Last week I bought a new pair of running shoes for when I run on the treadmill at the gym and eventually (if it ever warms up) outside. My other shoes were pretty worn out and pretty cheap to begin with, so I decided to get a decent pair of shoes. I saw that Kohls had a sale on shoes and headed over there to check them out. I ended up getting a pair of Asics Gel-Kanbarra 2 running shoes. I don’t know a lot about running but I do know that Asics are a good running shoe, so I went with them. Plus, they felt great when I tried them on. I haven’t used them very much to give a review, but I will give a review after wearing them for a few weeks.
On the same day I also bought a new lawn mower. At the end of last year my old lawn mower that I had for about 12 years kind of died and so we needed a new one. Since I have been doing what I can to care more for the environment I went with a battery powered lawn mower. A friend of mine ordered one and so I sent away for some of the materials about it so I can see what they were all about and check the prices. So I ended up getting a Neuton Lawn Mower. I am looking forward to mowing my lawn and not emitting any air pollutants or noise pollution.
Today, the greatest hockey player turns 80 years old. No, it isn’t Wayne Gretzky because, with all due respect, he couldn’t even hold Mr. Hockey’s jock strap. I am talking about none other than Gordie Howe the Detroit Red Wings legend, who has played in more professional hockey games and scored more goals professionally than any other hockey player.
I never had the opportunity to see Gordie play in person, but I did have tickets to see him play for the Detroit Vipers when he signed a one game contract so he could play hockey in 6 decades. However, I was not able to go for various reasons and passed the tickets off to someone else. Sadly it would be the last time he would really ever skate again because of having both knees replaced, which he said is the one thing he misses the most.
If you want to read more you can read two excellent articles that appeared in the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press.
Since I moved my blog over to WordPress from Blogger about 5 months ago, I have had 241 spam comments caught by Akismet. If you don’t have Akismet installed on your blog then you are missing out on one of the coolest tools for blogging. It is so nice to know that Akismet is there doing it’s job and preventing my blog from being inundated with spam. And for some reason a majority of come on my blog post Amazing Grace (Not A Movie Review) for whatever reason. That is the over 200.
The under 200 is how much I weigh, which I probably have not been under 200 in 10 years. About 4 years ago I weighed 265 and went on the Atkins diet and lost 55 pounds. I then went back up to 235 about a year or so later and maintained right around there. Then back in August Kimmy and I got a membership at World Gym and we started eating better. I began to shed some weight due to the fact that I go to the gym 5 days a week for about 1.5-2 hours per day. So between that and eating better I have now gone below 200 pounds. I really do not have a goal weight that I am shooting for, but I am enjoying the fact that I now wear the same size jeans that I did in high school. I also enjoy working out and being able to run at least 2 miles on the treadmill everyday at the gym. So life is good.
I understand that they want to draw a hard line in the sand with teams that are caught in such practices, but giving the whole team what amounts to a death sentence is stupid. Alberto and Levi had no part in it as well as many of their fellow team members. You can read more about it here.
So Levi has started an online petition to allow him and his team to ride. You can join the campaign by going to letleviride.com and signing up. Hopefully, this will cause the ASO to realize they need to allow him and Albero to ride this year.
I had a teacher at my Bible college that told us if you can’t say “amen”, say “ouch” instead. This one kind of makes me say “ouch”. It is a quote from John Wimber.
Years ago in New York City, I got into a taxi cab with an Iranian taxi driver, who could hardly speak English. I tried to explain to him where I wanted to go, and as he was pulling his car out of the parking place, he almost got hit by a van that on its side had a sign reading The Pentecostal Church. He got real upset and said, “That guy’s drunk.” I said, “No, he’s a Pentecostal. Drunk in the spirit, maybe, but not with wine.” He asked, “Do you know about church?” I said, “Well, I know a little bit about it; what do you know?” It was a long trip from one end of Manhattan to the other, and all the way down he told me one horror story after another that he’d heard about the church. He knew about the pastor that ran off with the choir master’s wife, the couple that had burned the church down and collected the insurance—every horrible thing you could imagine. We finally get to where we were going, I paid him, and as we’re standing there on the landing I gave him an extra-large tip. He got a suspicious look in his eyes—he’d been around, you know. I said, “Answer me this one question.” Now keep in mind, I’m planning on witnessing to him. “If there was a God and he had a church, what would it be like?” He sat there for awhile making up his mind to play or not. Finally he sighed and said, “Well, if there was a God and he had a church—they would care for the poor, heal the sick, and they wouldn’t charge you money to teach you the Book.” I turned around and it was like an explosion in my chest. “Oh, God.” I just cried, I couldn’t help it. I thought, “Oh Lord, they know. The world knows what it’s supposed to be like. The only ones that don’t know are the Church.”
When you joined the kingdom, you expected to be used of God. I’ve talked to thousands of people, and almost everybody has said, “When I signed up, I knew that caring for the poor was part of it—I just kind of got weaned off of it, because no one else was doing it.” Folks, I’m not saying, “Do some-thing heroic.” I’m not saying, “Take on some high standard, sell everything you have and go.” Now, if Jesus tells you that, that’s different. But I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, participate. Give some portion of what you have—time, energy, money, on a regular basis—to this purpose, to redeeming people, to caring for people. Share your heart and life with somebody that’s not easy to sit in the same car with. Are you hearing me? That’s where you’ll really see the kingdom of God.
It really makes you think that maybe churches need to look at what they are doing and consider what kind of image we are portraying. I was talking with my parent’s the other day and they were talking about a couple of churches that would hand women shawls if they came in with short sleeves on, granted that was many years ago. But I know of two friends who attended the same church (at separate times) not too many years ago and were asked to leave because of their appearance.
The first friend had decided that it was time to get his life right with God and so he decided to start attending church, so after getting off of work on a Sunday morning he went to a large church in my area. When he went in he was met at the door by an usher and told that he needed to go home and shower and change before he could come into the service.
The other friend had just had major surgery on his brain and decided that going to church to thank God for saving his life was something he wanted to do, so he walks into the same church wearing a hat to hide his scar. He finds a seat and as the service is starting he is approached by an usher and told that he needs to remove his hat. My friend explained to the usher that he had just had surgery on his brain and he did not want to remove his hat because the scar was ugly looking and he did not want to freak anyone out. The usher told him if he did not remove his hat that he had to leave. So my friend left.
Now fortunately the first friend decided that his desire for God was greater than the rejection that church gave him, but the other friend has no desire to ever walk into another church building again. However, I am doing my best to hopefully show him that is not the reality of what church is supposed to be.
It does make you think about what it is we do as churches that causes barriers between people and God. Is it a dress code? Is it a style? What is it that may be causing your church to turn people off to Christ rather than on to Him? I heard Mosaic’s podcast recently where Erwin McManus was talking about how someone said they would never put their faith in God, because they could not forgive their father for things they have done to them. And someone told them that they can’t forgive their father unless they can accept God’s forgiveness for them. In other words, you don’t come to God because you are all cleaned up, but after you come to God he will clean you up.
You can read the full story behind Bluetree’s song here. Here is a portion of the story.
We were in Pattaya to be part of a praise event not far from this street, the soul purpose of which was to worship and show God’s light in a dark place. We wanted to play more than the scheduled slots while we were there, so we found out that one of the bar owners would let us play a worship set in her bar on the proviso that we brought as many from the missions team who would buy coke-a-cola all night. We walk in to the bar which is about the middle of walking street, girls are lined up on the stairs waiting for business. We get set up, we’re really nervous and quite uncomfortable but we kick in to a familiar beat of worship and soon it’s ok. God starts to speak and we started to move in to this spontaneous song. The truth is when you worship in a place, you start to see God’s heart for that place. What would God say to a place like this?
Amidst the depravity God say’s, I’m the God of this City, I’m the King of these people and Greater Thing are Yet to Come, Greater Things are Still to be Done HERE. The song wasn’t written before that night, but we came out of the bar having worshipped with the song that is now the title track of our album – God of this City (Greater things). The song isn’t just for Pattaya – it’s for your city, and it’s true. By faith we must expect that greater things are still to be done.
My friend Adam posted this video on his blog. It really is an amazing song and I encourage you go to iTunes and download it, you won’t be disappointed.
Here is reason #476 why I am not geared for children’s ministry. But you take them and put them into their teen years and then I will be happy to deal with them.
Much has been discussed about whether or not global warming is true. This is especially a hot topic in churches amongst Christians. With Al Gore’s advocacy of global warming, which led to him winning a Nobel Peace Prize, and his movie An Inconvenient Truth it has really pushed the issue to the forefront.
I don’t know if global warming is true or not, but I think that some of the good things that have come from the possible scare of it is good. What is wrong with consuming less or recycling or living more environmentally friendly? I know it flies in the face of our American way, but maybe it is time that we here in America stop being consumers and start caring about our planet a little bit more. Anyway, I saw this video a while back and thought it presented some interesting thoughts on this subject.
Last week I bought a new pair of running shoes for when I run on the treadmill at the gym and eventually (if it ever warms up) outside. My other shoes were pretty worn out and pretty cheap to begin with, so I decided to get a decent pair of shoes. I saw that Kohls had a sale on shoes and headed over there to check them out. I ended up getting a pair of Asics Gel-Kanbarra 2 running shoes. I don’t know a lot about running but I do know that Asics are a good running shoe, so I went with them. Plus, they felt great when I tried them on. I haven’t used them very much to give a review, but I will give a review after wearing them for a few weeks.
On the same day I also bought a new lawn mower. At the end of last year my old lawn mower that I had for about 12 years kind of died and so we needed a new one. Since I have been doing what I can to care more for the environment I went with a battery powered lawn mower. A friend of mine ordered one and so I sent away for some of the materials about it so I can see what they were all about and check the prices. So I ended up getting a Neuton Lawn Mower. I am looking forward to mowing my lawn and not emitting any air pollutants or noise pollution.
HT to 
I really do not have a goal weight that I am shooting for, but I am enjoying the fact that I now wear the same size jeans that I did in high school. I also enjoy working out and being able to run at least 2 miles on the treadmill everyday at the gym. So life is good.
However, I am doing my best to hopefully show him that is not the reality of what church is supposed to be.
