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Fear OR “Faith working through love”
Yesterday was not the day I planned to have–but there were many blessings anyway. One of them was our reading to prepare for small group. As our pastor preaches through Galatians, our small groups are reading and discussing Tim Keller’s commentary–and it is profound. Convicting? Yes! But comforting, too. Not condemning–well, as long as I keep praying for the grace to look at the Cross and not fixate on myself. (Because whenever I get stuck focusing on my sins and immaturities and lack of faith? I despair!) Toward the end of the reading, there was a list comparing the “two fundamentally different ways to live” — either as “sons” or…
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Solemn Thanksgiving and Praise
If you’re so inclined, I hope you will read this slowly and discuss it with your children. It is not only historically accurate, it is encouraging–especially as we continue to pray for the many changes coming soon to our government. The First National Proclamation of Thanksgiving as given by the Continental Congress in 1777: “FOR AS MUCH as it is the indispensable Duty of all Men to adore the superintending Providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with Gratitude their Obligation to him for Benefits received, and to implore such farther Blessings as they stand in Need of: And it having pleased him in his abundant Mercy, not only to continue…
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Saying Grace
“Saying Grace” by Norman Rockwell (By the way–if you ever have a chance to see a Norman Rockwell exhibit, go! A small grouping of his original paintings came through Billings a few years ago and WOW! Did we love seeing the actual artwork in person–as compared to “flat” reproductions in magazines or on shiny-stock posterboard. Real art has so much texture and depth! It is one of the many reasons that I am so grateful for the gifts and generosity of Samara’s husband, Taylor Lynde. His willingness to step out of galleries and put small pieces on an ebay store is why even as I type this, I am…
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Overlooking an Offense (HT: Tim Challies)
Tim Challies has a great post on overlooking that I encourage you to read: Overlooking an Offense His main points are: 1. Examine Yourself 2. Examine Yourself Again: Are You Right? 3. Determine the Importance 4. Look for Patterns 5. Be Sensitive 6. Seek Counsel And I’ll close with his closing words (on seeking counsel) to tempt you to (hopefully) click on through: “It may be valuable to seek the counsel of other mature Christians before pursuing confrontation. You will want to ensure that this is not simply an opportunity to gossip and vent, after which you will feel better and let the matter drop. But discreetly seeking wise…
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Summaries and then I’ll be OFFLINE for a couple of days …
Hi again, friends! Just a quick note to let you know that I’m working furiously to write some quick summaries from the CCEF Conference and then intersperse them back over the last five days in between the applicable Live Blogs. So … if these topics are of interest to you at all, please jump back to last Thursday (November 13) and look for the summaries (especially if you’ve been scared off a bit by my 60,000 word count on the actual Live Blogs! I assure you that my summaries are much shorter). You may need to click on the “archive” section of my blog to read all of them. UPDATE…
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CCEF Conference Reflections (& Pictures)
Fred and I are sitting on the floor of the Philadelphia International airport (because that is the only way we could plug in our laptops), just about to board our first flight home. Fred is pulling off all of my live blog texts from the CCEF Conference so that, hopefully, I’ll be able to re-read through them (without a live internet connection) and possibly write some reflections on our flights home. (Ummmm … I just love being able to work on airplanes. Not only do I hope to get these posts written, I also have a bunch of actionable emails that I just haven’t been able to get to in…
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Summary of Tim Lane’s Plenary: ‘Godly Intoxication’ (CCEF Conference Live Blog)
Well … it was very hard to see the CCEF Conference coming to an end. But it’s not hard for me to come to the end of typing these summaries! 🙂 I am just chomping at the bit to get to my darling Sophia. Before I go, however, please enjoy just a few notes from Dr. Tim Lane’s plenary, “Godly Intoxication”: For the most part, we’ve been working within the context of our first part of our mission statement–restoring Christ to counseling. There has been this emphasis of trying to think of how the wisdom and breadth and depth and grace and redemptive message of the Bible intersect into this…
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CCEF Conference Sunday AM Plenary: Godly Intoxification (Tim Lane)
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Summary of David Powlison’s Plenary: ‘Escape to Reality’ (CCEF Conference Live Blog)
The worship on this wonderful Sabbath morning was great. Please click through to the Live Blog to see the words of the hymns (and a few links to Getty videos that I was able to find too–wow! that is a great fiddler!). But the highlight was, of course, the “Sunday School” lesson taught by Dr. David Powlison and the “sermon” given by Dr. Tim Lane. (I put those words in quotes to be clear that, of course, a session at a parachurch conference–as wonderful as it is–is not the same thing as a local church service.) Here are just a few of my notes from Dr. Powlison’s teaching: I’m going…
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CCEF Conference Sunday AM Plenary: Escape to Reality (David Powlison)
