Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a football lover… now, that’s the beautiful game.
So hailing a couple of the most exciting guys I’ve seen, here’s a few highlights from…
Barry Sanders
Reggie Bush
It’s got to be fun to be THAT good at something!
Life’s been racing lately; blogging has fallen down the list, though I often think of things to post. Reading some quotes online, I found this list of questions as suggestions for a men’s accountability group.
What effect would your life feel if you answered questions like these with friends regularly?
Relationship building is a process which takes time; when that time is invested, trust and vulnerability grow. We offer these questions as part of this building process, knowing that when used in love and wisdom they will help men open their hearts to each other.
1. Have I been with a woman in the past week that could be viewed as compromising?
2. Have all my financial dealings been filled with integrity?
3. Have I viewed sexually explicit material?
4. Have I spent adequate time in Bible study and prayer?
5. Have I spent quality time and given priority to my family?
6. Have I fulfilled the mandates of my calling?
7. Have I just lied to you?
Just updated the Speaking page.
Three of the last five are by “guest speakers”… well worth your time.
Some great things are shared there by my friend Blair and my friend Ray.
Those are followed by our latest series, entitled “A Disciple’s Life”. I’ve been impacted and challenged much by my prepartion for these lessons. If you’re exploring what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, I hope these might bless your journey too.
I love the Scriptures.
But sometimes I don’t know what to read when I open the cover.
I recently opened The Message and flipped to what Eugene Peterson wrote as an introduction to the prophets. Here are a few bits…
Everyone more or less believes in God. But most of us do our best to keep God on the margins of our lives or, failing that, refashion God to suit our convenience. Prophets insist that God is the sovereign center, not off in the wings awaiting our beck and call. And prophets insist that we deal with God as God reveals himself, not as we imagine him to be.
For a people who are accustomed to ‘fitting God’ into their lives, or, as we like to say, ‘making room for God,’ the prophets are hard to take and easy to dismiss.
The God of whom the prophets speak is far too large to fit into our lives. If we want anything to do with God, we have to fit into him.
One of the bad habits that we pick up early in our lives is separating things and people into secular and sacred. We assume that the secular is what we are more or less in charge of: our jobs, our time, our entertainment, our government, our social relations. The sacred is what God has charge of: worship and the Bible, heaven and hell, church and prayers. We then contrive to set aside a sacred place for God, designed, we say, to honour God but really intended to keep God in his place, leaving us free to have the final say about everything else that goes on.
Prophets will have none of this.
They contend that everything, absolutely everything, takes place on sacred ground.
And that’s why I’ve always loved the prophets.
Thanks Eugene.
Kathleen Norris speaks of the Rule of Benedict, which she was exposed to upon connecting to a Benedictine community, where sharing took on new heights.
In Benedict’s rule, this was said about how possessions would be shared…
“Whoever needs less should thank God and not be distressed. Whoever needs more should feel humble because of his weakness, not self-important because of the kindness shown him. In this way, all the members will be at peace.”
“Whoever needs more should feel humble because of his weakness”…
I can’t say I’ve ever heard that angle in discussions of materialism and wealth, but wow…
Benedict, you nailed it.
And you nailed most of us too.