July 2010
10 posts
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WatchBrotherly love - splitting a liver
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WatchThe challenges of truth-telling in leadership & marriage.
HT - Geico
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The power of love
You can love the loveable under your own power. Only through Christ’s power can you love the unloveable. Thank God that my wife knows this.
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Do it again
A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God...
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“Confidence is being convinced that “you must love the Lord your God with all...”
– Hayley DiMarco - The Woman of Mystery
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“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”
– Lewis B. Smedes
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Calling all "Twilight" fans...
“Nothing is so beautiful, nothing is so continually fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstasy as the good. No deserts are so dreary, monotonous and boring as evil. But with fantasy it is the other way round. Fictional good is boring and flat, while fictional evil is varied, intriguing, attractive and full of charm.”
Simone Weil
(HT - Ray Ortlund)
June 2010
3 posts
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Let her go
Imagine raising a daughter who does not fear, can mentally and emotionally handle being alone for long stretches, and that embraces adulthood before her 20s (or 30s.)
If only we could not make idols out of our children, oh the things they might accomplish!
“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” - Shedd
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May 2010
14 posts
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Withheld love - Ray Ortlund
In the top 100 (#55) of all Christian blogs, you need to follow the posts of our pastor Ray Ortlund. At the very least, read this one on withheld love that came out of his sermon on Proverbs 3 yesterday:
“Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.” Proverbs 3:27
The alternative translation in the ESV margin is “Do not withhold good from...
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Down is the new up
Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory. Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the...
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The Bible Belt is LOST
What do you call a person that invests years into people’s lives only to realize they were dead the whole time? A TV watcher or church worker in the Bible Belt?
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“God is the Ultimate Telemarketer. He called me at 17 and it took me almost 20...”
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I'm tired of wasting power
“All the attributes of Christ, as God and man, are at our disposal. All the fulness of the Godhead, whatever that marvellous term may comprehend, is ours to make us complete. He cannot endow us with the attributes of Deity; but he has done all that can be done, for he has made even his divine power and Godhead subservient to our salvation.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon
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“There’s only 2 things we can do on Earth that we can’t do in heaven:...”
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No Time for Quiet Time?
Our community group at church is having great conversations about the book, “Life Together” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Hayley and I were reminded of these words on quiet time by Andrew Murray. They have inspired our family to practice “the morning watch.” It took some moving around of priorities and self sacrifice (going to bed earlier, less tv, a more messy house) but has reaped huge rewards....
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WatchLaughing at ourselves- Sunday’s Coming is a satire of the new church template. “Contemporvant” & ”Growtivation!”
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April 2010
13 posts
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Mark Twain clubs Jane Austen
“I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own...
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“Cultivating Heaven on Earth is folly. Cultivating citizens of Heaven on Earth is...”
– MD
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“I defend the Bible the same way I defend a lion. I simply let it out of its...”
– Spurgeon
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Believers and non-believers look too much alike →
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Read Hayley's article "When Nice Isn't Nice" →
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Grace Without
I’m becoming more and more convinced that grace communicated to those who fall that is absent of the communication of the cost of that grace (Christ on a cross) is just being nice to people. It’s like giving a gift with nothing in the box.
In “The Cost of Discipleship,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer said,
“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring...
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Why women won The Masters Sunday →
The good guy won.
After watching Tiger in interviews during and after the tournament, I’m starting to wonder if someone has told him that humility isn’t something that you can just insert into your personal life, but you don’t have to in your professional life.
ESPN story
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“When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”
– Bonhoeffer
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“Any discussion of grace without the Gospel is just plain nice.”
– MD
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Just a book
“Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.” Psalm 119:18
A reminder that without God’s divine light imparted on the believer, the Bible is just a book.
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“It is hard to have patience with people who say ‘There is no death’...”
– C.S. Lewis
March 2010
18 posts
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“A culture of positive thinking and self-esteem has wiped away all perceived need...”
– Michael Reeves
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B4UD8 is a CBA finalist
The ECPA just announced that one of our books is a 2010 Christian Book Award Finalist in the Children & Youth category: B4UD8 (Before You Date).
So honored to have this as Hungry Planet’s fifth finalist over the past six years. Thanks to the ECPA for this tremendous honor and we give glory to God for using two broken people with no platform to create books for other broken people.
...
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“Because Christians find refuge, not in what we can do, but in what Christ has...”
– Tullian Tchividjian
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WatchGoodbye dead tree
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“If testosterone were beer, a 9-year-old boy would be getting the equivalent of a...”
– Dr. Louann Brizendine
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“When leaders hide their failures, they fail to lead authentically. Instead they...”
– MD
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“Unplug your church’s fog machine. If you’re a pastor or leader in...”
– MD
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“What is the chief end of preaching? I like to think it is this. It is to give...”
– Martyn Lloyd-Jones
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The lesson of St. Patrick
Here’s to a 16 year old boy, taken prisoner and wisked off to a foreign land, enslaved as a herdsman for six years, only to hear a voice that “his ship was ready” and escape home at the age of 22.
Then a second voice called him back to minister to the people and country who enslaved him. And so the Irish (including this half Italian, quarter Brit, quarter Irish writer)...