The Elusiveness of Revival

I wrote this post a while back and am just now posting it.  I have rewritten it, I welcome your suggestions, and your feedback on this one.

Our country is in desperate need of a great awakening.

My church could use a good revival.

I need a revival.

Except for prayer I have no control over the first two, but I can do something about the third.

Every Christian has experienced a time of spiritual dryness. It happened to the prophets of the Old Testament, the great church fathers, 18^th century giants of the faith and certainly it happens today. Sometimes it seems that God is hiding Himself, though I am certain that that is not the case.

I recently confessed to three of my friends that I have been in somewhat of a spiritual lowpoint lately. While I’m in the midst of this lowpoint, feeling distant from God, I am aware of my situation. I know that I am not where I should be, but it feels as if I’m powerless to fix it.

Here is the question of this post; why is revival sometimes so hard to come by? One thing I do know is that the major problem in a time of spiritual dryness is sin. I know without a doubt that anyone with unrepentant sin will not emerge from such a condition simply by accident. I also don’t believe that God will just yank us up out of the funk without clearing up the sin that we seem unwilling to let go of.

For me, the major symptom of being in this condition is a lack of regular quiet time. When in this condition my quiet times are either sporadic, or low-quality. They sometimes feel like drudgery. Under normal circumstances I enjoy reading my Bible and my time alone with God in prayer is the best time of the day.

This all leads to the next major question; if I realize that sin is what has me in this rut, why can I not simply cut out the sin? I want to stop, I realize that is my major problem. Why is it often difficult to just repent. That is, of course, the key to it all. I can take some comfort in Romans 7:14-25. And I can of course conclude as Paul did ²⁴What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! God provided both forgiveness and way out.

Two Posts I’m Recommending

I don’t do this often, but today i’m reccommending blog posts by other people.

First and shortest, read Adam’s blog post about tithing.  It’s good and not too preachy.

Then read this post by Dr. Reid.  At the end he recommends this song which I have seen posted by several people over the last few months.  It never connected with me until I read this post.

Here’s the video:

I should have a regularly scheduled post for you tomorrow.

What You People Are Looking For (July edition)

This is 4 days early, but the 1st is Friday and I don’t want it to conflict with best web junk for the week, so I decided to go ahead & post it.

Here are the searches for July.  I now have 81 posts with 255 tags, so this list keeps getting broader.  This is not all of the searches, most are pretty normal and the stuff you would expect.  I do, however, think you will notice a trend in this list.  Remember I don’t edit this list at all, I just cut & paste the ones I think are interesting.  The spelling and craziness goes to the searcher.

• peach tree loaded
• prop up peach tree branches
• “peach tree branches props”
• leaning peach tree
• protected woodpeckers
• watch sonic husband and wife commercials
• did people ever eat mountain lion
• google earth “coolest thing”
• john mclamb, language school, costa rica (I really hope they found his blog from mine, they searched twice)
• jeremy dockery and brother
• prop up leaning tree
• we harm trees
• i dont have a drinking problem i drink,
• how to get rid of peach tree boars
• commercial jeremey holiday inn express c
• how to prop branches on a peach tree
• geekiest thing ever
• propping up heavy peachtree
• what does sbc president do? (I guess one post was about this)
• best web junk
• how to prop up a peach tree branch

Later this week a post called Peach Tree Redux to address what clearly is a major problem.

Best Web Junk (July 25)

Interesting (running the numbers) – via flowerdust.net

Misspelled, or bad grammar tattoos – via Dave Barry.  This is sad & funny also it has a lot of cussing, but it’s still very entertaining.  (Please don’t juge me too harshly for putting up a link with a lot of swearing)

Check it out.   This is the Nirvana baby – From myextralife

This vid is cool.  A mini vs. a go-cart on a go-cart track.  The race starts about half way through.

I just realized that this week all my links contain something that you could find offensive if you are easily offended.  Sorry about that.  It’s not my usual style, I’ll try to clean it up for next week.  To make up for it, here’s a link to a lolcat.  It’s disgustingly cute and there’s nothing vaguely offensive about it.  Here’s another.

And finally here’s a little game.  Read yesterday’s post and see where I’ve been in the past 8 days.  Guess my mileage in the comments for the 14th -22nd of July.  The person who is closest wins the prestigious title of Geography Czar of my blog.

What’s this – a new blog post?

So I’m back from the basement and it’s time to get back to normal life.  Which, it just so happens, includes writing blog posts.  I’m going to start off with a little travelogue. (Just a few pictures from my past week.)  Then tomorrow, your regularly scheduled best web junk, and next week it’s back to normal blogging.

I had an 8 day vacation .  I went back home to visit my family.

Which included my new nephew that I had never seen before.  he had a bit of a rough time coming into the world and was not allowed to see his momma for the first few days.  But he is clearly doing very well now.  This is not a fake picture, this is Jake Johnson my nephew. he really looks like a cabbage patch doll.  Also I’m sporting the half-face tan and looking oddly bald.  (I’m puffing out my cheeks to look like him.)

I also went to the eye doctor as I always do during my summer visit home.

Here you can see me all google-eyed.  Freshly dilated with virtually no blue part left.

Then I went to Mexico to visit my good friends Brent & Amanda Highfil.  Here’s a pic of their two oldest children Luke & Noah.  We played Rock Band on the Wii Friday night with Keaton & Ali Shewcraft.  It was really fun.

I also got to go fishing twice.  once on Barkley with my dad.  We caught 6 bass fishing a Carolina rig on main lake flats.  (pretty descriptive huh)  and once at a family get-together.  We were at this lovely private lake.

I caught about 6 bass and a few of these very hungry catfish.  The other guy is my uncle.

I had a good time, glad to be back in Fayetteville and I have plenty to do for the next few months.

Best Web Junk (July 18)

a disturbing fail

as long as I’ve crossed the line into scatological, here’s a clever comic

Here’s a type of fishing I’ve never tried

Bird Poo Rorschach

Does anybody else see an image in this gift left on my car window the other day?

Let me know if I’m crazy or what you see in the comments.

I may be a bit slow moderating yoru comments

Suggestion please

I have literally tens of readers, and some of you are a very helpful and literate bunch.  So help me out.

I’m taking a trip soon and I’ll be in my car for 11 hours or so.  I need some audio books, and I am thinking of joining audible.com for a trial.  I’ll get one free book, Plus it helps out the TWIT network which I listen to like 3 hours a week and have only ever donated a few dollars.

Here’s where you come in.  I only get one free book, so I need a suggestion of what it should be.  I like history, politics, comedy, and sci-fi.

(I know the cumberland county library has audiobooks to download, but never what I want, and I think audible books have a bookmarking feature, which is awesome.  cause it means I can listen to something else if I desire, without resetting a 10 hour book.)

I’m strongly considering The Areas of my Expertise by John Hodgeman

Also, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo just because it seems like one of those books i should have read a very long time ago

Best Web Junk (July 11)

I can’t decide if this looks delicious or disgusting

I never expected photoshop disasters to be informing me on the news

I know it’s childish and scatological, but puzzle farter made me laugh out loud

Wait for it…

The best Thai lightbulb commercial you’ll see today

Picking Our Sins

I just read this post, and I wonder; does this surprise anyone?  Here’s and obvious disclaimer – I am clearly in the 71%.

Here’s the thing.  We all choose the sins that we are going to be offended by.  And for most of us, this poor body-stewardship is not one of them.  I know that I regularly wake up in the morning and am determined to change my behavior so that I am healthier, but often by lunchtime I’ve forgotten that determination.  Also I know that overweightness is a sin I find very easy to forgive in others.

However there are a host of sins that I judge much more harshly in myself and others.  I am not saying that the other sins that we judge more harshly don’t deserve the treatment.  I am, however, wondering how we decide where to draw that line.  Why are we offended by cussing but not overeating?

Over the years I have known Christians who were offended by women wearing pants, and Christians who are seemingly not bothered by anything.  I really don’t have any suggestion for where the arbitrary “sin line” comes from.  I would suggest that it comes from our church, but for the most part we chose churches that hold to our views rather than molding ourselves to the views of our church.

Here’s what I do know.  God does not have an arbitrary line.  He hates our sin – all of it – and He wants us to “be holy in all our conduct.”