*Quoted from movember.com:
It’s Movember, the month formerly known as November, dedicated to growing moustaches and raising awareness and funds for men’s health issues, specifically cancers affecting men. Please support my efforts by making a donation at http://mobro.co/neverdar/d.

We only have a month to grow and support these Movember moustaches, so please come along for the ride.

Thank you for donating at http://mobro.co/neverdar/d and for helping me change the face of men’s health. Go the Mo!

Lots more information is available on movember.com, as well as info on how you can join in and grow your mo for men’s health!

God loves you. God wants the very best for you. He has a wonderful plan for your life.

These are just some of the ways that we try to describe God to people.

We tell people to respond to this character of God with love and joy. We assure people that we can come to our loving Father boldly, because we are His children.

I think that we’re missing something in the exclusive use of this kind of language. I don’t think we get a complete picture of who God is when when we focus exclusively on this calm, safe language about God’s character.

When we look at the Old Testament language that describes how we should respond to God, we see dozens of verses like the one above, with a word that we don’t often teach.

Fear.

When we see in Proverbs, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” and compare that with all of the commands in the Bible to “fear the Lord,” we begin to get a more complete picture of God.

Even the most loving of fathers needs to discipline his children from time to time. The whole of Israel’s history is filled with God punishing His children when they disobeyed.

But the story doesn’t end there. God is indeed a loving father. He wants only the best for His children. When Israel returned to God in humility and repentance, God forgave and restored them. When we see God in this light, we can truly understand and appreciate His love, because we know He actually cares about what we do.

In this consequence-free society that we see around us, we often get caught up in the image that God doesn’t care what we do because He loves us. But love without consequence isn’t love – it’s apathy.

A loving father cares if his kids are hurting themselves or others. He punishes his children for their disobedience, and he forgives when they repent.

An apathetic father doesn’t need to forgive, because his kids ‘haven’t done anything wrong.’ An apathetic god wouldn’t need to send his son to redeem his children, because they wouldn’t need redemption.

I think it’s perfectly healthy for a child to be fearful of punishment for doing wrong. But that child also needs to know that the punishment comes from love and concern, and that forgiveness is always available.

The fear of the Lord may be the beginning of knowledge, but it’s certainly not the end.

When have you felt the ‘fear of God’?

For more on this topic, check out Francis Chan’s Basic: Fear God DVD

In the process of such diligent writing, it occurred to me how much I had been neglecting my own blog space over the years, and I determined that I would write more often and with a clear goal in mind.

So, on that note, I’ll be walking through the book of Proverbs over the next several weeks, and posting short devotional thoughts every couple of days or so.

Part two of this grand adventure will be to return to participation in Sunday Setlists over at theworshipcommunity.com

At some point, this blog may evolve into something with a little more purpose, but for now, if you’re reading, I appreciate any feedback you’d like to offer.

Here’s to diligence.

The story of Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis 32 has always been one of my favourite Old Testament stories:

And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.”

There are any number of deep thoughts in this passage, but the one that has been on my mind of late is the giving of the name ‘Israel’ to Jacob.

As is common in the Bible, a change of name is an indication of a change of destiny, but my thoughts center on the choice of the name. Now, I’m not trying to say anything against 3000+ years of history, but I find it interesting that we would have the name Israel as the choice here. The name Israel is translated ‘he contends with God,’ which has an obvious relation to the scene here in the passage, and is a clear improvement on Jacob, which means ‘heel.’

Or is it?

Is the renaming of Jacob, in fact, a sign of the blessing that he received from God, or is it meant to serve as a warning? Consistently through the next thousand years, the people of Israel will be in contention with God, going through this cycle of rejection, reprimand, repentance and restoration. I wonder if the choice of name itself is meant to serve as a prophetic word that the people are meant to learn from rather than to perpetuate.

I could be entirely out to lunch on this, but I still think that there’s a message in this for us, and it’s that we ought to be pursuing a life of obedience to God rather than being in contention with Him.

Are you contending with God over something at the moment? Maybe it’s time to realize that He can knock your hip out of joint any time He likes, and that it’s better to obey the One who is greater by far than us.

“Where no oxen are, the manger is clean,
But much revenue comes by the strength of the ox.” (Pr 14.4)

Sometimes we convince ourselves that, the simpler we make life, the better it will be. However, what we often fail to realize is that it’s the complicated, messy things that are necessary for real success.

Take, for example, our good friend the ox. Oxen are big, awkward, smelly, and a real pain to clean up after; however, in Solomon’s day (and even in some parts of the world today), a farmer with no oxen would have no livelyhood, because he wouldn’t have the means to produce enough…erm…produce to make a living.

This holds just as true for our own lives. Sometimes it’s the things that are a real pain that are the things that we need in order to be more successful. This is particularly true in our walk with God. God pursued us in the most inconvenient possible that we might benefit from it. Jesus asks that we, in response, deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him. He reminds us that nothing worthwile is ever convenient. The benefits of having an ox far outweigh the inconveniences, but it’s through the inconveniences that we are able to better value the benefits. Sometimes we need to suffer through those inconveniences in order to see the greatest benefit. Sometimes we need to suffer through cleaning the stable in order to generate revenue.

Where could you benefit from having an ox or two?

If you do a quick Google search, you’ll see that there is a fairly large portion of the tech community who have already weighed in, and to say the reviews are mixed would be way more than an understatement. In fact, I think I’ve read more negative reviews than positive ones so far, and that may not be a good sign.

Here’s the rub, though. Most of these negative reviews are focusing on expectations they had for a device of which they had absolutely no prior knowledge. Apple fandom being what it is, I’m not convinced there weren’t people out there who thought the iPad would solve world hunger while it made you coffee and teleported you to work in the morning (and – oh yeah – played music, to boot!).

I, for one, see the iPad to be pretty much exactly what I expected it to be (and just a little bit more), but maybe that’s because I didn’t expect it to be made of unicorn tails and angel tears.

I didn’t expect a camera. It would have been a cool feature to do video chat, but I didn’t think that was the goal of the machine.

I didn’t expect Flash support. Frankly, Flash is annoying at best on a full-featured Mac, so why put that aggravation into something that’s less capable?

I didn’t expect multitasking. This, I think, is most people’s biggest beef with the iPad. I don’t honestly see it as that big of a deal. People gripe about this on the iPhone, too, and yet it’s still punching the smart phone market right in the face. The power that Apple has built into this thing means that, if you actually need to switch from writing an email to surfing the web for a picture to put in said email, you can be over and back in a pretty short period of time, such that I doubt the average person would notice the difference in time over switching between two running applications. (Please let me clarify on one point. I have not actually touched the device. I have only seen the demos. This last point is, therefore, a little speculatory, but again, the system works surprisingly well on the iPhone OS already, so why introduce unknown variables to an already solid platform?)

There are many other gripes that I’ve seen out there, but I just wanted to touch on the few that people seem most upset about. But, on to what I did expect.

I expected it be a big iPod touch. The iPhone OS has proven itself to be a capable platform, so why mess around with something that already works? There was a lot of hope out there that Apple was going to do something that was as revolutionary for tablet computing as the iPhone was for smart phone computing. I wasn’t nearly that hopeful.

I expected an e-book reader that could rival the Kindle DX. E-books are quickly becoming the best way to consume large amounts of words on the go without resulting in a lifetime of chiropractor appointments from carrying pulverized trees around in your bag. The iPad takes the e-book market and brings it to a whole new level. The iBookstore is open to any publisher who wants to join the party, and gives the user a great resource for finding printed words. That, in itself, is fantastic, but what really takes the iPad forward is the fact that it already supports other e-book marketplaces, including the Kindle store, since Amazon was so kind as to put it on the iPhone. All of a sudden, you’ve got any number of ways to get books of any kind onto your machine. This, in my mind, makes the iPad worth the difference in price between it and the Kindle DX.

(As a side note, E-ink is a fantastic invention, and I appreciate the Kindle for what it is, but the comic book geek in me still holds a deep-seated resentment for being limited to my laptop or my iPod Touch for reading digital comics in full color.)

(As a second side note, I am a little disappointed that the iBookstore won’t be available outside the US at release, but I trust it will come along in due time.)

Apple did also manage to surprise me in a couple of ways that made me quite excited by the iPad as a potential way to replace my netbook as my portable machine (and for only a slightly higher price point).

First, I didn’t expect to see a hardware keyboard option, let alone Bluetooth keyboard compatibility. I’m excited by this in the way that little kids get excited about snow days in winter.

Second, I didn’t expect to see iWork show up and be fully functional (and for a crazy low price, at that). Combine Keynote with the VGA output option, and the possibilities grow even further.

Third, I wasn’t expecting the level of support for the current app store apps that they opened with. I was kind of expecting to see, at best, iPhone resolution for some current apps, but I wasn’t expecting to see almost every app available (and in full-screen) without the developers releasing iPad specific versions.

Now, maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I’m more caught up in the hype than I thought. Or, maybe I just had really low expectations coming into this announcement. Either way, I see the iPad as delivering everything I want it to deliver, at a better price than I was expecting.

But that’s just me.

One of the other key features of this series has been the use of secular songs that center around the word ‘crazy’ in their themes and lyrics as a lead-in for the message. This particular week, we were treated to a performance of Hannah Montana’s ‘Let’s Get Crazy’.

The message itself focused on the idea that if we simply act as though we have our spiritual lives in order, eventually our actions will soak into our souls and we’ll be spiritually mature. The point, of course, is that it’s the opposite that’s actually true – we need to be changed on the inside first, and when our hearts change, so do our actions and attitudes.

As many of you are aware, I try to participate off and on (hopefully soon it will be more on than off) in the Sunday Setlist blog carnival, which has recently moved from Fred McKinnon’s blog to theworshipcommunity.com.  As part of it, worshipers can post recaps of their services with a list of the songs that were sung. Anyone is welcome to participate, be they worship leaders, pastors, support people, or anyone who might be in the congregation. All you have to do is blog about the worship service you attended and post a link to your post on this page. Whether you blog or not, though, please feel free to check out the links to the other recaps that people post. It’s really cool to see what others are experiencing in their respective services as we all join for worship at different times and in different ways.

So, without further ado, This weekend’s setlist for Allison Church:

Opening:
Meet With Me
How He Loves
Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone)

Before the Message:
Let’s Get Crazy – Hannah Montana

Closing:
From the Inside Out

So, once again, Please feel free to check out Sunday Setlists over at theworshipcommunity.com.

In the wake of the disaster in Haiti, which I’m we’re all reeling over, there’s been another issue come up that seems to be stealing our attention away from the needs of the Haitian people, and provoking great anger among both Christians and non-Christians alike.

A certain televangelist (who I shall not name, as this post is not about him) made some rather unfortunate comments about the situation in Haiti, which has led to a rather large outpouring of unfortunate comments about this particular televangelist. Many of these responses and comments have left me with one question in my mind:

As Christians, what are we about?

My hunch is that, no matter who long or short your answer might be, there’s one word that rings common across the board:

love

We love because he first loved us (I John 4:19). It doesn’t matter from what denomination you hail, or what your theology is, you can’t argue that at the very core of the Christian faith is this one simple word.

love

I’ve seen the statement. What’s missing?

love

I’ve seen the responses. What’s still missing?

love

This issue is one of the very few things in this world that makes me truly angry. I know that we’re all in the process of regeneration and that we all have sin in our lives that we continue to deal with on a day-to-day basis, but there comes a point where we all have to agree to work on this one thing, and make that the thing that the world sees.

Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13.35). If we want to be known as disciples of Christ, we need to start with one simple command:

love

There are a great many issues that the secular world has with the Church, and I guarantee you that nowhere on the list is, “those Christians are just too loving!” More often than not, the issue is exactly the opposite. We’re often seen as judgmental, as bigoted, as downright hateful, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is saddened by that fact.

So, let’s start to change that. Let’s start in our homes, in our churches, in our neighbourhoods. Let’s deal with others with love and respect, especially those with whom we disagree. Let me be clear on this: we don’t have to agree with or condone the actions of everyone to love them. God does not love anyone any more or less than anyone else. Neither should we.

Let’s show the world that we belong to Christ. Let’s love one another, the way that God loves us. Let that be what makes headlines. Let that be what people think of when they think of the Church, and not the unfortunate comments of one man.

Anyway, at this point, we’ve been back from Korea for a little over two months, and we do indeed miss the Community of Joy and all its members, but it’s been great to be back home as well, and re-experience North American worship services with the knowledge that we gained from our time overseas.

This Sunday, I departed a little from my usual plan, and went to the 11:00 service at Allison Church rather than the 9:15 which is closer to home for me. I had a couple of reasons for this, both involving my plans to get involved in Allison’s music ministry since it looks like we’re in Moncton for a little longer than we had initially hoped (but that’s a story for another day, and probably isn’t why you’re reading today’s post).

This Sunday, being the third week of Advent, was the third week in Allison’s ‘Christmas with Izzy’ series, where we talk about the relevance of Isaiah to the New Testament, specifically the Christmas story. We were also treated to a presentation by the children’s ministry, with fairy tale characters talking about the Christmas story.

For this week’s chapter in the Izzy saga, Dave looked at Isaiah 40, leading us from the point of Isaiah saying, “The King is coming” to saying, “The King has come”. One of the most thought-provoking points that Dave brought up (that also happens to be the one that’s far to easy to leave at church and not take home with us) was that God calls us to SHOUT. ‘Shout for what?’ asks Isaiah. “HERE IS YOUR GOD” (see Isa 40.6-11). Dave makes the point that we find it so easy to shout at sporting events or at the visit of celebrities, but we seem to have a problem shouting for the King of kings. We don’t hesitate to shout our excitement about earthly things, but we often pause when it comes to shouting about the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us (see John 1.14).

We certainly need always to be willing to give an answer for the faith that we have, and this time of year is among the best times to do that, which is exactly why Dave said that Allison is doing multitudinous Christmas Eve services at both campuses.

For the music this morning, John and his team led, putting together a great blend of music that I know I appreciated. The list went something like this:

Opening music:

• Meet With Me (Ten Shekel Shirt)
• It Came Upon a Midnight Clear (with an extra chorus that I wasn’t familiar with)
• Emmanuel (Hallowed Manger Ground) (Tomlin)

Next came the Children’s presentation, followed by a baby dedication, and the congregation joined the kids in singing their song.

Then, before the sermon, we sang Silent Night, after which Dave shared with us, and we closed with the chorus to Emmanuel as we had sung earlier.

Please feel free to head on over to Fred McKinnon’s blog and share about your worship services as part of his Sunday Setlists blog carnival. You don’t have to be a worship leader to participate, all you need to do is blog about the church service you attended this week.