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Blogging

From Slice of Laodicea, hosted by Ingrid Schlueter: an interview with Pastor Dustin Segers of Shepherd’s Fellowship concerning Christian bloggers maintaining balance,focus and righteousness in their lives with regards to blogging in general and as a ministry, specifically anyone called into discernment.  I do hope readers take the time to listen to this interview in full, Pastor Segers has in my opinion some solid advice for us all to consider and take to heart.

File under: Avoiding Distractions

Christian doctrine etc;

The Marshian Chronicles  and Lindsay Brooks of Apologetics.com have posts from earlier in the week that personally speak to and challenge me to step up even more in proclaiming my faith in Christ.  Part 1 of the post from The Marshain Chronicles is here and Part 2 is here.  I mentioned a few days ago about working on a friend of a friend’s PC.  Well the back story to this "friend of a friend" is that they are Mormon, and during our interaction,I felt a need to witness to this young man about the true Jesus of the Bible (sans John Smith), I didn’t though because of not "feeling" that the timing was right.  I don’t know, maybe there’s truth to it, maybe me just dragging my feet in this particular instance since I didn’t have an established relationship with the young man.  As I’m making this entry though, it does occur to me that somehow, some way, I do need to talk to this young man about his involvement with the Mormon church and His relationship with Christ.   

Lindsay Brooks offers his 2 cents worth regarding proclaiming the Gospel, and The Marshian Chronicles also gives some practical advise and words to ponder to go along with what the believer is told in 1st Thessalonians 5:

1st Thessalonians 5:19-22
19 Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; 20 do not treat prophecies with contempt.

Technology

As much as I enjoy technology, be it computers or AV equipment, I am a slow adopter.  For example, I’s only been in the past 3-4 years that I’ve fully embraced Windows XP as my preferred Windows OS (a long time Windows 2000 holdout).    Likewise, I was a diehard fan of the Musicmatch Media Player.  Even after Yahoo acquired the software and "reinvented" it, I held out on the legacy version as my default media player, forsaking Windows Media Player.  Over the past six months or so Musicmatch has become less and less appealing to use, as Yahoo has made efforts to migrate users to it’s home branded media player.

After a day of frustrations with installing Musicmatch about a month ago, I finally gave in and abandoned the app for Winamp.  For the old Musicmatch fanboys that are looking for a comparable replacement, I highly suggest giving  Winamp a try.

Need a tool to convert your media files or graphics to different formats? Check out the freeware media converter know as Format Factory.  The interface is a little buggy/quirky, but the utility itself has performed wonderfully.

Grace and peace be with you.

As I was preparing for work Friday morning, a conversation from Wednesday evening with the Young Adults group popped up.  We we’re in the "Why study and discuss discernment?" section of our study and discussion and as additional food for thought,I bought up the notion of being able to pick up on subtleties of what’s said with regard to doctrine, beliefs etc. 

As a very generalized example, I used Democratic presidential nominee Obam’s call for "change", and the frenzied response of supporters.  The idea being that those (not all inclusive) that are in support of Obama seem to respond (emotionally and in an almost cult-like following) to his message of change, but the question remains… "What change is proposed?".  Saying you want change is one thing, saying you have a vision or plan for change is another.   In another way think of someone professing: "I’m Christian", yet their life merely reflects being a "good person" by man’s standards of morals and conduct rather than being Christ led and thus Christ-like in attitude,behavior, etc.  Essentially it’s just a word with no godly weight or sense of Holy Spirit led conviction to it.

Updated 20080907 at 2:33 pm
Hmmm!?… reference the statement:  "In another way think of someone professing: "I’m Christian", yet their life merely reflects being a "good person" …"  My Pastor practically said the same thing in today’s sermon.

The thought that finally impressed upon me however was that regardless of a Christian’s political interest or involvement, we ought not to think of political figures as messiahs that will bring about moral change through the political process.  The Jews seemed to have made a similar mistake in their assumption that the messiah would free them from the occupation and influence of the Roman Empire.  They thought that political reform was His mission, at least in part.  I’m not discounting the possibility of a godly man or woman being used by God to address this country’s moral deficit however, I think that the call by God is for each of us to fix our eyes on Him and His Word, to be ambassadors of Christ that are an effective catalyst for spiritual change at a localized level.

By influencing those people in our immediate sphere of influence (family,friends,co-workers,employees,neighbors,etc) we can effect a change that works from the bottom up versus putting too much stock and energy in hoping for politicians to employ God’s message and values to the people from the top down.

Grace and peace be with you.

I had some additional thoughts from a comment left by Jen of Walk Two a few days ago that I’d like to share today.  Jen and I were speaking about spiritual deception ie; false prophets, and immediately the recent fall of Todd Bentley (Lakeland Florida Outpouring Revival fiasco) came to mind.

If one is not aware of Todd Bentley, the short of it is that he’s a charismatic "prophet" associated with Fresh Fires Ministry.  Bentley led what’s been described as a franticly paced revival in Lakeland Florida over the past 2-3 months.   Bentley has had a questionable past, and seems to have become a quick and rising star on the scene of evangelism (?).  As for the revival itself, some of the questionable things to come form this "revival" include reports of healings  accompanied  with violence, heavenly visitations ("Third Heaven") and encounters with angels; specifically one named "Emma".

Apprising Ministries, Apostasy Watch and Marsha West have already done a well enough job commenting on this story so I won’t go into detail adding my 2 cents worth to what’s already been written about the bizarre happenings of the revival. What I do want to add however is some spiritual food for thought in retrospect.

The first thought comes from 2nd Thessalonians, and pertains to all spiritual deception not just the Florida Outpouring Revival:

2nd Thessalonians 2:9-12
9 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, 10 and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

Honestly, I don’t know whether to take those verses as pertaining strictly to the false prophet being delusional in their own self crafted schemes or the people flocking to the deception?  This next verse however is in my opinion definitely addressing those that practice and preach false doctrines, and counterfeit works.  It’s something that many folks obviously missed before hopping on the Florida Outpouring Revival bandwagon:

Colossians 2:18-19
18 Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. 19 He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

Also see: 2nd Timothy 4:2-4

And Jesus said: "So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time." (Mark 13:21-23)

Grace and peace be with you.

I spent most of the Labor Day weekend working on a PC for a friend of a friend, while Monday was spent catching up on my church’s web site and blog.  During the process, I realized that I had missed posting a sermon from the 2nd week of August so I took care of that as well.

At the end of the post, which is a summary (outline) of the sermon over the Beatitudes  (Matthew 5:3-12).  I noticed 8 points of application to the sermon that hit home, and that I thought would be neat to share.  The points cover areas that God performs "reconstructive surgery" of the heart.  I’m not sure if I’m up to #8 yet.

Grace and peace be with you.

I popped in to R3 late yesterday evening to see what E.B. has been up to.  I caught this post, which is a continuation from an earlier post titled: Prayer Thursday: Courage.

Thanks to E.B. for posting my comment, which I do hope was and is uplifting.  Be sure to read the first link!  E.B. speaks of some simple truths about God and one’s relationship to and with Him.

File under: "Wow" with a big ‘ole exclamation point.

Grace and peace be with you.