Owen Strachan with a great post here.
This is also one of the huge reasons I love living in Madison WI as we seek, at The Vine, to initiate a movement of church planting in our region and beyond.
Friday, March 09, 2012
Rick Reilly Composes a Great "Thank You" Piece to Peyton Manning
He writes:
It was trendy to make fun of your "Yes, sirs" and "No, sirs" and your 1950s haircut but many of us secretly admired it.Read the rest.
You played a violent game and yet somehow held on to that southern gentility. In the middle of the worst time of your life, you took the time to write a hand-written note of sympathy last week to Fox's Chris Myers upon the death of his son.
Thank you for watching more film than Martin Scorsese. Thank you for always being the last one to go home at night, for knowing more about what defenses were going to do than some of the players on those defenses themselves.
You came to a nowhere franchise and made it Somewhere. Greatness poured out of your fingers because you put in the hours and the study and the pain to let it. Two Super Bowls, four NFL MVPs, 11 Pro Bowls, 11 playoff seasons and more records than a used CD store.
(HT: Joe Crispin)
NBC to Live Stream Olympics
Relevant Mag:
For the first time ever, all of the events in the Olympics will be streamed live and available to viewers in real time. NBC has signed a deal with YouTube, using its player to deliver livestreams of the London 2012 Olympics on NBCOlympics.com. Which means you can watch all the gazillion swimming races and not be forced to miss even one single one ...
A Great Reminder
Did I know these things already? Yes. Do I need to be constantly reminded because I am forgetful? Yes.
Ray Ortlund writes:
Ray Ortlund writes:
The longer I live, the more I care about fewer things, and it’s good. Here are those fewer things:
1. God is patient. “. . . the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience” (Romans 2:4). Where would I be now, if God were not patient with me?
2. My wife is my most precious earthly treasure. “An excellent wife is the crown of her husband” (Proverbs 12:4). And how I delight in my family!
3. Everything man-made will fail. But it’s okay. Everything God-made will last. “God’s firm foundation stands” (2 Timothy 2:19).
4. Gospel doctrine creates a gospel culture. “If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11). When the gospel gets through, our relationships become beautiful.
5. I will die in just a few years. What matters now is lifting up a bold new generation for Christ. “I endure everything for the sake of the elect” (2 Timothy 2:10).
6. God visits weakness with power, suffering with blessing, setbacks with progress. “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
7. The Bible is my oxygen. “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63). How could I live a single day in this world of illusion without God’s inerrant Word?
8. The grace of God is the endless resource for everything I face. “Be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1).
9. The highest truth is God’s mercy for the undeserving. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). It’s all I want to talk about.
10. Whatever else I lose, I must keep my own walk with the Lord. “But for me, it is good to be near God” (Psalm 73:28).
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Why Community is a Big Deal for Evangelism
Basically, the witness of community is more powerful than an individual witness. Loving your neighbors is much easier if you never have to deal with them. Living in light of the gospel is much harder in community where people sin against you. Your neighbors know this and that is why talk is cheap. Experiencing a people who confess their sins against one another, repent, and forgive is foreign to the world. Communities that live in this way, transformed by the gospel, will not only have a good reputation among their neighbors, but also they will point them to hope in Jesus. This is a community that has joined the mission of God.- Brad House, Community: Taking Your Small Group Off Life Support, p. 41
Those Children Have Names
John Knight writes in response to the recent "after-birth abortion" discussion that has been making the rounds lately.
As nearly everyone admits, the authors are not proposing or arguing anything new. They have, in fact, done a great service to the cause of the unborn by openly and clearly connecting the argument for infanticide with abortion.Read the rest.
But let’s not stop there. Let's drag the idea of infanticide and its connection to abortion into the full light of day. Horrific ideas can't live in the light of Jesus — and this is one idea we’ll have to keep killing until Jesus returns.
Here’s one way to do it. Attach a real person to what infanticide does. Don’t allow it to be an abstract idea about an unnamed, unknown child with a specific set of circumstances — circumstances that are usually hard enough to make us recoil at the potential suffering.
Children You Know
Make it children you know: Billy or Mariana or Chua or Narong or Desta or your own. Feel the horror in yourself at the thought of that child’s destruction, and then talk about it openly. You already know and should be teaching your church that this child, no matter his or her circumstances, is a gift from God for God’s glory and for the benefit of his church. If they come with complications because of disability or poverty in the family or any other reason, that child is a call to the church to demonstrate the love and grace and mercy and power of God in Christ.
That child is a call to demonstrate Jesus is a greater treasure than your comfort.
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
New Books From Crossway in March
- Am I Called? by Dave Harvey
- Gospel-Centered Discipleship by Jonathan Dodson
- Warfield on the Christian Life by Fred Zaspel
- God is Love by Gerald Bray
- Proverbs: Wisdom that Works by Ray Ortlund
Japan Tsunami Photographs - Before and After
These photos are stunning and shocking. They show the before and after of the tsunami that recently rocked Japan. When you click over to the website you can click on the image to see the before and after.
"Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled."
Timmy Brister writes:
There’s a lot of talk about being missional these days. There’s not a lot of visual aids, at least not like this one. I found it incredibly moving. May God raise up many men and women like Sara in our generation to take the gospel in the heart of brokenness and ruin and see the transforming power of King Jesus.
On The Horror of "Selective Reduction"
An anonymous writer for American Thinker:
My soul carries a new scar. The pain is fresh and keen, and I know that while time might see the pain fade, I will never fully recover from what I've seen, and done. For I have failed, intentionally and knowingly, in the first duty of a parent: protecting the lives of two of my children.Read more.
My wife and I wanted children; alas, we needed IVF treatment to realize this dream. Several cycles and multiple embryo implantations later, we welcomed our blessing from G-d, who is the light of our lives.
Recently, we tried for another.
"It never rains, but it pours," said the fertility doctor -- of the three embryos that were implanted, all three took. We were faced with the news of triplets. I was shocked, knowing the burden that would entail, but since G-d gave us three, I was prepared to do whatever I needed to do to help, manage, and provide.
My wife? Something snapped. She insisted that we do a "selective reduction" from three to one, or else she would have a full abortion. She was adamant. She would not carry three. She would not carry two.
I was presented with a Coventry-esque decision: save one, or save none. I chose the former, though I tried on several occasions to convince her to at least keep twins. I failed.
We were told, point-blank, by the doctor who would do the procedure that they would inject potassium chloride into the placenta to stop the hearts. We were told, point-blank, that it was painless. Even then, I knew I was being lied to, but given the choice presented, I agreed anyway. My mantra became "Save one, or save none."
Before the procedure, my wife's eyes teared up; she asked the doctor over and over if they would feel pain, and was assured they would not. I asked again if my wife was sure about this because once done, it could not be undone. She said she was sure, but her tears and her looking away from the screen, deliberately, and her wanting me to not look either, told me the truth: she knew as well that this was wrong. I wanted to insist that she look, but I think that her mind -- already fractured by the news of triplets -- would have snapped permanently had she seen the images onscreen. And to save the one, and for the sake of the one we already had, I needed my wife sane.
My wife didn't look, but I had to. I had to know what would happen to my children. I had to know how they would die.
Each retreated, pushing away, as the needle entered the amniotic sac. They did not inject into the placenta, but directly into each child's torso. Each one crumpled as the needle pierced the body. I saw the heart stop in the first, and mine almost did, too. The other's heart fought, but ten minutes later they looked again, and it too had ceased.
(HT: STR.org)
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
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