On this day in history: In 1813, rubber was patented by J.F. Hummel. In 1852, the first edition of Peter Roget’s Thesaurus was published. In 1913, Gideon Sundback patented an all-purpose zipper. And in 1986, Roger Clemens of the Boston Red Sox set a major-league baseball record by striking out 20 Seattle Mariner batters.
Today Is National Zipper Day! I don’t even know how to celebrate… So zip something up!
Kalita Dripper Review – This is one of the pourover devices that I do not have, and would like to add to my coffee resources. This article is a review with several great points for picking one up on Amazon.
10 Watch Styles Every Man Should Know – I love a good watch, and have a couple of nice ones on my list to add to my wardrobe someday. But there are many different variations out there, and you should know the differences.
Sounding The Sumburgh Foghorn – Have you ever wondered what an old foghorn sounds like? In this video, they fire up on old foghorn in Scotland. It’s pretty fascinating to watch.
Scripture often refers to our relationship with God as a “walk.” That image is conveyed in the last stanza very clearly, in both a positive and negative light. This stanza tells us how to achieve this. Let’s look at the first half of it in Psalm 119:113-116:
In the previous stanza, the psalmist presented the word of God as a light for the path. If we are to walk in God’s ways, we need such a light to clarify where we are to put our feet. With that information, we know what to do. In the next stanza, we are told how to do it.
Very often, we can see the path before us, and we can see obstacles in that path very clearly. What we sometimes cannot see is our way around those obstacles. And if we are not using God’s Word as a light for our feet, then we cannot see clearly how to get around them at all.
So how are we to stay on the right path and keep ourselves form straying away from it? That’s the point of this stanza. If we are to walk the path that God has called us to, we must be very intentional in doing so, because the wrong paths are many, and they are easy to stray onto. If we are to stay on the right path, we must be intentional. And that intentionality comes through a consistent, continuous investment in the Word of God.
There are at least three ways that we can keep our focus intentionally upon God’s Word according to this strophe of Psalm 119. Two are found in the first half, and the third is in the second half, which we will look at next week.
The aim is never to become a master of the Word, but to be mastered by it.
Have you ever felt like life has thrown you a bunch of curve balls and you just don’t know how to handle it? That is how I have felt recently, and I have managed to rebound from that. Let me explain how I keep the proper perspective in view.
One of my bucket list items in life is to one day take a hot air balloon ride. I have flown in planes and looked out of the tiny windows to catch a glimpse of the ground far below, but a hot air balloon gives you a whole different view. You can see everything clearly. Hot air balloons typically fly at heights of 1500 to 3000 feet. This isn’t all that high, but it is high enough to get a good view of everything under you and see how it’s all laid out, and how all the different areas are connected to each other. Someday, I hope to experience a hot air balloon first hand.
You probably already know that we recently left a ministry in a community where we were fairly established and comfortable, to move to an entirely new town and a new church. With several kids in the mix, some of which are teens, that was enough drama to begin with. I am confident that God was highly involved in that whole process, and intentionally led us here, and is continuing to lead as we get settled and established in this new role.
I’m even more confident of that now, after being here for several months, even more so than I was during the transition process itself. Since we have moved in, our lives seem to have been plagued with one setback after another. With kids lamenting the move, grieving even – which is a normal process – we felt like it might take a while to get our feet under us. But when you throw a few other elements into the mix, such as a van accident, in which our van was totaled, though no one was hurt; a half dozen house issues, mostly plumbing; and a couple of other events that could have knocked the wind from our sails, we felt more than off balance. We felt defeated. I felt defeated.
New Testament Expositionby Walter L. Liefeld (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing, 1984)
My preferred style of preaching is expository preaching. To be sure, there is a place for topical sermons and other aspects of crafting a message for the church, but primarily, I much prefer to preach expositorily.
In doing so, it helps me to grow just as much as it does the listeners sitting in the pews. I enjoy taking a passage and moving from the page of Scripture to the pulpit, describing what the passage means, and how we can use it in application for our lives today as well.
To that end, I want to be the best preaching I can be, and studying books on the topic is always helpful. This book, New Testament Exposition, by Walter L. Liefeld, was one of the books I read in college for a homiletics class. While it has been around for a while, it is proving helpful to pull it out and reread it again.
Hopefully, it will reinforce some things I practice, and remind of things I need to incorporate into my sermon crafting and delivery. It’s available on Amazon from a variety of sellers. If you preach regularly, I recommend that you pick up a copy.
But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.”
Several years ago, I developed a Life Plan, outlining the most important aspects of my life, and what I wanted to achieve in each of those areas. Periodically, I take the time to review that plan, in order to make sure I stay on track.
I was first introduced to the idea of a Life Plan by Michael Hyatt, through his blog on leadership. At that point, he was the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, and was striving to help others develop their leadership abilities on the side. Since then, he has made his leadership platform his main work, and has developed it into a full time business.
His blog and podcast are full of great leadership resources. Most of these are designed for the corporate or business mind, but there is a lot of overlap into the church as well. I find a lot of his resources to be extremely helpful, to the point of being almost invaluable.
One such resource is the development of my Life Plan. I initially wrote out a detailed plan for my life around 2011, identifying those areas of my life that were most important to me, and striving to make them the best that they can be.
