I sent this e-mail to my colleagues back on August 13th, 2010, on the subject of Google Wave (which had just announced it would end):

“For it is impossible to restore to repentance those who were once enlightened – those who have … shared in the Holy Spirit … and who then turn away from God.” Hebrews 6:4-6
I love the beginning of Hebrews; I’ve read and re-read Hebrews 1-5 but each time I come to chapter 6 and stop. This passage seems so contradictory to what I’ve learned. If a person has “shared in the Holy Spirit” and repented (the passage says “restore to repentance”) doesn’t that mean that they were saved? Or are these people who merely played the game of repentance and acted holy but never truly surrendered their life to God? Of course, this could lead to the debate of God’s elect, and can we surrender ourselves, but I don’t think this is what is being discussed here. The word “enlightened” seems to be an operative word. It occurs in the KJV, NIV, NLT and NASB (I didn’t check others) so I trust the translation. Also, KJV refers to these as “partakers of the Holy Ghost,” meaning people who have the spirit of God in them, and as people who have “tasted of the heavenly gift.” What is being discussed here? Who are people who have “fallen away” and now cannot be restored to repentance? Is the analogy of a field being burned indicative that these people will go to Hell or merely that they are now useless to the Kingdom of God?

Daffodil Lament
For some reason, I like saying the word “daffodil” lately. I don’t know why, though. It might because I recenly heard the song “Daffodil Lament” by the Cranberries, or maybe it’s because I seem to be getting a bunch of SPAM advertising some drug called “Tadafalil” or something like that. When you get a song stuck in your head, listening to a new song will help you forget it, but how do you get a word out of your head?

Visiting Iowa: Well, Friday morning we got off of the plane in good old DSM and immediately had goose bumps. It was a cold morning for Iowa in August. We suddenly regretted not having warmer clothes in our bags. Fortunately, it’s warmed up but I think God was trying to tell us that we weren’t in Florida anymore. Seeing family is well worth the goosebumps.

Apple – iTunes: “Party Shuffle” Here’s a nifty iTunes trick. The Party Shuffle is nice except that it tends to “get in a rut” sometimes and play a whole batch of songs that you’ve rated as 1 or 2 stars; even if you have check the box to play higher rated songs more often.

My solution is to create three smart playlists and use these as the source for my Party Shuffle.

Before I explain, it will help to know that I rate my music 1 to 5 stars therefore 0 stars means not rated yet. I also have a personal rule of thumb that I don’t rate songs when my only complaint is that “I’m not in the mood for this now.” So if a christmas song comes on my first impulse might be to say, “ack, this stinks!” and rate it as a 1 star, but really, if I’m in the christmas mood it might be 4 stars.

OK, now to the playlists. The first smart playlist has only one rule “Rating is equal to 0 stars”. This will always list all of the music I haven’t had a chance to rate. When I feel like the party shuffle is not playing anything new, I tell it to use this as the source. I try to rate each song as it plays, but invariably I only rate 10 – 20%. That’s ok, it adds variety and works towards the goal.

The second playlist is “My Top Rated Classical.” This one is special because I’ve found I’m either in the mood for classical or I’m not. This has two rules, “Rating is greater than 2 stars,” and “Genre is Classical.” Maybe, when more of my music library is rated I’ll change this to 3 stars but right now I need more variety than this provides.

The third playlist is “My Top Rated.” I’ve modified the playlist that iTunes ships to have the following rules: “Rating is greater than 2 stars”, “Genre is not Holiday” and “Genre is not Classical”.

All of the above playlists have checked “live updating” and “Match all of the following conditions.” Other options are disabled.

Now, I can change the source of my partyshuffle to suit my current taste.

iTunes Developers: Please, add a feature that allows putting a link to the playlists on your Windows desktop. It would be nice to just click the icon that says “My Top Rated Music” and have it launch iTunes and start playing.

BIND 8 for NT: “How can I setup my DNS so that my own and my clients’ mail is reliably delivered” Wow, a great little tutorial explaining clearly how to set up your dns records to show the world that you’re servers aren’t sending spam and also how to set up your mail server to recognize those who are likely spammers.

The Spiritual Leader’s Task: “move people from where they are to where God wants them to be” The men’s group at West Bradenton Baptist Church is discussing the qualities of a spiritual leader. Here are few notes of interest:

• Fear is the opposite of faith.
• It’s the little things that make the big things happen – Coach Wooten
• Seldome do the best players make the best team
• God’s desire for our life is to continually draw closer to him
• Spiritual leaders work in a paradox: God calls them to do something only God can do.
• Spiritual leaders have God’s authentication – Despite Moses’ failings, he was capable as a leader because God choose him.
• God has chosen many leaders who were diminutive in appearance – not boastful and inflated.
• God told Joshua that he had to meditate on the law and to not depart from it so that he can be prosperous and have success.
• God vindicates a leader overtime. Being criticized is not necessarily a sign of poor leadership.
• When leaders lead through the power of the spirit, lives change. If things aren’t happening, it’s because the leader is relying on talent, not God.
• It’s not charisma.
• People will recognize that the moving force behind the leader is God (cf. Ezekiel’s ministry in Guatemala).

…both Joshua and Moses went through hard times.
This is true, and in both cases, the hard times were brought about when they tried to get ahead of God. By this I mean doing something that God did not tell them to do.

Sometimes, we go through hard times because God is purposely trying to refine us and and make us stronger. Sometimes, we go through hard times in order to prepare for what he has planned next. Sometimes, both of these are true.

Regardless of the reason why, many times our hard times are brought about by our dis-obedience to God’s commands. As evidenced in many a Sinefield episode, so many of life’s problems would be avoided had we done things God’s way instead of our own.

Using gmail (and other non-hotmail) mail service with MSN Messenger. If you have Windows XP you were prompted at the initial set-up to “associate a passport” with your windows user account. Something about this dialog seems to encourage many people to sign up for a hotmail account. If you already have an e-mail account or don’t want to use hotmail then there is no need to sign up for a hotmail account. All you need to do is create a passport with Microsoft for your preferred e-mail address.

Simply go to the passport website and click the link to register for a free passport. Fill out the form being certain to give the proper e-mail address. For example, if you are someonespecial@gmail.com then give that here. Before the process is complete, you will have to confirm that the e-mail address you have given works by checking your e-mail and clicking the link therein.

Once that is done you can easily associate your newly created passport with your windows XP user account. If you cancelled out of the wizard that popped up you can return to it by going into the control panel and clicking “User Accounts” and then “Change a user account.” Find the desired username in the list and choose “Change my .net Passport.” From here the process is rather intuitive.

The only thing you don’t get is the alert toast pop-ups when you receive new e-mail. Hopefully soon someone will invent a plug-in for Windows Messenger and MSN Messenger that provides the same functionality. Maybe Google will release an enhanced toolbar or feature not related to Messenger that provides the same. Either way, you can live without pop-up toasts telling you to check your e-mail. (You can!)

OpenOffice.org Documentation:: “Create and Maintain a Table Of Contents”
So it’s actually pretty easy to create a table of contents. You just have to take a minute and use google to find the tutorial.