4 years ago...

On April 4th, 2004, my dear wife made my heart sing with joy when she said yes to the question "Will you marry me?" I am so thankful to God for her and my love and gratitude for her continue to grow.

I don't know if you know this...

...but I'm kind of a big deal.

Because I am married to someone who is a big deal.

Bullets over Thursday

Taking my cue from Chris Hubbs, here are some bullet points for Thursday, January 31, the year of our Lord two thousand and eight:

• Alex Chediak scored a prepub copy of Tim Keller's The Reason for God and has some thoughts on it. This is only serves to get me more excited about this book. HT: McCoy
  
• Michael McKinley shares a statement that Mark Dever (of IX Marks Ministries, among other things) gave regarding the cooperation between Acts29 and IX Marks. This is an excellent and very encouraging read.
• Lost Season 4 starts tonight. I am a nerd and I can't wait to start watching this show again.
• Justin Taylor posted 10 YouTube links to author Dave Harvey's thoughts on his extremely helpful and beneficial book on marriage, When Sinners Say I Do. I heartily recommend you watch these clips and then read the book. An audiobook has also recently come out.
• Resurgence has a good interview with pastor/author/professor/linebacker Voddie Baucham.
• Mark Driscoll is preaching through "Religion Saves and Nine Other Misconceptions." Good stuff.
• You should join Goodreads. It's a blast. Visit my page and see what I'm reading.
  
• My wife is beautiful, amazing, and a continual joy to my heart.
  

Worchester=Wooster?

I've been listening to an audiobook of David McCullough's excellent biography of John Adams and the reader keeps pronouncing the city of Worchester" as "wooster." Can someone please explain this oddity to me?

Oh, and don't just come up with the lame "That's just how they say it in New England." That is not going to cut it.

Bonus points (that are good for what? No idea.) if you can come up with words that sound much differently than they are spelled.

And huge props to whoever remembers the Wooster character from the "New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh."

On being proactively romantic

Tonight I bought some roses for Dallass on the way home from work. While I was waiting in line one person asked me if I was going to get engaged tonight. I said "No, I just wanted to get my wife some nice looking flowers. At this point, the checker interjected with a knowing look "Ahh...someone must be in the dog house!"

This is one of my biggest pet peeves. It seems that romance gotten to the point in our culture that it fits into 2 categories: the new stage (where everything is exciting and both parties are actively pursuing each other with gifts and other romantic gestures) or the reactive stage (where people use the tools of romantic convention to clean up some mess they have made).

I suggest that romance is much sweeter when done proactively. I told the checker tonight that I have found that you don't have to buy flowers to get out of the dog house when you've already bought flowers.

So, all you lovers: buy something nice, write a note, sing a song, or whatever brings your sweetie joy. And then maybe those annoying checker people will stop assuming that I'm only buying flowers to appease my angry wife.

Generation Y in the workplace

MSN has an interesting article about Gen Y in the workplace.

Employees under the age of 29, also known as Generation Y, expect their employers to provide more benefits and other perks than their older counterparts, according to a new survey from CareerBuilder.com and Harris Interactive. Gen Y workers want better pay, a flexible work schedule and company-provided BlackBerrys and cell phones.

generation y entitlement

Even the wind and the waves obey Him...

Forecast for today:

LARGE WEST SWELL WILL MOVE INTO THE WATERS TODAY...PEAKING NEAR 27 FEET AT 17 SECONDS. THESE POWERFUL WAVES WILL GENERATE BREAKERS OF 30 TO 35 FEET IN THE SURF ZONE BY AFTERNOON. THE SWELL IS EXPECTED TO RECEDE BELOW 18 FEET WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON.

BEACHES...JETTIES...AND ROCKS ON EXPOSED COASTLINES ARE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS IN THESE CONDITIONS. LARGE WAVES CONTAIN TREMENDOUS FORCE AND CAN SWEEP INDIVIDUALS INTO THE FRIGID AND TURBULENT WATER WHERE SURVIVAL IS UNLIKELY. PEOPLE ARE ADVISED TO REMAIN AWAY FROM THESE AREAS UNTIL THE WAVES SUBSIDE.

I work about 5 minutes from the beach and I will be watching these during my lunch break. From a far distance of course. Lord knows I don't want to be swept in frigid and turbulent waters where survival is unlikely.

Caption this

The best tourist attraction of all time has taken a serious blow to the head. Please enter your own caption for this brilliant picture.

My best is "A big ox-ccident!"

Read more about it here.

paul bunyan

Happy Birthday Dallass!!!

Happy birthday to my wonderful wife Dallass. You are my favorite and I am so thankful to our good God for you.

Books in the mail!

Yesterday, I went to my parents house and saw a mysterious box from WTS Books. I knew that my mom had just gotten a shipment from them the week before and I wondered "Is that my Christmas present? Should I open it now and ask questions later?" Well, I thought it prudent to ask questions first, so I called my mom and she said "Oh no...those are just more ESV Children's Bibles for my Sunday School class."

Dang.

We continued talking and before I hung up, she sighed and said "Oh, just open it! Those are books for you. I wasn't going to give them to you until we got back (they are out of town this week) but just open them now!"

Just then, the heavens opened up and I heard angelic singing in my ears. It was a beautiful moment.

I eagerly opened the box and, lo and behold, my parents had blessed me with a copy of Beeke/Pederson's Meet the Puritans and Goldsworthy's Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics!

Thanks Mom and Dad!

Thoughts on Sigur Ros

Tim Smith at Doxologist shares some good thoughts on Sigur Ros and their wonderful art.

Like Tim, I recommend Takk as a great starting place to listen to the music of Sigur Ros, especially on an autumn drive.

sigur ros

The Idol of Approval

Darrin Patrick recently gave an excellent talk entitled "Dealing With Personal Idols" (audio stream/download here). In that talk he gently but piercingly helps the listener to evaluate the things in our lives, general or specific, that can take the place of Jesus as the Lord of our hearts and desires.

I freely confess that I often place the approval of others in a place of greater importance than recognizing the approval that I already have in Jesus. This sin plays itself out in every area of my life, whether it's my marriage or getting a cup of coffee at Starbucks. God help me as I seek to honor Him in every area of my heart and life.

Also see another great talk on idolatry (download) by Mark Driscoll at the Continuous Worship conference back in September.

mark driscoll darrin patrick idolatry

Mark Driscoll- Preaching to himself

Mark Driscoll is a well known pastor who in his sermon last week did something that well known pastors often don't do: he repented of pride. Not only did he repent, he addressed specific issues and did it with much grace. As my friend BJ mentioned earlier, this could become Driscoll's most influential moment. I praise God for the good work being done in and through Mark Driscoll.

The sermon was entitled "The Rebels Guide to Joy in Humility." You can listen to it (download) or watch it (download) here.

Here is an excerpt from that sermon:

I believe that humility is the great omission and failure in my eleven years of preaching. I believe that this is my greatest oversight both in my example and in my instruction.

I therefore do not claim to be humble. I do not claim to have been humble. I am convicted of my pride, and I am a man who is by God’s grace pursuing humility.

So in many ways this is a sermon that I’m preaching at myself, this is a sermon you are welcomed to listen in on as I preach to myself.

But I truly believe that were there one thing I could do over in the history of Mars Hill it would be in my attitude and in my actions and in my words to not only emphasize sound doctrine, encourage in strength and commitment and conviction but, to add in addition to that, humility as a virtue.

And so I’ll start by asking your forgiveness and sincerely acknowledging that this has been a great failure.

And I believe that it is showing up in our church in the lives of men and women who have sound doctrine but not sound attitude. They may contend for good things but their motives are bad and their methods are bad and their tone is bad and their tactics are bad and their actions are bad because their attitudes are bad even though their objective is sometimes good. I see this in particular with the men. I see this with men young and old, men who have known Jesus for a long time and should know better, and men who are new to Jesus and are learning sometimes the hard way.

I will take some responsibility for this. Luke 6:40 says that when fully trained, disciples are like their teacher, and I am primary teaching pastor of this church and I can’t simply look at the pride in some of our people and say that I am in no way responsible or complicit.

I’m a guy who is pretty busted up over this personally and it really came to my attention last December just in time for Christmas. The critics really brought me a lot of kind gifts of opposition and hatred and animosity. Merry Christmas. And some of those most vocal and nasty critics were Christians – some of them prominent Christians. So I was getting ready to fire back (my usual tactics). They hit you, you hit them twice and then blog about your victory. Which I don’t have any verses for and don’t say it was a good idea. But it had been a pattern in my life until a man named C.J. Mahaney called.

I’d always considered humility to be cowardice and a compromise. In the name of humility you give up biblical conviction and passion and the willingness to contend for the faith (Jude 3) and to fight false teaching. What he was describing was orthodoxy in belief and humility in attitude and that those two together are really what God desires. And so it got me thinking and studying and praying through pride and humility and repenting and learning and growing. So I would start by saying that I thank my dear friend C.J. Mahaney for his ongoing friendship and the kindness he has extended to me and the things I’ve been able to learn through his instruction.

Furthermore, I apologize and repent publicly to you, the church for whom I am responsible, for much pride in the history of my ministry that some of you have poorly imitated and for that I am deeply sorry.

And thirdly, to say that I’m not a humble man but as result of study I’m a man who is acknowledging his pride and pursuing humility by God’s grace.

-- Mark Driscoll, sermon on Philippians 2:1-11 (November 4, 2007), part 5 in The Rebel's Guide to Joy in Humility (3:16-8:40)

HT:Justin Taylor

mark driscoll humility cj mahaney

Progeny

This is a great photo showing how unbelievably adorable my kids are and how talented my wife is (she made the costumes)

Thank you Lord, for them all.

Happy Reformation Day

On this day back in 1517, Martin Luther changed the world (and that's not an exaggeration) by tacking up 95 objections to the Roman Catholic church. Tony at the Shepherd's Scrapbook has a good quote regarding the Reformation:

“… we need to realize that the Reformers saw nothing less than the gospel at stake. We sometimes forget what Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and others risked in taking a stand for the gospel. They risked their very lives. Regarding the Reformers’ work as nothing more than sowing seeds of unfortunate division shows both little knowledge of and little respect for what they did. They were human, and they had their faults and shortcomings. They sinned, sometimes greatly. But they also, like the imperfect characters of the Bible, were used greatly by God. In other words, the church should be grateful for the Reformation. And in this age of religious pluralism, theological laxity, and biblical illiteracy, perhaps the Reformation is needed more than ever before.” - Stephen J. Nichols, The Reformation: How a monk and a mallet changed the world (Crossway: 2007) p. 21

Sam Storms has a great post entitled "Celebrating the Reformation: A Lesson on God's Sovereignty over Human Sin"

In his post, he shares some great thoughts about Thomas Cranmer and it piqued my interest. I found a great audio biography of Cranmer presented by Jim Hamilton at the 2007 Bunyan Conference.

You can listen to that biography here.

As always, Tim Challies has his Reformation Day Symposium up.

*Added on 11/01/07- Read or listen to John Piper's biographical message on Martin Luther.

We ended the day by taking the kids (dressed as adorable CareBears) out for some treats and hanging with some friends. On to November!

reformation day thomas cranmer church history
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Now playing: Radiohead - House Of Cards

The beard is gone...

Almost all 6 months of my beard is now in the trash. I now look like a fat little kid. If I had a picture of my current face, you would agree.

O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing...or an earpiece to understand Russian

This past weekend Dallass and I, along with many friends from our church, attended the Desiring God regional conference "The Pleasures of God."

John Piper has been a significant influence in my life and it was a pleasure to see him preach/teach in person again. Dallass had only heard recordings of his preaching, so I think she particularly enjoyed seeing him in person.

The conference was held at the Bryte Russian Baptist Church in West Sacramento, just down the street from my beloved-in-laws. It was great to attend the conference and hang out with family on the same weekend. When I have gone to conferences in the past it's always in some city that I don't know and I end up only seeing the airport, where I am staying, the conference venue, a coffee shop, and some kind of restaurant/pub for meals. I guess I'm not the most adventurous cat in the world.

As you may have noticed, I mentioned that the conference was in a Russian church. We have driven by BRBC so many times and I've always wanted to go, but I have been intimidated by the whole I-don't-speak-Russian thing. The conference itself was in English, but the church had Russian signage all over, the song leader (Brother Nicoly) had a pleasantly heavy Russian accent (I would have loved to hear him say "I will break you" Rocky IV style), and many attendees had the earpieces in that magically translate words like "intra-trinitarian" into their appropriate Russian counterpart, which sounds something like "bob."

Encouraged by the multilingual fun (there were also American Sign Language interpreters for the deaf- yes!) of Friday and Saturday, we decided to attend the church on Sunday morning since Piper would be preaching there on Sunday morning. I spoke to one of the youth kids who were helping out with the conference and he kindly told me that "Ah...yes. You can come toomoorow and you will...ahhh...be able to get earpiece and understand...ahhhh...yes. No problem for you!"

We arrived on Sunday morning at the church ready to rock, Russian style. As we walked through the parking lot, we noticed that we were severely under dressed. As in, we looked like a family of homeless vagrants who decided to go to church and threw on whatever clothing was closest to the top of the shopping cart. Our church is quite casual when it comes to dress and...well, let's just say the folks of BRBC know how put on their Sunday best.

When we got inside we were escorted into the sanctuary. Unfortunately they didn't have any more KGB ear pieces so we had to guess what was happening during the speaking portions of the worship time. They had a great choir (and I am a sucker for lovely Russian church singing- Rachmaninoff's Vespers is one of my favorite pieces to listen to), a barbershop quartet singing in English (heavily accented English), a youth band, and combinations of soloists and the choir. Piper preached a great sermon and then we sang together with the church of Jesus as we closed the morning worship. Once again, I marveled at the beauty of diversity within the church that Jesus is growing for the sake of His name.

You can listen to the conference messages here.

You can visit BRBC's website here. It's all in Russian!

Listen to Rachmaninoff's Vespers.

john piper

And we're back

We had a good time in Seattle over the last week, enjoying friendships new and old, attending the Continuous Worship conference (more on that later), and hanging out at the Seattle Zoo.

One thing that kind of dampened our spirits over the week was that our daughter Adelaide caught some kind of flu bug and she "exhibited" symptoms of that bug for about 5 days, with one particularly spectacular episode occurring at the zoo, cutting our visit short. Not so fun...

Well, she's feeling better...but it appears that Dallass, Hugh, and I have caught the bug. Yuck. I was supposed to preach at church tomorrow but it doesn't look like that's going to happen now. Hopefully we'll get over it quicker than Adelaide did!

In spite of the flu, it's great to be home. Thank you Jesus for a good week and an encouraging time with our brothers and sisters in Seattle.

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Now playing: David Crowder Band - The Glory Of It All
via FoxyTunes

Headin' out...

We're leaving today for Seattle. The blog will be on temporary hiatus, unless I can find a computer somewhere to use.

I will be attending the Resurgence conference titled "Continuous Worship" on Monday and Tuesday. We'll also be visiting friends at Mars Hill Church (and elsewhere) and hopefully making new ones. We'll also be enjoying hanging out in the beautiful city of Seattle

The conference will feature Harold M. Best, author of Unceasing Worship and Music through the Eyes of Faith, pastor Mark Driscoll, author of Radical Reformission and Confessions of a Reformission Rev from Mars Hill Church and worship pastor Tim Smith from Mars Hill Church.


You can read more about the conference here.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death

Madeline L'Engle- 1918-2007.

“Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

You can read some tributes to this marvelous woman here and here and read an older interview that Christianity Today published a number of years ago (Thanks to JT for pointing out this interview).

D. James Kennedy- 1930-2007

“Now, I know that someday I am going to come to what some people will say is the end of this life. They will probably put me in a box and roll me right down here in front of the church, and some people will gather around, and a few people will cry. But I have told them not to do that because I don’t want them to cry. I want them to begin the service with the Doxology and end with the Hallelujah chorus, because I am not going to be there, and I am not going to be dead. I will be more alive than I have ever been in my life, and I will be looking down upon you poor people who are still in the land of dying and have not yet joined me in the land of the living. And I will be alive forevermore, in greater health and vitality and joy than ever, ever, I or anyone has known before.”

Click here for a tribute page for Dr. Kennedy.