Tired.

So much stuff going inside my head. I have a huge thing at work (that I know I've been repeating myself about a lot) in a week. My self esteem, career, and sanity all lie in the balance of my passing or failing a big survey. The company I work for has international accreditation with this company. They come just once every three years to survey and ours is due on the 11th. There is so much to be done in anticipation of it. Kind of a long story why. I've been trying my best to learn what needs to be done as well and the language and logic that go with this company. I'm not making sense, but hopefully I will in a few weeks. Oh and my wife's 30 birthday is this Sunday! No pressure!

So the lack of postings can be attributed to this. Maybe some of the other team members can pick up the slack! (Cause they sure aren't posting on their blogs much! ;)

Don't waste your life.

A theme I've been picking up on lately from reading Roy, Steve and others blogs is about making something with this gospel we have heard. It seems the motivation and inspiration comes from many different movements and speakers. I think every one can appreciate what Dr. Piper has to say below. (Except for maybe a few of the free will types out there!)

I love technology

Wow. It's been very cool over the last week as my dad and I have made some technological upgrades (that are pretty inexpensive actually) and we can now chat (seeing and hearing) one another over the internet. It's lame we're so far away from each other so this really is a huge blessing. Anyone else out there want to connect?!

Jott - So I can work 27 hours a day.

So I was thinking on the way home from work how great it would be in this crazy work season if I could somehow keep working in my car on my way home. When I got home I went online and signed up for the free service from Jott. Basically it takes voice mail and transfers it into text. I call a local number, leave a message and it shows up in my inbox. I left three, complex messages tonight and within 5 minutes they were in my inbox without any spelling errors. Get this, here is the kicker, the calls are sent to India where a person listens to my call and then transcribes it and emails it back to me. For free. Looks like I just outsourced me some secretarial work!

Our friends are in town.

Ben, Rachel and baby Titus. Here's to good friends, tonight is kind of special.

Flagging in church.

Kind of a cool moment that I can't quite capture with my camera phone.

Wolves

Inexplicably there is a wolf habitat thingy at the bottom of the mountain we noticed on the gondola ride down. These wolves don't look vicious though. Just retired.

The tram.

They built this tram to take us down the mountain. God bless em'.

Made it to the top!

Steve Maines, Phil Taylor, Jason Hughlett. Defeated Grouse Mountain in one hour twenty minutes. Along side a 79 year old guy, a 12 year old kid with a mickey mouse back pack and a thousand other nutso people. My fave other climber was a lady in designer jeans and flip flops.

Blogging from the Grouse Grind!

There is this mountain that is like 3000 feet to the top. You can scale it up this gnarly steep, trail to the top called the Grouse Grind. We are a 1/4 way up and I am already spent. But there is a lady in a dress and fancy shoes doing it so I guess I can't complain. See you at the top!

This is so funny. And so good. And so right on.

I'm breaking my internet exile again but this is to good to pass on sharing.
Found it here

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Up at midnight.

I never have insomnia. I do tonight. I have a huge, huge, huge, career defining review happening in a month, so I was sitting in bed thinking of the millions of things I need to prepare for. I actually went to bed at 9;30 tonight trying to get a good night sleep!

I have actually not been anywhere near the TV, internet (Except posting from my phone) or talk radio in my car in three days (Which is a long time for me) but tonight, here I am. Lame. Oh well, back to my "season of simplicity and humility" tomorrow.

Well, I need to get to work by 6 am to get cracking on this list in my head so I should try and force myself to sleep. We'll see how that goes!

The long sun.

JesusFest 2008

So this last weekend we had an outdoor event at the church called "JesusFest, West Coast". It was amazing, wonderful, hot, terrific... My friends Ed and Wendy and their ministry Worship Invasion made it happen. There were two great worship teams and Nolan Clark spoke. Nolan is amazing. I know I can get on here and mention someone and people who don't know just roll their eyes, but take my word for it. I wish I had sermon audio to post. He preached two great messages that inspired and challenged me deeply. Nolan has a church over in Kamloops, BC called "The Feast" that he pastors along with his wife Heather. Heather is a worship leader that God was using when Lakeland took off. Anyway, I took some pictures that I'm going to post soon. But there is some video that someone took that is cool. Check it out here.

Church outside today.

A beautiful day today. We're all outside singing, preaching, getting burnt. We're gonna have a picnic in a bit. We should do this every Sunday.

Punched in the face...

Well actually elbowed. I have a big mouse under my left eye tonight. I got it from my brazilian jiu-jitsu/MMA class that I've been taking for the last three months. I'm kind of bummed though cause with having to pay for childcare over the summer I can't afford to keep taking classes till the fall. Stinking gas prices! Oh well, I know that God is calling me into a time of consecration for a time so maybe the timing is good. It'll give me the chance to heal up a bit. I've been non-stop sore and achy since I started.

Well that is pleasant.

So today's bible verse over there on the right caught my attention. I quietly examined my heart for a few seconds after reading it.

Jacob's Dream by Jason Upton

Jacob really longed to be a hero
All I really wanted was a friend
I'm the way, the life, the truth
So tell Me Jacob when will the lying end?
And does the striving make you strong?
Because when I came to love on you
You fought me till the dawn

Finally Jacob's lying down
And while he sleeps I will dream
Of a generation not known for their crowns,
Or success, but a King...
Who was not so much as interested in crowds, or
Pleasing men, but knowing Me

I have given Jacob's generation the key of David, intimacy
To open up the doorway to the nations, and release
Revelation, of intimacy, with me

Jacob had a dream for all the ages
Jacob had a drive to build a nation
But the fighting is in vain
If your only aim is to build your own great name

Because My dream's not what you do
Jacob will you dream for me
The way that I have dreamed for you

The story of a lost soul.

So today someone at church called me "the accuser of the brethren" and "Satan". And then rode away on a bike.

Over a year ago when I was still pastorin' for a livin' we were doing a Wednesday night renewal service where I would select 10 or so songs, make an iTunes playlist and then pipe it through the sound system. A bunch of us would just kind of quietly wait and worship. There were lots of beautiful moments. We did this for a while, and it was a good season.

One night out of no where this random guy showed up. We welcomed him in and he started coming regularly. He came to church one Sunday when Paul was preaching through Matthew and came to the passage on the unforgivable sin. Afterwords I ended up praying for this guy along with Paul to rededicate his heart to Christ. He'd spent years believing he'd commited it and was filled with joy as bondage's and shame came off him that day. He started coming out more and more of the following weeks and even brought his step-dad too.

One day he surprised us to say that God had told him to reconcile with his wife and he was flying her out. God had been restoring their marriage apparently. She showed up and we started to get to know her too. By this time, he would stop into the church about once a week during the day and I would pray for him and give him tapes to listen to. One day he shared with me he and his wife were going to move up north for work. Knowing he already had a good job and nice place to stay I cautioned him that he should consider sticking around a bit and stabilizing his renewed faith walk and restored relationship with his wife. He didn't.

A month ago he popped up. Without his wife. I got the feeling right away something was different. He started coming around a lot. Things got wierd. I'm not going to get in to it, but within a week he'd already kind of worn out his welcome and it's apparent that things aren't right. Before I'd really had a chance to connect with him he had shown up one night to the renewal service, walked up on the stage, told everyone God had given him a song to sing, grabbed a guitar and played the ever spiritual "Stairway to heaven". A few days later he told Paul our pastor that the music at the church sounded like funeral music and that we weren't using his giftings. Paul very politely disagreed and this guy snapped and stormed off. His step-dad (who by the way has become a great friend and awesome member of our church) confirmed things had been horrible around the house, with suspected drug use, bizarre behaviour, the police coming out, ect...

Well today he popped up. He sat quietly in the back all service and I wasn't sure what was going on. Afterwords the report got back from my wife he was spouting off weird stuff . So I looked around and saw him out in the parking lot talking to a group of people trying to get in their car. They looked a little freaked out so I went outside. I called him over and the first thing he brought up was how great it was when I had prayed for him way back and how God was doing such deep things in his life. A really long story short, I challenged him that I didn't think his life and story were adding up (Cause mine sure does lol!) and he freaked out on me. He was really delusional, angry and all over the place and the whole time I really thought I was going to have to protect myself when he attacked me. I sat there trying to figure out if I should try and chuck a demon out, reason with him, ect. He ended up telling me that I was the one who had a spirit and that I was the accuser of the brethren and Satan. He hopped on a mountain bike that was stashed in some bushes and rode away.

Long story I know. It's just sad to remember back during that time when we were doing that renewal prayer service and saw this guy as fruit of our pressing into God. I know God isn't done with him. I'm praying for him. But there isn't anything tougher than to see someone freed from prison just to go right back there again but with screwed up theology on top of it. You start to question your methods. Who knows? Was the mental illness dormant? Was retreating back to drugs one last time what scrambled his mind into chaos?

Who knows. Pray him if you think about it. Pray for his step-dad Bob too. He is scared, crushed and saddened a ton by all this.

Later on today Noah and I stopped by our feeding/blue bus ministry in Abbotsford, about 20 or so miles from our church to see the team over there. Sure enough in the middle of the crowd of folks was this guy (must have rode his bike fast to get there!)spouting all kinds of his nonsense. The look on the team (who didn't know what had happened at church) was that he was just another messed up homeless guy. I didn't say anything to him and kind of slipped away. Just another messed up homeless guy... something isn't right about that...

This is awesome!

Just thought I'd share a story I'm really geeked about here.

This is something I thought about doing as a kid. Don't tell my wife.:(

Berryfest-facepaint and rain don't mix

Berryfest-splashing in puddles

Berry fest #5

It started raining on our one mile walk home from the berry festival.

B-fest #4

There is a cool little farmers market that sets up in downtown Abbotsford each Saturday. We baught some zuchinni bread and organic cherries. Next up in a few weeks, garlic fest!

Berryfest#3

Measuring the boy at berryfest. 5 years old and 4 feet tall.

Berry fest #2

Standing next to the first of the harvest. How biblical sounding heh?

Berry festival #1

so our little town closes a few streets at the beginning of the berry harvest every year to have a festival. Here is a pic of Noah getting a dragon painted on his face.

The lost chapter of Galatians.

The following fragments were discovered recently in the lower Hebron valley. Biblical Archaeologists and scholars are trumpeting it as the single worst discovery of fake biblical text since the discovery of the lost gospel of Judas.

Behold...



Galatians 7:1-3

"1 Brothers, I forgot to add something... when I viewed the youtube video of our brother Peter again eating with some of the circumcision sect I challenged him indirectly via the comment sections of one of the greek brother's blogs. 2 I want you to forget everything that I wrote the Corinth church about dealing with your brothers in the faith discreetly and in private to avoid bringing disrepute to the body. I say again, forget that. It is much better, as the young ones say, to "flame them" with your blog posts or church gossip. 3 LOOK HOW I TYPE THESE WORDS WITH MY OWN HANDS ALL IN CAPS AND MAKE THEM BOLD, take advantage of the internet where you never actually have to get to know someone, and can spout off sweeping and ill informed judgments upon them while damning them to hell!

Sadly for some, this false scripture is made real and manifest through actions. I sure hope corporations get total control of the internet, jack up the prices, have outrageous subscription fees for sites like google causing folks to cancel the internet. Then maybe the christian hit squad would cancel their internet, shut off their computer and take their attacks back into living rooms and church hall ways.

Obama will expand Faith stuff

Hey been a while since I last blogged here, but I'm tired of writing about revival so found this cool article that claims Obama will expand GW's Faith-based initiatives. I think that O will win if he swings left but adds in conservative right wing "plug-ins" such as this, and maybe charter schools, and maybe optional prayer in schools. Obama would then be the Firefox 3 candidate, a well run machine with lots of great options.

It'd be funny if Jeremiah Wright would then apply for and receive and exorbitant amount of funding-- fox news would have a collective heart attack, I'm telling you.