Words of Truth

• • The problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar.

• • The problem with many people is that they quit committing their lives to Christ because they are afraid that He will make their lives miserable.
• • The reasonableness of surrender: In light of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the surrendered Christian life only makes sense

What hit me was when he said, “What are you living for?” I started thinking about my life and what I have done in the past ten years. I graduated from Bible College and Seminary with the intent of serving God in full time Christian ministry. I became a pastor for two and a half years, but the entire time I was in college up to the present time, I have been accumulating debt: student loans, car debt, credit card debt, etc. When I went back to school to be a nurse, it was with the intent that I would get a good paying nursing job, work hard, and pay off our debt. We could then re-enter the ministry unencumbered. We moved to Indianapolis and I got a job making three times as much money as I ever did before. We then made some more bad debt decisions (a “consolidation” that didn’t work out), and our spending increased to exceed our income.

What I realized that night, is that we have been simply treading water (or drifting) for the past several years, and we have made no headway on this debt. It is true what the Bible says about “no man can serve two masters.’ The desire of my heart is to preach and teach the Word full time, but I cannot do that right now, since I am busy serving my other master: debt.

That night I told God that I was giving it all back to Him. I crawled back up on the altar, and I am waiting to see what He does. I will continue to work hard, we are cutting expenses, and we are not wasting money anymore. One thing I had to give up was my Colts tickets. I was spending $640 a year on my seat for ten games. Each game, I would spend $10 for parking, $15 for food, and who knows how much in gas (90 minute round trip). I realized that over the past few years, the Colts were becoming more important to me than God. I would struggle with going to church when the afternoon game wasn’t over. This spring I had actually decided to skip church this fall if there was a Colts home game during church. As we know, anything more important than God is an idol.

This doesn’t mean that I’m not a Colts fan now, it just means that I have reaffirmed that God is more important to me than football. I was looking forward to tonight, which was the first home game (albeit preseason) for the Colts in the new Lucas Oil Stadium. I had planned to attend. I actually stayed home for reasons I will get into in the next post. Suffice it to finish this post by saying that at Camp, I decided to start living for God instead of for myself.

ME RIDING MY MOTORCYCLE FOR THE FIRST TIME

Yesterday I got a letter from the bank that “owns” my new motorcycle. They want the title. I just got the title this past week, and was waiting to register it until the next payday (since I was sick, we are short this month). But since they were breathing down my neck, I had to register it today. I called my insurance company and got the motorcycle insurance added. Then I drove to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (in my car, since I haven’t been able to take my motorcycle anywhere since it didn’t have a license plate).

I got to the BMV to get the plate, and the lady told me that I need to have the VIN certified (that it’s correct). I could call the cops and have them come out to verify the VIN, but I didn’t really think that was necessary. “Darla” at BMV told me that I “could” just ride it to the BMV sans plate, and get it when I arrive. I said, “Is that legal?” She said, “well, not really.” She then got me a “96 hour permit” to ride the motorcycle, which I then took home.

Then I put on my helmet, my jacket, my gloves, boots, and my shades. I jumped on the bike and rode it to the BMV (about five miles on city streets). I got my plate, and now I’m legal.

This was the first time I have ever been in control of a motorcycle. I rode a Puch moped in high school for a while, and this was absolutely nothing like it! It was exhilarating and nerve-wracking all at the same time. I ended up killing the motor twice on the way to the BMV (both while starting from a stop sign), and once on the way back. I am starting to get the hang of it, but there were times when I didn’t trust myself and so I elected to take the easy route. For instance, at one intersection I needed to turn left onto a road with no stop signs (I was sitting at a stop sign…it was a T intersection and the cross road did not stop…whatever you call that). I waited and waited for a good interval (I would have gone at several points in my car, but didn’t trust myself with the bike). The cars were piling up behind me, so I just turned right instead of left, drove down the road, turned around in the Target parking lot and came back.

I’m getting the hang of it. The shifting is really easy (and to think that was the part I thought would be difficult). The clutch/throttle switching is easier than I thought (it probably helps that I can drive a stick). The major thing I have to work on is my turns. They are too wide. But hey, on my way back home, I actually shifted during a turn. Bonus points for difficulty!!! Oh, and Happy Birthday, Dad!

You know how you learn something from someone else, and it’s basically a theory in your head, because you’ve never seen it happen in the real world? Like when you teach a child that the stove is hot, but they don’t think about it until they accidentally touch it. Then they learn experientially to stay away from the stove.

I learned something new this week. I learned it as head knowledge years ago as something that ancient civilizations would do to damage other cultures, but this week I really learned it. After you are done making homemade ice cream, don’t pour the rock salt/ice mixture out on the grass! It will kill the grass deader than dead. We tried to go out and pick up the rock salt that was lying on the grass, but enough of it had leached into the ground to sterilize it. Anybody know how to unsterilize ground?

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I am enjoying the Olympics for the most part, but there are a few things that are bugging me.

1. China’s use of deception in the opening ceremony. Evidently there are at least two different parts of the opening ceremony that were misrepresented: a. The fireworks outside the “birds nest” were mostly CGI. Whatever. Not really a big deal, but it’s a symptom. b. The second deception: the little girl who sang. Amazing singing talent, right? Nope. The real little girl singer was “too ugly” by the Chinese Politburo’s standards, so they got this girl to lip sync. Here is her picture:

The “performer” is on the left and the actual singer is on the right. Don’t tell me that kid isn’t cute. Just because the girl on the right looks like she’s mainlining happy-juice, that doesn’t make her cuter.

Another thing that bothered me? The fact that China still refuses to recognize Taiwan (also called The Republic of China or ROC) as an independent country. So they refuse to allow the Taiwanese Chinese to appear under their own flag, but instead make them declare themselves “Chinese Taipei”. To bring this home, consider this: The 2012 summer Olympics are going to be in London. How would you, as an American feel, if the British refused to let us use our flag (and substituted a generic “Olympic” flag), and made everyone refer to us as “The British Colonies”. Not that it’s likely, but it gives you an idea of how the Taiwanese must feel.

Kim and I watched the women’s synchronized diving today. I hate watching events with subjective judging. It seemed kind of odd how the judges kept giving the Chinese girls really high scores, and everybody else got lower scores, even though there really wasn’t much difference in the performances . Specifically, I found the New Zealand judge to be doing this. No, I am not an expert, but when there are six judges, and five of them give the Americans 7.5, and the New Zealand judge consistently gave the Americans scores around 4.5, a full three points lower than the other judges. Suspicious.

The final problem (so far) that I have had with these Olympics is in regards to the women’s gymnastics competition: I noticed the same problem with the judges (the commentators even mentioned the strangeness of the Chinese getting better scores than they deserved, and the Americans getting lower scores than the commentators expected. After watching one performance, and seeing the score, one of the announcers made a comment about “wow, I thought that should have been much higher.” And those ARE professionals. They usually hire sports professionals to announce those things.

One minor note, Bela Karolyi mentioned to Bob Costas that the Chinese “women” were underage. Olympic rules state that competitors must be 16 years old. . I remember commenting about that to someone at work earlier this weekend. I said, “if that girl is 16, I’ll eat my hat.” They are more like 13. I guess it’s possible, but what are the odds that the Chinese found six girls who were very flexible, started training them at age 3, and all six just happened to have a delayed entry into puberty? Yeah.

We aren’t even going to get into the human rights stuff or the pollution.