Do Not Be Like Mike

From Voddie Baucham:

There was a stark difference between the two acceptance speeches. As I listened to the two speeches, all I could think of was the old commercial catchphrase, “Like Mike... If I could be like Mike.” Unfortunately, in this instance, Mike was the last person anyone should aspire to be like. This was definitely not a Michael Jordan highlight. Jordan’s Speech was self-centered, indulgent, arrogant, and at times embarrassing. In contrast, David Robinson rose to the occasion and made a brief, inspiring, encouraging speech (see his speech here) that made his family, his team, and his friends proud.

Don't Waste Your Life Video

So good.

- by Lecrae

Entertain-o Church From the Atheist's Perspective

Read and say "ouch" here:

HT: @Phil_Johnson_

Here's to Idolatry

Religious Statue Falls And Breaks In Church
HT: Between Two Worlds

Your Routine

Francis Chan - Balance Beam

Raising Kids in a Pornified Culture

Helpful.  From Zach Nielson re: @betweentwoworlds.

1. Aim to give our kids a huge view of God who is gloriously delightful.

2. Teach them the gospel. 

3. Teach them that boundaries bring freedom and obedience is a blessing.

4. Talk to them sooner than later about sex.

5. Begin to train your kids on how to interact with the opposite sex.

6. Guard who your kids spend time with.

7. Put Your Computer in a Public Place and Turn Off The T.V.

8. Seek to cultivate a relationship with your kids such that they feel as though they can be open with you about anything.

Go here for the whole thing.  It's worth the read, especially here in the OC.

Twitter Will Kill You

Share this with your addicted friends.

David Crowder*Band Rockumentary 4:

Proverbs Resource

2 To know wisdom and instruction,
to understand words of insight,
3 to receive instruction in wise dealing,
in righteousness, justice, and equity;
4 to give prudence to the simple,
knowledge and discretion to the youth—
5 Let the wise hear and increase in learning,
and the one who understands obtain guidance,
6 to understand a proverb and a saying,
the words of the wise and their riddles.

7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Here's a great resource to help, from C. J. Mahaney and Sovereign Grace.

Cut the Cable

We did.  The price kept going up and we didn't want to keep up...and - pleasant (and predictable) surprise!  The lack of TV has opened life up all the more with quality family and reading time.  I don't really miss it.

But here's even better reasons for watching your TV watching (and not just watching TV).  

America's Debt to John Calvin

From World Magazine.

Piper, quoting Kuyper:

In the rise of your university education . . . in the decentralized . . . character of your local governments . . . in your championship of free speech, and in your unlimited regard for freedom of conscience; in all this . . . it is demonstrable that you owe this to Calvinism and to Calvinism alone.

And yet most of us have no idea.

She Gets It

...and says it far better than I.

This is how I feel about my babies.

The State of Sudan

My in-laws are missionaries in Sudan.  They've passed this article along as a good summary of the situation.

From the Economist:

Under the terms of a peace agreement with the northern government of Mr Bashir signed in 2005, the south is expected to vote for secession in a referendum in 2011. The prospect of gaining a new country, South Sudan, raised hopes of an end to Sudan’s civil war between the predominantly Muslim north and the Christian and animist south, which lasted on and off for the best part of 50 years. At last, the flattened south would rebuild itself.

Now, however, even many southerners, let alone their fiercely partisan foreign backers, worry that the region’s progress towards independence is going awry. Not only is there the increasing rate of intertribal violence and the hostility of the north to contend with. But the south’s woes have been added to by the incompetence and corruption of the Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS), mainly composed of former guerrilla fighters in the SPLM, the political movement of the SPLA. They have managed to spend about $5 billion in oil revenues over the past four years with very little to show for it, apart from weapons. At the present rate, South Sudan will fail before it has even been born.

Finding God's Will

This is an excellent lecture on the topic.

From Kevin DeYoung, at NEXT.

Slow Down the Texting!

From Al Mohler:

Statistics can be used to inform or to mislead, and sometimes they can shock.  See if this statistic isn't shocking:  In the fourth quarter of 2008 American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month.  That, dear friends, is nothing to LOL about.

That statistic comes from The New York Times.  In "Texting May Be Taking a Toll," reporter Katie Hafner offers a view into the lives of American teens.  They are fanatical texters.  As Hafner reports, "They do it late at night when their parents are asleep. They do it in restaurants and while crossing busy streets. They do it in the classroom with their hands behind their back. They do it so much their thumbs hurt."

Authorities now blame excessive texting for sleep deprivation, distraction in school, poor grades, and even repetitive stress injuries.  These teens are texting while they should be sleeping, and they are sleeping with the cell phone set to vibrate so that they can respond to texts from friends without waking parents.

Thirteen Acts of Soul Worship

David Clarkson continues, in his discourse on soul idolatry:

Before we come to confirm and apply this truth, it will be requisite to make a more clear discovery of this secret idolatry, the most that are guilty of it not taking notice of their guilt, because they account nothing idolatry but what is openly and outwardly so.

He then lists and describes thirteen "acts of soul worship."

1. Esteem.  That which we most highly value we make our God.

2. Mindfulness.  That which we are most mindful of we make our God.

3. Intention.  That which we [make our ultimate goal] we make our God.

4. Resolution.  That which we resolve [to pursue] we make our God.

5. Love.  That which we love [the most] we make our God.

6. Trust.  That which we most trust we make our God.

   "For confidence and dependence is an act of worship which the Lord calls for as due only to          himself."

7. Fear.  That which we most fear (respect, revere) we worship as our God.

8. Hope.  That which we make our hope we worship as God.

9. Desire.  That which we most desire we worship as our God.

10. Delight. That which we most delight and rejoice in, that we worship as God.

11. Zeal.  That for which are more zealous we worship as God.

12. Gratitude.  That to which we are most grateful, that we worship as God.

13. Care and Industry. That whom we serve we worship as God.

Who is your God?  May we be like Thomas who, when seeing Jesus, proclaimed:

"My Lord and my God."  

And my Jesus Christ receive our sole soul worship.

50 Factors Within Nations That Determine Their Wealth or Poverty

Now that's interesting...

From Wayne Grudem, delivered at Scottsdale Bible Church.

HT: Tim Challies

William Young (Author of the Shack) Tells Us What He Believes

An interview by Kendall Adams, pastor of the Burlington Baptist Church, with William P. Young of The Shack.  He discusses what he believes about the doctrines of the atonement and hell.  Worth knowing if you liked the book.

Secret and Soul Idolatry

David Clarkson writes of the "twofold worship due only to God, internal and external."

External worship is the religious activity - bowing, and I suppose singing, reciting, and whatever else goes along with a religious service.

Internal worship, as Clarkson says, is "the acts of the soul and actions answerable thereto."

When the mind is most taken up with an object, and the heart and affections most set upon it, this is soul worship, and this is due only to God.  For He being the chief good, and the last end of intelligent creatures, it is his due, proper to him alone, to be most minded and most affected; it is the hour due only to the Lord to have the first, the highest place, both in our minds and hearts and endeavors.

Therein, external idolatry is something like bowing to an idol.  But secret and soul idolatry is

when the mind and heart is set upon anything more than God; when anything is more valued, more intended; anything more trusted, more loved, or our endeavors more for any other thing than God.

Clarkson chillingly concludes:

Secret idolaters shall have no inheritance in the kingdom of God.

Every thought, attitude, word and deed is one of worship.  The worship is either true - devoted to the God of the Bible - or false - devoted to anything else.  This is paramount for all of life and specifically for counseling.  Our problems of the soul, our relationships, and our outlook are so often problems of lingering soul idolatry.

Spoiling The Blessing

My sermon from May 3rd on Genesis 12.10-20 (where Abe sells out on his wife).

Single and Fully Feminine

From Carolyn McCulley

As found on Mary Kassian's Girls Gone Wise