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Saturday, September 13, 2008

Favorite Time of Year.

Wow! It is so hard to believe that it has been one month since I posted last. I always intend to post every two weeks, but things have been VERY busy lately.

Of course school started back and I am in charge of two Bible classes. This is my first time as a year-round teacher of any kind, but I love it very much. It has consumed a lot of time though, even though I didn't think it really would.

Another reason I have not posted recently is because of what I like to call "technology demons." You know what I mean, for some reason my wireless at my house stopped working a month or so ago, and through countless attempts to fix it or to have it fixed, I had never been able to get it back up. Then out of nowhere I decided to try it again a few days ago, and it mysteriously works again. So that's really neat.

It has been a time of transition and getting things started. Our youth group is starting new curriculum and has made a new partnership with Word of Life, and we were doing a lot of training to get all of that straightened out. And then of course our Evangelism Explosion ministry started up last week and that has taken a lot of my time as well, but it is going to be so worth it if even ONE person gets saved.

So all of those are reasons why it has taken me over a month to make another post. But I know that all of them are paltry.

This is a great time of year for sports, especially a Tampa guy like me. My wife and I have watched at least 75% of the Tampa Bay Rays games this year and we are utterly amazed. My best friend who runs a website called www.3guysandasportspage.com has predicted for years that the Rays were going to hit their stride soon, but to be honest I didn't see it. Our team salary is less than the Yankees luxury tax. We are out spent in that division like 50-1 (that's a wild guess) and the Yankees and Red Sox have looked so dominant over the past eleven years of the Rays existence. But right now our magic number is 16 to win the division.

The USF Bulls have also got off to a 3-0 start. Starting QB Matt Grothe (my friend on Facebook) is a Heisman trophy candidate and that team is easily the best team in the Big East after three games. Go Bulls.

And then there's the Bucs. I am a die-hard Bucs fan, but I have a really bad feeling about this season. I hope that I am absolutely and completely wrong and that the Bucs go 15-1 on the way to the Super Bowl... in Tampa. I do miss the days when we had a respectable and decent man at the head coach like Tony Dungy, but I am still die-hard.

All in all, I love this time of year. School's back in, sports are all over the place, the weather cools off a little bit, and we prepare for the holidays... awesome!

As far as the church goes, tonight we are having the Community Dedication Service for our new building. It should be an amazing service. We are honoring all of those people who assisted in getting that church building back to the beautiful building that we are now corporately worshipping in.

For the spiritual emphasis of this post I want to talk a little bit about Jesus. I recently taught about when Jesus chased the money changers out of the temple. This story really changed my view on Jesus when I first got saved. The Jesus I thought of before was the one in all of the pictures, where he looked like a dark-haired Fabio and had a huge smile on His face surrounded by children and sheep.

But when Jesus walked into that Temple during the Passover season and saw the people selling animals for sacrifice and exchanging money for the local temple tax, and saw that these people were making a HUGE profit off of God, Jesus couldn't stand for it. The Bible says that he made a whip and just went in and cleared the place out. This reminds me that Chuck Norris wears JESUS pajamas. (a few of you will get that) Jesus wasn't a sissy, He was a man's man and he had the courage to stand up for what is right. Why don't we?

I am not suggesting that we run people out with a whip, but I am suggesting that we not listen when people try to gossip to us; that we walk away when people try to tell us a dirty joke; that we say something when someone says something offensive toward God.

It takes a lot more courage to stand up for what is right than it does to just let something go. But think of the courage that Jesus had to do all He did for us, let's follow His example.

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PS Please comment.

PSS A friend of mine just released a book called "Tatoo on the Heart." Check out his website: http://www.tattooontheheart.com