Twelve Ordinary Men

I am going to start reading this book today. I felt like it would be a great book to read during the Disciple sermon series. Hopefully, you can read along, or if you have already read it please join in. Even if you have not read it, I hope that I can share some interesting information from it. Thanks!

Back to normal

Life is officially back to normal this morning. Kaileigh, Dylan AND Tyler are now back in school. The tree is down, though it never got decorated this year. I would say the decorations are down, but they were never up. John is back to work. And I have some time alone in the house after a very rough Christmas season. I don't know about you all, but I have not even had time to THINK about reading lately! But, a new year is here and things are settled down now. Time to get back on track. So here is the big question of the day: Should we continue to blog about Shaping of Things to Come? Should we start a new book? I know that most of the people who were reading Shaping are probably way farther ahead than I am. Plus, I am having a hard time REALLY getting into it. But, I guess it is up to you. Hopefully I can get some suggestions. I have some ideas, This Beautiful Mess (from Paul), the second Brian McLaren book (in the New Kind of Christian series), or I found a book that sparked my interest called 12 Ordinary Men which might tie into this sermon series? Maybe something different? Share your thoughts........

Friendship

OK, so not exactly from a book, but more from a chapter of my own story: Can we talk about friends? What is a friend? Do we use the term too loosely? What are your thoughts?

Childhood

What were your favorite books when you were a child? What are your childrens favorite books? Although kind of hard to see the picture, mine was a book called "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go" by Richard Scarry. It is a cute book, and there is a little golden bug on every page that we used to huddle around and try to find. My kids love all of the Veggie Tales books. Tylers favorite books, when he was little, were Pokemon books. What great memories!

God, the Creator of Pleasure...........

OK. I don't know why this hit me while I was reading the Shaping of Things to Come. I mean, I guess I could have figured this out, after all, I know that God created all things. So, some people cannot connect God with our daily lives. Some people cannot feel God in pleasure. Is pleasure selfish and therefore sinful? God created the things in us that give us pleasure. Our taste buds, our skin, even our likes and dislikes. Here is what I think.... God wants us to feel pleasure. He wants us to enjoy our lives. Can pleasure LEAD to sinfulness? Absolutely. But that is because we fail to see God in those things that make us pleased. We fail to see our pleasure as a gift from Him, and therefore misuse and abuse it. Those are just my thoughts. What are yours???

What Are Your Thoughts???

Please check out one of my older posts....Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. What do you think about the comments that were made???

Shaping of Things to Come....

I love, in this book, how they talk about the well in the center. To summarize, if you are a farmer and have livestock on a small farm, you would fence it in, to keep your animals with you and other animals out. If you are a farmer and have miles and miles of farmland, it is impossible to fence that in. So how do you keep your livestock from running away? Put a well in the center. Animals do not travel far from a water source. OK. Now think about church. In the past, church seemed to be the farm that put up a fence. We are in, they are out. What we want to be is a farm where you are never out, just a little further from the "well", which is Jesus and the Gospel. The closer that you are to the center well, the more Christlike your journey is. I desire to be close to that well. I pray that God leads all of closer and closer to the center. I pray that he allows us to see all of his people, not as being non-Christian or Christian, but as being a little further away from the center, never out. Gods grace reaches all over and covers all of us.