When Will It Begin?

Especially in the church?

Happy Resurrection Day!

Life's For Sharing

Whether you've seen this before or not, it's worth watching over and over. How much fun is this?



Can you imagine a group of people sharing life and Christ in such a way? Not necessarily with the dancing, but altogether. As one body. Life's For Sharing. Great slogan; fun video. Be encouraged.

(This came in the email: At the train station in Liverpool , T-Mobile did this great commercial unbeknown to the daily commuters. They practiced for 8 weeks and late one night at the station. On January 15th, 2009, with hidden cameras and 400 dancers at 11:00 a.m. their plan was put into action.)

Truth In Comedy

Maybe it's tragedy, but it's truth nonetheless.

The Wife's 30th Birth-Weekend!

My wife, Bridget, turned 30 this past Friday, and boy, did I get her good! What started out so fun but small turned into an elaborate 3 day adventure! You don't understand how hard it was to not let anything slip during the week. My friends and I tried a couple of times, but luckily, we caught ourselves and were able to give Bridge the surprisiest birthday party ever! (Yes, I made that word up.) Thank you to all the parties involved in helping to plan and participate in such a wonderful weekend. For the low down on the hoe down, check it out here.







(my beautiful bride)

Hello, March

iLog wrap up and other updates coming soon. Until then:

"That Smells Stinkowith"*

I live in Oklahoma. I root for Oklahoma teams. I knew we were in trouble when we came away with zero points after two trips to the redzone. Plus, Tim Tebow is a darn good football player. And a believer. A passionate believer. However, that doesn't make all the hype about him before, during, and after the game any more tolerable for OU fans.

I didn't pay too much attention to it all. At least, I tried not to. But when all the announcers talked about was "Tebow this" or "Tebow that", then it became difficult to ignore. That particular sentiment was echoed by many Sooner fans in the days that followed the BCS Championship game. I heard plenty of, "Yeah, but did they have to keep talking about Tim Tebow?" Well, apparently they did.

The guy is good. He loves Jesus, and he's not afraid to tell you about it. If anybody deserves all the fuss about him, it's Tim Tebow. I like the guy. I don't know him personally, but I'd like to. Goodness oozes from him. Some would argue that greatness oozes from him. Victory seems to follow the guy around. For Florida and Tebow fans, you can't talk enough about him. For Oklahoma and Sam Bradford fans, you can't shut up fast enough. All the praise and hype for Tebow is sweet music for the Florida faithful and fingernails on a chalkboard for Sooner Nation.

Then, as I was pondering all of this, I was reminded about a particular passage of scripture. It comes from 2 Corinthians 2:14-16a, from the NIV:

14But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. 15For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. 16To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.

In a Roman victory procession, the Roman general would display the spoils of war, including any captives, amidst a cloud of incense burned for the gods. To the Romans, the victors, the smell was sweet, but to the captives, it was the stench of slavery and death. To the one, the smell was sweet victory, and to the other, it was bitter defeat.

As a believer, the message about Christ and his love and forgiveness smells sweet to me. But, I know for some, it stinks; they don't want to hear it. Even though it is a good message, a message of hope and mercy, there are some who don't want any of it. They would just as soon you shut up about it as to keep on and on about how good Jesus is.

Any of this making sense? Are you connecting the dots yet? I'm not saying that Tim Tebow is Jesus, nor am I calling Sooner fans unbelievers. But the illustration can be drawn. Losing to the Gators, and all the hooplah about Tebow, have put a practical case in point for me concerning this passage of scripture. Even though the Sooners lost, I sure am glad to be on the victorious side of Christ and smell that sweet aroma of his glory. Be encouraged.

Soli Deo Gloria

*(You might check the spelling on that word, but Star Wars fans will recognize that one from the mouth of Jar Jar Binks in Episode I)

"Mommas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Pastors"

I found this video on the Pyromaniacs blog. They are the also the ones responsible for my previous post. This video was the previous post to the one I used as my previous post. If you're confused, good. If you're not, then I'll try harder next time. ;) Anywho (to borrow from my wife), watch it and comment, if you would please. Be encouraged.

VOTE!

don't vote party - vote righteousness

don't vote race - vote righteousness

don't vote sex - vote righteousness

don't vote pocketbook - vote righteousness

don't vote age - vote righteousness

don't vote charisma - vote righteousness

don't vote looks - vote righteousness

don't vote fear - vote righteousness

Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people. Proverbs 14:34

Father, God, You are God and You are in control. I thank you for the opportunity to elect our leaders. Today, I hand this nation's election over to You. Your will be done, Your kingdom come, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Have mercy on us as a nation, O God. I turn to You. Be our rock and our fortress. I ask for peace and joy in the midst of this tumultuous time. Whatever happens today, You are still my God, and You are still my hope. Thank You for the blood of Jesus; thank You for the love of Jesus. In his mighty name I pray.

Soli Deo Gloria

More Stuff

Isn't this what got us into our nation's financial mess in the first place?

Ahh, true happiness. There's a lesson in here somewhere. One of many passages of scripture to check out:

"Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, 'I will never leave you or forsake you.'" Hebrews 13:5

Be blessed; be encouraged; be content.

Happy Birthday, Bobo!

My #1 son turned 10 this past Saturday. Wow. He's so old. And he's getting so big. The circumstances surrounding his birth and early years were not so great, but he is my pride and joy. Well, one of them anyway. He is awesome! Below are 10 of my favorite memories from his first 10 years (in chronological order - as best as I remember it)

1. his birthday (born in OKC on September 27, 1998 - I was a very proud dad)



2. it took him forever to sleep through the night (I mean forever - thankfully, we learned from him and had the others sleeping through the night within a few weeks)



3. he once stuck some keys in an electrical socket outside my office in KY (I could hear him hitting the wall with the keys, but didn't think about a socket until he got real quiet before he started crying really loudly)



4. he would pronounce the letter W "double doo!" (he spent a weekend or something with my parents who taught him his letters - that one was his favorite)



5. he loved the American flag (he always shouted "A flag! A flag! A flag!" until we finally acknowledged that he was seeing a flag)



6. he was George Washington in a school "play" (I think it was President's Day or something in either the first or second grade - he read a few lines)



7. he had to have glasses (there was a prophet at our church who was healing some people of eye problems - glasses, etc., he stood for a moment, then sat down and said that he liked his glasses)



8. his violin recital (he's really gifted)



9. playing baseball (he had the highest on base percentage on the team, because he kept walking, and he was a pretty decent second baseman)



10. his prophetic word (wow, what a word spoken over him - if you want to hear it, make your request known in writing and send $1 to.... - just kidding about the dollar, but it's worth hearing, just not on this blog - sorry)

There they are. My wife calls him Bobo on her blog, so we will too. Happy birthday, Bobo! I love you, buddy.

Music Permit

If you make a rule, then some idiot's going to try to enforce it. This morning's "Eddie's Stuff" produced this little gem:


Amazing how quickly we forget the original meaning or intent of a rule or law. We do it today with the seperation of church and state, and so many other things. I received this email from my father yesterday:

THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY WAS INSTITUTED TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL. NOTE: IN 2008 THE BUDGET FOR THIS DEPARTMENT IS NOW AT $24.2 BILLION A YEAR. THEY HAVE 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES. What do they do?????

How quickly we forget. Reminds me of the pharisees. In being so strict in following the law, they forget why they were following it in the first place. So strict, so literal. No room for interpretation. No room to use your brain and do the right thing at the right time. Thank You, Lord, for Jesus and His love. Thank You for Your grace.

My 9/11 Post

I know that today is September 15, but I wanted to post something about 9/11. When today's "One Big Happy" cartoon came out, I thought it would be apropos to go ahead and post something. (wow - that's the second time this morning that I've used that word) Here's the cartoon:

The following is the timeline for 9/11 that I read on air during my morning show at 7:46 CDT, the time the first plane hit the north tower:

9/11 Timeline
(All times EDT)
Please note that the precise times may vary, depending on the source. For this report we used the timeline from the FBI, Time magazine, ABC and Washington Post.
7:59 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 11 takes off from Boston’s Logan International airport with 95 people onboard.
8:14 a.m.: United Flight 175 takes off from Logan with 65 people onboard.
8:20 a.m.: American Flight 77 takes off from Dulles near Washington, D.C., carrying 64 people.
8:21 a.m.: Flight 11’s transponder is turned off. Shortly afterward, the plane turns south toward N.Y.C.
8:40 a.m.: The FAA notifies NORAD that Flight 11 has been hijacked.
8:41 a.m.: United Flight 93 takes off from Newark with 44 people aboard.
8:43 a.m.: The FAA notifies NORAD that Flight 175 has been hijacked.
8:46 a.m.: American flight 11 slams into the World Trade Center’s north tower at 400 mph.
8:50 a.m.: The first New York Fire Department trucks arrive at the World Trade Center.
8:52 a.m.: F-15s from Otis Air National Guard Base are scrambled.
9:03 a.m.: Flight 175 crashes into the World Trade Center’s south tower at more than 500 mph.
9:16 a.m.: The FAA informs NORAD that Flight 93 may have been hijacked.
9:21 a.m.: The FAA notifies NORAD of a suspected hijacking of American flight 77.
9:31 a.m.: Bush makes his first public statement saying the country has suffered an “apparent terrorist attack.” He asks for a moment of silence.
9:37 a.m.: American Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon.
9:45 a.m.: The FAA orders the shutdown of U.S. airspace, a first in U.S. history.
9:48 a.m.: The U.S. Capitol and White House are evacuated.
9:55 a.m.: Bush leaves Florida on Air Force One. He phones Vice President Dick Cheney and puts the entire U.S. military on high alert. He also receives word of the plane crashes at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.
9:59 a.m.: The south tower of the WTC collapses.
10:03 a.m.: Flight 93 crashes into the ground near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
10:10 a.m.: A portion of the Pentagon collapses.
10:28 a.m.: The north tower of the WTC collapses.
1:27 p.m.: A state of emergency is declared in Washington D.C.
2:30 p.m.: The FAA announces that there will be no U.S. commercial air traffic until noon EDT September 12 at the earliest.
2:51 p.m.: The Navy dispatches missile destroyers to New York and Washington.
3:07 p.m.: Bush convenes the National Security Council, holding a videoconference with council members in Washington from his bunker at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
5:20 p.m.: Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex collapses.
6:54 p.m.: Bush arrives at the White House aboard Marine One, the helicopter used to take Bush from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to the South Lawn.
8:30 p.m.: President Bush speaks to the nation, telling Americans: “Thousand of lives were suddenly ended by evil... These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.”
· 343 firefighters died (60 of them were off-duty).
· 23 police officers died.
· 75 Port Authority employees perished – including 37 of their own police officers.
· 10 bystanders were killed by falling debris.
· 16 people escaped the south tower from above the floors where the plane hit.
· None escaped the north tower from above the floors where the plane hit.
· 18 survivors were found in the debris – 12 fire fighters, 3 police officers and 3 civilians. All were found by September 12th.
· 2,823 – the total number of dead.
· Total cost of the destruction estimated at $60 billion.
· 3.1 million man-hours went into the rescue and recovery over an eight-month period.
· 1.8 million tons of debris was cleared from the site.
· The 110-story south tower was reduced to a four-story pile in just 10 seconds. It registered 2.3 on the Richter scale.
· The second tower collapsed in just eight seconds.
· More than 300,000 tons of steel, concrete and glass hit the ground.
The plane that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, hit a section that had recently been renovated and was still only partially occupied. Authorities say the death toll would have likely been much higher if the area had been fully occupied. The crash caused a gash on the west side of the Pentagon measuring 30 yards wide and 10 yards deep; 185,693 square feet were damaged and 37,161 square feet were destroyed. Three of the five Pentagon rings were damaged. It cost $501 million to repair the building; repairs were finished within a year of the attack. The Pentagon Memorial will be unveiled today on the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attack. It’s being called “The Park.” The memorial’s focus is 184 benches built over a pool of water – 59 of the benches face the Pentagon and represent the passengers killed on American Airlines Flight 77. The remaining 125 benches face the opposite direction to memorialize those killed in the building. Each is engraved with the name of one of the people killed.

It was tough to get through it. Our AM station morning guy, couldn't even read it. I played an audio montage after I read the timeline. He tried to read the timeline after the audio montage, which was a 13 minute montage of several radio stations in Manhattan from 9/11/01. It's amazing how much it still affects me (all of us, I'm sure) 7 years later.

I've got some great stuff to post later (probably tomorrow). Be blessed.

An Interesting Twist

In going over my message this last Sunday, God gave me what I thought was a pretty clever (and dead-on) quote. I was just feeling a burden for the church. Not just my parent's church, but the body of Christ as a whole. In praying over it, this is what came to mind:

"Our faith fails when we forget how much we're favored by the Father."

WE are his chosen, treasured, special, personal possession! How quickly and often we forget that. God's people, the Hebrews, forgot that rather easily, too. The exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land is rife with grumbling, complaining, whining, and turning away from God. The theme of forgetting continues through the New Testament. The pharisees are prime examples of people who had absolutely no memory of God's favor for his people.

Later in the afternoon, the thought was developed a little more.

"Our fear is fueled, and our faith fails when we forget how much the Father favors us."

Quick, little example: Peter, walking on water, focuses more on the waves than on Jesus, his fear takes over, his faith falls, and he starts to sink. Now, side note, he is the only one to have stepped out of the boat, so props for Peter, there. God couldn't show his favor (love, mercy, grace) any better than by sending his only begotten son, Jesus Christ to die for us while we were yet sinners. He not only loves us, he likes us.

Now, here's the twist. This morning whilst praying, it hit me - this is not just a word for the church - it's a PERSONAL WORD.

Whoa.

God just wanted to remind me, that I am treasured by the Most High God. My own faith fails, and my own fears are fueled, whenever I forget that the Father will never forsake me. I even had a word spoken over me back in March dealing with the same thing. Here's a clip of what Paul Costa had to say:


Interesting twist, huh? Be encouraged.

Skip Carey Part 2

The following are a short tribute to Skip Carey from MLB.com and his most classic (and my favorite) two calls for Braves baseball.

The Tribute:

THE Call: I was praying so hard during this game. I was in my bedroom watching, and my parents were watching in the living room. There were two outs in the bottom of the ninth, the Braves were down by a run with Sid Bream, one of the slowest men in the game on second base representing the winning run, and Fransisco Cabrera was at the plate. Did I mention there were two outs? Barry Bonds was in left field for the Pirates. Fortunately, he's never been known for his throwing arm. No movie could ever touch this script.

I don't think I ever jumped so high or cheered so loud in my life. I flew into the living room, "did you see that?!!" My mom was whooping and hollering, too. My dad was trying to get us to calm down. I still get teary-eyed every time I see this clip.

The Championship: It was a Saturday night. I was doing my request show in KKVO radio in Altus, OK. My parents recorded the game for me. I remember asking them at one point what the score was. 1 - 0. The tape was waiting for me on my bed when I got home after midnight. I watched with great anticipation. It was well worth the wait.

The only World Series Championship Skip Carey got to call. It'd be cool to call a championship someday. Any kind of championship. I often wonder if I'll get to celebrate this again. If I do, it won't be the same without Skip Carey calling it.

But I do know that I will enjoy it. ;)