Lessons from Learning about Adding Fonts to an Ipad I set out to determine if purchasing an Ipad for use in a college classroom would have benefits over a regular notebook computer. The one major hangup everyone from the "fanboys" to the Mac newbies has...
Everyone in a denominational setting should watch... SBTS – Resources – Video: The President’s Forum on the Future of the Southern Baptist Convention
Our Last K-5 Graduation Honestly, last night was a roller coaster of emotions. We were so happy that Reilly was finishing Kindergarten, but melancholy that he was the last cousin to do so. Ariel, Allison, Carissa, and now Reilly...
Very Happy This Happened Today! It has been a rough season to be a Tarheel fan! It has been even worse to pull for the Wolfpack! Tar Heels end skid by beating Wolfpack 74-61 - WRALSportsFan.com
It truly does seem that at times our burdens are overwhelming. These long nights of the soul are hard to forget and usually lonely even with the closest of family and friends.
However, in the last few weeks we have been burdened for those who are in need of prayer. To genuinely empathize and pray for those in need of great spiritual comfort and strength is the burden I face tonight.
It has been a rough season to be a Tarheel fan! It has been even worse to pull for the Wolfpack!
Tar Heels end skid by beating Wolfpack 74-61 – WRALSportsFan.com
Honestly, last night was a roller coaster of emotions. We were so happy that Reilly was finishing Kindergarten, but melancholy that he was the last cousin to do so. Ariel, Allison, Carissa, and now Reilly all are in grade school.
He did win the trophy he wanted to win and he received $50 in cash from everyone and he got the DS game he wanted… all told it was the best night of his life.
We pray that he and Allison will love the Lord with all their hearts.
That would be the best graduation present.
via Doug Phillips
Saint Harvey Gets Three Stars
By Geoffrey Botkin
For several years, frustrated American readers have been wondering just who in the world is discipling the writers at Christianity Today magazine. The recent CT review of Milk may hold clues – important theological clues. The review appears to reflect doctrines of an obscure religious order which uses uniquely creative theology to unchain the human spirit, respect diversity, and expiate stigmatic guilt, especially in the interpretation of popular culture. See the rest at Doug’s Blog: Christianity Today’s Tragic Endorsement of Pro-Homosexual Filmmaking
Ray Boltz Comes Out | Liveblog | Christianity Today
Ray Boltz Comes Out
Mark Moring
Ray Boltz, who sold about 4.5 million records before retiring from Christian music a few years ago, came out of the closet Friday to announce that he’s gay.
In an interview with the gay magazine The Washington Blade, Boltz said he came out to his family and some close friends in December 2004, but only now decided to go public with the news.
“I’d denied it ever since I was a kid,” Boltz, 55, told the magazine. “I became a Christian, I thought that was the way to deal with this and I prayed hard and tried for 30-some years and then at the end, I was just going, ‘I’m still gay. I know I am.’ And I just got to the place where I couldn’t take it anymore … when I was going through all this darkness, I thought, ‘Just end this.’”
One reason Boltz decided to come out now might be because he’s performing Sunday at Jesus Metropolitan Community Church in Indianapolis, and then next Sunday, Sept. 21, at the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, D.C. Both congregations are a part of a denomination that embraces the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community.
Boltz is perhaps best known for his song “Thank You,” about a dream in which a Christian thanks the Sunday school teacher who led him to Jesus. It was the GMA song of the year in 1990. Other Boltz hits include “Watch the Lamb,” “The Anchor Holds,” and “I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb.” (see rest of article)
Sometimes it never goes right….
A lost Nintendo DS.
An accused younger brother, who always is to blame …
A mad search resulting in many “lost” things found and …
3 clean rooms!
No Nintendo DS
Two Vehicles torn apart…
Weeping…
Distraction…
Finally,
Found, younger brother not to blame …
Smugness on his part, embarrassment on hers.
A lost morning for me
TOP 10 THINGS YOU’LL NEVER HEAR A DAD SAY via preaching.com
10. I guess I’m lost! Looks like we’ll have to stop and ask for directions.
9. You know, honey, now that you’re 13, you’ll be ready for unchaperoned car dates. Won’t that be fun?
8. I noticed all your friends have a certain hostile attitude. I like that.
7. Here’s a credit card and the keys to my new car. Go have fun!
6. What do you mean you want to play football? Figure skating’s not good enough for you, Son?
5. Your mother and I are going away for the weekend. You might want to consider throwing a party.
4. Well, I don’t know what’s wrong with your car. Probably one of those doo-hickey thingies that makes it run or something. Just have it towed to a mechanic and pay whatever he asks.
3. No son of mine is going to live under this roof without an earring. Now quit your belly-aching, and let’s go to the mall.
2. Why do you want to go and get a job? I make plenty of money for you to spend.
1. What do I want for my birthday? Oh, don’t worry about that. It’s no big deal. (Okay, they might say it, but they don’t mean it.)
(from The Daily Dilly)
Dangers of Cohabitation | PreachingToday.com
In a 2007 edition of the New Oxford Review, Dr. A. Patrick Schneider II, who holds boards in family and geriatric medicine and runs a private practice in Lexington, Kentucky, did a statistical analysis of cohabitation in America, based on the findings of a number of academic resources. Here are five conclusions Schneider draws from his studies:
1. Relationships are unstable in cohabitation. One-sixth of cohabiting couples stay together for only three years; one in ten survives five or more years.
2. Cohabiting women often end up with the responsibilities of marriage—particularly when it comes to caring for children—without the legal protection. Research has also found that cohabiting women contribute more than 70 percent of the relationship’s income.
3. Cohabitation brings a greater risk of sexually transmitted diseases, because cohabiting men are four times more likely to be unfaithful than husbands.
4. Poverty rates are higher among cohabitors. Those who share a home but never marry have 78 percent less wealth than the continuously married.
5. Those who suffer most from cohabitation are the children. The poverty rate among children of cohabiting couples is fivefold greater than the rate among children in married-couple households. Children ages 12–17 with cohabiting parents are six times more likely to exhibit emotional and behavioral problems and 122 percent more likely to be expelled from school.
Brian Lowery, associate editor, PreachingToday.com; source: A. Patrick Schneider II, “Cohabitation is bad for men, worse for women, and horrible for children,” www.lifesite.net (10-4-07), reprinted from an original article in the New Oxford Review
Man, I hope he is not right. Talk about complete loss of ethics and the nobility of humanity.
Abortion and your right to accurate sex selection. – By William Saletan – Slate Magazine
Sexual SatisfactionAbortion and your right to accurate sex selection.
By William Saletan
Posted Monday, Feb. 25, 2008, at 8:48 AM ET
How does a taboo begin to die?
For an answer, look at Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. “Accuracy of gender test kits in question,” says the headline. The writer, Karen Kaplan, reports that many women are up in arms over home genetic tests that erred in predicting the sex of their kids. More than 100 women are suing one company. Others are calling for regulation.
Parents, Oh how much ought you to be continually devising for the good of your children! Often devise how to make them “wise children”; how to give them a desirable education, an education that may render them desirable; how to render them lovely and polite, and serviceable in their generation. Often devise how to enrich their minds with valuable knowledge; how to instill generous, gracious, and heavenly principles into their minds; how to restrain and rescue them from the paths of the destroyer, and fortify them against their peculiar temptations. There is a world of good that you have to do for them. You are without the natural feelings of humanity if you are not in a continual agony to do for them all the good that ever you can. It was no mistake of an ancient writer to say, “Nature teaches us to love our children as ourselves.”
Resolved —
At the birth of my children, I will resolve to do all I can that they may be the Lord’s. I will now actually give them up by faith to God; entreating that each child may be a child of God the Father, a subject of God the Son, a temple of God the Spirit-and be rescued from the condition of a child of wrath, and be possessed and employed by the Lord as an everlasting instrument of His glory. (See Newsletter Link)
A Church-Based Hope for “Adultolescents”
A Church-Based Hope for “Adultolescents”
By John Piper November 13, 2007
Christian Smith, professor of sociology at Notre Dame, wrote in the most recent Books and Culture a review of six books that deal with the new phenomenon of “adultolescence”—that is, the postponement of adulthood into the thirties. I want to relate this phenomenon to the church. But first here is a summary from Smith’s article of what it is and how it came about.
Tags: Adultolescents Piper
Baptist Press – Even at Christmas, too much is too much
Even at Christmas, too much is too much
Posted on Dec 21, 2007 | by Tammy Darling
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–Is the toy box overflowing? Are your child’s closet and dresser drawers jammed beyond capacity? Is every available space in your home being utilized in an attempt to store all the stuff?
Special days such as Christmas and birthdays can quickly result in an overabundance of stuff. To help alleviate this problem, let friends and relatives know you appreciate their desire to give something to your child, but that it would be great if they would limit it to just one item.
Too many toys and gadgets and too much clothing may not be the sign of a spoiled child or even a rich family. Often it is simply the result of well-intentioned giving gone too far.
In an article on “What’s Wrong With Buying Lottery Tickets?” Hal Lane observes, “Legalized gambling teaches the following principles:
Gambling is good. The state will give its seal of approval to a practice that has led many into addictive and destructive lifestyles. They will be sanctioning a false hope of instant wealth that has resulted in abandoned children, divorce, financial ruin, theft and suicide. They will lose the moral authority to oppose other forms of gambling that will follow.
Greed is good. The state will seek to entice players to take a chance on instant wealth. Instead of teaching the biblical principle that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, it will teach that the lack of money is the root of all kinds of evil.
It is good to educate the wealthy with money from the poor. Despite skewed statistics that attempt to say that lottery tickets are bought by a cross section of the economic spectrum, the truth is that the poor and desperate buy disproportionately more lottery tickets. “Those making less than $10,000 per year spend more than any other income group, averaging $597 per year. Furthermore, the top 5 percent of lottery players account for over 50 percent of lottery sales, spending on average $3,870 per year.” (Timothy A. Kelly, Family Research Council)
The end justifies the means. It is not how we raise money but how we use the money that determines the morality of the means. If citizens are OK with using revenue generated from lottery ticket sales, will state legislators next consider legalizing pornography and prostitution and earmarking those funds for students’ benefits?
Lotteries are thinly veiled cloaks for greed and selfishness. Christians can stand out as stars in a dark culture by refusing to participate in the many forms of gambling, including the lottery.”
http://erlc.com/article/whats-wrong-with-buying-a-lottery-ticket
Making it a Merry Christmas 
by Suzanne Hadley
“Hi. My name’s Suzanne and I had a lousy Christmas.”
It was December 28, and I felt like I needed to join a holiday recovery support group. As I hoisted my suitcase into a friend’s trunk, I breathed a sigh of relief to be back on my own turf. With visions of “the great Christmas blow-up” dancing in my head — and trust me, three sisters in tears is not a pretty sight — I collapsed into the front seat.
I soon learned I wasn’t alone in my post-holiday depression. Out poured my friend’s own tale of holiday woe. And in the weeks that followed, I learned that nearly everyone I knew had experienced holiday unpleasantness in some form — the critical mother, the bad gifts, the boredom, the arguments. We had all gone home looking forward to warm family times and returned in need of therapy.