Pages

Friday, December 12, 2008

Relax

I am done with school now and I am trying to set some habits for the break. They say that if you can do something for 3 weeks it is a habit. So I have just enough time to set some good habits before school starts up again. Here are three that I want to set:

Run 2 miles every day
Do 100 pushups
Read 3 verses from my Greek Bible

I will hopefully set a habit of blogging more often. If there are any of you still reading...

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Spam.

It looks like I have been neglecting my blog for too long. I got this message.

Your blog at: http://johnnywhoop.blogspot.com/ has been identified as a potential spam blog.



I had to fill out a thing saying that I am not a spam blog. Yet I lied...

Sunday, September 7, 2008

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

John Piper Books + thousands of old christian books + thousands of old classics + kindle = a giant mobile library that is easy on the eyes.

We have been doing a project where we gather 200 links to websites that assist in Bible study. Along the way I found some good, some bad, and some ugly websites. The ugly was predominate. It is amazing how much content some people try to fit on one page.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Contrast

I spoke a message today in student chapel on contrast and I was a little rushed since student chapel doesn't have a lot of time and we always have tons of announcements. I still really enjoyed talking about it even if I wasn't able to be as clear or as thorough as I would have liked.

We see contrast all around. Simple things like hot and cold, dirty and clean, and old and new. The contrast of light and darkness is a biblical contrast since it refers to our life as believers in a crooked and perverse generation (Phil 2:15). We live in a dark world and as Christians we are to be in sharp contrast to the world in which we live. We are not to separate ourselves from the world nor to blend with the world. Both of these would eliminate the contrast. One by isolating the light and the other by extinguishing it.

My problem is that I let the world in and the thinking of the world begins to dim my light. So i am not shining but merely glowing or worse I am blending with the world all together. I would prefer it not to be this way but the world is a strong force to someone who is not correct in his view of shining. 

I would argue that our shining is not an end or a means but rather a result. It is a result of a deep relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. E M Bounds in his book Essentials of Prayer put it better than I can:

“The flower and fruit of a holy life, abounding in good works, must be seen. It cannot be otherwise. But the surface growth must be based on a vigorous growth of unseen life and hidden roots. Deep down in the renewed nature must the roots of religion go which is seen on the outside. The external must have a deep internal groundwork. There must be much of the invisible and the underground growth, or else the life will be feeble and short-lived and the external growth sickly and fruitless.
He goes on to say,
  “…Activity is often at the expense of more solid, useful elements, and generally to the total neglect of prayer. To be too busy with God’s work to commune with God, to be busy with doing Church work without taking time to talk to God about His work, is the highway to backsliding, and many people have walked therein to the hurt of their immortal souls.

Notwithstanding great activity, great enthusiasm, and much hurrah for the work, the work and the activity will be but blindness without the cultivation and the maturity of the graces of prayer.”

I often think that serving Christ is the end but just serving Christ is no good without a deep relationship with him. It is from this relationship that we are able to shine forth.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Surprise

My girlfriend Kara surprised me today! I thought that she was going to come on thursday but she came today. My friend David sent me a text "call me 911" so I called thinking there was a big problem and he said that he needed help carrying something up in the Emmaus storage room. So I went up and when I got to the thing he wanted help with it was a cardboard banner and I was really confused. Just then Kara and Joanie jumped out and hit me with couch cussions. It was really a good surprise.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

School starts in a week

I have been thinking about a lot of things these days and I am having a hard time coming to a conclusion on a lot of them. 

One thing I have been thinking about is the value of the education that I am receiving and how I should be more involved in my classes and less involved in things outside of school. This goes against what I have felt for the past two years. I always felt that there was a great need to get out and put into practice what I am learning. While that is valid I think there is something to be said of spending time preparing for ministry and not letting ministry get in the way of the preparation.

Look at Paul he spent 3 years in Arabia being trained by God (Galatians 1:17) and Moses spent 40 herding sheep before God called him to ministry. David was a shepherd and Jesus spent 3 years with the apostles teaching them before he left. I feel this is the Mary time of my life when I have lots of time to sit at the feet of the Lord and learn from him. There will be other times to do the Martha work and I feel that I will be better prepared for it by being a Mary right now. 

This is not an easy thing since there is an atmosphere of service here at Emmaus. I don't want to put that down since I feel different. Yet I don't want to be a monk and never go out of my room either. So I am going to prioritize my time, putting more emphasis on my study of the word and less on ministry.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

I am at my brother's house now hanging with his family.  I just started reading a lot of blogs and decided to blog but not for a few weeks once camp is over and school starts.