Thanksgiving 2008

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. 1 Timothy 4:4

There you have it. Enjoy your Thanksgiving feast and even be thankful for the weird foods.

Seriously, how blessed we are. There is so much to be thankful for.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 says, thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.

Even in the rough times, we are to be thankful. I think it is a thing of perspective. Either we can focus on the bad things or we can call to mind all of the ways we are incredibly blessed.

Thanksgiving helps us get our eyes off ourselves and back on God.

Here are a few of the things I am thankful for. First, thank you Lord for saving my soul and thank you for continuing to conform me into Your image. I am thankful for my wife and children; what a blessing they are. I am thankful that I have a job and that day-by-day God continues to provide for us. I am thankful for good friends; how irreplaceable they are.

I will rejoice today on Thanksgiving Day and with God's help, I will be thankful every day.

Philip
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God’s Faithfulness

Thoughts from: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.

The only serious mistake we can make when illness comes, when anxiety threatens, when conflict disturbs our relationships with others is to conclude that God has gotten bored looking after us and has shifted his attention to a more exciting Christian, or that God has become disgusted with our meandering obedience and decided to let us fend for ourselves for a while, or that God has gotten too busy fulfilling prophecy in the Middle East to take time now to sort out the complicated mess we have gotten ourselves into. That is the only serious mistake we can make. It is the mistake that Psalm 121 prevents: the mistake of supposing that God’s interest in us waxes and wanes in response to our spiritual temperature.

It’s great that God isn’t like us. He loves us, is committed to us and doesn’t give up on us. It’s so easy to judge Him through our eyes. We think He will treat us as we treat others.

He knows I am a sheep. I follow but I also wander. I forget lessons I’ve learned and have to travel the path again. And there He is right beside me – a true friend. He seems to be enjoying the journey. He doesn’t point out that I should have already learned this lesson or should have gotten beyond this behavior a long time ago.

The greatest thing is that He is changing me bit by bit. Someday I will be like Him. Someday He will see Himself in me. But that’s not today.

Philip

ilumina Mobile

I love the ilumina Mobile on my Palm. It’s not really a Bible itself but an overlay on top of a set of Bibles and other study tools. It came from Olive Tree.

One of the things I like most is that it adds a set of tabs to the bottom of the existing Bible reader program. This makes switching through Bibles, commentaries, cross references, Life Application study notes and dictionaries so simple. It also adds some nice tap and hold features for looking up words, adding bookmarks, searches, overviews and introductions.

As I’m doing Bible study I find myself using the ilumina features to easily navigate from source to source. It’s easy to go much deeper than I planned to – and that is a good thing.

Here is some of what comes in the ilumina mobile package. Either the NIV or ESV, the New Living Translation, and the King James. There is a Bible reading schedule, two commentaries, Life Application Notes (which are so practical), overviews of each book, introductions to each book, an encyclopedia / dictionary, cross references, a verse finder where you can look up verses by subject, 66 maps and a whole multimedia section with animations, videos and 400 photos.

If I didn’t have any of the other Olive Tree programs, this package alone would be an awesome resource. It has all the tools you need for serious study. They work well together and are easily accessible. What would take up a shelf on the bookcase at home can be carried in the palm of your hand.

If you want more detail on ilumina mobile, check out Olive Tree’s page that gives screenshots and a walk-through.
ilumina Mobile

Philip

Take Him to the Streets

I simply argue that the cross be raised again at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles but on a cross between two thieves, on the town garbage heap, at a crossroad so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek . . . at the kind of place where cynics talk smut and thieves curse and soldiers gamble. That is where He died. And that is what He died about. And that is what churchmen should be about and that is where churchmen should be.

-Ian Thomas