I must follow, if I can

I don't know Matt Hall. But my buddy Dave referred me to his article about the Desiring God conference at John Piper's church last fall. After reading Matt's article, I went to the conference website and downloaded John Piper's first session to my mp3 player and listened to it like 5 times. It was so good. The message totally kicked my butt! It was something I really needed to hear, and I wish somebody had prescribed it for me earlier.

I am doubly indebted to both Dave and Matt Hall for exposing me to this material, as well as for providing the inspiration I needed to get my own MovableType web app up and running!

This is what got the wheels cranking in my mind to write that article about Choosing God's Will:

God never coerces us. In one mood we wish He would make us do the thing, and in another mood we wish He would leave us alone. Whenever God's will is in the ascendant, all compulsion is gone. When we choose deliberately to obey Him, then He will tax the remotest star and the last grain of sand to assist us with all His almighty power. (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, Dec. 1)

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." - 1 Jn 1:5-10 (ESV)

There is an interesting paradox in the Gospel. I was thinking about the paradox last night, and then I opened my Bible to 1 John and saw it right there. The paradox is that you have to not be sinful: yet, you have to admit that you're sinful. If you're sinful, you can't be in His presence: but if you say you're not sinful, you're lying. You have to be good: but you have to admit that you're bad.

I rented Luther this weekend and watched it twice. The opening credits proudly tout the name of the Lutheran bank that bankrolled the film (which I thought was kind of weird... you never see B of A or Wells Fargo logos come up with the studio logos at the beginning of a movie). The editing is poor and most of the actors have strange unidentifiable accents and deliver their lines in an awkward manner, with pauses in the wrong places (which is why I had to watch it twice and constantly rewind and use subtitles in order to catch much of the dialogue). And there are some terrible overdubs where the actors on film are clearly not saying anything remotely close to what you hear out of your speakers.

Also, the movie made it look like Luther died young, but he actually lived to the age of 62, which was a pretty descent lifespan in the 16th century. Furthermore, many people are familiar with what Luther actually looked like, because several portraits are in existence, and he was definitely much more portly than the young Joseph Fiennes. I don't understand why Renée Zellweger gains 30 pounds to play Bridget Jones and Martin Short dons a fat suit for Primetime Glick, but Joseph Fiennes won't do so much as stick a pillow under his shirt and put cotton balls in his cheeks.

In his essay, "Xmas and Christmas," C.S. Lewis impersonates a Roman historian analyzing British culture, and he describes two distinct winter festivals that occur at the same time, yet which have two different themes that are not related to one another at all. One is pagan and the other is Christian. One involves a mad rush in which people exhaust themselves in the marketplace, and the other involves reverent worship.

I was saddened while reading about the Fourth Crusade yesterday. Crusaders were forced by Venetian extortionists to sack Christian lands like Zara and Constantinople. They never even went to the Holy Land. Pope Innocent said Satan was behind the whole thing. Well, yeah! In his wrap-up to the chapter on the Crusades, Bruce Shelley writes, "Christianity's highest satisfactions are not guaranteed by possession of special places, and the sword is never God's way to extend Christ's church" (Church History in Plain Language, 192). Amen! Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world. Christians in all eras and areas often forget this.

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Rom 3:23 (ESV, NIV, NKJV, etc.)

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But I'm not used to looking like I need His grace so much. I'm used to looking like I pretty much have it all together. But I don't. None of us do.

"All the pleading which deliberately refuses to recognize the Cross is of no avail; it is battering at another door than the one which Jesus has opened. I don't want to come that way, it is too humiliating to be received as a sinner." (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, Dec 8).

Good morning, welcome to reality!

Christians are so uncool. At least Rolling Stone thinks so. They were going to run a story about down & dirty street ministry on the Spanish island of Ibiza, but RS pulled the story, because apparently they're mad at Christians for getting Bush re-elected. In their response, the brothers and sisters at 24-7prayer.com said:

The good news is that 24-7 is now officially out of tune with the spirit of the age, (and Rolling Stone is about as Official as you can get on these things). THIS IS GREAT NEWS! It means that, while we are culturally present enough to be on the radar of mainstream interest, we remain culturally irrelevant enough to be considered alternative and subversive which is EXACTLY where we need to be. Culturally present but gloriously different, 'aliens in the world' as the apostle Peter put it. 'Out of sync with the American zeitgeist' according to Rolling Stone!

I've never seen anyone get so excited about getting cut from a magazine before... Praise the Lord!

(The irony of it is that if you go to Rolling Stone's website, one of the rotating Flash blurbs on the home page is a link to the video for U2's "Vertigo", the lyrics of which almost perfectly parallel the story about 24-7's mission in Ibiza that RS chose not to run.)

Did you know that U2's second album October was actually sold in "Bible bookstores"? (I just found out that Evanescence's second full-length album Fallen was actually intentionally distributed in the Christian market, too, until the band went and made a scene. Where have I been? That's okay, I don't like Evanescence anyway. Your sound and your music have to happen because it's what's inside you, not because it's what's trendy, marketable, and profitable. Not that I let the CD racks at the Christian bookstore dictate what I listen to...)

In a (11/14) New York Times interview before the new album's release, Bono said:

There's cathedrals and the alleyway in our music. I think the alleyway is usually on the way to the cathedral, where you can hear your own footsteps and you're slightly nervous and looking over your shoulder and wondering if there's somebody following you. And then you get there and you realize there was somebody following you: It's God.

If you ever get bored, you might try doing a search for U2 on ChristianityToday.com. It's a lot of fun. You'll find more than 200 hits, and right at the top is their review of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. There's Jesus all over that record.

The conductor of the Crystal Cathedral's unionized house orchestra killed himself at the church after a 9-hour standoff. (In the interest of full disclosure I have to mention that my grandparents go to the Crystal Cathedral, a fact which has embarrassed me for a long time.) The standoff began less than two hours before the scheduled start of their annual pageant, "The Glory of Christmas." The conductor, Johnnie Carl, had arranged the music for the show, but it was prerecorded, so it's not clear whether "the show must go on"...

Carl had expressed that not only was his job stressful, but there were also pressures just dealing with people around him. That's what happens when your religion is about slick performances rather than gospel authenticity. Pastor Robert Schuller said, "His music brought joy to the millions of viewers around the world who watch the Crystal Cathedral's 'Hour of Power' television program each week." I'd say what he brought wasn't true joy, but just the appearance of joy. Too bad he couldn't plug into the source and receive some of that joy for himself...

Tonight after the service I went into the church bookstore to look something up. Pastor Sam was talking about Colossians 1, where Paul says he's trying to "fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ." I remembered from John Piper's Desiring God that there's a parallel verse in Philippians 2:30 where it talks about Epaphroditus "filling up what is lacking" in the Philippians' service to Paul, and he does that by acting as a messenger. But, of course, I couldn't remember where this was, so I had to go in the bookstore to look it up in Zodhiates' Word Studies.

So I sat my Bible and my notebook and my pen on the little table in the bookstore, and while I was looking it up, I turned around and saw a guy thumbing through my precious Moleskine notebook. I said, "Hello! That's personal!" and grabbed it from him. He said, "Sorry, I didn't know. It was just sitting there..." I suppose he must have thought it was a decoration. But I opened it up, and some other guy had actually written in it! Maybe he thought it was a guestbook like my Mom keeps in her guest room for people to leave nice notes in.

Someone has suggested that I should expect someone to look through my stuff if I set it down in a bookstore. I disagree. If it were for sale, my Bible would be in a little Bible box like all the others. My notebook wouldn't be the only notebook in the store, they wouldn't both have my name on the first page, and they would both have price tags on them. Furthermore, would you not realize, once you see writing in it, that it's not a blank journal for sale? And if you thought it was for sale, why would you start writing in it yourself? And it's not that I'm being ungracious. I'm just taking the opportunity to rant and to vent. I'm being honest, which is often a rare quality in the church today. If you know me, you would know that I don't actually intend harm to these people.

If God engineers our circumstances, then we have no right to be frustrated!

To be faithful in every circumstance means that we have only one loyalty, and that is to our Lord....If we learn to worship God in the trying circumstances, He will alter them in two seconds when He chooses. (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, Dec. 18)

There is no such thing as coincidence. Everything happens for a reason, and I cannot change what happened. Maybe this guy was an angel and he had a message from the Lord for me. I don't know. But all that I have, all that I am, is the Lord's. He can do to me what He wills.

Okay, so he wasn't an angel. And it's a good thing, too, because this is part of what he wrote: "The life we live is not our own[,] for who's to say that we'll live to see tomorrow?" While it may be theologically correct, there's something a little foreboding about it when you're getting on a plane. Especially when the plane was delayed for two hours due to fog and then another two hours due to a "mechanical" (I know, mechanical is an adjective, and I didn't supply a noun, but neither did the announcer at the airport when he was telling us that the plane had a mechanical...), and you spent the whole weekend thinking about what Oswald Chambers said about believing that God engineers our circumstances.

"But does God cirumcise our engineers?" says my Dad (who's reading over my shoulder and holding my very cute youngest nephew Joseph).

He does engineer our circumstances! I wore my Delirious? trucker hat on Monday, so two young Christian guys who are going to the Bethel school of ministry in Redding came over and sat by me in the waiting area, and we had some really good talks during the 5 hours that we waited for our flight. They were a little more charismatic than the people I've been fellowshipping with at Calvary, but we shared common ground because of my experience of God's work in other places. The conversation centered around the idea that it's bad to bash your brothers and sisters, and how it's important to find balance through both having the Holy Spirit and being grounded in God's Word (one without the other gets you nowhere). It was a blessing meeting those guys, and I don't think I've ever experienced anything like that while traveling alone.

I'm studying a lot about the biblical Jacob and the practice of wrestling with God. But lately there's a big question I'm struggling with, and that is knowing when to go with the flow and trust that God in charge, and when to intervene because it depends on you.

Steve Stockman, in his book Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2, relates Jacob's story to Bono's. When I read over the passage a second time, I noticed another dimension to the story I had never grasped before. When Jacob was wrestling with God, he didn't know who he was at first. Just some guy who comes up and starts wrestling with him. "The mysterious agressor eventually was understood to be God, and Jacob got a new name..." (p. 153-4). This is what I saw: here Jacob is, wrestling with him all night. By dawn he realizes the physical circumstance has spiritual significance and says, "I will not let you go until you bless me." He's seeking to find the spiritual answer to what's going on in the natural. And it's as if God's saying, "Do you not recognize me? Do you not see my hand at work in your life?" And this is the key: "Do you not see that when you're wrestling with your father, your brother, your father-in-law, you're wrestling against ME?"

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, p. 364:

Do not look at someone else and say--Well, if he can have those views and prosper, why cannot I? You have to walk in the light of the vision that has been given to you and not compare yourself with others or judge them, that is between them and God. When you find that a point of view in which you have been delighting clashes with the heavenly vision and you debate, certain things will begin to develop in you--a sense of property and a sense of personal right, things of which Jesus Christ made nothing. He was always against these things as being the root of everything alien to Himself. "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth."

Happy New Year! Do you have a resolution? I do...

Ever since I graduated college almost seven years ago, I've been living as if I'm still waiting for my life to start. I don't know if it's because the career I prepared for never began, or because the family I expected to have never happened. The dreams of touring the globe in a worship band or moving to Scotland never materialized. Interrupted dreams can have a hard effect on a soul.

In a previous entry I said,

I don't know if it's because the career I prepared for never began, or because the family I expected to have never happened. The dreams of touring the globe in a worship band or moving to Scotland never materialized. Interrupted dreams can have a hard effect on a soul.

God uses our losses not only to bring glory to His name, but also to bring about His good in our own lives, bring us closer to Him, and bring us to a place of deeper sanctification and reliance on Him.

Not much to say today, except I wanted to provide a link to Matt Hall's blog for today. Good stuff! Pat's reading John Owen's book right now and he wants to let me read it when he's done...

So, I'm sorry I haven't blogged in a while. I read something in Oswald Chambers over Christmas vacation about how God uses silent seasons in our lives to speak to us, or to draw us into waiting dependence. Sorry, that doesn't necessarily mean new blogs are going to be terribly profound...

Last night Flogging Molly played a show at the Senator, but I couldn't go because it was sold out. I saw Katie at Worship Generation tonight and she told me she had a ticket but didn't go, so I totally could've gone! Dangit!

This morning I played fiddle and mandolin for worship with Sam and Kevin. It was the first time I've played with them since I stepped down last summer. It's so good to be back!!! I got new D'Addario Helicore violin strings yesterday for the occasion. I know, I've been using Dominants for almost 20 years, but they didn't have any full size Dominants in stock, and these were 10 to 15 bucks cheaper (still $40). They have a stranded steel core instead of synthetic gut like Dominant, but they sound really good. Apparently these are the strings bluegrass players use, and they're suitable for electric violins as well. I think they produced a more even tone plugged in this morning than Dominants do. Good stuff!

The question is, who cares?

When consoling me about a church split before I moved to Chico, my mom said, "Church would be wonderful if it weren't for the people..." She was pointing out through irony the fact that the body of our perfect savior Jesus Christ is in fact made up of imperfect human beings, yet at the same time, you cannot have a church without people, because church is a community (Greek ekklesia).

When you serve in any area of ministry, whether the place is a big ol' megachurch or a teeny home fellowship, you're bound to come across people who just get on your nerves. Sometimes it's people who are bogged down in their mediocrity and have no desire to learn or grow. Sometimes it's people who are bogged down in their carnality and have no desire to kick the habit and walk in freedom. Sometimes it's people like me who come across as too busy to care so they just rush by you in the hallway on their way to fix some technical difficulty in the sanctuary, missing the tree for the forest, as if living by the Vulcan mantra, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few..." (And if I've ever come across that way to any of you, I sincerely apologize!)

There's a passage I wish I would have read earlier this morning. According to my reading calendar I should have read it last night; but if I had, it's questionable whether my heart would have been in a place to receive such a pertinent application.

The LORD said to Moses, "Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain." Exodus 34:1-3 (ESV)

It's been a pretty emo weekend for me. So much so that a good buddy called me a girl. A few months ago, Pastor Sam taught out of Philippians 3, and he spoke on not letting the past hinder you. I've been having a hard time making that a reality in my life. But I think Exodus 34 paints a picture of moving on that we can apply to ourselves spiritually. It's been a whole two chapters since the Golden Calf incident in chapter 32, and the Lord had already given the order to move on in Exodus 33:1.

Life is a journey.

The English words journal and journal are borrowed from Middle French, and share the same root, jour, meaning day. Life is a journey, and journals, whether they be travel journals or journals written at home, convey that attitude. A.W. Tozer in The Pursuit of God does a good job of illustrating the spiritual walk as a lifelong journey, growth in personal intimacy with God, a trip of the kind where you never reach the end, because there is always further to go.

So that's why I've converted the blog from the "i once had dreads..." theme (about the past) to the road theme, which is about a continued journey into the future. The poem is from Tolkien. The original banner picture was taken at Deer Creek Falls on Hwy. 32, but I plan to change it up every once in a while with new pictures of new roads.

I know I quote Oswald Chambers a lot, but there's something about his daily devotional that makes it continually relevant. However, sometimes I end up skipping a day. The Feb. 18 entry is one particular one that ministered to me. I'm wondering whether I skipped it last year, because I know that hearing it would have done me some good.

The sense of having done something irreversible tends to make us despair. We say, "Well, it’s all over and ruined now; what’s the point in trying anymore." If we think this kind of despair is an exception, we are mistaken. It is a very ordinary human experience. Whenever we realize we have not taken advantage of a magnificent opportunity, we are apt to sink into despair. But Jesus comes and lovingly says to us, in essence, "Sleep on now. That opportunity is lost forever and you can’t change that. But get up, and let’s go on to the next thing." In other words, let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of Christ, and let us go on into the invincible future with Him... Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step. (My Utmost for His Highest, Feb. 18)

In considering the rationale for God-centered worship, we must begin with the realization that worship is the number one priority of the Church. Jesus' famous statement in John 4:23 that the Father seeks worshipers is unparalleled, for nowhere in the entire corpus of Holy Scripture do we read of God's seeking anything else from a child of God. God desires worship above all else.

Thus, every man who calls himself a Christian must understand that worship is the ultimate priority of his life. Worship is what God wants from you and from me. Jesus hallowed and substantiated this in His chiding of busy, frenetic Martha, who was so critical of her sister's sitting at Jesus' feet: "Martha, Martha . . . you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her" (Luke 10:41, 42). (R. Kent Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man, 111)

Nowhere in all the Scriptures do we read of God's seeking anything else from the child of God. One often hears that Christians are "saved to serve," and there is a limited sense in which this is true, for throughout eternity as well as during our earthly life it will be our joy and privilege to serve the Lord God. But this heavenly service will itself be primarily worship (see Heb. 9:14; 12:28; Rev. 22:3). Nowhere in the Bible are we told that the Lord seeks our service. It is not servants He seeks, but true worshipers. (Robert G. Rayburn, O Come, Let Us Worship, 15)

5. Occasional victories over sin are not mortification. There are two occasions or seasons in which a man who is fighting with a particular sin may seem to have mortified it, but has not in reality. (i) When that sin breaks out sadly and seriously in a way that greatly disturbs his peace, terrifies his conscience, brings the dread of scandal, and clearly provokes the Lord to judgment. This may awaken and stir up all that is in that man, filling him with the abhorrence of sin, and sending him to God to cry out for life and help to set himself against the sin. The whole man, both spiritual and natural, is aroused. Sin shrinks. The sin in question appears to lie dead before him. It is like a soldier who draws near the enemy lines and kills an important person. The guards then awake and make strict inquiry after the enemy. The enemy, meanwhile, has hidden himself like one that is dead until the noise and tumult is over. Though for the time being he is quiet, there is in his mind the firm resolution to do more mischief at the first opportunity. (John Owen, The Mortification of Sin, abr. R. Rushing, Banner of Truth, pp. 29-30)

These are my friends J.B. and Jen. I must confess I've never met Jen, but she's his wife, so now they go together, of course! :-)

A couple weeks ago J.B. was diagnosed with cancer. Prior to his diagnosis, someone from church had a 'word' for him that he was supposed to start journaling, but that this journal wasn't for himself, but it was to bless other people and help them through their issues. So he started blogging. His blog truly is a blessing, as he gets on there every day and updates everybody on what God's teaching him as he goes through the motions with hospital visits, exams, CT scans, etc.

This guy is a true bro, sent by God as a 'son of encouragement', just like Barnabas. If it wasn't for certain truths that God used him to speak to me, I think I'd be in a totally different place today. A couple weeks ago I posted a prayer request on my blog, but now I want to put the anonymous request together with the real man, and his wife, so you can not only have faces to go with the prayers, but now you can find regular updates to keep your prayers current.

Here is an excerpt from an e-mail I sent to my friend Kirstin that I thought would make a good blog entry.

I read an interesting chapter in Church History in Plain Language about the denominational theory of the church. It kind of threw everything I thought on its head. Denomination comes from a root meaning 'to give a name to'. Basically, the theory says that we are all one body in Christ, who agree on the fundamentals of the faith, even though we are a bunch of groups with different names. Unlike sectarianism, none of these groups--'denominations'--considers itself to be the sole posessors of the whole truth. So, denominations are actually a good thing, and much less divisive than I grew up thinking. It's possible that to call oneself 'non-denominational' (according to the old definition) would have actually been a negative term, meaning that rather than recognizing the truth that other denominations might hold, we're going to be our own exclusive group. If you go by the old definition of denominationalism, than to call yourself non-denominational means you're sectarian, exclusive, and divisive, whereas to be a denomination you are recognizing the worldwide unity of the brethren, and the fact that the church is made up of believers, not registered members. Unfortunately, the definition has changed, so that people who grow up in 'denominational' churches today wonder why they have to be part of that denomination. "Why don't we just call ourselves Christian?" they ask. And so they go and start non-denominational churches, and you can miss the whole point of denominational theory if you grow up thinking Presbyterians and Baptists and Methodists are sectarian, like saying "I follow Paul" or "I follow Apollos". Scripturally, that's the closest parallel we have, and so if we look only at the Biblical truth without considering the context of church history, we can be missing something important. We who preach such things today do so only because we're not aware of the history of the wars that ravaged Europe for 100 years while they tried to settle religious differences along political boundary lines. Originally, denominations arose out of the idea that it's okay to let your neighbor have a different stance on a certain non-fundamental doctrine than you carry, as long as they agree on the main points. Now, in America, it's evolved into pluralism, but it used to be about unity in the fundamentals.

I'm not saying that it's wrong for us to be non-denominational, or that it's wrong to be denominational (which I used to think). I just think it's important to get a context of our current church situation from Church History. Denominations were the way that the church avoided continuing massive bloodshed after the age of the Reformation. As Bruce Shelley says, "The denominational form of the church has marked the recent centuries of Christian history, not because it is ideal, but because it is better than any alternative the years have offered." No longer do we kill those we disagree with, so perhaps a greater unity in the church, outside the labels of denominations or 'non-denominations', is a greater possibility in the church today.

I'm finally all moved in! Oh, and guess what! I get to drive through a roundabout every day!!!

I am overjoyed at hearing about friends who have been receiving clear direction from the Lord lately. There is a clear distinction between His voice, when we just KNOW it's Him, and the 'confirmation' and 'peace about it' that we produce for ourselves through rationalization and reasoning—when we consult other people or search the Scriptures looking for self-justification in our corrupt situation rather than seeking the Holy Spirit's illumination directly into our souls. You can survey your friends and find ones who will take your side, and you can find promises in Scripture to help you feel better as you fight to have your own way, even though they are conditional on certain aspects of surrender which you are not meeting. But when we are honest, and in communion with the Holy Spirit, he won't let us deceive ourselves. This voice is truth. And we can hear it for ourselves.

...there is, if I may put it in this way, a secret instinct in faith, whereby it knows the voice of Christ when He truly speaks. As the babe leaped in the womb when [Mary] came to Elisabeth, faith leaps in the heart when Christ indeed draws near. 'My sheep', said Christ, 'hear my voice' (John 10:27). 'They know My voice; they are used to the sound of it.' They know when His lips are opened to them and are full of grace.

In the Song of Solomon (5:2), the bride knows the voice of her beloved. As soon as he speaks she cries, 'It is the voice of my beloved!' She knew his voice and was so accustomed to communion with him that she instantly recognzied him. So will you know the voice of Christ. If you exercise yourselves to know and have fellowship with Him, you will easily discern between His voice and the voice of a stranger.

Note this: When he speaks, he speaks as no man has ever spoken. He speaks with power. He will in one way or another make your heart burn within you (Luke 24). When He puts his hand to the latch (Song of Sol. 5:4), His Spirit will seize your heart!

Each one who has exercised himself to discern good and evil, and is increasing in judgment, experience, and observation to recognize Christ's voice, and the operations of His Holy Spirit, is the best equipped to judge for himself when God is indeed speaking. (John Owen, The Mortification of Sin, Banner of Truth, 114)

Via the State of California Franchise Tax Board website:

Your refund was authorized on Saturday, April 16, 2005

If you filed a paper return, please allow 25 business days from this date to receive your refund. If you filed your return electronically, please allow 10 business days from this date to receive your refund. If we make any adjustments to your tax return, we will notify you.

So, let's see... Looks like I should have it by the 30th, then!

I just read something in Disciplines of a Godly Man that goes along perfectly with what Pastor Sam said yesterday about 1 Thessalonians 4:11b-12a--"...work with your own hands, as we commanded you, that you may walk properly toward those who are outside..." (NKJV). Kent Hughes makes an important point, although most of this excerpt is him quoting someone else:

Lastly, our work must be done with an eye to excellence. Dorothy Sayers said that the Church in our time

has forgotten that the secular vocation is sacred. Forgotten that a building must be good architecture before it can be a good church; that a painting must be well painted before it can be a good sacred picture; that work must be good work before it can call itself God's work.

Work that is truly Christian is work well done.

Genesis 1 logs God's commitment to excellence when it says, "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good" (v. 31). Christians should always do good work. Christians ought to be the best workers wherever they are. They ought to have the best attitude, the best integrity, and be the best in dependability. (R. Kent Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man, p. 154)

I've grown up knowing that everything I do is supposed to be as unto the Lord. This should be true of all Christians, not just the ones who grow up going to a Calvary Chapel with parents who are in ministry and who sit in the main service because the 6th grade teaching is too "milky". But I know that not all of us live like this. (Plus, I know it's easier to grow up knowing what you're supposed to do than it is to maintain that practice when you grow up and enter the "real world".)

But what struck me most about this passage is the way the first part relates it to Church life, not just our vocation. "A painting must be well painted before it can be a good sacred picture," says Dorothy Sayers.

What if it said, "Music must be good music before it can be worship music?" What if it said, "Music must be playable on a secular radio station before we can consider its lyrical content for qualification for airplay on K-Love or Air One?"

What if all Christian movies were as well-made as The Passion? And what if Protestant filmmakers were as good as the Catholics? What would the world look like?

A few months ago I watched a convicting show about Wal*Mart on Frontline that caused me to not want to shop there anymore. I also saw one about the credit card industry that I found quite disturbing. (Thanks to Zach for the recommendations.)

Unfortunately, not very long after I viewed this shows, I once again found myself in a tight spot financially where I couldn't afford to shop anywhere but Wal*Mart!

Bill Power, lead singer for Blenderhead, wrote a forward for Simplicity, and after I read the book, I looked him up online, and found his blog at iambillpower.org. Soon I started checking out some of the links on his website, including Adbusters and Behind the Label.

So lately I've been thinking a lot about these two interwoven issues of corporate domination and the related sweatshops which increase their profit margins.

Something that's a little disturbing is the fact that so many punks wear Dickies and Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars because of their non-mainstream, all-American, enduring qualities, but Converse was bought out by Nike (like the biggest sweatshop offender in the world) in 2003, and Dickies has also moved their factories overseas where U.S. labor unions cannot guarantee living wages. Oh, and Vans (as in the Warped Tour) uses sweatshops as well.

Last night Josh & I went on a bike ride for what must have been 17 or 18 miles, at least. We rode from Bear Hole up to the end of the dirt road in Upper Park and then kept going. We crossed the creek with our bikes on our shoulders in rushing water that was 4 feet deep. Then we kept riding upstream, all the way through the Chico State wildlife preserve and through a whole hunting zone. On our way back to Bear Hole we tried to stay on South Rim, but it didn't work because the road curved and started going the opposite way of where we wanted to go. It was getting dark so we decided we'd explore that way another time, and we went back the way we came.

Needless to say, I'm sore, and tired, but it was a great time...

I'm heading off this very instant for Brian & Hollie's house in Malibu. They're having an open house this weekend and getting a bunch of the old crew together from the old days. Party all evening tomorrow, and worship on Sunday morning at their house. If anybody needs directions, call my cell at (530) 321-9065. I'll be coming back home on Monday. :-)

-Aaron

Just wanted to let everyone know I'm home safe. I got into town about 6 and called Brian for a freak-out session over the phone. Then I mowed the lawn (it was about 2 feet high and seeding out), raked the bark where we had a little mudslide from the weekend rains, and washed the bugs off of my truck.

It was such a good time in Malibu! In addition to everyone who showed up at B & H's, I also got to spend time with Gabe & Shannon (and Nina), and Kirstin drove up on Sunday to kick it at Zuma with us!

Photo blog to follow later tonight. I gotta run over to Sam & Pam's now for 24...

(I updated this entry on 7/9/05 because I moved the pictures to Flickr, which makes it really easy to get decent thumbnails. I wrote my own thumbnail script in ASP.NET, but the quality of the images was really poor.)

Hollie's art studio. We had an acoustic jam session up there on the porch on Saturday night.

I got to hang with Gabe & Shannon (Nina, too) at the Calabasas Starbucks, and then we went to John's Garden. You can probably tell his camera's a lot better than mine! :-)

Brian & Hollie Tieleman. Great friends I've known for 10 years!

These ones are from Kirstin's camera. She came up from Fullerton to go to the beach with us on Sunday, and it was great to be able to introduce her to my friends. She even got to drive by Pepperdine on the way, so she got to see where I went to school. (She's all about socal now, with her bleach-blonde hair...) ;-)

Saw Star Wars. Am speechless.

As soon as I discovered punk rock, I starting thinking how cool it would be if there were some sort of fusion that incorporated violin into it, but I didn't know anyone else who thought this was a good idea. Then 4 years ago I discovered Flogging Molly and saw my two favorite modern musical genres--Celtic and punk--joined. And last night, I actually got to play fiddle with a punk band! Flatfoot 56 is out in California on tour from Chicago. They played Chico on Thursday night, and they let me play with them a little bit at last night's show in Stockton. Afterwards, they asked me if I'd come down and play with them in Santa Cruz tonight!!! I can't get too much into details right now because I have to leave pretty soon...

(But now, if I ever go to Chicago again, the pizza won't be my only reason!!!)

(updated 7/9/05 for Flickr)

From Stockon 5/27 show with Whiskey Rebels, Hanover Saints, DCOi!, The Immorals.

Josh, the piper.

Tobin.

http://matthewhall.net/?p=569

this Henry Cloud guy is a total nutjob. He used to speak at my old church in Malibu, and at the time we thought he was really cool. He wrote this book called "Boundaries", so we all started establishing boundaries and telling people no whenever they asked for our help... Kind of a license to be a jerk, and I have yet to shave off many of those tendencies...

Just in case you were wondering where I've been... I've moved, and I was offline while I was waiting for my new Wi-Fi adapter to arrive... I now live in the same neighborhood as Pina, Laurel, Miguel, Jason, Jamie, Taylor, and Zayyyyne.

Although it was produced six months prior to yesterday's London attacks, this Frontline episode, Al Qaeda's New Front, does give a great deal of insight into the motivation and intended purpose of jihadists in Europe.

An interesting topic that I have not heard focused on in recent years is the idea of the revival of an Islamic Caliphate state. Jihadists like the ones who planned the attacks in Madrid last year are seeking to expand the boundaries of an Islamic empire to include the territory covered at the heigh of Islam in the 15th century, when the empire covered the entire northern half of Africa, as well as the entire Iberian peninsula in Europe (Spain and Portugal), and stretched to southern Poland in Eastern Europe, all the way east to the boundaries of China.

Regarding modern-day jihadists, German ambassador Georg Witschel has said:

There are only very few leading principles [that unify the diverse group of terror networks] as for example the hate against America, against Israel or against countries and governments supporting them. Furthermore, some rather vague ideas of revitalizing basic religious values and – in the case of Al Qaida, but also Hamas and Hisballah, the establishment of an Islamist Empire, a Taliban style Kalifat-State as a response to the perceived dominance of the ‚‘Western World’’. (http://www.rcss.org/newsletters/vol_9_no_1.pdf, 2, dl 7/8/05)

From Abdul Saleeb & Norman L. Geisler, "Understanding and Reaching Muslims", http://www.equip.org/free/DM809.htm:

Jihad is the belief that one should engage in a holy struggle to preserve Islam against non-Muslim beliefs. While orthodox Muslims consider jihad a literal, even military, struggle against unbelievers, some more liberal scholars interpret it as a spiritual struggle. Both the wording of the Qur’an and the militaristic life of Muhammad favor an emphasis on the literal understanding of it.

And also:

The targets of jihad are those who do not believe in Islam, particularly Jews and Christians. “Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture and believe not in Allah nor the last day” (Sura 9:29). Again, “O ye who believe! Take not Jews and Christians for friends. They are friends of one to another. He among you who takes them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk” (5:51).

This article also contains a great comparison/contrast between Jihad and the Crusades:

For anyone who ever finds him or herself singing along with the theme song featured so prominently in the wonderful film, So I Married an Axe Murderer (and no, Sixpence didn't write it), check out this great blog by Zach.

I want to recommend this essay by John Nichols of The Nation commenting on Fox News' handling of the London bombing and their frustration with the British response. I suppose that even though I haven't had cable in years, I would still have to consider myself a fan of Fox News to some extent. But this is still a really good, though-provoking essay.

This is a follow-up to a post back in May called, "You do what you can...".

It's super, super hot outside. So hot that I was wearing my suede sneakers with no socks and my feet were still hot. So I've decided I'm going to go get some new canvas sneakers today, similar to Chuck Taylor's but not.

Regarding what I said in the previous post, and all the implications of AdBusters and similar companies such as No Sweat, I have done some thinking, and basically everyone's a hypocrite.

I. AdBusters promotes this "Blackspot Sneaker". See this great Slate article by Rob Walker, "It Oughtta Be the Shoes", where he points out that AdBusters isn't really fighting the corporate marketings schemes, but just become one more marketing corporation. It's selling out, really. Walker writes,

But rather than challenge the rules of the advertising game, Adbusters, this time around, is simply playing along. As a result, the plan for the Black Spot does not feel like a triumph for the forces of antimarketing—it feels like a capitulation. This campaign doesn't slow the momentum of the culture of branding; it's merely along for the ride.

In order to sell their $70 shoes, AdBusters is marketing them by appealing to an individual's anti-corporate, anti-label, anti-marketing sentiments, which is hypocritical.

Wow, today's a big day for blogging...

Two really interesting articles came out today related to the war on terror and the London bombings. The New York Post has published an article called "It's the Terrorism" that addresses the fact that evidence is starting to suggest that the London bombings were suicide bombings. The writer says, "Save for the 9/11 attacks that leveled the World Trade Center, the United States has not had to confront the reality of suicide bombings. But for how much longer?"

I don't like that whole "Save for the 9/11 attacks" comment. Shouldn't those attacks be considered something like the mother of all suicide bombings rather than an "exception to the rule" type of thing? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to say that in America almost 3,000 have died in suicide bombing attacks carried out on September 11, 2001, and that there have been none since, but we should be prepared?

Another point he makes:

Meanwhile, a compelling series in The Wall Street Journal explores radical Islam's presence in western Europe. Yesterday's installment traces it back to the 1950s, when a mosque built by ex-Nazi Muslim soldiers became an outpost for the Muslim Brotherhood — the progenitor of today's Islamist terror networks.

I have not been able to check out the WSJ article, because they're listed as "for subscribers only"... But the similarities between Nazis and Muslim jihadists is disturbing, when it comes to hatred for the Jews, genocide, and the extermination of "infidels".

The writer brings up something else that I have not seen in the news at all. He/she says: "That Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a key element in the worldwide terrorist network of which Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were the kingpins is largely now beyond dispute." Beyond dispute? That's news to me. A lot of people have said we need to stay until the job is finished, but haven't resigned themselves with the reason we went there in the first place. The 9/11 Commission's report had everyone convinced that there was no connection at all.

This is funny...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/sandy-frank/80-virgins_4779.html

Like many people, I've been blown away by the magnitude of what happened a week ago on the gulf coast. I have been hesitant to put up links to donate to charities because I'm broke at the moment and unable to give myself, and I'd rather lead by example. But we should all be in prayer for all of the people who were affected, and do whatever we can to help. I heard a story about a guy from San Diego who chartered a huge passenger jet and brought back a dozen displaced families to live with people who had opened up their homes in California.

Someone told me that the pastor at the church I used to attend said that God had nothing to do with Katrina. But Amos 3:6 says: "Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?" God is in control. I'm not saying that any of those people deserved what happened to them more than the rest of us did. What I'm saying is: all of us deserved it. Look at what Jesus said:

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you w