This is an image of me reading my speech.

This is an image of me thinking about water.

This is an image of the portions of my body and clothing that weren’t immersed at the same to time as the rest.

This is an image of me.  My sister decided to take a picture of me since I had been baptized recently.

This is an image of me gazing disdainfully at the water.  Try to think of sin that way.

This is a video of my speech and baptism.

And once again, here is an electronic copy of the paper from which I read that speech.

I am scheduled to be baptized in the Seaside Church building on Sunday, April 24th 2011 during the 11 am service.

I’ve been baptized before and I plan to explain why I want to be baptized again before being baptized again.  I’ve written down the majority of what I plan to say on Sunday and it is available here in pdf format.

Sorry about the short notice.  I haven’t been checking my church’s facebook posts often enough, and so I found out about the opportunity just last night.  The thing is that I’ve been wanting to obey God in this for a while now, and I put it off for a while before that, so I don’t want to wait any longer.

Happy Resurrection Sunday!

Paul Trip wrote about counseling and the most influential voice in your life.

How faith driven and Christ centered is the conversation that you have with you every day?

No one is more influential in your life than you are because no one talks to you more than you do.  You are in an unending conversation with yourself.

There is a direct relationship between the content of this unending conversation and the state of your soul each and every day.

Psalm 42 gives us the unique opportunity to listen to the internal conversation of the psalmist as he evaluates his own eternal conversation.

1. The troubled soul:  All is not well within the soul of the author of the Psalm.  Perhaps this is similar to your experience.  Perhaps your soul is in torment.  If you are not prepared for this experience you will be vulnerable to temptation and sin when this experience comes.  This Psalm informs you that the problem is not unique and you are not alone.  The psalms express honest human emotion in the context of faith.  The psalmist is troubled by three experiences
   1. The apparent absence of God.  Verses 1-4 are about the apparent absence of God.  The Psalmist is thirsty for God, yet his soul is downcast and in turmoil.  The problem is that he feels distant from and forgotten by God.  The psalmist desires God’s presence, but feels God’s absence.  Charles Spurgeon seemed to have this problem along with many other people who were very close to God.  Spurgeon said that faith in God was the solution.
   2. The presence of trials.  Verses 6-7.  The waters and breakers are continuous and overwhelming.  Perhaps you have loneliness.  Perhaps it appears to you that everyone else has many friends.  Perhaps you thought that you would be married by now, but lately, you have begun to wonder if it will ever happen.  Perhaps your body has a chronic debilitating illness which makes even the simplest daily tasks to become difficult.  This contributes to the troubling of your soul.
   3. The opposition of men.  Verse 3, 9-10.  “Where is your God?”  The soul can be downcast and troubled because of the opposition of man.  This can be spiritual or supernatural, the demonic, etc. seeking to convince us that God has abandoned us in our trials.  The opposition comes in the form of individual people as well, especially in universities.  Regardless of the humility with which you hold biblical positions, you will know opposition from relatives and teachers and co-workers and that opposition can affect your soul as it affected the soul of the psalmist who was troubled in his soul.

It is particularly noteworthy to look carefully at how the psalmist addressed his troubled soul in response and the God of his soul:

1. The hopeful soul.  When your soul is troubled and in turmoil, there are two appropriate responses.
   1. Talk to yourself (verses 5, 11).  The psalmist interrupts his soul’s unending conversation.  This makes all of the difference.  Too often this practice is neglected by those who are troubled in their souls.  Spiritual Depression by Martin Loyde Jones is an exposition of psalm 42.  “We must talk to ourselves instead of letting ourselves talk to us…Most of your unhappiness is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself…You have to take yourself in hand.  You much preach to yourself and question yourself…and say to yourself ‘Hope in God!’”  Have you realized this?  Address yourself with the gospel and the promises of God.  Talking truth to yourself is a learned skill that requires practice and effort.  One conversation with yourself will not normally be enough to alter our troubled souls.  You must persevere.  You’ve been listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself for a long time.  The good news tonight is that you can begin to talk to your soul.  If you begin right away, you will reap the effect of the truth sometime in the future.  So the next logical question is “what do I say to my soul?”.  The psalmist provided a starters kit full of content: “hope in God.”  Troubled souls can not be trusted and circumstances often lie to us when they inform us that God is not for us…When we cannot see God’s hand we must trust God’s heart.  You can expand on this content by searching the scriptures for promises applicable to your trials and troubles.
   2. Talk to God.  Verse 8 is a prayer to God, built from knowledge of God from God’s word.  This turns his troubled soul into a hopeful soul.  Troubled souls become hopeful souls as we sing truth to our souls.  God desires that we humbly but boldly remind Him of His promises and rehearse them before Him.  Spurgeon said that “God’s promises were not intended to be thrown away as waste paper…”  The more time that you spend talking to yourself and reminding God of his promises, the less time you will spend listening to yourself and allowing a downcast and a troubled soul.

One cannot read this psalm without remembering our Savior’s uniquely troubled soul as his death on the cross drew near.  The psalmist felt the absence of God, but the Savior actually was abandoned by God and was crushed by God.  The Savior’s soul was uniquely troubled so that the souls of sinners like us would know freedom from the fear of eternal torment of soul in Hell.

Psalm 42:5 (NAS)

Why are you in despair, O my soul?

And why have you become disturbed within me?

Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him

For the help of His presence.

Psalm 42:11 (NAS)

11         Why are you in despair, O my soul?

And why have you become disturbed within me?

Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him,

The help of my countenance and my God.

The logical question to follow Bishop Jefro’s statement would be what are the problems with the buddy’s illustration for the affectionate man’s wife?

It seems to me that there are three primary problems:

1. The illustration implies that the wife is a burden and not a joy.  This is hopefully not, but may be true.
2. The illustration implies that the husband did not choose the wife or that the bridegroom was somehow forced to marry the bride and has been unable to free himself since.
3. The illustration implies that that which binds a wife to her husband is unpleasant and oppressive.

On the positive side, however, the ball and chain illustration does have a strong point:  It points out that a man’s wife is bound to him closely.

So, in order to redeem this strong point, I have modified the ball and chain illustration and renamed it the iPod illustration.  The man should inform his beer drinking and football watching buddy that his wife is more like an iPod than a ball and chain to him because of the following reasons:

1. His wife is more of a joy to him than a burden.  This statement may need to be objectified for accuracy, but the distance on the continuum between the current position and complete joy is indicative of the remaining work of sanctification.  John Piper has pointed out that Ephesians 5 says that Jesus, whom husbands everywhere are to emulate (vs. 1 & 2) went to a lot of troublesome (deadly) suffering and died because he wanted to have a radiant church for Himself (vs. 27).  Not everyone responds well to Jesus, and not all wives respond well to their (respective) husbands, so if you’re a man thinking of becoming married, choose a lady who wants to respond well to Jesus.
2. The men I know who have iPods, myself included, have those iPods because we wanted iPods before we had iPods and so we spent significant chunks of money on them.  Our memories of this spending encourage us to enjoy them instead of wasting them.
3. The men I know who have iPods, myself included, carry them around with us everywhere we go all of the time because we desire the benefit of their presence all of the time, not because of an oppressive link.  Note that the benefits of the presence of said iPod are very great if said iPod is an iPod Touch!

So here you have it from the twenty-seven and a half year old unmarried man whose iPod has a cracked screen and was lost in an armchair for several months during which the twenty-seven and a half year old moved (with his armchair) from Silverdale to Bremerton:  Don’t allow your wife to be called a ball and chain!

I took a look at them this afternoon and I am amazed that the things that I saw are somehow lucrative. I guess that this wouldn’t seem like quite such a suprise to me if it weren’t for the existance of public libraries and the internet, but since these both exist, I can’t figure out who watches it.

One of the channels is a weather only channel, so I think that I’ll just leave the tuner there.

I’ll start with the Coffee Oasis place in west Bremerton.  The Coffee Oasis place  is a facility that his been configured for ministry to lots of different people, but many of them are quite poor in the eyes of the world.  Every time that I go there I am reminded of how small my love for Jesus is.  This usually happens when I am standing around the few people with whom I am aquanted there and thinking about the best way to make myself sound good.  About this time someone starts telling someone else about how amazing Jesus is or what Jesus did for her or how grateful he is to be saved because he is not very smart, but God laid salvation out for him on a silver platter in such a way that he would have been a fool to not choose it.  I met one of the Coffee Oasis ministers at Washington State University.  Now I attend a different church in west Bremerton with people whom the world would say are significantly more successful than those at the Coffee Oasis, but I have recently been thinking that perhaps my friend has been blessed with greater love for God because he has taken people who have been discarded by the world and made them his community.

So let me point out to you a better blog (like, better than my own) by Daniel Frederick of the Coffee Oasis in west Bremerton:  in full and glad surrender:  http://dafrederick.blogspot.com/

You probably won’t find too much author glorifying stuff there.

So once again I am publishing this previously published memo which I believe should be used as a pattern for flyers for all such events.

Have some good Candy Partying this month.

2006

2007

I have two friends named Brandon, and now they are both married.  I took pictures, but I didn’t get paid.  I didn’t get paid because I don’t have good equipment and because my photography skills are insufficient, and because I did not indicate ahead of time that I would bring a camera with me.  I had fun anyway.

This is a picture of Brandon and Brandon’s dad and Brandon’s mom.

This is an image of Brandon and Brandon’s brother and Brandon’s other brother and Kyle, who was very nice to me when I showed up at Washington State University.

This is an image of pastor Busby of the Evangelical Free Church of Pullman and his daughter.  Pastor Busby gave his daughter away and performed a forty-five minute ceremony, which I am told was his shortest ever.

You can all tell what is going on in this image.  For some strange reason, the newlyweds decided to break the convention of tilting their heads to their respective right sides.  This picture would likely have turned out better if they had observed that convention.  No, I don’t know about that convention from experience, just observation and questioning.  Perhaps I should ask around some more.  Perhaps I can figure out how to include a questionnaire voting thing in this blog.  Until then, go ahead and post comments if you have experience.

This is an image of the back end of a wedding.

This is an image of the reception starting off in about the normal way.

This image shows the bride wearing the groom’s coat and the groom carrying the bride’s flowers.  This continued for the majority of the duration of the reception.  This image also shows Jay who was practicing his skill of walking in one direction while looking in another.

Proverbs 18:22

The wedding seemed to be successful. The ceremony was annotated. This means that the past told us what he was about to do and why it was that he thought he was doing it before he did it.

Then my sister and her husband and me had our pictures taken. He had a nice tripod which we didn’t take a picture of, but we did take a picture of the “huge free” sign.

I had an interesting time at the Schuette’s community group on Thursday night because there was a discussion about whether or not people should be allowed to be baptized immediately upon the transmission of a statement of repentance. Three of the seven people who were baptized on Sunday had previously been deterred from baptism by men who thought that the appropriate time for their baptism had not yet, or never would come. On the other hand, one lady at community group knew of several people who were baptized at a summer camp (candy was involved) but had not been known to live as Christians.

My comment was that maybe baptisms should be a bit more public than they generally are because if they were people might be a bit less likely to be baptized just to be baptized. I seem to have changed my mind from what I was thinking at the Tuesday night community group when I said that baptisms didn’t need to be public because circumcision wasn’t public, but that people should know that they had occured. Perhaps Mars Hill Church has come across the best of both worlds by including video of baptisms on the world wide web. I guess that this blog helps too.

The most interesting thing I heard was that the reasoning that says that new believers should wait and live as Christians for a while before they are baptized is the same reasoning that says that people people who have affection for each other should wait a while and live together to see how they get along before they become married to each other.

Directly above this text is an image of a goose which distracted us all at the front end.

This is an image of Alan telling us all why it is that he was about to baptized.

This is an image of Alan and lead pastor Chris (Swanny) walking into the Island Lake
Directly before.

Directly after.

One down, six to go.

This is an image of Kehly telling us all why it is that she was about to baptized.

Two down, five to go.
This is an image of Clarissa telling us all why it is that she was about to baptized.

This is an image of Clarissa being baptized.

This is an image of Paige and her daddy telling the witnesses why she is about to be baptized.

Directly Before

During.Directly after.

Four down, three to go.

This is an image of Olivia telling lead pastor Chris (Swanny) why it is that she was about to baptized.

Five down, two to go.

This is an image of Candice (not Queen of the Ethiopians) telling us all why it is that she was about to baptized.

Directly After.

Six down, one to go.

Directly after.

Now take a look at lead pastor Chris (Swanny) in this picture and compare it the wedding picture below.
Now you tell me which event is happier.

I don’t really know how to describe the system in a complete way, so here are five things that I like about it.

1. The Bible software is not just Bible software. Many different books can be downloaded and plugged into it. For instance, the books that I have plugged into it since my original purchase are: The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer, The distinguishing Traits of the Christian Character, and Systematic Theology.
2. By searching the entire library for a particular biblical passage, any reference in any book in the library that refers to that biblical passage will be found. In this way, the entire library can be used as a Bible commentary.
3. Lots of books that are plugged into the library system include references to the Bible. By placing my cursor directly on top of these references, the text of these references is instantaneously displayed before my very eyes in the translation of my choosing. This takes much less time than flipping through the paper pages of a book.
4. A double click of any word in any book opens up the appropriate dictionary. This may be a Bible dictionary or just the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.
5. The whole thing stays on my hard drive, so there are always lots of things to read, even if the computer is not connected to the internet.

There was a bit of Bible teaching there (three session) and I took notes. I am providing these notes at the request of those who attended, but neglected to take notes. I am not providing these notes because they are particularly clear, terse, or helpful. Sometimes I just type things out to help me to follow what is being taught and I never look at them again.

Notes are here

But I have come up with something that may be beneficial to some of you. Here are two Bible verses which I have had several occasions to use recently:

Proverbs 18:1-2

The sermon was about regeneration which I have not studied very much aside from learning Titus 3:5 in AWANA. The sermon reminded me of a book that I read in December of 2007 as I began to benefit from a confrontation regarding my sin which was pushed upon me (the confrontation was pushed upon me, not the sin). The book is called The Distinguishing Traits of the Christian Character (1819) by Gardiner Spring. The book is almost like a lab manual that enables its reader to do science in his or her own mind so that he or she can determine whether or not the uncommon graces of God are at work inside of him or her.

I think that these sorts of things are important to look over so that you can make sure that you are not deceiving yourself and confusing the grace of God with your own wishful thinking (so listen to the sermon and or or read the book).

Pastor Mark talked about three works that Jesus does (in the following particular order):

1. The work that Jesus does for someone (justification)
2. The work that Jesus does in someone (regeneration (I think that this drives sanctification))
3. The work that Jesus does through someone (good works)

A whole list of observations that a person can make about himself or herself to determine whether or not they have been regenerated was pointed out based on scripture. I seem to remember that most of them had something to do with newness (newness of heart, newness of mind, newness of desires, etc.).

So I left Seattle with some ideas that I had not thought of before:

1. Christianity really doesn’t have to be very complicated. All that I really have to do is respond to Jesus appropriately
2. I have been regenerated, my deepest desires are to worship Jesus and not myself
3. Seems like there was something else. Perhaps I will be reminded of it and replace this line with it later

Of course I recommend it along with another sermon about Unlimited Limited Atonement (small audio, large audio, notes).

Yesterday’s sermon is available here.

During the sermon, I learned two new words: Monergism and Synergism.

Monergism is the idea that God decides ahead of time who He is going to save and then He saves them unilaterally. God just reaches down and grabs a sinner and says, “sorry, I know you were traveling towards hell as quickly as your little legs would carry you, but I have decided to save you. You’ll thank me later.”

Synergism is the idea that God extends His arm from heaven to men, and that those who are saved are the people who wisely accept God’s help and reach out to Him so that He can lift them up to be with Him.

My apparent normality was made possible by the writing of my dear sister, which is included below. Prior to reading that, please enjoy this picture of me appearing to be a normal person during my lunch hour.

Eating out

Veggie Burritos (Qdoba, Chipotle, Taco del Mar)

When you order the veggie burrito, make sure you say “no beans, no cheese” (possibly more than once). Other than that, you should get a flour tortilla with rice, lettuce, tomatoes (are considered “mild salsa” or “pico de gallo”) and guacamole if you wanted it. And sometimes there are grilled green peppers and onions that can go in as well.

Veggie sub/sandwich (Subway, Georgio’s, Panera)

You need to pick the sub (“I’ll have a veggie sub please”), then you pick the bread (ask for “Italian” or “white”), then you pick the size (6’’ or 12’’) and the kind of cheese (none (duh)). I like to have mine toasted with green peppers and onions and then other stuff added on when it comes out of the toaster, but you can have it anyway you want it (toasted or not—you have to ask if you want it toasted) with lettuce, onions, tomatoes, green peppers, olives, pickles etc… Pretty much the person making it will ask you what you want, and you just tell them as they are putting it together for you. At the end, you can get oil and vinegar (pretty much the 2 components that make Italian dressing, which I like), mustard (I usually get one stripe of spicy mustard—isn’t really that spicy, but it’s a good flavor), mayonnaise (I usually skip ‘cause I already have the oil and vinegar for moisture and flavor), salt, pepper, parmesan (cheese—no!) or oregano (a spice that’s fine, but I usually skip). The 6’’ veggie sub at Subway works out to be less than $3.50 ‘cause meat is expensive and you’re not having any.

Mexican Rice (Azteca, Tijuana’s, Ixtapa)

Self-explanatory. Doesn’t hurt to clarify/remind “no beans, no cheese” because some restaurants automatically add that to the rice or anything else they happen to be serving. You can also order a burrito—just tell them what you want, or find the veggie one on the menu and modify it to what you want, again “no beans, no cheese” or ask for extra rice to replace the beans. If the burrito comes with red sauce all over it, it’s okay. It’s not spicy, it’s some yummy totally legal tomato stuff that goes on burritos to make them “wet burritos”

Pasta and Marinara sauce (Olive Garden, California Pizza Kitchen)

Pasta is pasta. Angel hair, linguine, spaghetti, cappelini, penne, rotini. All of those are pasta, just in different shapes and sizes. There is almost always one of those (or something of the like) that comes with marinara sauce or pomodoro (read the description—if it has “meat” in the description, don’t order it). “Marinara” is universally (okay, maybe not quite that) known as “tomato pasta sauce with no meat”. Ask if it comes with cheese, or say “no parmesan” so they don’t bring it to you with cheese all over it.

Baked potato (Wendy’s)

Order the “Sour cream and chive baked potato”. The sour cream comes packaged separate from the potato. You can trade your sour cream back for some margarine, or just ask for margarine and throw the sour cream away.

Steak Fries and Salad (Red Robin)

I don’t know why they’re called steak fries. Maybe because they are so big. I don’t believe it’s more than $3 for a bottomless basket of fries. Maybe they aren’t called steak fries on the menu at Red Robin. I think they might not even be by themselves on the menu (apart from coming with burgers), but I was there last week and asked for either a basket of fries, or a side of fries, and they brought them to me, and when I finished them, they refilled them again. They also have a decent side/garden salad, but you have to ask for no cheese. I don’t care too much for their Italian dressing, but it’s better than eating no dressing at all. They put tortilla chip pieces on their salads, and I like that.

Brandon was quite generous and has provided the digital copies of his work to me. He has also given me permission to publish his work here for your enjoyment.

The Pullman/Moscow Beer Handbook

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my current community group leader and Seaside Church’s newest elder for inviting me to his residence to drink beer with his family on the evening of December 23 of this year after he learned that I was sitting at home all by myself.