A taste of parenting?

Tonight, I was hurt by someone who I had attempted to build a relationship of trust and honesty with.  They used me.  They used our relationship as a cover-up for their sin.  They tracked my name and the name of our ministry through the mud, potentially.  And, I am heartbroken.  I just want to know, "why would you do this after all we have worked for?"  I want to shout that, but, I don't think shouting will help.

Is this what it's like when you pour yourself into someone and they turn around and make the sinful choice anyway?  It feels like I was betrayed by my inner circle.  Yikes, for a second I almost make a comparison to Jesus and Judas.  This has nothing on that.  But, it still feels like all the progress we had made just went out the door.

A lesson in all this is, "Honesty at all times".  Which is a struggle for me.  I'm a recovering liar.  I'm feeling first hand what I made my parents feel like every time I threw them under the bus.

Colossians 3:9-11

⁹Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices ¹⁰and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. ¹¹Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

I think lying does so much damage.  I can see from my own past as an avid liar the pain it can cause and the tremendous loss of time.  Most horrible is the loss of trust.  I think the devil became the father of lies because he knew that lies were easy.  He couldn't because the father of remarkable evidence, so he went with the next best thing.  If we lie to one another and break that trust, then how can we feel loved by our faith community?  


God, let this be a lesson to me.  Help me to foster a climate of honesty and transparency.  Make my world a place where loving correction is never replaced with judgement.  Most importantly, help me to keep your image in my mind.  Christ be my all and take all of me.

Strippers vs. Church or Bring A Stripper To Church Day:

Church Marketing Sucks has an interesting story and some food for thought.

http://bit.ly/cnmTLK

The Donkey, the Stallion, and the Strategy of the Hills :: Desiring God Christian Resource Library

The Donkey, the Stallion, and the Strategy of the Hills :: Desiring God Christian Resource Library

A story by John Piper that I thought was pretty cool that he wrote for or around Palm Sunday. Give it a read.

I thought this idea that the character of The King says towards the end carried a significantly dense weight. "When we have given all we can
Then we will fight, but only then." When has a all powerful God given His all? When has he run out of love and patience? The story is great and I would love to hear your opinions on the questions It raised in my mind and maybe hear some of what it stirred up in yours.

God is good?

At least one of my youth are dealing with this issue, "If God is love then how could he ever punish?"  We're going to be taking a look at this topic later on in the year, but I came across this video and thought that D.A. Carson does a great job in just a few minutes.  So, check it out.



How can God be loving yet send people to hell? from A Passion for Life on Vimeo.

"time to collect" with adrian peterson, gary busey and shaq

First Person Tetris:

Have you ever said to yourself, "I wish I could better understand the plight of the shapes in this game that I am playing, right now." I know I have, because essentially I'm sending them to their death. When I finalize a row, BOOM! They just disappear. I'm sure that shape doctors have been working on it for a while now and are soon to come out with a cure for spontaneous proximity based disappearance syndrome (SPBDS). While they do that why don't you try to get better acquainted with the mind of a shape as it spends it's brief life cycle spinning and dropping to it's doom.

You barbarian.

 http://www.firstpersontetris.com/

Zip Snip saves Christmas:

I saw this on tv and it made me lol.

The Wreck of the Deutschland:

Have I posted this poem before? Just incase I haven't, I'll post the whole thing here for you to read. I love it.  The poem is considerably long so it's entirety is after the jump.  But, I'll go ahead and let you know what it's about...cuz you won't get it from the poem easily.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.

4. The Wreck of the Deutschland

To the happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns exiles by the Falk Laws drowned between midnight and morning of Dec. 7th. 1875