Oct 21

Is your worship wonky?

Wow! Corporate worship gone wonky. Listen carefully to the words. Then read Psalm 96

Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth!
Sing to the LORD, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day.
Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples!
For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods.
For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens.
Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.
Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength!
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering, and come into his courts!
Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth!
Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns!
Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.”
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
before the LORD, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness.

Oct 20

How big is God?

Oct 14

How to clean your washing machine

 

1 – Fill a spray bottle with a 50/50 mix of vinegar and water. Spray it on the outside of the washer and wipe the whole thing down with a soft, clean cloth.

2 – To clean the inside, fill washer with warm water. As it fills, add a gallon of vinegar.

3 – Run the washer through an entire hot-water wash cycle. The acid in the vinegar will get rid of grease, bacteria and soap scum.

4 – Run the washer a second time on the shortest cycle possible with just pain water, to rinse away any trace of vinegar.

Read more: How to Clean a Washing Machine With Vinegar | eHow.com

Oct 13

Stuff

Every fall I start stirring in my stuff. There is closet ,drawer, attic and basement stuff. I separate the good stuff from the bad stuff, then I stuff the bad stuff anywhere the stuff is not too crowded until I decide if I need the bad stuff.

When the Lord calls me home, my children will want the good stuff, but the bad stuff, stuffed wherever there is room among all the other stuff, will be stuffed in bags and taken to the dump where all the other people’s stuff has been taken.

This fall I had an extra closet built so I would have a place for all the stuff too good to throw away and too bad to keep with my good stuff. You may not have this problem, but I seem to spend a lot of time with stuff……food, cleaning, medicine, clothes and outside stuff. Whatever would life be like if we didn’t have all this stuff?

Now there is all that stuff we use to make us smell better, stuff to make our hair look good. Stuff to make us look younger….healthier, stuff to hold us in, and stuff to fill us out! There is stuff to read, play with, entertain us, and stuff to eat. We stuff ourselves with food stuff.

Well, our lives are filled with stuff…good stuff, bad stuff, little stuff, big stuff useful stuff, junky stuff, and everyone’s stuff.

Now when we leave all our stuff and go to heaven, whatever happens to our stuff won’t matter. We will still have the good stuff God has prepared for us in heaven!!!!

–author unknown; found circulating the Net via email

Oct 04

Password Security

When is a password secure? How long would it take a hacker to break it?

Use this website to check your own password. Mine hit 2 million years…

Ways to create a strong password:

1) no dictionary words, proper nouns – nothing backwards or with a number simply tacked on the end
2) no personal information (don’t use a child or pet’s name, birthdate. phone numbers, etc…) – at least make it a challenge for the hacker
3) length, width and depth create a degree of complexity

  • longer is better (6 – 9 characters?)
  • width is the type of characters – use 3 of the 4 types in your password (A,B,C,etc. and a,b,c,… and  1,2,3,… and $,?,&)
  • depth – choose something difficult to guess; think of phrases, use mnemonics, use the first letter of each word in a phrase, substitute numbers for letters, etc..

 

For more information, use google. Here are a few links to get your started:

http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/password_strength.png?tag=siu-container;attachment_1341
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_strength
http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/passwords-create.aspx
http://www.tcnj.edu/~it/security/passwords.html

Sep 18

Happy Birthday to my church – Shades Mountain Baptist!!!

We are 100 years old today!

Sep 12

grace is

Posted: September 11th, 2011 | Author: Serena Woods

grace is forgiveness, but not just forgiveness.

grace is empowering and powerful, but it’s not just power.

grace costs everything and it’s free.

grace is freeing, but it’s not cheap.

grace is favor.

favor is

  • approval
  • preference
  • bias
  • partiality

Grace is God saying: I approve you, I prefer you, I am biased toward you, I am partial to you.

God pours His grace out because He wants you. He made an excuse for you. He set things up so that you could win.

You ask Him to forgive you and He’s an infinite number of steps ahead of you.

While sin cripples you, grace gives you the power to run without the handicap.

You have to deny your own common sense and sense of justice, thereby denying yourself, to really grasp just a hint of the complexity of grace.

When you know that you can’t lose, then you’ll play the game because you enjoy it. There is no pressure, there is no competition, there is no getting kicked out, and there is only one MVP. Jesus in on your team.

He died to keep you there. There is no way He’s letting you go. He wants you to play.

Now go get back out there.

Read more: http://www.graceisforsinners.com/life/grace-is/#ixzz1XfyrMmxx

Sep 11

Social Media in the post 9/11 world

This article started my thought process… 9/11 In A Social Media World: How The Times Have Changed

The absence of social media 10 years ago – what did we miss since tweeting, facebook, and texting were not widely used?

This is another posting that is relevant; it compares 9/11/01 with the day Osama was killed in May 2011.

This NYTimes article contrasts the communication methods used by the masses on 9/11 and today (the 10th anniversary)

My thoughts? I have not formulated my opinion on social media yet – but I use it! I email, maintain several websites, Facebook, tweet and IM. Oh yeah, this is a blog post! 🙂 And if you’re reading this, you use social media as well.

Cell phones were common – but smartphones were not: no texting, no camera, no video, no instant messages. To get information to family and friends, you called them. To search for missing co-workers and family members on 9/11/2001, people put up posters in New York City. Communication was experienced with the same kind of relative delays that asynchronous short wave radio uses. The data must make a complete circuit and only one person could talk at a time. How different from today – when we are bombarded with text messages and emails and tweets and phone calls! Can you imagine not hearing from a family member for minutes and hours and days after a catastrophic event? We expect our family and friends to connect with us immediately – we’re always on, always in touch…

I’ve heard that technology is increasing in developments and formats and possibilities and speed exponentially. If that’s true, the advancements and changes we’ve seen in these last 10 years will be small relative to those that will happen in the next 10 years. Who knows? We may have the Star Trek-type computer access – and a teleporter would be really cool!

On the other hand, I actually enjoy a face-to-face conversation now and then. And sometimes it’s good to hear someone’s voice on the phone. And I absolutely loved getting a personal letter in the mail – not a bill or a form letter or an advertisement – but something personalized and handwritten just to me.

So…social media is here. It’s like releasing the feathers from a pillow into the wind. Our ‘normal’ is a break-neck pace of constant communication. What will ‘normal’ be in 2021? Who knows – but I’m going to hang on and try to keep up! 🙂

Sep 07

mega-churches in the SBC

This is a list of the mega-churches in the Southern Baptist Convention – published by Lifeway. My church is number 89. The definition of a mega-church is 2000+ in weekly attendance and givers to the Cooperative Program. These numbers are all self-reported. (Take them with a grain of salt!)

Sep 06

How many crayons are in your box?