"I bet if I had a million dollars I could hook that up. . ."

Name the movie for a star. . .

For all two of you who have vested interest in what's going in Savagetown. . . that is stupid, my apologies. Here is an update, Julie and I are waiting Lucy's birth. Good times, though, the last month officially stinks. It is well worse than waiting for my wedding day, because at least there was for sure date, and I got to hang out with Julie everyday, and friends, and plans lots of crap. There is no such mountains of fun in waiting for baby. Although, we have had good times washing all of the new clothes for her to wear, thhbbbbbbt! No, really, we are totally excited, and I am a little impatient, which is silly because Julie is on bed rest and has to sit at home all day for a month, so I'm sure she feels double impatient. But, speaking of wedding, today is Julie and my anniversary! Yeah! It is cool to remember our wedding day and the excitement of being together. It is also fun to think about how different our lives are now, and how God continues to watch over us and use us.

My dear friend JR visited us on the way down to his new home in Memphis, where he will, in fact, be walking. It was awesome to see him, though it wasn't much of a party. Since Julie and I are in wait mode, we do a lot of sitting. He and I got to chatting a bit about how crazy change is and how different people respond to it and what not. I have realized that I have trouble with really big changes, and can't imagine going through them without Julie as she is much more calm during those time. And I found twenty dollars or my dad's name is Randy.

I added 'the chuck' to my links area on the blog, this is a link to some awesome Chuck Norris facts. I also am in the hunt for a Chuck Norris total gym. I found a couple on Craig's list, but they haven't emailed me back yet. I know that with a Chuck Norris total gym, I will be one step closer to becoming a Ninja.

In other news, I got to preach last weekend. I personally felt that it went very well, although, you may get a different story from the congregation. Not really, I have received positive feedback. The sermon was on 'Love', more specifically , the sort of love the church should for each other and the world around them. Originally, I was going to go down the road of unpacking the meaning of 'koinonia' - fellowship and what it truly looks like, but I kept leaning more towards the love side. THen the kicker was, I was on the net, and stumble across an article by this KJV only dude who was basically going off on people who point to greek 'nuggets' in their sermons. It was pretty interesting, because I don't think that it is necessary to dive deep into greek or hebrew when preaching the word, and at times it is overkill, espescially if the preacher is not good at connecting with the people and teaching them through the importance of a text. This guy, however was on a whole nother level. He was going as far to say that using greek in a sermon was nothing but an unbiblical parlor trick, that only points to glorify the knowledge of the speaker. I am guessing, he has not had good experiences with this.

He went on to site the different words for 'love' in the NT. His claim was that they are universally interchangable within the text and held no difference for the original readers, nor do they hold any relevance to today. (remember old KJV guy) To top it off, he included a 'test' as proof for this claim. The short version of the story is, his test totally proved him wrong. Anyways, all of that to set up the fact that I ended up feeling led to talk about the difference between the loves in Scripture. (Philos and Agape) The premise being that Agape is totally unbiased emotionally. Agape love, which is God's love that we should model and have in the church and to those outside of the church, is given despite any sort of ill feeling towards people. Example: 'Turn the other cheek'. . .if you get slapped by someone you love emotionally, it would be pretty easy to turn your cheek, overlooking the wrong that had been done. But if random Joe who annoys yous slaps you, it's on. Agape love is intentional, covers over wrongs, and gets the people who don't automatically connect with you emotionally. (enemies, weird neighbors, ugly people, widows, orphans, single moms, those on the margins, rich people, etc.) It covers everyone. You might say its patient, kind, selfless, keeps no record of wrongs, slow to anger, selfless, not rude, etc.. This is huge for the church. George Barna said that the church has become 'an island of piety surrounded by a sea of irrelevance' to many people. I wonder if that's because they love (Agape) really well?

I'll leave that there, but thanks to angry KJV guy, for allowing God to speak through your wrongness.