. Instead as it draws to a close it states the following, Communally acceptable guidelines for the option of abortion will be available in such cases as early-teen pregnancies, incest, rape, life-threatening or health-threatening circumstances for the mother, or the high probability of a seriously defective child. In a covenantal community, however, many of these situations which otherwise would encourage abortion, should be less prevalent. The community will participate in, and accept responsibility for, birth decisions and abortion decisions if any. There will be frequent community experience of common prayer and common forgiveness. As I read that, and re-read that, I realized that our official statement to the world is that we see the real possibility of abortion for a whole host of reasons including a "high probability of a seriously defective child." All this flies in the face of the fact that all human beings are in the image and likeness of God, even those who has sever handicaps. Not to mention the number of times that I have had a couple come to me with the doctor saying that the ultrasound showed their baby would have a serious defect, only to have a healthy baby born. Not to mention those who have been born with a serious physical or mental problem, who are some of the most amazing babies that testify to the grace of God in the lives of his people. Such a stand, or lack of it, in my mind is yet another place were we have decided to abandon following our Lord and trusting his providence so that we can compromise with the world's view of things.

Started Pod-casting

In an attempt to keep up with technology, I have started to pod-cast the messages of our Sunday services. The podcasts are still in the formative stage, and will probably be plagued by problems as I work to incorporate all the aspects of a pod-cast to the feed. If you are interested check out Messages From Bethel Exeter