Sikeston’s Winter of Fire and Ice

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blackout, electricity, explosion, fire, ice, ice storm, Missouri, photos, power failure, power outage, Sikeston, storm, substation, video, weather, winter, winter storm

Scroll down for details (thanks to Megan for the pics)…

A severe winter storm bore down on Sikeston Monday night and unleashed a 36-hour torrent of freezing precipitation on the city.   The picture above was actually taken before the worst of the damage.  By the time the storm moved out Wednesday morning, we probably had around 2 inches of ice (that’s a guess…I haven’t seen an official estimate) on trees and power lines.  Most of the city remains without power late Wednesday night.

City utility crews are working extremely hard (as they always do) to restore power as quickly as possible.  It’s been a really tough week for them.  Less than a week before this storm hit, we had a circuit breaker explosion and fire in one of our substations that caused considerable damage, and some power outages.  A utility employee caught part of it on video.  From just a little bit farther away, a spectacular, eerie, and slightly unnerving light show lasting several minutes lit up the partially darkened city.  The first blow was fire.

Church Covenants

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christianity, theology, church, christian, Mark Dever, church covenants, 9 Marks Ministries, 9 marks, ix marks, ix marks ministries, church membership, church covenant

Does your church have a covenant?  Does your church use its covenant?  Should churches have covenants?  And how should a church covenant be used?

Those can actually be pretty controversial questions.  Mark Dever and others at IX Marks Ministries have invested significant time and energy into helping churches work through some of the controversy and develop biblical covenants and constitutions.

I’ll probably have more to say about church covenants later.  For now, I’d like to ask you to think about the four questions I posed at the beginning of the post and share your answers in the comments.  Thanks!

[EDIT] Important related posts on this blog:

Why do we make Covenants? (laying a foundation)

What difference does a church covenant make?

JollyBlogger David Wayne’s cancer story

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blogging, blogs, blogs and blogging, cancer, christian, christianity, christmas, colon cancer, David Wayne, faith, God, humility, jollyblogger, religion, sickness, suffering

David Wayne

The purpose of this post is not to inform you that David Wayne has cancer.  Many of you already know that.  David, who’s only 45, found out less than a week before Christmas that he had stage four colon cancer, and then spent Christmas Eve in an operating room undergoing surgery.

The news came as a shock to David and his family.  What do you do when you’re blindsided by news like that–and right before Christmas?  How do you absorb that kind of blow?  David is deeply convinced that God is good, and that He is sovereign.  Now, saying you know that God is sovereign when everything’s going well is one thing; saying you know it when you’re told you have stage four cancer is another.  What does it mean to trust God when you find yourself in the middle of a personal crisis of that magnitude?

R.C. Sproul marks Roe v. Wade anniversary with video series

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abortion, christian, christianity, ethics, ligonier ministries, R.C. Sproul, religion, roe v. wade, video

This is a quick follow-up to my last post.  Today, wedged between Sanctity of Human Life Sunday and the anniversary tomorrow of Roe v. Wade, Ligonier Ministries announced they are offering free streaming video of R.C. Sproul’s series on abortion.  Sproul believes abortion is the moral issue of our day.  I agree.  You can watch his six 30-minute videos here.

• Related articles on this blog:  Abortion

Sanctity of Human Life Sunday

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abortion, adoption, christian, christianity, George W. Bush, pro-life, religion, russell moore, Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, unborn

For many years now, the third Sunday in January has been widely recognized as Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.  President Bush issued a National Proclamation last week, which began with these words:

All human life is a gift from our Creator that is sacred, unique, and worthy of protection. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, our country recognizes that each person, including every person waiting to be born, has a special place and purpose in this world. We also underscore our dedication to heeding this message of conscience by speaking up for the weak and voiceless among us.

There is abundant biblical support for that first sentence.  “All human life is a gift from our Creator” because we are knit together by God in our mother’s womb, and all of our days (no matter how violently short they’re cut) are known to God even before conception (Psalm 139:13-16).  “All human life is a gift from our Creator” because all men are His offspring (Acts 17:29) and consequently bear His image (James 3:9).

I’m more talented with the sword

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children, family, humor, kids, sword, swords

This was a conversation I had with my eight year old son this evening:

“Dad, would you rather have a gun or a sword?”

“A gun.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t have to get as close to your enemy with a gun as you do with a sword.”

“Yeah, but you can throw a sword.”

“Yeah, but you can shoot a bullet farther than you can throw a sword.”

“Okay. You can have the gun and I’ll take the sword, because I’m more talented with the sword”

…he said confidently, undaunted by the fact that he’s never actually held a real sword in his life.

Bruce Ware on the Atonement

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amyraldianism, atonement, baptist, Bruce Demarest, Bruce Ware, calvinism, calvinist, christian, christianity, church history, doctrine, election, John Calvin, limited atonement, Multiple Intentions View, reformed theology, religion, Richard Baxter, Sam Storms, southern baptist, spirituality

I want to begin this post with a disclaimer and a warning.  The disclaimer:  I’m about to wade into theological water way over my head.  Okay… here goes… glub, glub, glub… (that’s the sound I make when I’m sinking).  The warning:  Long post ahead!

I’m going to include quite a few links below, and then pose a question.  If you’ve never really thought much about this issue, I’d like for you to read as much of the linked information as possible (especially Bruce Ware’s paper on the “Multiple Intentions View” of the atonement).

One more thing, before I get to the links.  Most people who know me very well consider me a Calvinist.  However, that label means so many different things to so many different people, and can be so unnecessarily divisive  that I don’t care for it.  Nothing at all would be lost if it just went away, in my opinion.  At any rate, my allegiance is to the Word of God, rather than to any particular system of theology, although I believe systematic theology is an important discipline.

The Doorpost Film Project – Volition

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abortion, choice, film, holocaust, human rights, morality, movies, Randy Alcorn, slavery, social action, The Doorpost Film Project, Tim and Matthew Morgan, video, Volition

The embedded video has been removed due to an unintentional misuse of it on my part.  Please follow the link after the film synopsis to watch the movie.  It’s excellent.

//FILM SYNOPSIS
Volition (n)- The act of making a choice. Sometimes the choice of inaction has consequences stronger than we could ever imagine. Throughout history, men have been faced with difficult choices in a world that makes it easy for them to conform. This film explores the hope that lies behind every decision made in the face of adversity; the hope that is buried in the heart of those that look beyond themselves and see something bigger worth fighting for (from The Doorpost Film Project)

This film has a simple message.  In matters both great and small, we’re constantly faced with a choice between moral courage and moral cowardice; and the choices we make cannot be divorced from their consequences.

This is a morality tale.  Don’t mistake it for the gospel, or think that I’ve done so.  No one will be saved by moral courage.  No one has ever been good enough to atone for their own innate resistance to God.  No one can know God except through Jesus Christ. “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.” (John 14:6-7)

And there is more to be said about the choices we make than what this short film attempts to say.  But what it does say, it says well.   The choices we make really matter, and often have far-reaching consequences.  Do what’s right, even when it’s hard

2008 Blog Highlights (and a lowlight)

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abortion, Barack Obama, Blog Action Day 2008, blogging, blogs, blogs and blogging, christian, christianity, government

The purpose of this post is simply to look back at some of my most visited posts of the past year, as well as to point out some of my personal favorites.

Please take time to browse through the links below.  The comments are still open on all posts, and I would love for you to jump right into any of the discussions.  I generally try to respond to comments.

If you’ve come over here from Robert Hruzek’s Blogapalooza, you’ll find a number of differences between these lists and the one I gave Robert.  There are two reasons for that.  (1) I didn’t have to restrict myself to only one post per month; and (2) my present goal is to provide a fairly comprehensive overview of my first few months of blogging.

(Incidentally, if you don’t know about Blogapalooza, you can still participate.  Just click on old Einstein there for more information.)

Not counting my two static pages (About and A Bad Heart), here are the 5 Most Visited Posts on my blog to date; some Popular Series I’ve posted; and my Personal Favorites:

“As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God”

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Africa, atheism, atheist, christian, christianity, conversion, evangelism, God, religion, salvation, social action

That was one of the headlines in a British newspaper a few days ago.  Atheist and journalist Matthew Parris visited his boyhood home in Africa and came to a rather ironic conclusion.

…travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

It’s a fascinating, unbiased testimony to the authentic personal and social change produced by genuine conversion.  Read it here.

The God who is out of control

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book reviews, books, C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia, control, God, sovereignty, The God Who Smokes, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Timothy J. Stoner, Trevin Wax

It’s common for us to talk about God being in control of all things.  Rarely do we speak about God being out of control.  In his review of the new book by Timothy J. Stoner, The God Who Smokes: Scandalous Meditation on Faith, Trevin Wax quotes this excerpt:

“God really believes that he is the most worthy, most majestic, magnificent, glorious, stunningly beautiful being in the universe. And he is fixated on the certainty that only he deserves worship—that to him alone belong honor, glory, and praise forever and forever. With red-rimmed, stinging eyes and burning hair, all we can say is—he is right. He is astonishingly beautiful, utterly majestic and perfect in the symmetries of justice and righteousness, knowledge, and wisdom. He is as hypnotically compelling as a surging forest fire and ten times as dangerous. He is out of control—ours, not his.” (83)

I am convinced, by that paragraph alone, to buy the book.

The God who has revealed himself throughout history, whose words and ways are recorded in the pages of Scripture, is utterly beyond human control.  We cannot anticipate his next move, or manipulate his actions, or in any way put him in our debt.  He is free, sovereign.  He “does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth” (Dan. 4:35, NIV).  He consults no one and needs nothing.

In a well-known passage from The Chronicles of Narnia, the Kings and Queens, upon discovering that Aslan had quietly slipped away from their coronation feast, remembered Mr. Beaver’s warning:

“He’ll be coming and going. One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down – and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s quite all right. He’ll often drop in. Only you mustn’t press him. He’s wild you know. Not like a tame lion.” - from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis)

Indeed.  Not at all like a tame lion.