I’ve been a Grisham fan for a long time. I think I’ve probably read all of his novels. They’re all very much alike but I still enjoy them. I’ve heard rumors that he’s a believer, a Southern Baptist I think. His books will occasionally deal with spiritual issues, like the missionary in The Testament. I just got a hold of his latest book, The Associate, and, while it has some objectionable elements that won’t allow me to recommend it wholeheartedly, it did have a pretty clear gospel message. Consider the following passage:
If you listen to me teach or preach long enough, you’ll soon realize that C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors. Mere Christianity is probably the book I quote most often and I’ll go ahead and offer some of his thinking here.
I have many things on my mind lately that I’d like to get down on paper screen. I thought this was the most important at the moment so I’d like to deal with this before we get on to some other pressing issues.
A student of mine asked me to write down some verses about salvation for her. I appreciate having students that are interested in doctrinal issues and at Silver State I had many. So I thought rather than just print out a list of verses, it would be a bit more helpful to walk through some of these passages and show what they are saying. Let’s start with Ephesians 2.
Someone has introduced my wife to Gilmore Girls. She has checked out several DVD sets from the library which I am forced to watch with her. Someone will pay. I need to borrow some classic West Wing episodes or maybe some Arrested Development to get these contrived conversations out of my head. Off to Hulu.
My kids have been on a Jonah kick lately. We have the Veggietale’s Jonah movie and the soundtrack on our iPod which they want to listen to constantly. They love Billy Joe McGuffrey and The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything (the Relient K version), which means those songs are constantly stuck in my head. I’ve always kind of liked Veggietale’s, but I think they’re too shallow in their story-telling. Unfortunately the mistake they make is actually a very common mistake among Bible teachers.
Edit: I entered this discussion as part of a misunderstanding on Facebook. The topic of 2 Peter 3:9 came up and I thought I would use this opportunity to do a little writing on the subject since a lot of people I know have questions about God’s sovereignty in salvation and how it relates to passages like this. Here’s my take on 2 Peter 3:9.
Ella and I play this little game where I ask her something and she says no until I convince her to say, “Maybe yeah” and then I say, “I am the winner!” She responds with “I am the loser!” She, of course, doesn’t understand what she’s saying. When she grows up she may be a bit upset with me. I’ll play her some Switchfoot (The Loser) and it’ll be okay.
Anyway, it just so happens that I am rarely the winner. I enter contests as often as the next guy but I don’t think I’ve ever actually won much. Well, every week I put my name and email address into the Free Stuff Fridays giveaway over at Tim Challies blog because every week he’s giving away great stuff. Its a great blog that I visit every day.
I’ve pushed Tenth Avenue North before on my blog. They continue to be one of my favorite bands. My wife got to meet them before seeing them in concert. I’m still jealous. Anyway, I went ahead and voted for them and enough people agreed with me to win them the Dove Award for New Artist of the Year. So congrats to them and I hope to be able to catch them in concert. Catch some lyrics from my favorite song on my Good Friday playlist after the jump.
I was playing with Photoshop, learning a new technique, and created these images to use as wallpaper. I currently have it in 3 resolutions (1024×768, 1280×1024, and 1920×1080). If your monitor is set to a different resolution and you’d like one of these, let me know and I can make it to fit your monitor. Open it full size, right click and choose “Set as Desktop Background”. Here are the links:
My wife is a much better blogger than I am. In the past few weeks, I think I’ve said, “I’m going to blog about that” about 20 times. You can see how diligently I’ve kept that promise. Anyway, if you’ve been following my wife’s blog, you probably know that we have decided to move on to a different place after this year. I don’t know where we will end up, but I know God has good in mind for us. We hope to settle down a bit soon. This will be my twins 5th house. They are turning 5 this summer. Maybe if I join the military we can move less.
