"Lord Jesus, Great High Priest, Thou hast opened a new and living way by which a fallen creature can approach thee with acceptance.
Help me to contemplate the dignity of thy Person,
The perfectness of thy sacrifice,
the effectiveness of thy intercession.
O what blessedness accompanies devotion,
when under all the trials that weary me,
the cares that corrode me,
the fears that disturb me,
the infirmities that oppress me,
I can com to thee in my need and feel peace beyond understanding.
The grace that restores is necessary to preserve, lead,guard,supply,help me.
And here thy saints encourage my hope,
they were once poor and are now rich,
bound and are now free,
tried and now are victorious.
Every new duty calls for more grace than i now possess,
but not more than is found in thee, the divine treasury in whom all fullness dwells.
To thee I repair for grace upon grace, until every void made by sin be replenished and i am filled with all thy fullness.
May my desires be enlarged and my hopes emboldened,
that i may honour thee by my entire dependency
and the greatness of my expectation.
Do though be with me, and prepare me for all
the smiles of prosperity, the frowns of adversity
the losses of substance, the death of friends,
the days of darkness, the changes of life,
and the last great change of all.
May i find thy grace sufficient for all my needs. "
I can't figure out how to embed the actual surf cam so you'll have to click on the link. HERE Enjoy.
Recently I finished a short essay from John Edwards "The Preciousness of Time and the Importance of Redeeming It". Thanks to our friends at the Rebelution.com for pointing me to it. For me it hit on two very timely topics.
First it provide me the nudging to examine how i spend my time. With The New Wine Conference behind us myself, my family, and the ministry I lead turn to a season of rest. For me this means that my free time actually is free. If you're like me this means that it can also be dangerous. I'm apt to spend hours channel surfing, when i could be actually surfing, it means I spend time reading pointless RSS feeds when I could be feeding by reading things that would nurture my soul, I'm prone to end up interacting with twitter posts when i could be interacting with my wife and daughter. Time will be spent this summer one way is honoring to the Lord the other leads to a life of a sl
uggard. Yikes.
"You have had much time of leisure and freedom from worldly business. Consider to what purpose you have spent it. You have not only had ordinary time, but you have had a great deal of holy time. What have you done with all the Sabbath-days which you have enjoyed? Consider those things seriously, and let your own consciences make answer."Second, Edwards in a very pastoral way urges the reader to view time as the most non expendable, most precious of comedies. I'm reminded of the brevity of life and often of seasons of life. Abbie, my daughter, is a constant reminder of this. Her changes are daily as she grows and matures. Her coo's will soon turn to words, and her seemingly irrational motions to a very active toddler. As my first fathers day passed this last weekend I looked back and realized that every moment that God has given my family is just as important as what we from a human perspective choose to value.
"Second, time is very short, which is another thing that renders it very precious. The scarcity of any commodity occasions men to set a higher value upon it, especially if it be necessary and they cannot do without it. Thus when Samaria was besieged by the Syrians, and provisions were exceedingly scarce, “an ass’s head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove’s dung for five pieces of silver.” 2 Kin. 6:25. — So time is the more to be prized by men, because a whole eternity depends upon it; and yet we have but a little of time."
Here's what we've been up to these past several days...
For the other videos visit Steve's blog.
This is from The Resurgence.com . Hope this challenges you much as it has challenged me....
"Would you like Barack Obama on your kid's work rota? OK, maybe someone with his leadership gift and—assuming he loves Jesus—you'd be pleased, right? Not a man to let go lightly. Well, a former US President (and a legendary one) was let go. Why? As a young man Theodore Roosevelt, serving in a Sunday school, noticed a boy arriving with a black eye. When Roosevelt asked, the boy explained with embarrassment that another boy had pinched his sister, so he'd taken a swing at him and gotten into a scrap. Roosevelt gave the kid a dollar and a pat on the back. The future president was quietly removed that week.
I reckon there's a parable for us, and by "us" I mean the contemporary church. There is an expression of masculinity—an aggression, protectiveness, and a sense of injustice—which is primal in all men. I even see this in my boys. (The youngest seems to have come out of the womb yelling "charge!") Sure it has been horridly distorted in all men by the fall, but it's there.
The Choices
Men are wired with instincts, and it seems we have three choices:
- Abdicate indiscriminately to these instincts. This option leads to ungodly, ill-disciplined, boastful masculinity (chauvinism).
- Exclude them. The second leads to what we have had for centuries: churches that can't cope with men who reward boys for fighting for their sisters. (Churches which, in the words of Leon Podles, are "women's clubs with a few male officers." The husbands stay home or get dragged along, and look glazed till they hear the golden words, "We'll close the meeting there.")
- Redeem and channel them. The third option is the most difficult and the least fashionable, but it's also the most biblical and the most promising when it comes to getting the world changed for good."
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