Monthly Archives: January 2005

Bin Laden Bounty

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If a man’s life (or death) is worth$50 million why am I buying life insurance? Seriously. And why am I paying what feels like exorbitant taxes? Right now here is the message the United States government is sending:

  • Our national debt is not a concern – we keep making up money to spend on Iraq, bin Laden and inauguration parties
  • Taxes are not necessary to raise money to fund events and functionality within the government
  • I can get myself into enough debt to have caused George Washington to die of a heart attack had he seen the nation in that much debt

Fun, huh?

The Wrong Trousers

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If you’ve ever watched ‘Wallace and Gromit,’ and lets face it, if you’ve watched Chicken Run, you’ve seen the animation work of the people behind Wallace and Gromit, then you might have seen the ‘Wrong Trousers.’ episode. This post has nothing to do with that. I just liked the name of the episode and so therefore I’ve titled this post such.

I’d like to warn Colorado in general that my new niece will be arriving at Denver International Airport next month towards the middle and I’m going to be overly protective of her so that she and her family are safe. If you notice that traffic is at a standstill between the 11th through the 15th next month it is only because I’ve blocked all of the major highways so that my family can safely travel where they need to.

If this sounds excessive, just remember that another important person, President Bush, got the same treatment when he came to town. Sure, Hawley’s a bit younger, probably hasn’t formed any political opinions and doesn’t run the country, but she’s important and I just want you to understand in case you are slightly put out by having to be late to work, lunch, dinner or the bahamas.

That is all.

Happy Birthday Becky!

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Happy Birthday to my sister who turns a year older today [I’ve stopped naming actual years for people who are no longer teenagers as it usually makes me feel old]. I hope that she’s enjoying her birthday at work. Or maybe I hope she’s not working on her birthday. Either way, I hope that it is fun. We’ll call later (and hopefully leave a message on your machine because you’ll be with your sweetheart).

Best Day Ever

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Abby sometimes pays us huge complements, which we take with great joy, but one that she’s used periodically for some time now goes something like, “Mommy, you’re the best day ever.” Why Jessica is a good day is a mystery to me. She’s a great wife, a wonderful mother, but I’d sure hate to add another day to the week 😉 I’m pretty sure she’s trying to say something like, “You’re the best.” It’s cute though and it does make my day when I’m the best day ever.

Deer Momm, I Gotz a GNU SpellChacker

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I have just installed the fancy schmancy spell checker into my Firefox browser so I can now check the spelling in these blog posts. Or course the down side is that I actually have to use it and it may take me just a little bit longer to post. However, my mom can now read this blog without thinking, “I hope that the other mothers who read this blog don’t think I’m a bad mom because my boy’s spelling is worse than the presidentz.”

Email Killed the Floppy Star

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Do you remember floppy disks? Do you remember the 8-track? Do you remember the vinyl records? All of those are ancient data transfer methods. However, now with ubiquity of the internet, the speed of broadband (more than half of US internet connections are broadband) and the simplicity of email floppy disks have all but died. Sure, Dell was going to get rid of the floppy drive in their PC‘s several years ago, but businesses cried out, “We love old technology, give us Windows 95!”

So, kudos Apple for bumping the floppy. CD burning takes only a wee longer with todays faster drives and the data storage quantity means I won’t have to carry a suitcase if I want to take a lot of data somewhere (I would have to with floppies).

Grace, The Other White Meat

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James Robinson writes about love and grace in his post: WWJD? Love Somebody, Perhaps?. If there’s one thing that believers tend to do its talk about grace and lay down the law. Surely Romans 6’s talking about walking uprightly is important, but I have since moving to Denver found some really important truths to be a key to an effective walk with Christ.

The Positional Truths
Holly Hills Bible Church is very attached to the Pauline epistles where we learn that our position in Christ is settled. In the heavenlies we are hidden in Christ (Collosians 3), our salvation is secure and no amount of sin can separate us from God (Romans 8:38-39). Here’s the thing about Grace that is really key: it’s inexhaustable. We can in no way find the end of the love of God because He is infinite, and love is one of His perfect attributes. Therefore, His love is infinite as well.

Back to the positional truths. The positional truths are as follows:

When a person becomes a believer their sin nature has been crucified with Christ.
The believers are resurrected with Christ, ascended with Christ and then seated with Christ where we are hidden with him. Positionally we’re secure. I, no matter how much I sin stand confidently before God as one of His own due to the work of Christ. My works are nothing.

Our condition on this earth, as we’re sanctified (setting aside more and more of ourselves unto Christ, being conformed to His image), is never effecting our position. However, our position, because of Christ is being conformed to our position, which is hidden in Christ. The unbeliever’s condition and position are consistent because they are both directed towards the flesh, however, any inconsistencies that we have as beleivers are paid for by the blood of Christ.

I have found myself at times thinking things and realizing that they were not consistent with my position and therefore, as Paul writes, brought them into submission of Christ. My condition is effected by the flesh but not ruled by the flesh – Romans 7 is followed by Romans 8 where we learn of the victory that the believer has over sin through abiding in Christ.

Love Trumps Tolerance
Our pluralistic, relativistic culture touts tolerance as ‘the lord of the ring’ because it sounds to unifying. It’s not, it just allows for separation into categories while looking the other way. In engineering there is what is called a tolerance level that is the amount of error that is acceptable. Tolerance almost always has some limit. For example we can tolerate Christianity in our United States of American culture as long as we don’t have prayers in public places, no “In God We Trust” on our money and promote other religions based on the fact that none of them is actually true. We tolerate Christians, but once they’ve exceded a tolerance level then we must limit and control their practices. Tolerance is not friendly to justice, which is exacting.

Love, on the other hand looks past errors (I Corinthians 13:4,8) and is patient in growth and injustice. However, love is compatible with Justice because it says, “Let justice be done, there are consequences for actions” but is not contrary to still loving the person before, during and after punishment.

God Gets the Glory – No Matter What
One last thing that just recently hit me is that God gets the glory no matter what. If we’re righteous in our lives He gets the Glory of enabling us to be so. If we sin He gets the glory for being so gracious and loving. Ephesians 2:10 says that God has good works planned for believers – we’re going to do righteous things in our lives – we can plan on it. When we do those thing God gets the glory, we get rewards in heaven for it, and we get to be with Him as he reveals His glory to us. Wow! That’s so amazing.

Lord, We Give You Glory
I tried to sum up the concepts in this post two Sundays ago in a song that I’ve written. The lyrics are below and a rough and dirty recording is available to listen to as an MP3 (email me for guitar chords).

Lord We Give You Glory MP3.

Lord we give you glory
Lord we give you praise
You are the first born from the dead
The one with whom we’re raised

Sealing our position
We’re hidden with you
We are your possession
Jesus we love you

Your grace knows no boundary
A gift from up above
Knowing me you found me
And gave me your love

A Lot on My Plate

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I’ve got a lot of work to do today, but I had to post an Abbyism. She’s having a hard time understanding that my wheat allergies make most breads a bad food choice for me. So today during lunch she stated to Jessica, “Daddy can’t have bread because it makes him fat.” Yeah, that too, but it’s mostly the wheat.