Bearfruit

“Share What You Wear” is a program organized through my church that distributes countless thousands of clothing and basic houseware items free to needy people in Des Moines. Semi-trucks full of items are being unloaded at Grace Church now and starting Thursday, scads of people, hundreds at least, maybe thousands (I have no clue how many) will come through the building and get good quality used clothes for themselves and their kids.

My class last night seemed to enjoy an illustration I gave so I decided to share it here. The class is the first of 5 I will teach called “Getting a better spouse,” which is a poor name, but the goal is to make our families stronger by improving the husband and wife relationship. The common denominator of all the people in the class is that we all have kids and as any parent knows, sometimes life seems incredibly busy. Also at times it can feel like our kids are the center of our families and all life revolves around them.

As parents its critical to admit that one of our most important job is to raise our children properly (cf Proverbs 22:6, Deuteronomy 6:6-7). But that doesn’t mean the children become the center of the family. They need to learn that the world does not revolve around them. Therefore the class’s goal will hopefully help draw the mom and dad together. Doing this helps the whole family.

But… the husband/wife relationship is not the most important relationship in the family. The most important is the parent/God relationship. God invented the family and He

Starling news has just been uncovered, Ubuntu is now more famous than Jesus. Here is the graph from Google trends: (click for a larger version)

Note that point F says, “Mood a bit gloomy in town of Jesus’ birth.” I’m sure that’s because Jesus has just officially been eclipsed in search engine popularity by Ubuntu.

Let’s see, God made the universe, the earth, the plants, animals, sun, moon… then he made a man, whom he assigned the task of naming the animals, then he made a woman and created the institution of marriage. All of this in six days. Then he invented the “day of rest.” What did God do on this day?

The answer is simple. Don’t start by preaching, don’t start with morality. Don’t start by trying to be angelic. Start by caring for others. Jesus said,

34 “So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. 35 Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” John 13:34-35

Wither you believe in Evolution or Creation, one thing that we can prove and see from science is “survival of the fittest.” It’s the one aspect of Darwinian Evolution that is supported by science and therefore is not an issue of contention between humanists and Christians.

The concept is that people, creatures, plants etc that have certain attributes that make them suitable for life in a certain environment thrive and reproduce, therefore passing on the characteristics to their offspring.

Tonight I taught my small group class… this was part one of a two part lesson entitled, “Practical Tools for Sharing the Gospel.” Among the controversial parts were, “Memorizing Scripture” where I challenged anyone in the class to quote a chapter of scripture… (Becky quoted Psalm 23 flawlessly from memory, two others implied they could quote a chapter as well) What makes this controversial is few people like it when they’re told that they’re not doing something that they should be doing, and I wholeheartedly believe that scripture memorization is a commandment from God.

My Observations on Selling to Churches:

• Cold calling stinks. It’s the least fun kind of sales in the world.

John Talks: John was shot in the mouth by assasins for planting churches in Brazil. In total, he was shot 3 times, once in the mouth, once in the neck and once in the arm while preaching in a Brazillian church. John was a missionary commisioned by a local (Des Moines, IA) church and had just returned to Brazil from the USA.

The prognosis: Benign. For the record, benign has several meanings, but the most familiar is, “tissue that does not have a detrimental impact on surrounding tissue.” This is often used in the context of cancer and how a tumor can be benign, meaning that unless it presses against something, it’s not causing a problem because it’s not affecting the tissue around it.