If ye keep watch over your hearts, and listen for the Voice of God and learn of Him, in one short hour ye can learn more from Him than ye could learn from Man in a thousand years.

-Johannes Tauler-

Every night, I have a ritual.  I iron my clothes for the next day.  This allows me to get ready in a hurry and not have to worry about it in the morning. 

There is something I have found interesting in the clothing world.  Wrinkle Free Clothes.  Seems to me like that is false advertising.  Every evening, I iron my wrinkle free khakis and my wrinkle free shirt.  If it is wrinkle-free, why am I having to iron it?  Does anyone else have this problem?  Wrinkle-free is a slight oversight in advertising.  Wrinkle-less, maybe.  But not wrinkle free.  In defense of Dockers and Hagar, I did buy some khakis that weren’t advertised as wrinkle free and I couldn’t even iron out the wrinkles. 

My point to all of this is, we don’t always get exactly what is advertised.  Wrinkle-free means wrinkle-less.  Lower calorie diet food actually means smaller portions.  Diet Coke is truly a diet because it tastes so bad, who wants to drink it?  In our world, advertisement often triumphs over the total truth of the advertisement.

With the Word of God, however, it is not so.  Whatever is written in the pages of Scripture is the truth.  We can rely on it.  There is no false advertising.  It has all the answers we need and we can rely on God’s promises.  II Corinthians 1:20, “For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.”

Father’s day came early for me.  Sonya bought me a new grill.  I love grilling food and my other grill was shot.  We went to pick  it up at lunch and fired it up for dinner.  My other grill had been out for a couple of months so tonight I was excited to cook. 

Even though it was a quick dinner it turned out good.  Grilled BBQ chicken…Simple recipe: Tex Joy BBQ Seasoning and then about ten minutes before you are done, baste it with BBQ sauce (My choice is Sweet Baby Ray’s).

"Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them."

-G.K. Chesterton

HT: the bob blog feed

In honor of school being out and the beginning of summertime, I want to share Mikey’s Funny for the day:

YOU might be a school employee if you want to slap the next person who says, "Must be nice to work 8 to 3:30 and have summers off."

YOU might be a school employee if it is difficult to name your own child because there’s no name you can come up with that doesn’t bring high blood pressure as it is uttered.

YOU might be a school employee if you believe that unspeakable evils will befall you if anyone says, "Boy, the kids sure are mellow today."

YOU might be a school employee if you encourage an obnoxious parent to check into charter schools or home schooling and are willing to donate the U-HAUL boxes should they decided to move out of district.

YOU might be a school employee if you think caffeine should be available in intravenous form.

YOU might be a school employee if you believe the playground should be equipped with a Ritalin salt lick.

YOU might be a school employee if you can’t imagine how the ACLU could think that covering your students chair with Velcro and then requiring uniforms made out of the corresponding Velcro could ever be misunderstood by the public.

YOU might be a school employee if meeting a child’s parent instantly answers this question, "Why is this kid like this?"

YOU might be a school employee if you would choose a tooth filling over a parent conference.

YOU might be a school employee if you know how many days, minutes, and seconds are left in the school year.

HT: Mikey’s Funnies

It is rare for me to plan a sermon series and then change it at the last minute.  I have been planning our series Tall Tales? for a couple of months but over the last couple of weeks, the Lord has been stirring my heart about the things that hold us captive.  The enemy of our souls is holding many of God’s people hostage with doubt, worry, depression, bitterness and pride.  We must find release from these things.

Hebrews 12:1 tells us, “let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”  We must lay aside the things that ensnare us.  We must be set free!

Beginning Sunday we will start this new series Hostage.  Come expecting for God to change your life!

Last week I tackled a project at my mother-in-law’s house.  It was a simple project of just replacing  a vent a hood.  A vent-a-hood was already in place, so it should have been an easy switch.  Well, it didn’t work out that way.

First off, the old vent-a-hood had a five inch vent, the new one a seven inch.  I spent half a day trying to find a solution to that problem.  We modified (jack-legged) the vent-a-hood with some duct work and then we were ready to go.  We installed it! Or we TRIED to install it.

We put the old vent duct onto the new modified piece only to find out that the old duct was damaged.  We tried to figure out how that could have happened.  We were careful pulling it out so we wouldn’t damage it.  I decided to take a look up the vent to the ceiling.  Something was wrong, seriously wrong.  The vent was 8 inches off center.  8 inches!

When you are trying to fit a new piece of equipment onto an old one, you need it to be centered.  To hide the home builder’s mistake, they had built an enclosure around the vent pipe and nailed it shut.  Not only that, they enclosed it and then built the cabinets around it, so it was almost impossible to get to.  They were trying to hide their mistakes and we would have never figured it out unless something went wrong.

This is the way it often is in our lives.  We get off-center and then build a wall around it or cover it up so no one will ever know.  We look good on the outside, our talk sounds good but we are still off-center.  The word sin literally means to miss the mark.  We miss the mark and our lives don’t line up with our Creator.  When something is off-set there is not a free flow from one to the other.  So it is, in our relationship with God.  Our lives must be in line with Him so that we can experience His abundance in our lives.

We cannot cover up our sins or our failures by putting on a front.  God knows our hearts, we cannot hide.  Too often we keep things hidden in our heart and only acknowledge them when something goes wrong or gets exposed.  God wants us to live in an open relationship with Him, where we readily acknowledge our failures, admit we have failed and repent (change).  This keeps us in line with Him.

Where have you gotten off-center in your life? 

I want to express my apologies to my faithful readers because of my slow writing here lately.  We have been pretty busy and I have put writing to the back burner.  I see the light at the end of the tunnel and am hoping to be back on schedule with writing again next week.

This week we were out of town for a couple of days.  We went to pick up Josh from Gainesville, Texas.  He has been on vacation with my parents for the last 2 weeks.  It is great to have him back.  He helped me unload the car and will have to take out the garbage this evening:)  Well besides that, I am glad he is home.  Josh is my partner and helps me tremendously with things around the church.  When he is gone, it is like missing my right hand man!

While we were away we spent a couple of nights with Sonya’s parents.  It was great to see them and her dad seems to be doing better.  I tackled a project for my mother-in-law and as usual it took me two days to complete a two hour project.  I used to get mad at this kind of thing, but I am encouraged that at least I am consistent.

Hannah made my night.  She was wearing her Snow White outfit, because she is a princess.  So as she was going around the house she would address me as Prince, instead of Dad.  “Prince, will you get me___?”, “Prince, what are you doing?”  Is it any wonder I spoil her?  (For those of you who question her addressing me as Prince, she believes I am really a prince.  She is not referring to the 80’s rock star)