My buddy Dave Warren and the late Douglas Adams have said about the same thing. Here’s Douglas Adams on the presidency:
It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it…anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. – Douglas Adams
I have never heard so many conservatives and liberals so angry about their presidential candidate options. There is not so much a sense that one is better than the other but rather the people I continue to talk to are angry about the failure of character of the two primary candidates. Comment Survey: do you feel that the candidates have shown their true character and that they’re both nasty, or instead do you feel like my exposure to opinions is just unique and uncommon?
Originally uploaded by RandyPeterman.
We went to the Pumpkin Festival yesterday at the Denver Botanical Garden’s southern location in the foothills of the Rockies. This sheep lives there and I thought that I captured the captured sheep in a rather nice photograph. Here you go 🙂
Good grief! Its been a long time since I was thankful on a Thursday. So I’m going to be thankful today for three Nadias. In alphabetical order 🙂
Our WorldVision child is named Nadia. We get periodic stuff about her well being, but after hurricane Ike caused a lot of trauma, I’m glad to hear that she is well. I’m thankful for the opportunity to sponsor a child and and that she’s growing up and maturing with health and food and a family. We need to send her a letter to tell her that. I’m a bad sponsor in that department, but I’m thankful for the opportunity nonetheless.
My second Nadia to be thankful for is my niece. When I look at these pictures I just smile. She’s getting bigger and bigger and soon she’ll be getting married talking to me instead of just smiling at me. I’m thankful she’s growing and is generally a healthy well taken care of baby girl.
Lastly, but not leastly: our friends daughter Nadia just makes us smile (and sometimes cry – in a good way) when we get to see her in person and online at the YouTube. I’m thankful for our friends and their amazing care for not only their daughter, but so many others directly and indirectly.
Thank you to all three Nadias. You bless us.
Evie came into my office, crawled up onto my laps and then asked, “Where are your singers?”
“My what?”
“Singers.” She gestured with her hands covering her ears. “For music.”
Oh! Headphones. Headphones that faithfully reproduce the sounds of singers. I love this little girl.
This morning ladylighthouse asked on Twitter:
Anyone have any positives or negatives regarding spiritual gifts tests???
I gave a reply that pointed out that First Corinthians 12:11 indicates that the Holy Spirit gives the gifts and its not about you now and forever, but about Him and His timing. This got me thinking about how my theology has drifted from “Spiritual Gift” oriented theology to “Spirit Directed” theology. One looks for the Holy Spirit to work in my life in one particular area, the other says, “My life is yours: take it and run.” One is focused on one aspect of the relationship that the believer has with Christ and the other is focused on the entire life of growth that comes from moment-by-moment relationship with God.
There are a few key passages that lead me to think that Paul’s references to Spiritual Gifts were given for specific knowledge on a specific topic, but were not for us to take as the primary focus of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. The passages include Galatians 5:22-23 (the Fruits of the Spirit), 2nd Corinthians 3:18, Romans 12:1-16, and Colossians 3:1-3. This list is hardly exhaustive, but the verses mentioned each have an element of relationship that is critical for us to take into account in the context of Spiritual Gifts. In other words, we don’t discount the spiritual gifts, but we don’t focus on them alone.
Galatians 5:22-23
Galatians 5:22-23 is often referred to as the fruits of the Spirit passage. Interestingly this is not exhaustive. It is a brief summary of some basic characteristics that should reflect the life of Christ in you, but it is not an entire list. God’s character is infinitely good and is reflected in many ways, as His life pours out of you, you should be blown away by the extremely long list that is proven beyond this list. The Holy Spirit, who is guiding the believer in a moment by moment walk empowers the believer unto righteousness. The only way Ephesians 2:10 can be fulfilled is if we are abiding in the Holy Spirit’s direction and are living out the many fruits of the Spirit. This relationship aspect to righteousness is exactly why we can defeat sin in our daily lives.
II Corinthians 3:18
This passage has had my attention for a little over a year now I think. It has been quite refreshing to study this passage and each time see an element of Christ and His work that I somehow missed before. The nature of the mirror is to reflect Christ, and we’re looking at what we’re becoming. Not at what we are, but what we’re becoming. The mirror shows us who we are in Christ. The beholding of the Lord is part of our spiritual growth and the Holy Spirit moves in us to cause that growth. The growth comes from what is already true of us in Christ being shown to us. We grow because we reckon those things true (See all of Romans 6 for the concept of reckoning and its impact on our daily life).
Romans 12:1-16
By the mercies of God we do all of Romans 12. As a logical result of His mercy we respond to Him by listening to the direction of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit causes us to do a tremendously long list of things that are not a Law, but instead reflective of a lifestyle. The Holy Spirit moves in the life of the believer and causes a radical response that includes gifts (vs 6-8), but is very practical for a daily walk that meets the needs of 1) our vertical relationship with the Lord, 2) our horizontal relationship with other believers and 3) our relationship with the world. As someone in my Tuesday night Bible Study put it: its like a layered snowball that builds on the previous layer.
Colossians 3:1-3
The Holy Spirit reminds us of Christ and the Father (John 16:13-14). Colossians 3 reminds us of our heavenly position. We are now seated in the heavenlies with Christ. We are now to be setting our mind on things above where our life is. The Holy Spirit, as we walk in relationship with Him, will be drawing our attention to our heavenly association and position. Our condition, the situation in which we live, is to be viewed from a heavenly seat where we’re hidden with Christ. We don’t see the trial as a meaningless something, but instead as an instrument the Lord is graciously using for our growth.
Conclusion
If we think about the Holy Spirit only working in us through a gift, we come up short. If we think that we’re only going to be used in a finite manner instead of in a daily walk, we’ll be disappointed by our walk. If, however, we embrace the concept of moment by moment relationship, the idea that the Lord uses the Holy Spirit in our life to bring about our sanctification, and we realize that we’re right now in the heavenly places and that the Holy Spirit draws us to that realization: we’re going to be more than conquerors. We’re going to be more than just people who have a spiritual gift, we’re going to be people who change the lives of those around us. I live that a lot, not because of me, but because of Him in my life: powerfully.
Dear cougar at the bowling alley,
Your pants were not hip huggers, I’m afraid they nearly gave all of us access to your reproductive organs, which I’m pretty sure none of us at the alley wanted to see. Your hair was massive. Massively awesome. It complemented your cleavage which was out there for all of us to see. Your hair and cleavage said, “I’m a respectable woman who is wholesome, full of character and available for the low price of $4.50/hour for things that are illegal.” I’d recommend putting your warez away and considering that the rest of the public is not interested in your pubic regions. At all.
Instead my family and I desired to see you and your friends having a good time in a G-rated, or possibly PG-rated manner wherein maybe your shirt was slightly low cut, but not designed to let your nearly college graduate boyfriend take regular peaks from over the rim of his beer glass at what were surely nearly aged bosoms as those he weened on two decades ago.
I’m trying to refrain from calling you a whore because that sounds negative, and I don’t want you to think I think that of you. I’d prefer that you just understand that I don’t want to know you in that way, my family doesn’t want to know you that way, and I don’t want my young impressionable children to think, “Mommy, why don’t you dress like a cheap whore?” Mostly because there are great women out there that they could be like.
I’m going to predict you won’t read this, but if you do, know that I don’t hate you, but instead, I want you to just put some clothes on. I’ll only show you my bowling balls and you can just show me your bowling balls, but that’s not to be a double entendre, its just me saying that at the bowling alley, we only need to see the sport implements. Get a Burqa.
Yours truly,
Randy
Today is Friday. The day after Thursday, which is the official day of thankfulness around here, but since my posting is as consistent as a politician in a tough week of financial news, I’m just going to post a bit of thankfulness today.
One Set of In-Laws are in town and I’m thankful for them. They really are swell folks and I’m enjoying the time with them.
My mom had her birthday Wednesday – she’s a great mom, and I’m thankful for her a lot.
Abby is growing up a lot the last couple weeks. We put her into a charter school program and we really, really like it. I’m thankful for her
My sister-in-law who is living with us constantly makes us smile. She’s a blessing and we hope that we can get some more time with her before she finds a scad of friends and leaves us in the dust 😉
Time with friends. We’ve also had some friends over in the chaos of the last few weeks and enjoyed their company.
Time with family. My brother’s family came into town a few weekends ago and I’m finally getting to blog about it in tiny micro-bits: We love them and had a great time. Pictures should be forthcoming some time this year.
I was reminded this morning of a really, really stupid moment in my teenaged life. A moment when I had the whole family in the car with me. I was driving. I was driving a Suburban. For those of you who are not familiar with the Suburban its much like a large pickup truck with a camper shell on the back, only it has three rows of seats so you can fit an entire army of people in it. In fact in High School we called them MAV’s because that stood for “Mormon Assault Vehicle” because we assumed an entire neighborhood could be taken over by the number of “missionaries” [I think that’s too kind a name] that could fit into a Suburban… but I digress.
So I had the family in the Suburban and we were driving home from Lake Tahoe to Carson City. This would be the kind of hill where the grades are steep and the road is windy. Think of it as the perfect place for a James Bond drive the car off a cliff kind of scene, only instead of his awesome tricked out Astin-Martin, think big GM truck. The Astin-Martin can nearly fly and the GM can nearly drop like a lead weight. I was driving kind of fast. And by kind of fast I mean stupidly fast and scaring my dad. Scaring my dad on windy roads is hard to do, but I did it. So he reached over the seat from the back where he was sort of seated and grabbed my shoulder and said, “Slow down!” I think he only had to tell me three or four times before I actually did slow down.
I’m pretty sure that Suburbans are not able to corner like that and that angels actually held all four tires onto the road. I can’t prove it, but I also can’t prove that my dad was scared either. He could have just known exactly how fast the car could handle and knew I was getting close. He’s been known to drive ultra-fast on windy roads himself 😉 Did I mention the Suburban was lifted 3″?