Tonight

Tonight I didn't go to Karate class. Instead I went to the Wine and Spirit Store. I got a jug of Chianti, a bottle of Riesling, a bottle of White Zinfandel (for the little lady), and a bottle of Bourbon. That's right! I skipped a workout to buy booze!

That sounds terrible, doesn't it?

LUSH!

A Meditation for those who do not meditate on Christ.

Be assured of this: your sins must be your meditation, then, if Christ is not your meditation now. May there be great searchings of heart this night! How often do your convictions disperse like the smoke from the chimney, or the chaff from the winnower's hand; they soon vanish. It will not profit you to live at this rate — hearing sermons and forgetting them. Take heed to the voice of warning, lest God should say, "He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall be suddenly destroyed, and that without remedy." O wicked men! wicked men! one word to you, all of you who know not God, and ye shall go.

I will give you a subject for your meditation to-night. It shall be a parable.

A certain tyrant sent for one of his subjects, and said to him, "What is your employment?"

He said, "I am a blacksmith."

"Go home," said he, "and make me a chain of such a length"

He went home; it occupied him several months, and he had no wages all the while he was making the chain, only the trouble and the pains of making it.

Then he brought it to the monarch, and he said, "Go and make it twice as long." He gave him nothing to do it with, but sent him away.

Again he worked on, and made it twice as long. He brought it up again, and the monarch said, "Go and make it longer still."

Each time he brought it, there was nothing but the command to make it longer still. And when he brought it up at last, the monarch said, "Take it, bind him hand and foot with it, and cast him into a furnace of fire." There were his wages for making the chain.

Here is a meditation for you to-night, ye servants of the devil! Your master the devil is telling you to make a chain. Some of you have been fifty years welding the links of the chain; and he says, "Go and make it longer still. Next Sunday morning you will open that shop of yours, and put another link on; next Saturday night you will be drunk, and put another link on; next Monday you win do a dishonest action, and so you will keep on making fresh links to this chain; and when you have lived twenty more years, the devil will say, "More links on still!" And then, at last, it will be, "Take him, and bind him hand and foot, and cast him into a furnace of fire." "For the wages of sin is death." There is a subject for your meditation. I do not think it will be sweet; but if God makes it profitable, it will do good. You must have strong medicines sometimes, when the disease is bad. God apply it to your hearts! Amen.

~~C.H. Spurgeon, from Sermon 2690, Meditations on God.

Some Karate Pics from Last Month

I've obviously not been posting as often as I have been accustomed to, and in the void, I forgot to post these --

Cole and Daniel graduated to their next respective belts (for Daniel, this was his first promotion -- no longer a white belt!).

Acceptable Prayer

What are the true conditions of acceptable prayer?

1. The person offering the prayer must be in a state of reconcilation to God through Christ. This does not mean that God never answers the prayers of unregenerate persons; but the promise can be claimed only by those who have accepted the conditions of salvation and are loyal to their Christian engagements.

2. The prayer must be sincere, must express a real desire of the heart, and it must be offered and the answer sought only through the merits and intercession of Jesus Christ.

3. The prayer must be offered in absolute submission to the higher, broader knowledge, wisdom and righteousness of God. It must follow our Saviour's "not as I will, but as thou wilt." The only objects for which we have any warrant to press unconditional petitions are: (1) our own sanctification; (2) the bringing on of the triumph of Christ's kingdom, because God has positively revealed both of these to be his "will." The unconditional, unsubmissive demand for any other benefit, in relation to which the will of God is as yet unrevealed, is obviously a presumptuous sin, a ground of offence, and not an acceptable prayer.

4. In order that the prayer shall be acceptable, the person praying must in every case intelligently and dilligently use the means provided by God himself in the great framework of second causes and natural laws for the attainment of the end desired. If a man who prays for a crop neglects to sow the seed; or if a man who prays for learning neglects to study; or if a man who prays for the cure of a disease neglects to take the appointed remedies; or if a man who prays for sanctification neglects to use the means of grace; or if a man who prays for the conversion of sinners neglects to work for it as far as his power or opportunity goes, -- then, in every case, he disobeys and insults God: his prayer is a mockery and an offence, and it can be answered only by rebuke and chastisement.

Means in relation to ends and ends in dependence upon means are as much an ordinance of God and as obligatory on us as prayer itself. If God shuts us up in a situation where no means are possible, we have a right to pray for what we want in the absence of all means, and God is perfectly able to give it to us without means, if it seem wisest and best to himself. But in every case in which means are available to us their use is commanded, and the poor fanatic who neglects them and petulantly cries for what he wants dishonors God, grieves rational Christians and gives occasion to the devil and to his friends to triumph.

5. We must believe in the efficacy of prayer itself as a divinely-appointed means of attaining blessings. We must believe that we do and will obtain blessings by means of prayer in which we would not attain without it.

~~A. A. Hodge, Prayer and the Prayer-Cure, from pages 99-101 of Popular Lectures on Theological Themes; 1887.

Reflections on a Birdbath

Six little birds splashing in the bath,
Rolling, fluttering, frolicking.
And then all of the sudden,
Everybody's gone.

Behold...

The Boston Cream Donut!

Blessings

I've noticed something lately. Several times now, I've noticed people telling me "God bless you," when responding to the amount of children I have.

"You have seven children?"

"Yes, that's right. Seven."

"God bless you!"

Now, I don't know what these people mean in their hearts by saying this to me, but I'll take a blessing... thank you. I'm reminded of Baalam speaking an unintentional blessing, and the fact that it was indeed God who moved him to pronounce the blessing.

Is God moving these people to bless me and my family? If I am a man of faith, how can I think otherwise? Yes, thank you for pronouncing a blessing upon me, and thank God Almighty for blessing me.

Not a nerd, but not hip either.

WHAT? I'm three points nerdier, er uh, not hippier, than JOSH? Gimme a break!

Some thoughts on the slaughter of the Amish children

I don't have a bunch of answers... alot of questions, some of my own thoughts, but not a bunch of answers.

I couldn't sleep the other night, and I was up thinking. The question crossed my mind, What would possess someone to do something like this? And immediately I thought, "Hmm... possess...," and I remembered reading a sermon with some interesting points. I grabbed my book of Christopher Love sermons off the shelf and started paging... ah yes, there it is, Sermon 15 on The Combat Between the Flesh and the Spirit:

"1. Motions to sin from Satan are usually such as are abhorrent to nature's light of unnatural sins, those which the very light of nature struggles. And therefore divines rank temptations to blasphemy against God and to lay violent hands upon a man's self to be from Satan because they are unnatural. These motions do not arise primarily from the flesh but from the devil because they are contrary to nature, and therefore not from nature....

"2. Motions from the devil are usually to gross acts of sin which are not seated in the inclination and affections....

"3. Temptations from Satan are usually accompanied with with much horror and fear when they are first suggested. When a temptation is so strongly suggested that it makes a man quake, and horror comes upon him, this is an argument that it comes from the devil. And the reason is because nature provokes to those sins which are most pleasing unto nature. Nature does not raise a combustion in the mind."

This slaughter of the children was diabolical...demonic... I think so, anyway. Like I said, I don't have a bunch of answers, just some thoughts.

Some other thoughts... Monday morning a man entered a school room with the intent to rape and murder a school room full of little girls... and Monday night America enjoyed a nationally televised football game. The Eagles crushed the Packers.

How can anyone play a game, cheer about a game, care about a game, when something like this happened? It's the American way, it seems, to ignore tragedy and just go on like nothing happened. It's been going on for a while now. When is America going to take a moment to consider why our nation is given over to violence and perversion? And what is the Lord's quarrel with us? Like I said, not alot of answers, just a bunch of questions.

Thus saith the LORD; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not. -- Jeremiah 31:15.

Much Affliction

Acts 14:

 19 And there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people, and having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead.

 20 Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up, and came into the city: and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe.

 21 And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch,

 22 Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.

This was part of our Bible reading today, and it was encouraging to me to know that the Christian life is one of afflictions.  And yet I'm humbled to even use the word affliction to describe anything in my life when I've never been bashed unconscious with rocks and left for dead.  Just something I'm thinking about this Lord's Day that I thought might provoke good and edifying thoughts.