backpacking light

I read this article today in Backpacking Light and immediately the spiritual applications starting ringing in my ears. I urge you to stop trying to get all the latest gadgets and tools and focus on being prepared, in season and out of season, to share the Gospel by word and deed.

Check it out here.

-joe

rules

So, after Paul lays down the law on how to avoid succumbing to the law, he lays down some guidelines to follow. What?

At the end of Colossians 3 Paul gives some words to married couples, children, slaves and masters. The important part is verse 23, in everything "work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men."

Men, love your lives for the Lord.

Women, respect your husbands as unto the Lord.

Children, obey your parents to make God look glorious.

Slaves, work with your hearts directed towards Christ.

Masters, treat your slaves well because it makes Jesus look awesome.

In all these things, Paul keeps us trained on the one thing that will keep us from succumbing to asceticism: Jesus Christ, high and exalted.

I'll get to chapter 4 tomorrow.

-joe

allright, this time i'm really back

Well, after my post a month ago I thought I'd be back to blogging regularly but I ended up working full-time for the furniture store, having some relatives in from Texas and working on figuring out PHP scripting (again, that made my week.)

On thinking about working on the new scripting language I did realize that it was, in fact, very spiritual. I don't mean that php is the language of God, but I do think that the process of learning and thinking I had it, and then realizing I didn't, was deeply spiritual.

There were many times that I tried to write code before I knew what I was doing and it didn't work. I'd click on something and instead of doing what it was supposed to do, it would just sit there. It was discouraging. But I had a goal: to learn php so that the website would be easier to handle in the long run.

Now, take that idea (of working on something very hard and failing time and again but pushing on because of the end result) and put it into your mind for Christ. That's what we do as we seek to know Him and His word better. We study and we think and we act...and many times we fail. But sometimes we succeed and we get pumped that we've figured something out about the character of God or about how we should behave so that Christ is magnified.

So, continue the struggle. I'll be trying to make it work on this end.

-joe