More Than IT

2011-07-02T14:58:00.001-04:00

Praise God for freedom!

Character

2011-07-02T14:48:00.002-04:00

In wading through some old documents I found this devotion from Purpose Driven Connection I had saved:

Molded into Godly Character
by Rick Warren

Put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:24 (NIV)

*** *** *** ***

As I mentioned yesterday, your character is essentially the sum of your habits; it is how you habitually act. The Bible says, “Put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24 NIV).

God uses his Word, people, and circumstances to mold us. All three are indispensable for character development. God’s Word provides the truth we need to grow, God’s people provide the support we need to grow, and circumstances provide the environment to practice Christlikeness.

If you study and apply God’s Word, connect regularly with other believers, and learn to trust God in difficult circumstances, I guarantee you will become more like Jesus.

Many people assume all that is needed for spiritual growth is Bible study and prayer. But some issues in life will never be changed by Bible study or prayer alone. God uses people. He usually prefers to work through people rather than perform miracles, so that we will depend on each other for fellowship. He wants us to grow together.

In many religions, the people considered to be the most spiritually mature and holy are those who isolate themselves from others in mountaintop monasteries, uninfected by contact with other people.

But this is a gross misunderstanding. Spiritual maturity is not a solitary, individual pursuit!

You cannot grow to Christlikeness in isolation. You must be around other people and interact with them. You need to be a part of a church and community.

Why? Because true spiritual maturity is all about learning to love like Jesus, and you can’t practice being like Jesus without being in relationship with other people.

Remember, it’s all about love – loving God and loving others.

Kameron at the Bil-Mar Softball Tourney

2010-08-22T16:29:00.001-04:00

Jakson at Timertown 2010

2010-08-22T16:21:00.001-04:00

Last minute Charlie

2010-08-14T21:24:00.007-04:00

One of my less beneficial traits is a tendency to procrastinate. But I think "Last minute Charlie" is a more positive nickname than "Mr. Procrastinator", thus the title of this blog. The latest example of this character flaw is my preparation for tomorrow's Children's Message at church. I was called earlier in the week and agreed to come up with a simple message while our Pastor is off. We have a church campout so there won't be many kids in church - but still I should give this more than a couple minutes preparation. Like usual, Shelly helped me out. She had some leftover glow-in-the-dark bracelets from the Pumpkin Paint 2009 that we had saved specifically for this cause, and she even knew where to find them!

So tomorrow's message will come with a "snap", "shake" and "glow" wrist bracelet. I'm hoping most of them work, the box of open bracelets Shelly had with 6 only had 1 that glowed. But an unopened box was tested and the first two worked.

So what lesson do I share with our 4-8 year old children?

- Don't be a "last minute Charlie"

- Be prepared (Boy Scout theme?)

- Let your light shine for Jesus

- when you get snapped, or shaken - how do you react? it's a chance to shine!

- how long does your glow for Jesus last?

Oh boy, now my problem is picking JUST one - guess I should have procrastinated longer!

Have you met Alistair?

2010-08-08T07:58:00.005-04:00

Enjoy the Scottish brog?

Enjoy a good sermon?

Meet Alistair Begg.

www.truthforlife.org

2010-08-04T22:53:00.002-04:00

Dear Shelly,

"Happy Birthday" doesn't quite make the mark of how much I want you to enjoy this day and everyday of your 52nd year! I hope you get to have Starbucks coffee, that your ride to Michigan City to pick up Lindsey is safe and enjoyable and that we get to spend a little time together just to celebrate another year of blessings. I love you and can't imagine life without you!

2010-07-10T21:45:00.004-04:00

Happy 60th Birthday to my brother Russ!

Grandsons are delightful

2010-06-12T21:09:00.003-04:00

Just another morning at Nana Shelly's house. The plan was to have 'pudding painting' but the raw materials tasted too good for art, unless you consider Kam's 'body art'!

2010-04-13T07:09:00.000-04:00

Good listening:

Title	Reference	ID	Type
Be Patient, The Lord is Coming, Part 1	James 5:7	2611	Download Audio \| Buy CD
Be Patient, The Lord is Coming, Part 2	James 5:7	2612	Download Audio \| Buy CD
Telling the Truth	James 5:12	2613	Download Audio \| Buy CD
Prayer and Praise	James 5:13	2615	Download Audio \| Buy CD
If Anyone is Sick..., Part 1	James 5:14	2618	Download Audio \| Buy CD
If Anyone is Sick..., Part 2	James 5:15	2621	Download Audio \| Buy CD
Confession and Prayer	James 5:16	2624	Download Audio \| Buy CD
Bringing Back the Wanderers	James 5:19-20	2625	Download Audio \| Buy CD

If my wife had a blog...

2009-04-16T21:21:00.002-04:00

If Shelly had her own blog there would be plenty to write about this week. Most of it would be medical: her Dad had surgery Tuesday (non-invasive cancer), her brother (only 43) is scheduled for a knee replacement on Friday and her brother-in-law (Russ) had radioactive seed implants in his prostate yesterday. The good news is that her husband's name isn't on the list.

Thankfully all are doing well so far - praise the Lord!

What's up?

2009-02-28T23:10:00.002-05:00

Why have a blog if I'm not going to write on it? Good question - maybe it's a place to post a few photos. My life is plenty full without writing on this Blog or updating my status on Facebook but leaving a digital footprint on the web seems to be "the thing" to do.
Perhaps I should use this place to share ideas I have about ways to improve life or our world? But an improvement to me might be considered regression to someone else - it's amazing how differently two people can look at the same issue or action.

Take this online world as an example. Google has made it unbelievable easy to post our thoughts, pictures and even videos. Facebook has a powerful networking tool to connect people. Microsoft is trying to catch the wave but it seems like they don't understand how the average person does things. I've run across this at work in the past couple of years with their SharePoint product. If you've used the product "out of the box" you probably agree that it does a lot of things but it's certainly not intuitive to use. Our corporate office has made a huge commitment to use the SharePoint technologies so I'll probably be "forced" to use them more and possibly adopt them for our own company. But when I was looking for SharePoint alternatives a stumbled on a company called Mindtouch. They are an emerging privately owned company that offers a product called "Deki". I've used the free version called Deki Express and think it's a wonderful tool and will probably starting using it as my blog space in the future.

Why use something other than Facebook or Blogspot? I think each one meets a different need. The deki gives a nice balance of public, semi-private and private information. I've started one for our church to supplement our current website bethelzeeland.wik.is and I plan to start one for our neighborhood instead of developing a website with traditional tools.

More on this in the future, but for now I'd suggest you check out www.mindtouch.com "MindTouch Deki is an open source enterprise collaboration and community platform that enables users to connect and remix enterprise systems, social tools and web services."

memory lane

2009-01-04T22:09:00.005-05:00

Family christmas parties are a great place to stimulate our long term memory banks. This past Saturday our family celebrated our Christmas with the traditional 'potluck' dinner and then random forms of discussion, photography, sharing of stories and some referee efforts with the youngsters. This year Russ brought along some videos and a projector and played them where we could watch if we wanted but didn't disrupt all the other conversations. After the opening JibJab elves of the five brothers and the five sisters we saw two different videos from 1988 and one from 1993. Yes, we have all changed in the past 20 years!

2009-01-01T10:03:00.004-05:00

2009 - an 'odd' year; but there certainly wasn't much 'even' about the events of 2008. Do you remember when you were in grade school and had to write the date on the top of every paper you turned in? When the new year came the change in numbers would certainly use up precious swipes of my pencil's eraser and I'm sure there were times I put the old year down and never noticed it. No biggee.

In the world of IT the change in years brought about massive preparation and expense at the turn of the millennium, remember Y2K! Computer programmers (including yours truly) had saved precious space by only storing the last two digits of the year in many databases, how myopic. Comparing dates of 99 vs. 00 would certainly cause wrong calculations and I'm sure there were mistakes made (and I'm sure there are still many places still storing only two digits). But billions of dollars were spent in the US on new software that was Y2K 'certified' and billions more spent repairing software to work correctly. In the end, Y2K turned out to be a 'non-event'. Was it because of the preparation and money spent? Partly, but the hype and scare by mass media agents turned a relatively manageable problem into what some believed would be the apocalypse.

How does this compare to the events in our world today? What really caused the economic collapse of 2008? I don't know the answer to this question and I'm afraid no one else does either. We live in a complex world - complex laws on top of complex systems. Will the new political regime usher in relief or will their changes be just another layer of complexity on top of the many that have been laid before them? What will one dollar buy 365 days from now? What will be the price of gasoline - and does it matter?

I'll pay closer attention to national and world events in 2009, partly out of fear but also out of interest. But more importantly I need to simplify my own life. Just like the writing of a year becomes habit after many a school paper, so do our actions and non-actions at home, work and church. What is most important in my life? Maybe I should answer that question each day and make sure I put first things first (thanks Mr. Covey).

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things." Phil 4:8

Winter wonderland

2008-12-21T21:40:00.003-05:00

Winter wonderland was the tag line on the Michigan license plate for many years (at least that's what I recall). I don't know if the warmer climate or someone's marketing campaign led to the change but our weather today sure fits the description. It was a relaxing Sunday afternoon a good warm-up for Christmas day. All the kids and grandkids were over for lunch and stayed most of the afternoon. Football, naps, and a game of UpWords before the married kids left for home. That meant one more trip outside to clear another 6" of snow from the driveway.

2008-12-21T09:50:00.004-05:00

I've decided to enter the world of blogging. This won't be the favorite blog on anyone's list but perhaps, if time allows, I'll share some information with the rest of the blogging world that is worth the disk space that holds it.