Avoiding Evil

We are back from One Day, but I certainly have not recovered yet! This event like all other things had both it’s good and bad sides.

The Good Side:

1. The praise and worship music was excellent. With Chris Tomlin, Charlie Hall, Nathan and Christy Knockles, Matt Redman, Shane and Shane, and many more. I would have to say that these are some of the best worship leaders and song writers of our time and God uses them in such a way that simply brings the people into a spirit of worship.

2. The speakers were also excellent including, Louie Giglio, Beth Moore, and John Piper. From 10:00 Monday morning to 11:00 Monday night there was non-stop praise and worship and preaching on this huge stage that was set up out in the middle of a big field.

3. Even though there were large crowds of people I was fairly impressed with the attitude and feeling of the people around us. 30,000 people piled into a big field and yet as we were worshiping Monday night all the peole around us were just simply praising God and worshiping Him with thousands of voices all around us crying out in the nights sky to Jesus. It was a wonderful feeling to hear and see all of these people praising God and it is hard to imagine that that is not even close to the tremendous worship that will take place in heaven. I am in awe that the greatness of God and His inconceivable size and might!

4. There was a large tower that they read scripture from. They started Saturday and read the entire bible over the field all the way through Sunday.

5. The weather was excellent on Monday. There was no rain and it was cool which is a rare thing in Texas. I was grateful for that.

6. All the free bottled water you could drink. All around the field they had large tubs filled with ice and thousands of bottles of water that you could have for free.

The Bad Side

1. The deadly sun. You know they say everything is ‘bigger’ in Texas and apparently that goes for the sun too! It decided to pour out it’s mighty UV rays of death upon my head and basically slowly bake my skin. My arms are bright red, my ears and the back of my neck were burnt as well, but worst of all is my forehead which is now sporting some rather large blisters. I am in a tremendous amount of discomfort and pain at this point. Sun screen would have been smart, GRRRRRR!

2. The registration wait. Speaking of things being big in Texas the wait to get in and out of the back roads of Bells and Sherman Texas was simply unbearable. We got there when most of the crowd had cleared out so our wait was shorter but still consisted of at least an hour and a half and maybe two hours. When it was earlier in the day they were saying that the wait to get through the registration part was a good three to five hours! Around 30,000 people showing up in cars, trucks, vans, and buses.

3. Our own stupidity (mostly Chris’s). While we were waiting in the long lines to get in we realized that we didn’t get gas. A lot of the time the traffic was just stopped and on several occasions the car would be stopped on a hill making the gas gauge go down and the gas light come on. Well Mr. Wright seems to have a tremendous fear of running out of gas so the whole two hours was a miserable experience of him whining and crying and cussing and banging on the steering wheel and sighing, and screaming, and shutting the engine on and off and on and off again. We ended up parking, staying at One Day for a little bit and then going back in to the car and back to town to get gas so that he could get it off of his mind and concentrate on the event itself. As we got gas it was discovered that there was still a good three gallons of gas left in the tank and we could have drove another 90 miles on that! *SIGH*

4. The Hotel. We stayed in a hotel about 30 to 40 minutes away from the One Day field which was simply a nasty hole in the ground. Although I have seen worst hotels this one defiantly makes it on my top ten list with it’s moldy bath tub and mini-toilet. And their continental breakfast -> LAME!

5. Before the main event started there were some people showing up on Saturday and during that time it had been raining for a good 11 hours, soaking the fields, and there was a report of a few people getting struck by lightening as they were putting up their tents.

So those are some of the good and bad things about this whole trip. It was amazing to see thousands of tents set up all around us and in the middle this huge field with a tremendous out door stage that housed hundreds of lights, music equipment, and large sets of 24 speakers on each side of the stage with another set of 24 in the middle of the field on a delay system. I was impressed with the whole deal and I actually had a good time in retrospect although I had to deal with the bad stuff. Would I go again? Sure… [with sunblock of course].

Pressed

Today I finished up my last final for this semester. It has been a really hard semester for me and I am really glad that it is over to tell you the truth. I had New Testament, Principles of Preaching, Basic Evangelism, and Evangelism practicum. Even though I am done for now I do have a summer class that I will be taking in the dreaded Kansas City which means I am averaging about 14 to 16 hours a semester which is good for a extension student and especially since 9 hours is considered full time in Seminary.
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Now that it is May I have several seniors in my youth group who are graduating which means lots of graduation parties and little smokies! We are having a special service this Sunday to honor our graduates and lo and behold I have to sing! They had put me on the singing schedule and it just so happens that they ended up moving me to this Sunday… scary!

I decided last year when I did my first senior recognition that I wanted to not only get them something that would last, but also something that would benefit them spiritually and so last year I got all the seniors the Experiencing God Devotional Books. This year I went the same route, except we have a lot more seniors… that wasn’t cheap but I hope that it is something that benefits them especially as they go off to College. What is really cool is that we have a senior that was just saved at one of our youth events, baptized a couple weeks ago, and then is coming regularly to church and he will be there for the recognition. It is exciting to see these teens that God has so completely changed and know that there life will never be the same.
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Wow what a week! My forecast is not looking any brighter at this point in time either. In between homework, finals, and major projects that had to be done this week I also found myself being swamped with other stuff as well.

We had a Children’s Retreat on May the 2nd and 3rd and tomorrow is when we are doing a presentation to the church in both the 8:15 and 10:45 services. At the last minute on Thursday I was informed of all the fun little things that needed to be done for this particular event such as video interviews, voice-overs, and a slideshow. So on Thursday afternoon, which is supposed to be my day off, I am scrambling around trying to figure out what I need to do. I ended up video taping people on Friday afternoon but then to my dismay I found that I did not have the cable to get the video from the camera to the Mac. Knowing that my friend Christopher would come to the rescue I called him and asked him if he could bring his cable down. Unfortunately Christopher had also had a bad day and then he couldn’t find the cable anywhere.

Ok, no big deal, we are going to St. Louis anyway right? I can just pick up a cable when we get there! *ERRRRRNNNNNNNTTTT* WRONG ANSWER! We get to St. Louis and drive to two different theaters only to see that the Matrix was sold out and then we drove down to eat and by the time we finished, my little friend Best Buy was closed. Fortunately for me I had to go to my friend Ron’s graduation in Rolla and the Wal-Mart there had the cable that I needed.

So this afternoon I get back home and begin the process of moving the video from the camcorder to the computer and I am telling you the program messed up so many times that I just wanted to explode! In fact Chris and Michael came to help and at that point I was so aggravated that I was very snooty to them, sorry guys. So for seven hours, from three to ten, I worked on this video/slideshow for tomorrow morning. That doesn’t include the seven or eight hours I spent on the thing Friday either. So needless to say I have had no time to post.

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“Blow the trumpet in Zion,
declare a holy fast,
call a sacred assembly,
gather the people,
consecrate the assembly.”
Joel 2:15-16a

On another note I am going to OneDay with Chris, Michael and hopefully Ron on May 25-27. I’ll be hanging out in Sherman, TX and listening to some of the best praise and worship music known to man, and best of all John Piper is going to be there to speak. I am really excited!!! Are any of you going to OneDay this year?

Pressed

Last night was an interesting night at Church. As I was preaching there just happened to be a thunderstorm and during the pivotal point in my sermon as I shouted with a loud voice “God hates it” a huge clap of thunder roared across the sky and shook the room. Perfect timing. Everyone was kind of shocked at first and then they laughed and cheered. he he.

I am starting a new study called Faith Under Fire “Daring witness in a dangerous world” of which I am fairly excited about. It is a study on Acts but it is different than any other youth material that I usually find because it is more expository. I don’t like a lot of the youth material that is out there because it is too watered down and lame and so I was rather excited about finding this. I hope it goes well.

I have to go to a training meeting today for our “challenge to build” program. It is an exciting time at our church! We just got a new music minister and now the new building is getting closer than ever, so things are looking up. Of course we are also getting all new office furniture so the office is going to be a mess today until they get all of that stuff put together. I think I will stay away long enough to avoid any heavy lifting on my part, eh eh.

Pressed

I had someone try to sell me this load of malarkey, “Reality is what you make it.” WHAT?! So does that mean if I think I am Buzz Lightyear then I am really Buzz Lightyear? “TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!!!” By saying that statement I think it gave him a tremendous amount of freedom to exercise his so called free will in order to bring about whatever reality he wanted. But the problem with this is that it takes away any absolute authority or standard, meaning all things can always change. Whatever is right for me and what ever suites me is reality for me and whatever is right for you and suites you is reality for you. This means for some there is one God, for some there is no God, and for some there are several God’s and every belief is right and every belief represents reality.

Well I sure hate to burst your humanistic, postmodern love bubble but come on people! Use your brain. My stapler and my printer are not the same thing! If a crazy lunatic came into my office declaring my stapler to be a printer should I agree with him and accept the fact that he thinks my stapler is a printer because that is what is right for him? Because he believes that my stapler is a printer does it actually make my stapler a printer? Should I recognize his rights as a human to honestly believe that the stapler is a printer and should help to pass laws and defend the race of people who claim that staplers are printers? NO! For crying out loud no! Instead I politely and lovingly say “no that is not a printer it is a DANG STAPLER NOW PUT THAT DOWN AND GET THE HECK OUT OF MY OFFICE! (Disclaimer: for those of you with the blatant inability to recognize sarcasm and humor that was a joke. I wouldn’t really yell at someone like that so don’t go crying about the hatemongers in the world who go around yelling at poor saps who claim staplers are printers.)

All religions cannot be correct, they do not all serve the same God, they are not all the same! There is either a God, no God, or many God’s but it can’t be all of the above. This means there is an absolute reality that exists, that has always existed, and that will continue to exist no matter how we perceive it. Since there really is a God then it doesn’t matter what the atheist thinks or how they perceive reality because it does not change anything. Their belief that there is no God does not make God disappear, he is still there and he is still real regardless of others personal beliefs or motives.

This also goes for God’s moral law. It is absolute and always has been. Just because a person does not know God and does not perceive his law to be reality that doesn’t make it go away. It is still there and they will still face the consequences and they will still give account for their actions regardless of whether they believe it to be true or not. That is reality. When it comes time to give account before God, the He is not going to say, “Oh well whatever was right for you was ok, welcome to heaven.” But instead we will all have to give account on that day for every single thing that we did to break the absolute moral standards of God.

“…all Christians should stand up and tell it like they see it. Let the chips fall where they will. Don’t worry if the public doesn’t even agree with your most basic assumptions. Your job is not to win. Your job is not to control this society. Your job is to say what God wants said.” - John Piper

This is what I have done and will continue to do. This postmodern, humanistic world wants us to believe that we have no right or business standing up and declaring abortion and homosexuality as wrong, but they are. They are wrong and my job is to stand up and say why they are wrong. I don’t go bashing them, nor do I do it in a belligerent way (although some do), I simply state the reasons why they are wrong and state the fact that the bible specifically addresses these issues. God is far more disgusted with a Christian who sits back and says nothing than with one who stands up against the moral depravity that is corrupting His people.

Jesus addressed sexual sin and every other kind of sin when he said, “go and sin no more” meaning yes you have sinned and it was wrong so from this point on go and never do it again. I can handle what Jesus said. I believe that homosexuals can repent, be forgiven, and follow Christ when they “go and sin no more.” I also believe that it is right for us to stand up and point to homosexuality as being a sin in order that more homosexuals would come to repentance. By speaking out against sin and revealing the biblical stance on such issues I am loving my brother by trying to show them what is right in the eyes of God. By saying nothing or supporting sin I show no love for my brother because I am in no way helping them to come to repentance and to a deeper relationship with the savior.

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