God is good!

I think that the title says it all, but I should probably elaborate a little more, so that I can edify my fellow believers!

Tomorrow I leave for Germany.  It’ll be an exciting day, mainly because, once I get to Germany, I’ll get to see my wife again after 2 ½ weeks.  Just like in any move though, you have to pack and get stuff ready back where you’re moving away from.  The difference with us is that, naturally, we’re trying to get rid of our stuff instead of trying to bring it with us.  Everything was going well.  Things were going and looking good.  That is until the last week.  No one seemingly wanted any of the big things that we have and need to get rid of so that we just don’t throw it all away.  The last couple of days, I’ve been getting really anxious and antsy because I couldn’t figure out how I was going to get rid of all this stuff.  Then a lightbulb went off for my wife.  She called a former co-worker of her’s to see if he had any ideas.  He called his Pastor and asked.  As it turns out, the church that this man pastors at has a ministry [I can't remember exactly what it's called right now] where they pick up stuff that you’d use in a house [ie all the stuff that we still have] and give it to needy people so that they don’t have to buy it at Goodwill or Salvation Army.  This was a godsend because lately, I’ve been thinking about how people helped my wife and me out when we were getting started and I had been wanting to help others in the same way.  After talking to this pastor, I wanted to cry because I felt so bad for not relying on God and just trusting his judgment and timing.

Lesson:  God’ll take care of it.  His clock works differently than ours.  Go drink a Pepsi.

Pray that I have a good flight tomorrow and that everything’ll work out in Germany for my wife and I!

Quite a scare

Early today, I’d decided that I wanted to get a sub from Publix for dinner, as I love Publix subs and I won’t be able to have them for a while since I’m moving overseas.  Since I sold my car yesterday, I had to walk to the Publix, which was fine because it’s not too far away and it’s nice outside now since the rainy season ended early down here in Florida.  As I was walking down the street, I noticed a turtle in the grass.  I went down to it to look at it.  It was overly afraid so it just clammed up, so I continued on my walk to get my sandwich, and noticed that the sidewalk that I was on continued in a direction that seemed to go through a neighborhood.  I made a mental note of it and decided that I would go down that path because it may be a shortcut back to my apartment.

On my return trip, I went down the path and, for some reason, looked down on the ground for some reason.  When I looked up, I saw that I was about to walk under a tree branch.  I looked up just a little bit more and I saw something that would make a pig sweat…

There was a hawk sitting on the branch and, as my luck would have it, it looked right at me as I was looked up at it, and it was only a few feet away from me!  I stood as still as I could.  The hawk started to move it’s wings and I though, ‘Great, I just happen to be holding a sack of dead meat right now too.’  I backed up as slowly as I could and walked on the otherside of the street.  Escaping certain death—well, a few scratches anyway.  As it turned out this wasn’t a shortcut at all.  I guess it was cool because I got to see a hawk up close.

My sub was good, by the way.

Polls

As the election draws closer and closer, more and more polls are coming out and each one says something different—Obama is up by 16%, Obama is up by 1%, McCain leads in Georgia by, 1, 6, 7, or 8%, sometimes Obama is up there by one.  I think that it’s fair to say that one one knows what is going to happen next Tuesday.  I was browsing through some election related articles and I found one from the Washington Post that I though was interesting.  In this article, the author tries to explain how the polls are being done and why they’re all over the map.  I thought that it was pretty good and it made a lot of sense.  In the end, the election day poll is the only one that matters.  I personally think that this presidential race is too close to call and on Tuesday we’ll be up into the wee hours of the morning still figuring out who won—which will be fun for political junkies like me.

I caution those who are looking at these polls and already calling a winner.  Remember, as the article mentions in the beginning, the Truman-Dewey campaign.  Remember as well the election in ‘04, when some in the media were delcaring John Kerry the winner by a landslide before polls closed and votes were counted—an aide to John Kerry even asked Mr. Kerry if he could be the first to call him Mr. President, at around 4pm.  We know how those races ended—there hasn’t been a president Dewey or Kerry to my knowledge.

Now, I don’t really understand this.  The last sentence in the article says:

One recent criticism of current polling has been that it does not accurately capture the sentiments of those who primarily use cellphones.

Is there a huge percentage of people that use only a cell phone?  I don’t think that a poll that only included cell phone only useres would be much different—there is probably a diverse spread of opinion represented in cell phone only users.  Can someone explain to me why this should matter in the polls?  I think that if any one demographic of people that should be polled more are those in “fly-over” country.  It would be neat to see how a Montana, Nebraska, Kansas only poll would look.

Great Day!

Today has been a great day!  First, it’s my birthday, which is always cool.

Second, the Rays are going to the World Series!  I love their worst to first story.  I guess something that makes this better is that MLB didn’t get the match-up that they wanted—Red Sox vs. Dodgers—and a smaller market team will win it all this year…once again!

By the way, I’m wrapping up the first post for the Hebrews study and I’ll get that up soon.

Moving

Things are tough down here in Florida where I reside.  A few months back, my wife and I decided that we should move.  We were thinking somewhere else in the country, where the cost of living isn’t so high and the economy isn’t entirely service based.  But God threw us a curve ball [He has a tendency to do that right!]!  We found out about two months ago that my wife is pregnant [we're excited!].  When she told her mom, both of her parents got to talking and they decided that we should move to where they are.  This is completely fine and dandy since, where we live, we’re near no family at all.  The thing is, they’re in Germany!  After much prayer and consideration, we’ve decided to move over there [we wanted to go to Germany eventually anyway as missionaries—God's time frame is different than ours I suppose].

It looks like things will work out in our favor as we pay off what we need too, which is completely and totally awsome!  I can see God working through this all in tremendous ways.

I ask for your prayers as we embark on this endeavor.  We’ll need to sell a lot of our things so that we don’t go over weight when we fly over and I’ll need to learn German once we get over there.  God is in control and I know that He’ll provide for us as He always has.  Thanks in advance for your prayers!

Hebrews

I’ve been thinking lately and I’ve decided that I need to do more than just read my Bible.  I need to be studying it more in depth and sharing with others what I’ve learned.  So, with that being said, I think that I’m going to do a study on the Book of Hebrews.  It’s a really good an interesting book and I’ve been wanting to do a more in-depth study of it for a while now.  I ask for your prayers as I embark on this study and that the conclusions that I reach will be Biblical and that, most importantly, God will be honored through my work.  I will be looking forward to seeing others thoughts on this book as well.

Numbers 27.20

Lately, I’ve been reading through the book on Numbers and first of all, I have to say that numbers is a much more exciting book than I remember it being when I was in Bible College.  I noticed something this morning in my reading of it and I thought it was kinda interesting.  Something that I’ve never really heard anyone say anything about.  To set up the context, Balaam has defied Balak by blessing the nation of Israel instead of cursing it and he goes on to state that Israel is going to conquer all of the nations around and such.  Afterward, there is a census taken and the LORD calls Moses up on top of Mt. Abarim so that he can see the promised land—since he won’t be able to enter it due to disobedience.  While Moses and God are up on the mountain, He tells Moses that Joshua is to succeed him as Israel’s leader.  Then God says the following:

You shall invest him with some of your authority, that all the congregation of the people of Israel may obey.

Numbers 27.20 (ESV) [Emphasis mine]

Creation Worship

I was listening to The Glenn Beck Program this morning [like I do most mornings when I wake up] and I heard a very interesting thing.  He was speaking of a video on his website that showed people crying over dead trees.  I didn’t really know what to think of it at first.  I thought that maybe he was exaggerating a little bit because I couldn’t think that there had been an evolution from “tree huggers” to “tree mourners”.  After taking care of some things that needed to be done this morning, I sat down and went to take a look at the video that Glenn Beck had mentioned on his show. 

I was pretty shocked at what I saw.  At first I thought it was kinda humorous—thinking that the people were only acting and goofing around.  Then a man started to talk over the action and it sounded like a clip from a documentary.  Then I did some searching and found the website for the group that was mentioned in this clip, Earth First!.  If you choose not to watch the video, I’ll try to describe it for you as concisely as I can.

The clip opens up and there are people laying and sitting on the ground in the forest.  Some have very sorrowful looks on their faces.  Some have their heads in their arms.  Others are sobbing and crying.  Then one yells, “WE WANT TO MOURN…THE LOSS…[unintelligible] THE OLD GROVE…TO TELL THEM WE LOVE THEM, THAT WE DON’T WANT THEM TO DIE AND THAT WE ARE PEOPLE WHO CARE!  WE WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT TREES!”  Then another woman speaks, directly to the camera, and says that America has lost it’s way due to technology and that we’re craving answers.  She goes on to say, “Bring me to this cathedral, this is where I feel alive.  Bring me to this rock that has the most incredible life!  That makes me feel alive.  Then a girl screams at the end because she needs to feel more outraged.

Let it be known that I am glad that I’m not a rock.  I’m quite happy being a human.

Not just Sundays

I believe that there are two groups of Christians in America today.  One group is definitely larger than the other.  This larger group has a tendency to compartmentalize their Christianity–living and acting one way on Sunday, the so called “Christian way” and living like the world the other six days of the week.  This is not to say that they’re doing heavy drugs, drinking, and having sex but, instead of having their mind set toward heavenly things and the things of God, they get consumed with the things of the world and the worries of this world.

The second group is totally sold out to God.  They rely on Him for what they need [He provides it too!].  They worry more about the permanent things of God than the perishable things here on Earth.  They live their lives to glorify God and be a witness for Him to the world, that through their lives, people may come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.