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Coffee Break – 08.26.2019

Your Monday Dose Of Inspiration

Time for a Coffee Break! On this day in history: In 1873, the school board of St. Louis, MO, authorized the first U.S. public kindergarten. In 1939, the first televised major league baseball games were shown. The event was a double-header between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers. And in 1957, the first Edsel made by the Ford Motor Company rolled of the assembly line.

Coffee Break

Today Is National Cherry Popsicle Day!
Go find a popsicle and enjoy it! Just make sure it’s cherry!

How to Store Coffee Beans – This is one of the questions I hear the most frequently. There are so many misunderstanding surrounding the storage of your coffee. This is a good article, but let me emphasize two points: Keep it unground, and don’t store it in the fridge.

10 Clothing Hacks Most Guys Don’t Know – Want to look better without drawing attention to the fact that you are trying to look better? Try these ten hacks.

The Delicate Art Of Cobweb Paintings – I have never heard of this art medium. Now I kind of want to go see some of these paintings.

10 Most Heavily Guarded Places On Earth – Places like this always intrigue me, especially when the value is historical.

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Memorize Scripture: Psalm 119:129-132

Hiding God’s Word In Our Hearts

Verse 129 begins this stanza by using the word “wonder.” And God’s Word is indeed wonderful. Take a look at this week’s passage in Psalm 119:129-132:

Psalm 119:129-132

My kids frequently utter the statement, “I’m bored.” When my wife and I try to excite their wonder, little comes from it most of the time. We have been inundated with a barrage of incredibly life-like scenarios and creations from Hollywood, and prominent in the news of the day is the issue of “deep fake” news. This is the ability to create news events so real that they cannot be identified as fiction.

As a result of the entertainment industry, and the media and social media, much of our culture has lost our sense of wonder. But I don’t think that we can lay the blame at the foot of media and entertainment completely. I think that we have lost this sense of wonder because we have lost our sense of awareness of who God is and what he is doing in our lives.

The writers of the psalms have not lost this sense of awareness. The words “wonder” or “wonderful” or one of their many derivative forms occurs more than thirty times throughout the psalms.

In this stanza, the writer begins by stating that God’s statutes are wonderful, and worthy of obedience. This statement summarizes the theme of this stanza and the next, that God’s Word creates wonder within us when our obedience springs form a proper understanding and appreciation of it.

Why does the psalmist make such a claim about God’s Word? There are seven reasons given in these two stanzas, which we will look at in turn. From this segment, we can immediately see two of them.

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Getting Things Done With Todoist

Implementing A New Productivity Tool

For the last few years, I have used an online task manager to keep track of all my projects, tasks, and other items to be done. But recently, I have made a switch that has helped tremendously.

Todoist

Since 2011, I have used a task manager called Nozbe. Even though I have switched, it’s not because this was a bad product, or something I didn’t like. I have just found a few things that work better for me. Nozbe is a great product, and a great company. The only drawback in my experience is the expense. They are one of the more pricey task management systems out there.

A few months ago, I started using a new planner, which has become the most effective tool in that regard in my life. It has been a game changer. I’ll share more about it in a later post.

But, from that change, I also incorporated a hybrid task management system, with a fresh start in a new piece of software. I have made the switch to Todoist, and when paired with my planner, this has become a highly effective tool in my arsenal.

Todoist allows me to incorporate my task list into projects (Nozbe did as well, but Todoist seems easier to use). Those projects are the things that I need to get done to advance my work and my personal tasks and goals. I have set this up in almost every area of my life, from goals like growing in my skill as a guitarist, to weekly tasks, like sermon preparation, which contains several sub-tasks.

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Coffee Break – 08.12.2019

Your Monday Dose Of Inspiration

This Coffee Break is a little different than normal. Instead of giving you several links that have caught my attention this week, I want to give you one single link to explore, and encourage you to take a coffee break and take a look.

Coffee Break

This week is the Missouri State Fair!
And it is a fun place to be!

I don’t know if you have ever visited a state fair or not, or if you even have one near you or not. But if you ever have the chance to take one in, I encourage you to do so. And, if you are close enough to come visit the Missouri State Fair, I believe it is one of the best around.

When we moved to Sedalia, Missouri, home of the Missouri State Fair, I wasn’t too thrilled with the prospect of all the crowds in town, all the traffic, all the hassle of dealing with so many people in so small of an area. I enjoy crowds up to a point, but when they slow down the drive across town, or make it hard to pull into the bank, I can get kinda grumpy.

But with the fair in full swing this week, my perspective has shifted somewhat. I am helping run the booth for Show Me Christian Youth Home, drawing attention and awareness to the ministry that happens there, and have met a lot of people. And when I’m not working in that booth, I have wandered around the fairgrounds, looking at other booths and exhibits, watching and meeting people from all over the state and even the Midwest.

Frankly, it has been a very fun and energizing experience.

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Memorize Scripture: Psalm 119:125-128

Hiding God’s Word In Our Hearts

The first half of this stanza showed one reason that the psalmist was certain that God would deliver him. The rest of this passage gives two more reasons. Take a look at this passage in Psalm 119:125-128:

Psalm 119:125-128

God is a loving God. Of course, that goes hand in hand with his holiness and the need for righteousness in our lives. As the psalmist has discovered and revealed in this stanza of Psalm 119, God will deliver his people because of his love; and, in fact, God will deliver the psalmist because of that love.

The psalmist has enemies, and his enemies are the enemies of God. This is perhaps the lowest point in the entirety of Psalm 119, and we see the writer cry out for deliverance. His first reason for requesting that deliverance is because of God’s love, in verse 124.

The second reason the psalmist gives here is because he is God’s servant. The writer is basically declaring, “I belong to you, God! Help me because of that!” And like any good earthly master, who cares for that which belongs to him, should God do any less than care for those who belong to him?

The psalmist also seems to understand that God’s deliverance can be seen in the Word. He asks for deliverance, and he asks for it in the form of discernment to understand God’s statutes completely. You can see this clearly in verse 125.