desiring God

I've been reading an incredible book called Desiring God by John Piper. I'm still only about halfway through the book but I would highly recommend it to anyone. This book will definitely change the way you approach the Throne of Grace in worship. I won't go too deep into the meaning of the book. I just want to comment on one point in particular that has stuck in my head. Piper makes the claim that the greatest hindrance to our worship of the Father is not the fact that we are too focused on our own pleasure as many would say, but that the things that we allow to please us are so pitiful. The whole point of the book is that we should seek pleasure. But we should seek it in the ultimate source of pleasure, our Heavenly Father.

In the book Piper quotes often from C. S. Lewis and Jonathan Edwards. One quote from Lewis particularly stands out.

"Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

I pray that all of us as Christians would be less easily pleased and would seek our pleasure in the worship of the only name that is worhty of worship. If you feel yourself struggling during worship, being distracted, thinking of all the other things you could be doing, I encourage you to pick up a copy of this book and give it a read.

gaggles and gossip

Have you ever spent much time around middle school girls? Especially the younger ones that are just crossing out of childhood into the teenage years? When I was involved in Youth Ministry I dreaded meetings with the middle schoolers, not because I didn't want to be around them, but because I had no idea what the complex matrix of relationships among the girls would look like that day. I would always hear things like, "I'm not friends with her anymore because she said..." or "She told so and so that I like him and I don't!" (Though in reality I knew she did.) It always reminded me of a gaggle of geese all honking and snipping at each other.

I feel much the same way with the situation going on in our church right now. It's hard for me to get into a spirit of worship anymore becuase there are people on both sides of the issues that are acting like a gaggle of 6th grade girls. "They're just being judgemental and trying to play God." "So and so said such and such about the pastor and that's just not right." And the sad thing is that much of the "information" that is being passed around is third, fourth, or fifth hand or even farther from the source. "Well I heard that Joe Bob was talking to Mary Ellen and she said that Betty Sue told her that Billy Frank said ..." You get the picture.

I just wish that everyone, on both sides, would realize that our reason for coming together in the first place is to worship the living God, the Creator of the universe. Let's get back to doing that and all the gossip and back-biting and manipulations will seem so petty and insignificant in the light of His glory.

worldview quiz

A bunch of the other bloggers that I have been visiting have been posting links to this quiz so I thought I would take it too. It seems to be pretty accurate. It shows me as being highly evangelical and highly fundamentalist, which is very true of my personal worldview.

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists. Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 86% Fundamentalist 71% Neo orthodox 68% Emergent/Postmodern 64% Reformed Evangelical 61% Charismatic/Pentecostal 25% Classical Liberal 18% Modern Liberal 7% Roman Catholic 0% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

5 weeks

We're down to about 5 weeks until we move to Louisville, Kentucky and the nerves are starting to set in. Currently I don't have a job for when we get there, we have no place to live, and we're not sure how we're going to pay for anything. I know, that sounds insane, but we are trusting that since God has called us to go there, he will provide a way for us to make a living while we are there.

I've signed up for a couple of affiliate deals which will provide a small amount of money through this website. That's why you see the Google search box and ads on the side of the page. Anytime someone uses the search box and clicks on the links on the results page, or clicks on the ads on this page, I will receive a small amount of the advertising revenue from Google. I will also be adding some other links in the near future to some other Christian websites. I'll let you know how those work when I get them up and running if anyone would like to help us out by using the links.

On another note, Dee Dee pointed out something else that proved to us that God has called us to seminary at this particular point in time. When I was accepted to the Master's program that I am currently finishing up (today is the last day of the session, Yay!) I was scheduled to start in the middle of a term, in May of 2004. A day or so after being accepted I got a phone call saying that they had had someone drop out and were wondering if I would like to start early. I said sure, so I ended up starting at the beginning of a term, in April, 5 1/2 weeks earlier than I was scheduled to start. Doesn't sound like much until you realize that if I had started when I was scheduled I wouldn't be done for another 7 1/2 weeks from today (there's a 2 week gap between each 11 week term) which would mean I wouldn't be able to start seminary until January, which would mean I probably would not have enough time to be accepted to the Chaplain Candidate Program before I was over the age limit. Isn't it cool when God does stuff like that in our lives to prove to us that He is the one who is ultimately in control?

loving those that are hard to love

My church has been going through a rough time recently. There's alot involved but to boil it down to something manageable for this post I'll say that the pastor and staff had proposed some changes to the structure of the church and some additional steps for membership. We had met and prayed over these changes before ever presenting them to the church and felt that this was the direction that God was leading us to go. There was a backlash of opposition to the changes and it quickly degenerated to personal attacks from people on both sides of the issue. The pastor and his family have had to endure attacks on their character for several months now. I say all that to say that I have never met anyone who gives a better example of the character of a minister as laid out in 2 Timothy 2:24-26, than my pastor, Bill Pruitt. Throughout the entire ordeal, with accusations flying on both sides, I have never heard him utter a negative word about anyone. I have watched him love on people and had my human mind screaming out "Kick them out of the church" (which, by the way, he doesn't have the authority to do anyway). But he has followed the command to love the flock that God has called him to serve. This has been an incredible, and humbling example to me as a young minister just starting out and learning what it means to be a servant leader. I pray that when the trials and attacks of Satan come in my ministry, as I know they will, I will exhibit a small part of the character that I have seen exhibited here.

decisions

Alright, I sent out an email to my entire address book with a link to this blog telling them that they could come here to read the story about how we decided to go to Southern seminary and apply to become an Air Force Chaplain. So I guess I had better actually write the story out so that if by some huge stretch of the imagination someone comes looking for it, they will actually find it.

The whole idea of the chaplaincy has been kicking around since not long before I got out of the Army, but Dee Dee and I have always dismissed it. We thought, "No, I'm too conservative", "I wouldn't fit in with the inclusive atmosphere" and anything else we could come up with to shoot the idea down. But it just kept popping back up.

When we moved here for me to finish my undergrad degree it was with the plan of going on to seminary afterwards. Well, I started visiting seminaries all over the place but just didn't feel like any of them were where God was calling me to go. In fact, I felt like God was telling me "It's not time yet." So in the spring of 2004 we put seminary on hold and I began working on another degree (see the post below for that story).

In March of this year God told us it was time to start thinking about seminary again, and He told us pretty emphatically. Here's how it all happened. Dee Dee is in a Bible study group with some of the other women from our Sunday School class. The topic of the study on Monday, March 28 was submission. Dee Dee asked me how I felt she did in the area of submission and I told her I thought she did great. She agreed but said that the one area she felt she didn't do very well in was the idea of me being a chaplain. I said "Wow, I haven't thought about that in months" to which she quickly replied under her breath "Take it back. Take it back. Take it back."

That week, our Sunday School teacher and I got together for lunch. We had been trying to do so for about a month and a half but just never could hook up. One of the things we talked about was my conversation with Dee Dee about submission and the chaplaincy. I'm not sure why I evern brought it up, but I did. He challenged me to do something about it, to talk to a retired chaplain, or find an active duty chaplain I could talk to just to see what my options were. Well, I emailed a contact for the Chaplain Candidate Program that I found on the internet and got a call back the next day. After talking with him I really felt like God was telling me to pursue it. I know it sounds fast but by Thursday, March 31, I was convinced that God was telling me that this is something I need to do. I might end up not becoming a chaplain for one reason or another, but it's something that I must pursue at this point in my life.

OK, now for the Southern Seminary decision. Like I said, by March 31 I was making plans to go to seminary again (you have to go to seminary to be a chaplain). My human brain said, "OK, I have a good job here at Parkview, so I'll just stay here and commute to New Orleans for seminary." I got home that day and had a flyer in the mail from Southern about their Preview Conference that was coming up in April. I know, coincidence right? Well, let me tell you a little more about that flyer.

• It was postmarked on March 28, the day the idea resurfaced
• It was mailed to the wrong apartment, but made it to my box anyway
• I got it on March 31, the deadline to sign up for the conference was April 1

So we decided that God was telling us we needed to at least look into this school. When we got there we fell in love with it. Through the people we met and the things we heard at the Preview Conference God definitely confirmed that He is calling us to attend there. Oh and when we got to Southern and told the Director of Admissions the story about the flyer he said "And I can add something to that. All the flyers were mailed at the same time, about a month before yours was postmarked."

So there's the whole story. I know it's long and confusing, but that's how it happened.

degrees and more degrees

I did it! I just turned in my final assignment for the last class in my Master's program. On July 9th I will receive a Master of Science in Management with a major in Information Technology Management from Colorado Technical University Online. Now that this degree is completed I will take a two month break before started work on a second Master's degree, this one in Divinity from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Looking back over the past dozen years of my life, this is so far from where I thought I would be. In December 1993 I dropped out of college and joined the Army because I was tired of school. The Army promptly sent me to a language school that lasted over a year to learn Arabic. After completing my training I spent 2 1/2 years in Germany and then was transferred to Atlanta, GA. While there I tried for a while to complete my undergraduate degree but it just didn't work out with my work schedule after leaving the Army.

Just a little over three years ago Dee Dee and I decided to move back to Baton Rouge so I could finish up at LSU. We came back here thinking that it would take me a minimum of 2 to 2 1/2 years to finish up. I ended up switching my major to General Studies and finishing in 1 year and then begining this Master's program that lasted 15 months. So in the time we thought it would take me to finish my undergrad degree I finished it and a Master's. Now I'm getting ready to start on another degree. As my friend Shawn said the other night, "This from the guy that nobody thought would ever finish his first degree."

I know, I know, I've rambled in this post, but read the title of this blog OK. I'm just amazed at the places God has taken me and the things He has helped me to accomplish once I stopped running from Him and gave in to His will for my life.

Nerd quiz

OK, so I found this quiz that is supposed to tell how much of a nerd you are. I know there are tons of these things out there and most of them are pretty silly, but I just had to take the five minutes to run through this one to see. Here are my results. I always knew I was a nerd, just not quite that much of one.

"I wanna go with a girl"

It's funny how silly little comments like that can stick in your head for years. We had Shawn and Marja Liner and their daughter Maggie over for dinner last night. Shawn was the best man at our wedding and though we haven't stayed in touch over the years as much as either of us would have liked I still consider him to be one of the closest friends I have. Even after a year or more of not seeing each other when we get together it's like being with family. And I know that anytime we get together, at some point the phrase "I wanna go with a girl" is going to come up.

OK, a little background on the title of this post. It goes back about 12 or 13 years. I was in college at LSU and Shawn, Jim and Arthur Harvey and I had been sitting around their apartment. None of us had dates for the evening so we decided to go see the movie "Groundhog Day". As we were leaving the apartment, the whole idea of not having a date struck me and I blurted out "But I wanna go with a girl!" That phrase will follow me till the day I die as long as I am friends with those guys. But hey, can you really blame me? I mean, I was a 20-21 year old guy, going out to a movie on a Friday night with 3 other guys. OF COURSE I wanted to go with a girl instead.

Anyway, it's just those type of little unguarded moments that allow us to see into someone's heart and form a connection with them that can last for a lifetime. And it's just those little unguarded moments that Christ uses to change a life, and form a relationship that will last for eternity. So form connections with people, seek out friendships in which you can open yourself up and allow Christ to shine through you to touch another life and possibly change them for eternity.

Ramble relocation

For those of you who may not have heard, our family is on the move again. For several years now, actually since before I left the Army, I have had recurring thoughts of returning to the military as a chaplain. I've always dismissed these thoughts for a variety of reasons that I won't go into here. Well, about 2 months ago this thought recurred yet again and this time I couldn't ignore it. Through a series of events over the course of about a week God confirmed to me that He wanted me to pursue becoming a chaplain. To make a long story short, Dee Dee and I visited The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in April and felt that God was confirming that we should apply. So we are off to Louisville, KY to begin my seminary training in August. Once there I will apply to the Chaplain candidate program with the U.S. Air Force.

beginnings

Well, I've finally been assimilated into the blog collective. The youth minister at my church has been blogging for a while now and has been telling me about it but I've just never really thought much about it. I finally started reading his blog among others and I've been sucked in. I've been wanting to send out a newsletter to all my friends from the military and from previous places I've lived just to let them know what's going on in my life. Hopefully this will be a way for me to keep them updated on a more regular basis. As you can see from the title I plan to pretty much just ramble on about nothing in particular in this space. I've also been wanting to journal for years but just never could bring myself to do it. Since I spend sooooo much of my time in front of a computer maybe this is the way I can finally bring myself to do it.