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Showing posts from June, 2010

called or driven?

Today I read this helpful excerpt from Jack Arnold, pastor and missionary (who baptized me), on the distinction of being called in ministry, or driven in ministry : A driven person : (1) is gratified by accomplishments; (2) loves power; (3) loves success; (4) compromises integrity for success; (5) is project and goal oriented to the exclusion of people; (6) is highly competitive; (7) becomes angry at opposition, (8) is obsessed with and gives the impression of being busy; (9) seeks to control everything; (10) has a large ego but is inwardly insecure. A called person (1) knows God has called him; (2) senses he/or she is a person of destiny; (3) knows who he is in Christ and does not have to be somebody he is not; (4) understands everything has been given by God and can be taken away by God; (5) serves God for the praise of God, not men; (6) grasps he is not indispensable to God’s work; (7) longs to do his best for God and does not conform to man’s whims; (8) is committed to do God’s wi
UBS3 + Bexley802!

humiliation leads to possession

"You will find that you survive humiliation And that's an experience of incalculable value... The destination cannot be described; You will know very little until you get there; You will journey blind. But the way leads towards possession Of what you have sought for in the wrong place." (T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party, 1949)

isolation and destruction

Here's a lesson from my good friend Joe Jones... "Several years ago I went on an elk hunting trip in Colorado and the Lord had a lesson for me I had not anticipated. At about 10,000 feet on open pasture above the treeline I met a Basque shepherd who was watching over 3500 sheep with just himself and three Australian shepherd dogs. I was really curious about why the sheep would be up in such an isolated area on BLM land and not near any ranch. "As he was really lonely , he invited my brother in Christ, Ward, and me to join him in his shepherd tent for a cup of coffee. He actually wanted us to stay with him for a few days while we were hunting but we had backpacked in with our tent and wanted to 'rough it' for a few days. "Sometime later while we were standing on the edge of the flock and talking with the shepherd, we heard a pack of coyotes with a lone sheep that sounded very close but too far away for the shepherd to be able to help. In the midst of all the

we are inept

David Warren's column on... well, our incompetence which leads us to believe the superstition that underlying every problem is malice and that the state must have the solution... Let me mention in passing that President Barack Obama was in no way responsible for the [BP oil] catastrophe, and that there is nothing he can do about it. He is being held to blame for "inaction," as wrongly as his predecessor was held to blame over Hurricane Katrina, by media and public unable to cope with the proposition that, "Stuff happens." In a sense, Obama is hoist on his own petard. The man who blames Bush for everything now finds there are some things presidents cannot do. More deeply, the opposition party that persuades the public government can solve all their problems, discovers once in power there are problems their government cannot solve. Alas, it will take more time than they have to learn the next lesson: that governments which try to solve the insoluble, more or less

the decline of close male friendship

I was sent a very interesting article in Touchstone. Here's an excerpt and link... We still have the word “friendship,” and we still have something of the reality, but it is distant, dilute, bloodless. For modern American men, friendship is no longer forged in the heat of battle, or in the dust of the plains as they drive their herds across half a continent, or in the choking air of a coalmine, or even in the cigar smoke of a debating club. That is partly because our lives, for better and for worse, no longer involve the risk and the sweat that was the cement of deep friendship. No man will help hew the oaks for our cabin, because we no longer live in cabins. No man will stand by as we jump overboard to set the trawling net, because we have no boat and set no net; we live too comfortably for that. Under such fortunate circumstances, we need all the more the camaraderie and intellectual risk of the club. But gentlemen’s clubs have vanished or have been sued out of existence. (The C

The Al and Tipper we didn't know

Psychology Today blogger and marriage therapist William J. Doherty writes, "They were the baby boomer couple who could. At first sad, I became mad when I read their non-explanation of the divorce: they had come to a 'mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration.' ... Is this little whimper all that a 40-year marriage with children and grandchildren is worth? Sports teams and their home cities show more grief and anger when teams leave for better stadiums and tax benefits." His article is worth reading: " Al and Tipper: We Hardly Knew Ye "

prof-isms

Howard Hendricks has retired after 60 years of classroom teaching at Dallas Seminary. This Kindred Spirit article includes many of the "prof-isms" I heard from him too... "You are able to do many things. But be sure you find the one thing you must do." "There’s no one without significant creative potential." "You never graduate from the school of discipleship." "If God had said to me, 'I’ll give you another course,’ I would have said, 'Let’s make it an elective.'” "Heaven is a person: Jesus." "If you’re just like someone else, we don’t need you." "How big is your God? The size of your God determines the size of everything." "There’s no such thing as faith apart from risk-taking. Creativity takes risk. The people who are most secure in Jesus Christ shouldn’t be scared to try new things." "You cannot impart what you do not possess." "The teacher has not taught until

Nehemiah cared about the poor

Here's a good post from Brigada's Back Page ... In addition to this role of advocacy, which was mainly a ministry of words, Nehemiah also followed through with action for the poor. For example, because of his position of power (as acting governor), he must have been provided with quite a dinner spread. In fact, the Bible says that in those days, the governor of Jerusalem was typically served a meal hearty enough for 150 hungry eaters! Rather than gorge on the feast at what was left at the Jerusalem palace, he would typically invite 150 common folks over for dinner each day. These were hungry people. They would enjoy a fine spread, fit for a king, and — all the while — Nehemiah would apparently just quickly pack up a sandwich and head back to the work on the wall, his driving dream (vs. 14-16). With his head and heart in the right place, and his hands and feet at the right work, it’s no wonder that Nehemiah led his volunteers to finish the work on the wall (6:15-16). There reall