When Faith and I started dating back in 2001, we decided that it was necessary for us to take certain steps to make Jesus a vital part of our relationship.  Part of that plan was to read the Bible together, but we were not able to sit down together everyday to read it.  So we decided to read a chapter a day separately and we would send each other an email on our thoughts about the chapter for that particular day.  It was a great way for us to get to know each other better and more importantly get to know Jesus better together.

Over the years, we have gotten away from our daily Bible reading occasionally, only to pick it back up again for a while and then life happens and we put it to the side for a while.  We even switched it up and read books together as well.  We have been on a really good streak since the beginning of this year and I have been trying something new to help us keep up with the reading.

I setup a separate blog at http://cord-of-three.blogspot.com/.  Every Monday through Friday, I post a blog with that day’s reading.  We are both subscribed to the blog in Google Reader, so when it publishes we get notification of the new blog post.  Because we check Google Reader constantly all day keeping up with all of the blogs and news that we read, it is easy to open that one up and read what we have for today.  We then have comments open on it so that we can share our thoughts about that day’s chapter.  Right now we are reading Jeremiah, so there is not a lot of chatter about it.

This has been working really well for us to read daily together and discuss it even when we don’t have the time to sit down and talk about it each day.

I am so glad that my wisdom teeth are out now and I am pretty much recovered from the removal.  I am still a little sore and I have to keep taking some drugs for a few more days, but I am confidently eating again for the most part with some exceptions.

I kept looking at this procedure as a big inconvenience for me.  I don’t like it when I have to put things on hold for stuff like this.  I kept thinking about how it was going to slow down everything in my life.  Fortunately I have a wonderful wife who managed to pick up the slack for a couple of days with my chores and the kids.  Today is my get back in the routine day.  I had a good night of sleep and am back at work today.  I feel like it will be pretty easy to get back into the daily routine so far.

I have noticed in the past whenever I try to make certain disciplinary changes in my life whether it be an exercise routine, diet, time-management routine, etc….there always seems to be something that comes up to try to slow me down.  I will either get sick or some other crazy circumstances of life become a major inconvenience.  Many times these minor distractions have become the stepping stone for old habits.  But I find if I can maintain my focus and push through the distractions, I can pick up the ball again keep running.  It is all about how I choose to deal with the situation.  I have a choice to let it roadblock me, or I can lean into it, pray really hard and watch God move mountains.

How are you choosing to respond to life’s distractions?  Are you letting them hinder what God has planned for you?

Yesterday afternoon I finally went in to have my wisdom teeth pulled.  They have wanted me to pull them for a year or so now, but they never bothered me until I got a cavity on one.  So I was not very excited, but thought it would be a good idea to get it taken care of.

So I went in for the appointment in the dentist’s office.  I have to mention that my awesome wife brought the kids to the appointment and entertained them the whole time I was in surgery.  I was hoping for a fairly standard teeth pulling unlike Faith who had to go under to get hers pulled.  So I got all of mine pulled using only a local anesthetic.  He numbed my mouth up really good until my mouth felt like the size of a football.  He then worked on the bottom right one and had to dig out the roots using all kinds of tools.  It finally came out and the root had a big hook on the end.  The top right one came out nice and easy and then we took a break.  The appointment was supposed to be an hour and a half, but it took about 2 hours.  He had to work on the last two as well and I got a laundry list of drugs for pain.

Last night I had fun changing out my gauze every 15 minutes.  It was a bloody mess.  The bleeding has almost stopped now.  Had a little on me from sleeping at night, but nothing major.  My mouth is still pretty sore, but I have been able to eat some toast now.  It feels really good to chew.  I have the day off work today for recovery, but I should be able to go back tomorrow.  I am really hoping to get things back to normal quickly especially in the eating department.  I should be okay for now though because I can eat lots of ice cream and I can drink my Coke again.

Wisdom Teeth from Chris Walker on Vimeo.

Kendra turned 3 yesterday.  She is growing up right before my eyes.  For her birthday weekend, we had planned to go to the Zoo on Saturday, but we got rained out.  So we went to the movies and she decided to go see the G-Force movies about the secret agent Guinea Pigs.  It was a decent movie, one I am sure we will have to buy when it comes out on DVD.  On Sunday we had a big family gathering for her party.  We grilled out and she played with her cousins and swam in the pool for a while.  It was a really nice day.  I am not sure I am prepared for her and her brother to grow up as quickly as they are, but it is so much fun to see them learn and grow each day.  I only hope that I can help them both learn about Jesus.  I know that I cannot control what they eventually decide to do with their lives, but I hope that I can help them to make good decisions and teach them how Jesus has been a part of my life.

[Photo by woodleywonderworks]

The Fellowship of the Believers

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common.  Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Acts 2:42-47

This is one of my favorite scripture passages that really lays out a passion and vision that I have.  About 6 years ago, I thought that I was going to have a great opportunity to put this into action, but I met a lot of delay.  I have actually spent the last several years practicing this and learning more about how this type of community could exist today.

Tonight, I hope to begin laying the groundwork for this community vision that I have.  Having spent many years in Youth Ministry and using the Purpose Drive Model, I am making that crossover into a small group culture.  I know of many small groups that are very good at community, but I have seen others at different levels that struggle with community.  It is frustrating to see small groups that are little more than just another gathering of believers.  Gathering is good and fellowship is a lot of fun, but we are called to be more than “holy huddles.”

The end of Acts 2 lays out a model very similar to the 5 purposes of Purpose Driven Youth Ministry.  Verse 42 shows us a group of people who are devoted to discipleship.  Verses 44-45 shows us that we should love other people in ministry.  Verse 46 is the fun fellowship example.  And verse 47 shows us that we should worship God.  The only missing purpose is Evangelism, but not really.  The whole passage results in people being saved.  A small group community should be sharing Jesus with their lives in all that they do.  When I am at work, at the store, working in my yard, playing with my kids, driving on the highway……there are endless opportunities to share the love of Jesus with others if we can learn to be more outward focused and less inward focused.

Actions speak louder than words people, so let’s go do.

[Photo Credit - mikaelmiettinen]

It has been a few months since I have checked in on where my focus is.  In my post from May, I was feeling very busy and stretched.  I am happy to report now that I am really finding some traction.  This past weekend I decided that it was time for me to start getting better sleep.  I have always been a night time person, but it would be very beneficial to me if I could go to sleep earlier and wake up earlier.  I made some changes last weekend to set me on a more strict sleeping schedule and it has been glorious although hard at first.

I used to be able to fall asleep at any point during the day, but come about 10 PM and I would be wired with energy.  I would even sometimes have a hard time going to sleep at night.  Then 6 AM would roll around and I would be draggin’ all day long.  I really just felt tired all of the time mostly because I was averaging about 5-6 hours of sleep every night.  That was a lot easier to do when I was in college.

So I have decided to give up sleeping in on the weekends.  That was an easy decision though because my kids have not really let me sleep in for a long time.  I am getting up around 5 AM everyday and going to bed around 10 PM every night.  I have only struggled getting up early a couple of times this week because I was still adjusting and once because KC kept me up a lot later at night.  Other than that, it has been going really well.  I am feeling more rested and I am able to get a lot more done.

My favorite part is getting out of bed before my kids and having time to prepare for the rest of the day.  It is amazing how much more I can accomplish when I wake up on my own instead of having 2 small children jumping on my back to wake me up.

I grew up with 2 brothers and 1 sister.  We all loved each other, but I remember a lot more of the teasing, pranking, fighting, and general sibling rivalry more than the cuddly loving moments.  Yesterday afternoon I caught one of those loving moments between Ephriam and KC in the picture below.

Just so you don’t get worried, it was short lived.  Ephriam didn’t wait very long to start pushing KC away from him.  Things were back to normal pretty quickly, but it was a cute moment to watch while it lasted.

This weekend at VCC, Dave talked about the 7th commandment that says, “You shall not commit adultery.”  He came at this commandment from a perspective that I have never thought about before.  Many of the commandments are written in a negative fashion with their “do not”, “thou shall not….”.  Dave shared the commandment from a positive perspective.  The positive version of the commandment is to love faithfulness.  Instead of thinking about what actions we shouldn’t take, we also need to think about what actions we should be taking.

It was very encouraging to me to look at this commandment in this way because whenever I think about this commandment I am reminded of Matthew 5:28 that says,

But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Jesus really knows how to call you out when it comes to sinfulness.  The temptation to look is very hard to avoid.  But it is a matter of how I process what I see and where my intentions go.  This is something that I have to constantly be aware of and will probably have to guard myself from for the rest of my life.

After Dave worked through that passage including verse 29 about gouging out your eyes, I found encouragement.  Dave said that “Jesus raises the stakes of faithfulness and pushes right into our intentions to teach us to love faithfulness.  He wants us to be perfect and holy.”  (My loose quote of what I wrote down quickly)  There is no one perfect and holy besides Jesus.  In my perfectionist attitude I forgot that everyone else is imperfect just like me.  It is moments like these when I remember grace.

I was reminded that I am in training to be holy.  My journey to holiness will be full of failures and recoveries.   It is encouraging to know that Jesus has already walked the perfect path for me.

I am choosing to follow the example of Jesus and love faithfulness.

(Photo by compujeramey)

I expect that after reading the title that my some of you have already stopped reading because you have no idea what I am talking about.  Some of you are in step with me and are interested to learn more about my adventures in Twitter and photos.  Some of you are still clueless and are reading just because you are curious and think that maybe you could learn something.  Congratulations if you are still reading.  If you know what Twitpic and Flickr2Twitter are, you can skip ahead a little bit.  If not, please read on and soak up the social goodness that I will impart to you.

First you must have an idea of what Twitter is.  Twitter is micro-blogging officially.  Short updates about peoples’ lives from people that you choose to follow.  If you are not reading this blog in an RSS reader, you can see on the right column a bird tweeting my latest Twitter update. You can see a whole list of updates from me by going to my Twitter profile page.  Ok, so you have an idea of what Twitter is.

Twitpic is a service that integrates with Twitter and allows you to update your Twitter status with a link to a picture that you took with your phone.  It also works with photos on your computer or webcam.  I like to update Twitter from my mobile phone and it is cool to be able to send those pictures to share with everyone who follows me.

Flickr just introduced the new service Flickr2Twitter.  It works in the same way only my photos get uploaded to my Flickr account where I can tag, organize, and share them further.  The photo goes into  Flickr and then updates my Twitter status with a link to the photo.

I switched to Flickr because it gives me more control over the photos that I upload.  It is a lot easier to view them in Flickr as well.  The downside to Flickr is that you can only upload so much data per month under the free account.  I still have Twitpic active and will occasionally use that service as well, but I think that Flickr is going to win out because of what else I can do  with my photos after I upload them.

What is your favorite photo sharing service for Twitter?

Updated: Changed out the cruddy photo of me for a different pic at Faith’s request.