Since I’ve posted a few things about John Piper as late (click here and here to see them), I thought I would post a clip of a talk he did from his book, Don’t Waste Your Life. I guess as I’ve been watching the Don’t Waste Your Life video podcasts the Lord has been stirring this up in my heart once again! Maybe its that we, as a staff team, are praying and yearning for our students not to waste their summers, and ultimately waste their lives! Please pray for us as we yearn for our students to follow Christ this summer, that might be one of our AIA Summer Opportunities. be a revolution….
Archives for March 2007
the legacy of a father
This morning I czeched out the Desiring God blog and learned that John Piper’s father had recently passed away. You can read Piper’s journal entry that he wrote following his father’s death on the DGM blog, click here. I really appreciate that Dr. Piper would allow this journal entry to be posted. Why? Because it inspired me as a young man to be mindful of how I am living now and how, Lord-willing, I will live in the future as the Lord may bless me with a wife and kids. What type of things will my son say about me after he is at my bed side as I pass? Will he be able to say something similar to what John Piper said? Here are two paragraphs that made me think:
Thank you, Daddy. Thank you for sixty-one years of faithfulness to me. I am simply looking into his face now. Thank you. You were a good father. You never put me down. Discipline, yes. Spankings, yes. But you never scorned me. You never treated me with contempt. You never spoke of my future with hopelessness in your voice. You believed God’s hand was on me. You approved of my ministry. You prayed for me. Everyday. That may be the biggest change in these new days: Daddy is no longer praying for me.
I look you in the face and promise you with all my heart: Never will I forsake your gospel. O how you believed in hell and heaven and Christ and cross and blood and righteousness and faith and salvation and the Holy Spirit and the life of holiness and love. I rededicate myself, Daddy, to serve your great and glorious Lord Jesus with all my heart and with all my strength. You have not lived in vain. Your life goes on in thousands. I am glad to be one.
the big game
Last night, 5 of us AIA staff ventured to Wright State to watch, arguably, the biggest game in men’s basketball history at Wright State and had the privilege of watching an amazing one! Butler took Wright State down to the final minutes, but Wright State held them off for a 60-55 win! My roommate Kyle (a.k.a. my partner in crime), who works with student-athletes at WSU and meets with several of the basketball players, and I made our way down in the closing seconds to rush the court with the WSU faithful once the game concluded. Since I went to a D-3 school, that didn’t have a ton of school spirit, and Kyle went to Moody we haven’t had many opportunities to ever rush the court; okay we have never had the opportunity! So we had to do it! As the seconds ticked out off the clock we rushed the court and joined in the bedlam! Can’t say that it was the best moment of my life. At times it was so packed I couldn’t breath and at one point I looked for Kyle and when I found him he had a look of sheer panic on face. Once we got home he found a CBS Sportsline story and found what you see in the post! We made national media again! First ESPN at the Super Bowl and now this. Crazy. I hope you enjoy the pic. Make sure you find Kyle and see his facial expression. Priceless… Have a revolutionary day!
what men need…
One of my daily blog reads is the Resurgence and I hope that it becomes one of your’s as well! It is a collaboration of pastors and thinkers that are pursuing Biblical Christianity and what the Kingdom of God looks like lived out in our world. Anthony Bradley’s posts of been a blessing during the past year as I’ve wrestled through what it means to be missional to our world and his newest entry doesn’t disappoint either. Here are a couple of quotes, czech out the rest, click here.
David Murrow, author of Why Men Hate Going To Church, reminds us that 61% of the average adult U.S. church attendance is women, 80% of attendees at midweek church activities are women, and 90% of boys raised in the church will abandon it by time they turn 20-years-old.
“Men are looking for a real man to follow: dynamic, outspoken, bold, sharp-edged. They want a leader who is decisive, tough, and fair. They respect a man who tells it like it is and doesn’t mince words, even when it makes them mad. Men most respect a leader who doesn’t care what others think of him,” says Murrow. Satan is real, hell is real, people are dying, sin is alive, repentance is needed, healing is necessary and people need a Jesus who bears a sword and fights for them and men pursuing death for the same cause.