Walk On

For those of you who read here, thanks for your patience while I've been busy with, well,...life. I thought that things would settle down this week, but no. Now it looks like it'll be another couple of weeks before I can blog regularly again. So pray for me. I'll be as specific as I can...

#1-Two praise teams, a great student ministry, and a wonderful family. I'm blessed. But I'm also *really* worn out. Pray for wisdom...and relief.

#2-Specific students in our ministry that are devastated spiritually and emotionally. Recent and not-so-recent events that have happened and have rocked their world in every sense. Questioning themselves. Questioning their family. Questioning God. To all of you, I love you dearly and pray for you often. You are in the midst of a battle. The war is for your soul. You are not alone...don't give up.

#3- I've got some friends with really fragile marriages right now. Pray for them. The Enemy is highly upset at the great things going on here and, as a result, temptations and weaknesses seem to be cropping up everywhere.

Great students. Great adults. But the Enemy never sleeps. I remember something about a Roaring Lion roaming the earth looking for someone to devour...One day the King will put a bullet in his head. Until then, we march on.

God help us all

I recently got my hands on one of the new Hilary Clinton postage stamps. It seems the US Postal Service created a stamp with a picture of Senator Hillary Clinton to honor her achievements as the First Lady of our nation.

In daily use, however, it seemed that the stamp was not sticking to envelopes. Word on the street is that this enraged Senator Clinton, who demanded a full investigation. After a month of investigating, a special commission published the following finding:

1.The stamps are in perfect order.
2. There is nothing wrong with the glue/adhesive.
3. People are spitting on the wrong side.

(No, really. It IS funny.)

At the risk of sounding chauvinist...

"Just because God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, doesn't mean your music has to suck."

That was the commerical I heard recently on Revolution, SIRIUS Channel 67. It's a great station for someone like me who likes loud guitars and Biblically-based lyrics. For those of you not familiar with it, it's not a typical sanitized, adult-contemporary, Newsboys-kind-of-station. It freakin' rocks. Everything from Pillar to U2 to old-school Stryper. If James Hetfield followed Christ, he'd play here.

But recently I heard Mark Dristoil, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, say:
"As a heterosexual male, I had a hard time coming to Christ. I'd show up to church and we'd sing worship songs that were almost homo-erotic. Stuff about walking hand-in-hand in the garden while the dew was on the lily. It really freaked me out because I'd go home and read the Scripture and see where God was described as Father, King, Lord, and Warrior and think 'what kind of Will-and-Grace church is this?' All I can do to worship is sing these 'lily' songs and cry to God? "

It seems to be that the feminization of the church is worse than I'd thought. There's nothing wrong with being feminine... but it seems we're missing the balance on the testosterone side. Female without the male. Estrogen without testosterone. The Gardener without the Warrior. Yes, we are to cultivate and nurture. But, we are also at war. And it seems that femininity is a problem when you're at war.

Perhaps there are enough churches in existence that wage enough war for the all of us. There are certainly enough estrogen-laced worship services out there for all of us. At least, for me.

Is it generational? Is it cultural? Am I just a freak who'd love to have some adrenaline-charged worship music in his life? Maybe it's out there and I just don't know it. Maybe I'm too jaded. Maybe I wish we had more Real Men who passionately loved God without apology and didn't relegate 'worship' to gentle harmonies. Again, nothing wrong with gentle harmonies...but there's another side to the coin.

Maybe I'm just in the mood for some P.O.D. After all, their fans are known as Warriors...

Dick Cheney's School of Quail Hunting

'A cheerful heart works well like a medicine...', even though at times I tend to think laughter is NOT the best medicine, but that the best medicine is...well, medicine. I have a tendency to be wrong at times....

Nevertheless, in the spirit of the Arc of the Penguin, I bring you Dick Cheney's Quail Hunting School...

Lock and load, people. We'll get to more weighy matters in a bit...