a nerd's life.

Day 4 & 5 - Psalm 16 & 18

psalm 16 is a psalm about connection.  am i connected to God?  david is saying that he cannot exist without his connection to God.  "apart from you i have no good thing."  "i keep my eyes always on the LORD.  with him at my right hand, i will not be shaken" "you make known to me the path of life."

Father, you are my LORD, and i cannot know the path of life without a connection with You.  help me to have enough discipline and ferver to stay connected to you through dialy practices of prayer, meditation, scirpture reading, journaling, listening, and whatever else draws me closer to You.

psalm 18 is a praise dedicated to God.  david is exalting God to the highest honor - praising Him for this might.  david finds his strength in the LORD, "my God is my rock, in whom i take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold."

Lord, may i be a man to who relies upon you for strength.  You alone are my rock, who never fails me...everyone else will, but you NEVER will.  thank you for your promise..."i will never leave you or forsake you."  amen.

keep watching...

cuz this is funny. it's a video of a friend of mine playing with his baby daughter (http://www.jeffekblad.com/)

keep watching

Day 2 & 3 - Psalm 4 & 5

i got one day behind already!  sheesh, its hard to do this daily!  i mean i have done the readings so far each day, but journaling is tough for me to do daily.  i can remember when i had a conversation with dave ferguson and i shared that i don't journal daily, but instead i'm what i called a "high impact" journaler.  he laughed and said something like, "does that make you feel better?!?"  to which i said, "yep."

anyway upon reading Psalm 4, i have a verse that stood out to me:

"In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent."

ever lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling?  i do.  Usually i spend it thinking about the future.  but this text is telling us to spend some of those types of nights reflecting on whether we are sinning in our anger.  which reminds me of Paul's words, "in your anger do not sin: do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold." (Eph. 4:26,27)  Lord, please help me to keep it real with people and to not build up a malicious heart towards anyone.

after reading Psalm 5 i think this verse connected with me the most:

"Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my sighing."

i sigh from time to time.  i sigh probably for a lot of reasons:

• because i can't control a situation
• because i'm tired
• because i'm anxious
• because i miss a friend or my kids or my wife
• because i am satisfied
• because i feel blessed

i believe God gave me the ability to sigh as a way to expreess myself to Him.  Father, i am sighing right now because i feel blessed and i'm tired.  LORD, please help me to rest well tonight and prepare well for taste of small groups.  amen.

i've heard the song

but didn't realize he makes a ping-pong reference in it.  if you know me, i'm a total ping-pong addict - yep i'm a nerd.

Day 1 - Psalm 3

my small group decided to take on CCC's 21 day challenge - 21 days of davidic psalms - woohoo!  so here goes.

i'm a punk by nature.  i enjoy it when other people have a level of punk-likeness within them as well (unless it clashes with mine).  david seems to possess some of this quality in his comment when he says in vs 2 "many people say about me, 'God will not save him.'"  to which david ascertains, "but LORD, you are a shield over me."  it's as if david is saying, "i don't care what you guys think, God is totally going to take care of me."

Father, please remind me to seek you in times of need.  and more importantly, please help me to see you as a shield over me - that i may rely upon you not just in times of need but in all moments.  amen.

writer's strike continues...

and i miss The Office and Heroes.  i guess i will still get to see American Idol - at least they can't take that way from me! 

right now i'm watching Celebrity Apprentice - that's how low i have sunk...zzzzz...boring!  i sure hope those executive producers can give up some of their bling bling to help out the poorly paid writers.

if you're wondering what to watch during this stroke season - read this link:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/entertainment/5441640.html

college is cool

today i got the chance to hang out with about 20 seniors from taylor university and it was just plain fun.  these guys and gals were super engaged and they asked us a ton of great questions.

one of my favorite questions was from a student who asked, "i see that you guys are using the appreticeship concept to reproduce; are there other methods that other reproducing churches are using to reproduce?"  now, of course i have my biases about the concept of being an apprentice, but i loved the creative thought of this question.  props to the dude who asked!

so, how about it, do you know of other methods that reproducing churches are using to reproduce?

i'm glad i was presenting

because i'm not a very good participant.  today i presented at our 3rd reproducing church experience and i loved it.  nearly everytime i present i think, "why do i get to do this?  who am i to be teaching on such subjects?"  however, God reminds me just how awesome i am (ha - yeah right!!)  really he reminds me that we as leaders have been given much responsibility and it's a privelege to get to speak truth and story into people's lives - thanks God. 

one of my favorite parts (of which i was ironically a participant) of the talk was brian zehr's talk on how leaders think and feel.  he shared a story about how once while he was waiting for his flight to board there was a father saying goodbye to his 3 kids so they could board the plane without him (ages 8, 5, 2).  as he was saying his goodbyes the children were crying, "don't leave don't, we're going to miss you" to which the father was saying, "i love you, i'll miss you so much."  brian said this nearly brought him to tears as he watched the emotion of the family.  however brian was shocked and disappointed that nonone else seemed to notice this exchange and even seemed numb to what was happening right in front of them.  then brian asked us, (paraphrase) "how many of us are numb emotionally to what is happening in front of us (as leaders in God's Church)?"

now, i've heard brian deliver this talk before, but it nailed me right between the eyes.  i'm a big dork (in case you didn't know) - i have been staring at people, with a glassy look in my eyes, for the past several months - ignoring the emotion of what Jesus is doing in their life - and it's time to re-evaluate and figure out why.  thanks brian for bringing up the conversation.

pretty good movie

i saw this movie with a good friend tonight - Sean Bublitz.  it was a little crude but had great acting and only spun me even more into a confused oblivion about US politics.  but i still give it somewhere between an B+ and A-