January 28, 2006
Who Am I?
Who am I?
That the Lord of all the earth,
Would care to know my name,
Would care to feel my hurt,
Who am I?
That the Bright and Morning Star,
Would choose to light the way,
For my ever wandering heart.
Who am I?
That the eyes that see my sin,
Would look on me with love,
and watch me rise again,
Who am I?
That the voice that calmed the sea,
Would call out through the rain,
And calm the storm in me.
I am a flower quickly fading,
Here today and gone tomorrow,
A wave tossed in the ocean,
A vapor in the wind,
Still You hear me when I'm calling,
Lord, You catch me when I'm falling,
And You've told me who I am:
I am Yours.
- With thanks to Casting Crowns
Posted by Jesse at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2006
Three Mosaic excerpts
When we live our lives without God but we have the laws of God, the word of God, what ends up happening is we use all this stuff as a club to beat people up. To manipulate them. But God isn't like that.
You know the problem with a self-righteous person? They don't know they are self-righteous, they just think they are righteous.
No wonder so many people are afraid of God because the people who claim God can be so cruel. And yet, if you begin to follow Jesus, you begin to expose and oppose religious hypocrisy. It's one thing to have problems in your life, it's another to be fake. What happens when you live a fake, false pretentious life, you begin to use information to condemn other people so they can't see your falsehood.
- From "Some reasons I follow Jesus"
- Erwin McManus, Pastor, Mosaic
Posted by Jesse at 1:23 PM | Comments (0)
January 10, 2006
On Knowing History
The "timeless truths" of Scripture emerge from real people in real places and a God who has all authority working in real time. So the more I know about the places and times, the more I understand God's authority.
- Rob Bell (Christianity Today interview)
Posted by Jesse at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)
December 21, 2005
On displaying the Commandments
"[The ACLU's] repeated reference to the separation of church and state has grown tiresome. The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state.”
-U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Posted by Jesse at 4:53 PM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2005
Words vs. Action
"Too many of us have a Christian vocabulary rather than a Christian experience. We think we are doing our duty when we're only talking about it."
-- Charles F. Banning
Posted by Jesse at 3:46 PM | Comments (0)
June 24, 2005
Spiritual Mathmatics
An infinite God can give all of himself to each of his children. He does not distribute himself that each may have a part, but to each one he gives all of himself as fully as if there were no others.
-A.W. Tozer
Posted by Jesse at 3:16 PM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2005
Private Character
"Liberty for all does not mean independence from one another."
- George W. Bush
Posted by Jesse at 1:38 PM | Comments (0)
December 1, 2004
How Do You Spell Relief
I'm not going to spend all day at Bellevue because some wack-job tried to get high on Rolaids.
- Carlos on Third Watch
Posted by Jesse at 9:39 PM
November 8, 2004
Oh Lions, Yeah Lions
Satan prowls like a roaring lion
He's seeking whom he will devour
But I know that though he keeps on tryin'
Well, he's no match for Jesus power
Oh them lions they can eat my body
But the can't swallow my soul
Well they keep tryin' to crash my party
but they can't get control....
- Lions
KidStuf Classics
Posted by Jesse at 10:13 PM
August 29, 2004
Random Thoughts on Church
"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
- Alvin Toffler
"Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening."
- Barbara Tober
Posted by Jesse at 10:33 PM
August 18, 2004
Welcome to the Church in America
"A preacher stands against the immorality of adultery, but all the while he harbors anger toward he harbors anger toward the third parishioner from the left because the parishioner challenged on of his teachings three months ago. Is anger not as evil as adultery? Or a woman who scorns the man across the aisle for alcoholic indiscretions, while she routinely gossips about him after services. Is gossip not as evil as any vice? What's especially damaging in both cases is that neither the man who harbors anger nor the woman who gossips seriously considers the evil of their own actions. Their sins remain hidden. This is the true cancer in the church."
"Sounds like the same cancer that eats away at the rest of society."
"Exactly. Although in the church it makes every attempt to remain hidden, where it is left alone to grow in the dark. You ever wonder why incidences of divorce and gluttony and virtually all of evil's fruits are as high in the church as in society at large?"
"Actually, I didn't know that."
"Though being freed from sin, most remain slaves, blinded and gagged by their own deception."
- Dr. John Francis and Special Agent Jennifer Peters in "Thr3e" by Ted Dekker
Posted by Jesse at 4:06 PM
July 24, 2004
Revisions
"History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of History to allow for our current prejudices."
- Calvin
Posted by Jesse at 12:25 AM
March 13, 2004
A great moral teacher?
"I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I am ready to accept Jesus as the great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a boiled egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
- C.S. Lewis
Posted by Jesse at 11:33 PM | Comments (2)
March 8, 2004
The care and feeding...
Hi, my name is Jesse and I am an introvert.
My unoffical motto, mentioned in this article:
"If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it."
--Calvin Coolidge
The worst of it is that extroverts have no idea of the torment they put us through. Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves. Still, we endure stoically, because the etiquette books—written, no doubt, by extroverts—regard declining to banter as rude and gaps in conversation as awkward. We can only dream that someday, when our condition is more widely understood, when perhaps an Introverts' Rights movement has blossomed and borne fruit, it will not be impolite to say "I'm an introvert. You are a wonderful person and I like you. But now please shush."
Posted by Jesse at 2:39 PM
February 25, 2004
The Quotable Bob
"Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down inside you secretly long for a cold hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalise criminals and rule you like a king!"
-- Sideshow Bob
Posted by Jesse at 9:43 AM | Comments (1)
November 11, 2003
Unintelligent?
"You don't look unintelligent...but you sound unintelligent. That's deceptive. If you are going to be unintelligent, you should look unintelligent."
- Judge Judy
Posted by Jesse at 8:59 PM
November 5, 2003
Messy Spirituality
My life is a mess.
After forty-five years of trying to follow Jesus, I keep losing him in the crowded busyness of my life. I know Jesus is there, somewhere, but it's difficult to make him out in the haze of everyday life.
For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a godly person. Yet when I look at the yesterdays of my life, what I see, mostly, is a broken, irregular path littered with mistakes and failure. I have had temporary successes and isolated moments of closeness to God, but I long for the continuing presence of Jesus. Most of the moments of my life seem hopelessly tangled in a web of obligations and distractions.
I want to be a good person. I don't want to fail. I want to learn from my mistakes, rid myself of distractions, and run into the arms of Jesus. Most of the time, however, I feel like I am running away from Jesus into the arms of my own clutteredness.
I want desperately to know God better. I want to be consistent. Right now the only consistency in my life is my inconsistency. Who I want to be and who I am are not very close together. I am not doing well at the living-a-consistent-life thing.
I don't want to be St. John of the Cross or Billy Graham. I just want to be remembered as a person who loved God, who served others more than he served himself, who was trying to grow in maturity and stability. I want to have more victories than defeats, yet here I am, almost sixty, and I fail on a regular basis.
- MICHAEL CHARLES YACONELLI
July 24, 1942 - October 30, 2003
Posted by Jesse at 10:20 PM | Comments (3)
September 22, 2003
Quote of the Week
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." - - Plato
Posted by Jesse at 2:45 PM
June 4, 2003
"If you want to capture the attention of an uninterested group of people you must tie your message to on of the three attention getters; things they value, things that are unique; and things that threaten them." - Rick Warren
Posted by Jesse at 3:15 PM