neorants

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
–Romans 8:28 (NASB)

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!
–Romans 11:33 (NASB)

We’ve all been there. “Why is this happening to me?” “Why now?” “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

God doesn’t always let us in on the “whys” — and He doesn’t really owe us the answers (see Job 38-42 for more on this). Still, every so often, I believe He enjoys letting us in on His ways. Yesterday was one of those days for my family.

Continue reading ‘Unfathomable’ »

It’s been a rough year, but I was just thinking to myself how nice it is to know that I’m loved, by God and by family and friends. If you’re reading this, tell someone you love how you feel. Maybe it’s a friend or a family member who you just don’t say it to — maybe they know already. Say it anyway. There’s no better feeling in the world than to know you’re loved.

I wrote this on a message board today, because of someone’s response to my comment about how I thought I Am Second wasn’t religious, but was definitely Christian. I thought I’d put it here as well.

Well, I think people confuse Christian with “religious” too often. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t really their fault — a lot of Christians don’t do a whole lot to differentiate themselves.

When most people think about someone who is “religious,” they think of someone who subscribes to a certain set of rules. Christianity is foremost about relationship. That relationship, if diligently pursued, leads to changes over time — but somehow they don’t feel like rule-following anymore. They feel like loving someone back.

I could share some personal stories here about how that has worked in my life, but I’m not really so sure they’d be well received by all parties. If you’re interested in hearing more, get in touch.

Back to my point. You can be a religious Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, or Satanist, or yeah, Christian. But just because many Christians get bogged down in legalism doesn’t mean there isn’t a difference between being religious and being a Christian.

The zombie apocalypse is more fun than I expected.

I can’t get over this site I heard about on WAY-FM this morning. It’s called “I am second” and is at http://iamsecond.com. It’s got video testimonies from people from all walks of life, including some celebrities like Stephen Baldwin, Jason Castro (former contestant on American Idol), and Brian Welch (former member of the band, Korn).

From what I can tell, it looks like it was done by a church or churches in Texas, and it was executed with a level of excellence I’ve never seen when it comes to a web-based ministry. This is something I honestly wish I’d thought of. It starts with a list of video testimonies you can scroll through, or you can just click on the random one that is displayed front and center when you visit, and once the testimony is over, you can see other testimonies with a similar theme, or proceed to a basic Q&A about the Christian life, with such questions as “Does God care about me?”, “Aren’t there many ways to Heaven?”, “Why does God allow bad stuff to happen?” — it provides answers to some of the tough questions someone contemplating a Christian faith might ask.

Then, to top it all off, and this is what sort of blew my mind, it provides a link to contact someone, then and there, via e-mail, phone, or live chat. According to the site it is staffed 24/7. This is the sort of thing companies do to provide tech support after you buy a computer (though even that usually isn’t 24/7), not the sort of thing we Christians do to advance the kingdom. But why don’t we? This is just awesome. Like I said, I wish I’d thought of it, but I’m honestly just thankful someone did.

[Update: They've set up a blog as well!]

So I couldn’t sleep last night. Kept waking up every hour or two, and was having weird dreams. They’re sort of a jumble, but the thing I remember most clearly is that all of my wife’s friends and family were calling my parents to “diss” me. No specifics, just “I was calling to diss your son.” I remember this so clearly because I don’t know of anyone who would actually use the term “diss” in 2008.