My Blog Challenge

A friend of mine (I use that in the social networking sense, I haven't seen him since High School, but from reading his blog I'm sure we could be close) Nic Casey, posted a blog the other day that challenged me in my blogging, and I'm going to try it. He said he was trying to post once a day for a month, and for some reason that really got to me. Blogging for me is an exercise in creativity and a chance to get some of my thoughts down in a public journal. Yet for the last few months I've become pretty set on making this a blog about youth ministry (which it always will be) and I've lost sight of the idea that this blog is about me.

Because of this emphasis on youth ministry, I tried to get my posts together into series (like a preacher would), and I tried to make them applicable to one set of people (youth pastors). What's funny about that is as hard as I try, I never put together sermon series (again, not for lack of effort). Consequently, I never posted. Rather than this blog being the overflow of what God was doing in me and in the ministry, it became a chore.

God has been doing some spectacular things this last month and a half, but it didn't fit into a series so I didn't blog it (except for Bryant's testimony). That's going to change. Who knows, I may even post a survey about myself up here for all to read, if that's what I feel like doing for the day. So all that to say, look out blogosphere, I'M BACK!!!

-Jeff-

Punished for Cleaning up?

I had an interesting conversation with Kadin the other night. It went something like this:

ME: Do you know why you're in trouble?

KADIN: But Dad, I was just trying to clean up all my toys in the living room so you and Mom wouldn't have to trip on them.

ME: Was that what you were supposed to be doing?

KADIN: But I thought you always wanted me to clean my stuff up.

ME: Unless we already told you to get in bed.

KADIN: But I thought it would make you happy...

ME: I love it when you clean up stuff without us asking, it makes me very happy, but I'm even more happy when you do what you're told.

In 1 Samuel there is a story of King Saul. In chapter 13 he was given clear instructions that he was to wait for Samuel for seven days, and that when Samuel arrived he would offer the sacrifice and God's blessing would be upon the people. Towards the end of the seventh day the people started to get restless, and Saul decided that he would offer the sacrifice to God. Here is the conversation that resulted from this decision:

11 "What have you done?" asked Samuel.
Saul replied, "When I saw that the men were scattering, and that you did not come at the set time, and that the Philistines were assembling at Micmash, 12 I thought, 'Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the LORD's favor.' So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering."

13 "You acted foolishly," Samuel said. "You have not kept the command the LORD your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. 14 But now your kingdom will not endure; the LORD has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have not kept the LORD's command."

To paraphrase, King Saul said, "But I thought it would make God happy..."

I think an even more telling story is in chapter 15, when Saul is told by the prophet to kill everything in a particular area, and yet he decided to save the best stuff to offer a sacrifice to God. That's when God reveals to him the same thing I was trying to get across to Kadin, namely that doing what He says is more important than doing what we think He wants. Here is the way God put it in the bible:

22 But Samuel replied:
"Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD ?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.

23 For rebellion is like the sin of divination,
and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the LORD,
he has rejected you as king."

God was trying to stamp out the same attitude that caused the Pharisees in Jesus time, and causes a religious spirit today. This is the attitude that made the Pharisees balk when Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath, or when He chose not to have His disciples fast on certain days like everyone else did. We need to learn to do what God is saying now, not what we think He wants.

With Kadin, his heart wasn't to clean the living room, it was to try and stay up a few minutes longer. I think with King Saul, he wanted to please the people more than he wanted to please God. God is good at exposing the attitudes of our hearts, and He wants a people who a fully devoted to Him, not using Him for our benefit. Ouch.

Learning to walk with Him daily,

-Jeff-

What's the fun in hiding all the time?

If you've ever owned a turtle, you know they're no fun when they're in their shells. They don't do anything. Tiff and I had a turtle for a while, but Kadin was scared of it most of the time, and our schedule meant that we were always needing people to watch it. The joy of having a turtle was outweighed by the cost of ownership. Especially since he spent a lot of time inside his shell.

Last week was See you at the pole. I had a couple students peek their heads out and it was a thrilling experience for me. I was so excited to see them step out of the safety and comfort of their shells and put their neck on the line by declaring to their friends what they believed. God was moving in that moment, and I hope these students are beginning to see what God has for them. Because this christian life is meant to be lived, not hidden away from.

-Jeff-

So much to catch up on

Where has the time gone? It seems like just yesterday we were coming back from Summer camp, and now we're looking towards Youth Conference. There have been several things that have happened, but nothing as life altering as deciding to homeschool Kadin¹. Right now we're taking it a year at a time, but I know this is the right move this year. In about three weeks he's gone from knowing letter sounds to recognizing whole words without sounding them out. He cruises through his easy reading books and in about an hour can read a 25-30 page book (15-30 words per page). He's doing really well and really seems to be enjoying his newfound abilities and confidence.

Football season started this last week and, of course, I'm involved in fantasy football. It makes football so much more interesting because I'm looking at games all over the country, instead of just caring about the Seahawks. Here is a link to the league I'm in². My team is Coast to the first³. My starting lineup looks like this:

QB- Tom Brady
WR- Chad Johnson
WR- Javon Walker
RB- Larry Johnson
RB- Maurice Jones-Drew
WR/TE- Wes Welker
WR/RB- Jerious Norwood
K- David Akers
DEF- Denver


Now that's a studly line-up⁴! I've got consistant producers at almost every position, plus a couple of guys who could really break out and have big years. The only thing I'm kicking myself for is picking Johnson over Joseph Addai. I'll let you know how the season progresses.

And speaking of football, the 'Hawks played three quarters of really good football (so what if it was against the 'Bucs). Bill Simmons from ESPN Page 2 picked them to play the Pats in the Superbowl, and you know what? I'd be okay with that. I think the 'Hawks are the best team in the NFC right now, and I don't care what the "experts" think. I guess we'll find out in week 3 if they're among the elite or not (they play the Bengals). BTW, I just finished this season in Madden 2008 and they just missed the playoffs, going 9-7 (the Rams were 15-1 and lost to the Broncos in the Superbowl). Not that it means anything at all.

Well, that's enough rambling for now, tune in next time when I talk about the Super jet!
-Jeff-

1- One of my big fears as a parent is that I'm not smart enough to teach him what it means to be a good man. Now I've compounded that fear by assuming the responsibility for his education. Before I could always point at the school and complain about their faults, now all the fingers are pointing straight at me. This should be it's own blog post.

2- Kadin named it league-o, because it sounds like lego. This reminds me of when my sister bought my niece a gerbil, and Kadin told her to name it Abra-hamster. He's very clever about things like that, which brings me back to point #1.

3- He also named the team, which is good, but I keep getting "Don't you mean coast to the worst" comments from my league.

4- This team will be very good, but we lost by 8 in week one. This week we should get on track, although Johnson will be playing the Bears defense, which isn't a good matchup for anyone (see Tomlinson, LaDanian)

Picking up the loose ends

As I was looking up some links for my last post I realized that the Mexi-blog #10 is still sitting as an unfinished draft. Hopefully I'll be able to finish this on my trip to Indianapolis this week, because Tiffanney will be sitting right next to me for 9 and a half hours (it's not really, but with the time change and a two hour layover in Denver we leave Washington at 8:30pm and get to Indy at 6:00am. I contrast, we leave Indy at 8:30pm and get home at 11:30pm. The time change messes everything up) while we travel and eventually we'll run out of things to talk about. This blog was intended to sum up everything that happened in Mexico and give some testimonies of the incredible things that God did.

I'll try and post some thoughts on General Council, so if you're not lucky enough to be able to attend, check in here for the latest news. Also there are at least two other blogs leading up to General Council that I've enjoyed reading, Future AG and AG Leadership Change. Check out both of those sites for information leading up to the conference.

Lastly, Tiff and I are looking to sell our rental house up in Stanwood, and we've got a lot of work to do in order to get it ready for sale. I'll let you know how it turns out, it promises to be tons of work and tons of reward once it sells.

-Jeff-

Training Camp opens!!!

The Seahawks are back at it. Training Camp is officially underway and I am so pumped for the coming season. I even started openly asking my wife for Madden 2008 for my birthday (August 26th) and I watched a recap of the Patriots 2004 season, plus a little arena football yesterday. We (yes I refer to myself as part of the Seahawks - 12th man baby!!!) are looking very, VERY, VERY strong on paper. I've been watching news stories and reading articles on this years team, and it may be the best ever. Our defense seems to have been shored up, now if only the offense can stay healthy we may be looking at another Super Bowl run.

One of the things I love about football is all of the analogies you can draw from it. I'm sure we'll run through a bunch of them during the season. I just had a weird thought though. I'm big into fantasy football (you can view or join my league here) and my weird thought has to do with it. For some reason I was imagining Peter and Paul up in Heaven when the Earth League Fantasy Draft comes around. I'm not sure what stats they'd use to determine a person's value, but maybe there would be points earned for witnessing, time spent in prayer, overcoming temptations, things like that. I'm sure that the first draft pick would be some little old lady in Argentina who's been praying non-stop for 74 years. And then it would probably be the guy who gave up his great business to help orphans in Malaysia or something. I think the guys we consider to be spiritual giants probably would be second or third round draft picks, because they've got to be doing something right, otherwise God wouldn't have put them in the position they're in. I don't think that seeing a million people making one time decisions for Christ would be weighted as heavily as seeing one person saved and walking with them until they are strengthened in the Lord. What would you look for in someone on your spiritual fantasy team?

-Jeff-

For more information on the Seahawks training camp, check out some of these links:
The Seahawks homepage
Seahawks blogs
The Seahawks Insider
NFL.com

How pure is your water?

What's in your bottled water? Is it pure, clean refreshing water bottled from an artesian spring? Or is it merely tap water that has been put into a fancy package and marked up? Pepsi is looking to clear up the confusion in their Aquafina line of bottled water by putting the words "Public Water Source" on all their bottles. Yep, that's right, it's tap water. For years now I've sworn to people that Aquafina was the very best type of bottled water, because of it's taste. But now I know it's merely average, just like the water I get at my house or maybe worse. I have a friend who works at the Pepsi bottling plant in Olympia. I've been to Olympia hundreds of times, and the water there always has a funny taste to it. Who knows what's in the water supply!

It reminds me of the Pharisees, because everyone thought they were so great, and yet Jesus called them out for being "full of greed and self-indulgence (Matt 23:25)". And that was Jesus being nice to them. In verse 26 He says this: "Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean."

The word of God is compared several times to clean, pure water (Ephesians 5:26, Hebrews 10:22, 1 Peter 3:21) but like the Pharisees if your cup is dirty then it doesn't matter how clean the water is, the drink is coming out muddy.

Sure Aquafina is tap water, but I'll still end up buying it because it's convenient and it quenches my thirst. Plus the bottles are clean, which is something that God is still working in me.

-Jeff-

For more on the Aquafina story, click here. Also here is an interesting video about the effects of bottled water on the environment.