Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Things will be quiet for awhile

Ever since coming to Christ last year, I have been pouring myself into studying God's Word. Drowning myself in the Word has been surprisingly easy for me... or so I thought.

In the past few months one thing has become clearer to me and has become a burden I want and need to rid myself of.

This burden is the knowledge that Christ is not sufficient for me currently... Each day I become more and more aware of the fact that there are unnecessary things that I still feel controlling me. I get these feelings that I need, or worse, HAVE to do something to be happy. These are idolatrous hooks of my past life that I must nail to the Cross, lest they rise up and consume me.

These warring idols in my life mostly relate to entertainment that takes up too much of my thoughts and time. The deeper I dive into the Living Water, the more I realize that my time is NOT mine, it belongs to Christ. He has bought me with a price, and it is time that I start following him instead of salivating like a trained dog when something "cool and geeky" comes my way.

So, you may ask, what does this all mean?

Well, for a season, it means some spiritual fasting for me. This is going to be extremely difficult, but it is something Christ is calling me to do. What he has called me to do is to give up all of my entertainment for awhile... every bit of it.

Starting on October 31st (What better day than Reformation Day to start?) I will only rely on God's Word for satisfying those needs for "entertainment" that I feel. I am vowing to search out the hooks of idolatry in my heart that remove Christ from his rightful place in my life. Until I travel from start to finish in the Bible and Christ turns these "needs" into just things I can do, free from any feelings of compulsion, I will be parting ways with all of my other books, my websurfing (blog posting included), my music, my games and anything else I just "occupy time" with.

The only exceptions will be a once daily check of email (in case family and friends are trying to contact me), Tabitha updates here and time spent with Zane. This is a personal fast and it would be wrong to force this upon Zane.

Denita has also agreed to join me in this, so please be in prayer for her as well. This will be a difficult trial, but both of us believe that this is needed for our spiritual health.

For those interested, here are some passages that have been weighing upon me that turned my thoughts to this fast: Luke 14:25-35, Matthew 6:19-24, Romans 6:1-23, Romans 8:12-17, Romans 12:1-21, James 1:19-27, James 3:1-18, James 4:1-12, Ephesians 4:17-32, Philippians 3:17-21

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Sometimes Morbid Curiosity Should NOT be Indulged

Being a kid of the 80's, I hate to admit it, but I was a fan of some horrible TV shows.

When I heard that a moldy-oldie was being re-made, I thought it could not manage to be as cheesy/bad as the original was.

Boy was I ever wrong. I never thought I would say this... but BRING BACK THE HASSELHOFF! I'll take the horrible hair... At least the original had a few plots that could be followed. Who is writing this drivel????

I really don't get how this piece of horribly acted and filmed crap is getting 4 stars on Hulu... it boggles the mind. It really says something when I am longing for the 80's again.

*SHUDDER*

Saturday, October 04, 2008

More Free Resources

When will the free resources stop?!? My poor laptop cannot handle much more and a larger HD is out of the picture right now.

For those who might be interested, I ran across another Original Language study page.

You have to sign up for an account, but it's free and will allow you to save personal notes to go along with your studies. This will be a great way to continue my studies while at work.

The "Listen to this Chapter" feature contained a wonderful surprise... links to a free, downloadable Audio Greek New Testament!

John Simon (from Austin, TX) has been recording the Greek New Testament, Latin Vulgate and part of the Hebrew Old Testament and is offering them as free downloads (MP3s encoded to 160 kbps).

Greekbiblestudy.org has the GNT either as individual files or one whopping 1.2 GB file through the "Listen to this Chapter" feature (Acts 21-28 are missing).

John's site has the missing chapters from Acts (except for 28, it is still a work in progress), plus the Latin and Hebrew files.

To make room on my iPod and computer, I downgraded the encoding to 32 kbps AAC and it still sounds great (and takes up less than 1/5 the space).