Thoughts of the week

1. Shell shock.

2. Seminary seems to be more about developing a good root than about fancy words & big books.

3. "To be a son or daughter of Abraham you have to have the faith of Abraham." -Greenham

4. In America we call it ministry; internationally we call it missions; in reality they're both apart of the Mission. We must not separate the idea mission from our culture.

5. Classes started, gonna be good stuff.

6. Sometimes it's better to be ignorant of a situation when the alternative of knowing means sinning.

7. It's regular for my wife & I to work our way through 3 mugs a day.

8. Ever had to do too many grown-up things in a week? #buildafort

9. The order of words in a sentence shows the order of loves in one's heart.

10. "Amidst all our pursuits & designs, let us stop & ask ourselves, For what end is all this? At what am I doing? Can the gross & muddy pleasures of sense, or a heap of white & yellow earth, or that esteem & affection of silly creatures, like myself, satisfy a rational & immortal soul? Have I not tried these things already? Will they have a higher relish, & yield me more contentment tomorrow than yesterday, or the next year than they did the last? There may be some little difference betwixt that which I enjoyed before; but sure, my former enjoyments did show as pleasant, & promised as fair, before I attained the,; like the rainbow they looked very glorious at a distance, but when I approached, I found nothing but emptiness & vapor. Oh! What a poor thing would the life of man be, if it were capable of no higher enjoyment." ~Scougal 

Friday Thoughts

1) It's lookin' like rain! (Heard thunder)

2) Felt a wee under-the-weather yesterday - you know, more than normally (Ha, meteorology joke!).

3) If the answer to a short answer question has these requirements: 1-2 pages, Arial, Single-spaced, size 12 font can it really be called a "short answer?" No. No. It cannot.

4) Next week is fall break, but it feels like it should be Thanksgiving.

5) I carved a pumpkin for the first time on Monday. (I'll brag) It was a pretty awesome looking first-time-carving-pumpkin. I also got way too excited about it.

6) Imaging what each of the professors should be for Halloween, here's what I've got: The costume lady from the Incredibles, Franklin the Turtle, Crocodile Dun-Dee, and a witch.

7) Reading Man in the Iron Mask for my fiction book. It's good to be back in a Dumas.

8) Barth sums up unrighteousness and ungodliness like this, "We confound time with eternity." Essentially meaning, we supplant God with ourselves. Scougal would say it like this, "We feel not the truth which we pretend to believe."

9) Ordination is this weekend.

10) My first cup of coffee on Tuesday was at 7pm. Needless to say I paid attention really well in my last class. (The other class... well, I was there for it.)

Week Thoughts

1) It's raining outside. CrAzy!

2) Going to Omaha for a conference. Omaha...

3) Henry Scougal has played a signficant role in my spiritual development.

4) Charleston, South Carolina

5) Started grad-school. Everytime I tell another student I'm taking 12hrs they look at me like I have pleague. In other words the same way college students treat you when they find out you're a pastor.

6) There's a lot of grace to be drowning in and this is good.

7) 145 pages - on average - of reading per week for one class. If it was 146 I'd protest.

8) The church phone has been ringing like crazy this week. Most were nice. Some were stupidly angry. One was just straight odd, while one was really neat.

9) "Who are you o man to answer back to God." Rom 9

10) "But he who is utterly destitute of his inward principle and [does] not aspire unto it, but contents himself with those performances whereunto he is prompted by education or custom, by the fear of hell, or carnal notions of heaven, can no more be accounted a religious person, than a puppet can be called a man... Whereas the spirit of true religion is frank and liberal, far from such peevish and narrow reckoning; and he who [has] given himself entirely unto God, will never think he [does] too much for him." ~ Scougal

The Dad

So my dad, right?

He and I were sitting in a conversation yesterday, a conversation I was honored to be a fly on the wall at.

Have you ever had a moment of decent clarity, when you’re there, but you feel so distant because the way you’re seeing something has changed perspective? Do you know what I mean?

The gospel. Straight forward the gospel, unmingled with cultural wish-wash or downplaying on the blood, sweat and tears of the difficulty and beauty of a life lived in faith.

“This is what makes us men, what completes us,” he said while point at a line on a page, which read, “You must love Jesus.” “He is the truth of the universe, which holds all things together that are, and if we don’t love him we are lost men.”

That’s my dad, preaching the gospel with passion, fervency. Casting all his hope onto the 2000-year-old reality, Jesus saves sinners. “I was saved 2000 years ago when Jesus died on the cross for my sins and all of my life I’ve been coming to understand that more.”

Yet, this post shouldn’t be a praising of my dad, he’s cool alright (and he has Harry Potter classes), but he’s just a sinner. No, this should be a post which is interpreted as this:

 “[They] find so much perfection and goodness [that] not only answer and satisfy [their] affections, but master and  overpower [them] too: [they] find all [their] love to be too faint and languid for such a noble object, and [are] only sorry [they] can command no more. [They] wish for the flames of a seraph, and long for the time when [they] shall be wholly melted and dissolved into love: and because [they] can do so little [themselves], [they] desire the assistance of the whole creation, that angels and men would concur with [them] in the admirations and love of those infinite perfections.” ~ Scougal

May dad and I get to worship the same God together. Be infatuated by him, be set aflame by him, preach and teach to others about him, live and die in him. And that is well worth writing about.

Them There Thoughts

1) The goodness of God draws us to repentance. I think our definition of 'good' is too small, too shallow, too flimsy.

2) Enrolled in grad-school. Classes start in 2 weeks. WSU didn't waste one minute in telling me I was accepted. Not one.

3) While enrolling I was sent to four different locations before 1) being sent to the right place and 2) being told the person I needed to see wasn't there.

4) Made fried chicken the other night, like my momma makes it! The gravy sucked, but the fried chicken was good!

5) Stared at the stars a few times this week.

6) The Head and The Heart

7) Vacation next week!

8) When your fears a dismissed one by one.

9) Almost had a major slip of the tongue while preaching... I blushed at the thought. Still.

10) Going to start calling my tattoo a freckle.

11) Here's a quote for you: "... When once the soul is fixed on that supreme and all-sufficient good, it finds so much perfection and goodness as doth not only answer and satisfy its affection, but master and overpower it too: it finds all its love to be too faint and languid for such a noble object, and is only sorry that it can command no more. It wisheth for the flames of a seraph, and longs for the time when it shall be wholly melted and dissolved into love: and because it can do so little itslef, it desires the assistance of the whole creation, that angels and men would concur with it in the admiration and love of those infinite perfections." Henry Scougal

Laugh

Taken From the Journal

"It had been a while since the reality of the cross impacted my heart. Since an understanding of the brutality of the cross has shown to affect emotion.

"Henry Scougal is right in saying, "Faith hath the same place in the Divine Life, which sense hath in the natural, being indeed nothing else but a kind of sense or feeling persuasion of spiritual things; it extends itself unto all Divine truths; but in our lapsed estate, it hath a peculiar relation to the declaration of God’s mercy and reconcilableness to sinners through a mediator; and therefore, receiving its denomination from that principal object, is ordinarily termed, ‘Faith in Jesus Christ.’"

"Both emotion and the intellect should be engaged in faith. For while one or the other will be primary both ought to be present.

"Because if faith is simply based on swinging emotionalism there is no knowledge or wisdom thus the person is stupidly ignorant. But if faith is a mass of knowledge and has no outlet the person is witlessly unwise and heartless, beating people with knowledge as though he wielded a battle-axe.

"So I must have both."