Craig Groeschel posted this on the Lifechurch.tv Swerver Blog. These are some great questions to serve as checkpoints for someone in church leadership. I am going to use these each time I do a self heart check to make sure that I am staying on track.
- What did I learn in God’s word this week?
- Is my burden for prayer growing or diminishing?
- Does my heart break for the things that break the heart of God?
Hit the link for the rest of the list.
I started using Remember The Milk several months ago, but after a while fell off of the bandwagon because I was not going to the site that often to keep it updated. the main reason that I originally started using it was because of its integration with Twitter. I receive notifications of when things are due as a text message to my phone. I added RTM widgets to my NetVibes and IGoogle pages to see if that would help me keep up with it, but I found that the widgets kept refreshing my page. I didn’t like that my homepage was constantly refreshing. It also logged me out often and I would have to log back in. It reached the point where I just was not using it on a regular basis.
Then the other day I went back to visit the site because I had not been in a while. There was some cleanup that I needed to do and was considering deleting my account because I just was not using the service. Then I found the GMail add on for Firefox that is available. I am always into my Gmail page so it is often that I would see my list of things to do. The add-on is also capable of letting me add new items and set them into the correct lists with due dates and priorities. So I am back on the RTM Bandwagon and loving it so far this week. This is IMHO the best To Do List Manager out there and the way it utilizes Twitter is my favorite feature.
I would like to know your thoughts on how you keep track of To Do Lists or how you have used RTM. Please comment.
Easter is supposed to be the biggest holiday in Christianity. For some reason though, I do not get super excited about it each year. I do enjoy the holiday and all of the traditions that go along with it, but I don’t get very excited about going to church on that day. I dislike the judgmental feeling that I get when I think about going to church on Easter. I don’t quite understand why so many people who do not attend church regularly show up in droves for Easter and Christmas church services. I realize that this is a good opportunity for churches to reach people that they normally would not, but it still bothers me. In the days leading up to Easter services, I was trying very hard to not focus on those thoughts and feelings, but tried to prepare myself to go to services and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ with with pure heart. Unfortunately I did not make it to services on Easter because I had a child sick with pneumonia. It was not the most fun weekend of all. We are fortunate that K.C. did not have to be admitted to the hospital and the kids were healthy enough to enjoy their Easter treats. The weekend was not a total loss, but very exhausting with a couple of late nights and trips to the Hospital.
I found myself many times in prayer and reflection on the events of the weekend searching for something that I could learn from all that I was facing. I began to compare my feelings of helplessness and uncertainty as I was waiting to see what could be done for my daughter, to how God must have felt as he watched his son Jesus take on the punishment for all the sins of this world. It made my situation look very insignificant compared to the big picture. Then as my thoughts moved from Good Friday and into Easter Sunday, I was reminded that we focus too much on the cross and the sacrifice and not so much on the power of the resurrection. God could have rescued Jesus from the suffering at any moment, but he had confidence in what was to be the greatest display of His power and ultimately the foundation of my Christian faith. God was not worried about Jesus because he new that His power was stronger than death itself. On Easter, we celebrate God’s power over death. I found great comfort knowing that no matter what challenges I face, no matter the fears that I face, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ paid the price of suffering for me out of Love and by His Power, overcame death.
That was my Easter experience this year. God used my experiences of the weekend to show me these things so that I would better understand why Easter is a big deal and adjust my attitude towards all of the hoopla that goes into it.
We very rarely experience a dull day at my house. With my kids, it seems that everyday is an adventure. This is the first Easter in a while that we had not planned to go out of town. We have had so much going on this month that this weekend was supposed to be a little more low key than recent weekends. Unfortunately things did not work out as planned.
Friday, K.C. woke up with a pretty good fever and was acting pretty irritable. We thought that it could be her teeth and gave her the usual fever fighting dosage of Tylenol and continued to monitor things. Her fever was still high on the Tylenol, so we went to the Urgent Care on Friday evening when it opened. We spent over 5 hours there while they checked everything out. Faith was with K.C. and Ephriam and I watched basketball in the waiting room. The kids were really good for us fortunately, but that was not how I had planned to spend my Friday evening.
The doctors found that K.C. had pneumonia, but it had really just started that day because they could not hear it with the stethoscope. So we got some antibiotics and took her home. We were happy to know what the problem was so that we would not be hanging waiting for test results having to return the next day.
Saturday, Faith went to help in the Discovery Land (Nursery) at our church. I stayed home with the kids and played. K.C. was much more the normal child on Saturday and was happy playing. No high fevers or anything like that. Things were looking great. Then I received the phone call. The Nurse Practitioner from Children’s Hospital called and said that they found bacteria in one of her blood samples and that they needed to see her that night. Faith was at church and I tried to call her cell phone, but she was not getting a signal. So I loaded the kids into the car and drove all the way to church to reach her. She took K.C. down to Children’s and I took Ephriam home to go to bed.
After several more hours of testing, everything was looking good as far as any indications that there might be another problem. They have to redraw the blood test and check it again hoping that the first was a false positive. It is possible that the first test could have been contaminated by bacteria from her skin. So they came home last night around 1 AM. Now we just hope that the phone does not ring today from Children’s. If they find bacteria again, she will have to go back. They told us that no news is good news and to just keep her on the antibiotic.
So today we celebrate Christ risen thankful that my little girl is at home with us. The Easter Bunny has visited and for now life is in order. I hope that this will be the end of this short adventure.
I have been so into Twitter lately that I haven’t been blogging as often. I have been putting most of my little updates onto my Twitter feed instead of updating my life on the blog. I guess also that I haven’t had a whole lot to report from here lately. Nothing terribly new or exciting around here. Just trying to pass the time today at work though since the business is off for Good Friday, but we still have to keep their email running. I have less than an hour left
I have also been working on a new blog for my Alumni Association of Sigma Theta Epsilon. I have quite a bit of work to do getting all of that together. It should be a lot of fun once things get rolling and we can setup some events. So far, it has been really nice getting back in touch with my chapter. For now its me talking a lot, but once UC is back from break I plan on meeting with the guys there and then trying to pull off an event. The paper work to make everything official with nationals will take longer, but I am not too worried about that at the moment.
Happy Friday!!!!!
-c-
Its not the Big Dance, but it is some post season play. I am happy to see UC get rewarded for their efforts this year. It would be nice to see them go deep in this new tournament.
The Bearcats learned late Sunday night that they have been invited to play in the inaugural 16-team College Basketball Invitational on Wednesday at either Penn State (15-16) or Virginia (15-15).
Click here for the rest of the article.
-c-
My dad noticed the other day that he couldn’t see my Twitter updates on the www.churchpunk.com. I have a badge setup there so that people who visit can see my updates. At first I didn’t think much of it because I get that error message at work because it is blocked. But then I got home and looked and was receiving the error as well. Of course it is not uncommon for Twitter to be down, but I was connecting fine. So I had to go recreate my script on the web page so that it would display properly. Thanks Dad for checking the site and making me aware of the error. You should see the updates clearly now. If not, you may need to clear your cookies and cache.
The latest podcast episode is up and ready for your ears. The topic this week is Avoiding a Competitive Spirit by Learning to Define Success. If you are unfamiliar with this Podcast, it is a podcast for young leaders in ministry hosted by regular people trying to balance life and ministry. You can check it out at http://www.whoaretheseguyspodcast.com/